- I wonder how long it will be before we’re forced back on the 55 MPH national speed limit, told to put on a second and third sweater instead of bumping up the thermostat a skosh, and excoriated for lighting our homes with more than one light bulb at a time.
- I’m fortunate that my employer still allows me to work from home for the most part. When that changes, my budget for fuel is going to climb and my current state of ‘Yeah, this sucks’ will turn into ‘Yeah, SYS$PoliticalPartyInPower sucks.” Well, more than it is now.
- I’ll know the energy crisis is real when I see wealthy people carpooling in their Gulf Streams to green energy conferences while wearing sweaters.
- Idea for a sociological study – Someone ought to look for upward trends of YouTube traffic on videos that show how to make food from the Great Depression. We’ll know when we’re in trouble when a lot of people start looking for ways to cook like Great-Grandma did when all she had was two old carrots, a couple cups of macaroni, and a squirrel to feed a family of 8.
- Question – What is going to be the impact of food aid to the average middle-class American when it comes in the form of uncooked rice, cooking oil, and dried vegetables and the only thing made in an lot of American kitchens is reservations and mixed drinks?
- In a land of defunct InstaPots, banned microwaves, and pizza delivery that comes with a $25 fuel surcharge, the new rulers will be those who know how to actually use their pots, ovens, and Brillo pads.
- I’ll know the Ukraine crisis is a big deal to the U.S.Government when we start hearing comments about how we only oppose the Russian government, not the hard working, honest Russian people.
- We’ll really know it’s a crisis when we see the sons and daughters of wealthy people and politicians going to Canada and Switzerland for a few semesters of study abroad while their parents start visiting rural and inner city schools to expound on the benefits of serving the nation.
- Am I the only one that thinks a lot of what Putin is saying isn’t meant for you,me, or even the current occupier of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue? He’s trying to sound tough, resolute, and righteous to Russians, and he’s doing a good job of making sure that his voice is the only one they hear.
All posts in category Thought for the day
Rumblings
Posted by daddybear71 on March 13, 2022
https://daddybearsden.com/2022/03/13/rumblings-4/
Musings
- It cost more to fill up my wife’s hatchback on Saturday as it did to fill up my full-size truck a year ago. At this rate, it might soon be cheaper to just hire a couple of big guys to carry my family around on their backs.
- My belief that all things I own should be made out of basalt or stainless steel was validated recently when we awoke to find the corner of our glass cooktop shattered and a crack starting to work its way across the surface.
- No idea how it happened. Nobody had cooked using that side of the stove in a while, and there wasn’t anything on the counter that could have been dropped on it.
- Wouldn’t you know it, but that particular model is no longer made, and the glass part needed to fix it is not available on the market.
- The ‘on-sale’ price for a new range was within striking range of making an extra house payment.
- Hey, it’s only money. Right?
- Two days after having new carpet installed in the basement, made necessary by the Great Laundry Room Flood of ’21, Louisville got between 3 and 5 inches of rain.
- There’s nothing more chilling than hearing your wife raving at the gods when she goes downstairs and discovers a 6-inch wide strip of wet carpet running along one entire side of the basement.
- Luckily, we caught it in time, dried the carpet, and had the pad replaced. Hey, it’s only money.
- I’m not sure if this indicates anything, but the coffee I like is no longer available in one pound bags. I have to either order a 12 ounce bag like Walmart sells at the price a 16 ounce bag used to go for, or I have to order a 32 ounce bag at a little more than double what a pound was going for a while back.
- The difference between me and Irish Woman – When the country ham she likes to get at the butcher shop hit $14 a pound, she complained about the cost while making a sandwich. When the roast beef I like hit $8 a pound, I quit buying roast beef.
- At those prices, it’s worth investing in a boar spear and telling the boy to go chase a pig out of the woods in my direction.
- Fortunately, my bologna has a first name, although its price tag is also ridiculous for what you get.
- Attempts to make home-made soda pop have been mixed.
- The root beer Boo and I made was quite tasty.
- The ginger beer, not so much. It’s OK and worth playing with the recipe to just make syrup to mix with club soda, but trying to make fermented ginger beer was an abject failure.
- We are, however, going to plant some ginger to see how well it grows around here.
- I was able to acquire an affordable, convenient room for LibertyCon in June. It’ll be good to see my tribe again.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 6, 2022
https://daddybearsden.com/2022/03/06/musings-370/
Musings
- Saying “I drink coffee for your sake and the sake of all His church” on a Sunday morning does not count as going to Mass.
- Nothing says “I love you” like waking your husband up half an hour early for his middle-of-the-night work assignment because you don’t think the two alarms he set will be enough.
- See above comment about coffee.
- Always read your work emails before sending them. Telling a vendor “I was doing your job while you were shitting yellow” is probably not conducive to receiving excellent customer service.
- “He started it” would probably have not been useful in the talking-to I would have gotten.
- I’ve been listening to Monster Hunter Memoirs and cackling to the humor. Irish Woman keeps asking if I’m OK.
- It’s what happens if the laughter stops that should worry her.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 25, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/07/25/musings-368/
Musings
- If you’re going to have the bridesmaids and groomsmen process to the altar to the sound of a string quartet playing “Sweet Child of Mine”, then please have the good graces to play a classical rendition of “Highway to Hell” as the groom approaches his place of judgement.
- If you’re going to have an open bar at a reception, in a warehouse-turned-event-space, with a family known far and wide for its ability to vocalize at a level making amplification unnecessary, during a thunderstorm, please don’t get pissy when I ask you to repeat yourself and stand so that I can see your lips when you talk.
- If you’re going to hold a pool party for your son and a half-dozen of his closest friends, please don’t feel it necessary to go back behind the pool to retrieve your phone in the pitch black of darkest night. Doing so will inevitably cause one of said young men to approach your loving husband to say “Um, Mrs. Bear is laying on the ground and can’t get up.”
- If you do, though, please don’t argue with your husband that you’re fine and just need a bandaid for your filleted shin so that you can drive your shocky self to the emergency room.
- If your wife has filleted her shin, please don’t be shocked that she screams when you pour cold water down her leg to wash out some of the larger chunks of rock and dirt. The peacock at the farm two streets over answering her call was pretty cool, though.
- If you are a doctor or nurse in an emergency room, please don’t feel it’s necessary to repeatedly peel back the bandage on someone’s leg, wince, and pronounce that this is beyond your skills to sew up. Also, loudly braying “No, this thing is freaking huge. No way am I trying to fix that!” into your cellphone does nothing for your patient’s state of mind.
- If you’re thinking about going into medicine, might I suggest becoming a plastic surgeon. Apparently, they have the power to answer a phone call from an emergency room at 3 AM, listen to the situation, then pronounce that they’ll be in at 9 AM.
- If you’re a loving husband, don’t comment with “I’ve seen worse” and then tell your wife about it while you’re assisting her while changing her bandage.
- If, two days after having 30+ stitches put into your leg, you start to run a fever, please don’t argue with your husband that you’re fine. It tends to make us grumpy and rather curt.
- If your loving husband is mixing up Dakin’s Solution for you to use on your wound, it’s funny to call it “Granny’s Recipe” the first three or four times he pours it into a mason jar. After that, the smile is only there because he loves you.
- If you injure yourself badly enough that you can’t enjoy your brand-spanking-new pool over the entire summer, please don’t complain about it to your husband who didn’t want the pool in the first place. Schadenfreude is not conducive to a happy marriage.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 11, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/07/11/musings-367/
Musings
- You know you’re in a cool group of folks when you mention that you’re stuck on a rather esoteric subject in a project and someone goes “Oh, yeah, check out <INSERT BOOK TITLE HERE>. If it doesn’t have what you’re looking for, let me know. I know a guy.”
- Another sign is the presence of not only a plushy manatee, but also a life-sized plushy lemur, at the party.
- You learn things when you spend time with your tribe. This weekend, I learned that I really like Irish whiskey. Irish whiskey, on the other hand, wants me to die horribly.
- I need to sit down with a paper map and plot out the routing for my flights to and from Texas this past weekend.
- I’ll have to make an unbroken salt circle around the map first. I’m pretty sure that I’ll summon something rather sticky and irritated when I finish drawing that particular shape.
- I was 2 for 4 in the “Screaming Baby on an Airplane” game this weekend.
- One waited until we were almost at the gate to deplane before losing his mind. Not perfect, but nearly so.
- The other one started whining when the engines fired up, cried as we took off, then screamed from Denver to Louisville. Everyone was, or tried to be gracious, about the situation. I was amazed at this infant’s stamina. He’s got a career as a marathon runner who does opera in his spare time.
- Folks, if you’re going to fly a low-cost airline in this day and age, please be sparing in your use of perfume, cologne, and fermented fish sauce during your morning cleansing rituals. Just because we’re crammed in like sardines doesn’t mean you have to smell like one.
- I normally tell my children that someone should be slow dancing with them before they can be smelled, but we were almost at the point of cuddling while we sat 6 across on a widebody.
- In the never-ending debate of “WhatABurger versus In-n-Out”, I have to say that when you want a tasty burger served with a side of great service and awesome french fries, you go to WhatABurger. When you want a delicious, sloppy, grease-bomb and a tee-shirt, you go to In-n-Out.
Posted by daddybear71 on April 20, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/04/20/musings-366/
Musings
- Pool – An Old English word that means “A hole in the yard into which one pours money, time, and liability”.
- It took two days for the installer to put the pool together, two days to fill it with the garden hose, and one day for Irish Woman to discover the first leak and the definite lean of the pump and filter.
- I am afraid to say this out loud, because she can kill me with her mind, but not my monkeys, not my circus.
- One good thing about this boondoggle is that someday, I will want to spend a lot of money on something she doesn’t want on the property, and all I will have to do is point across the yard to her industrial-size algae receptacle.
- Somehow, a trip to the farm store to get a heavy duty extension cord turned out to be a purchase of an extension cord, a garden hatchet, two solar lamps, and a plastic hollow log.
- We needed the extension cord because, of course, the pool installers got out here before the electrician did.
- The garden hatchet is so that Irish Woman can repel boarders while she’s puttering around the yard.
- The lights are so that Irish Woman can see her opponents while she putters around the yard.
- The hollow plastic log…. Well, I’m not really sure what that’s for. I’m sure it will have a purpose someday.
- There is that magical moment, after four days of banging your head against a problem, when it finally goes away and you’re proud of yourself. It’s not because you solved it, though. Rather, you gain a feeling of great accomplishment for not choking the person who knew what was wrong, how to fix it, and yet did not pipe up or bother to write down their knowledge. Allowing that person to walk away unscathed is the true achievement.
Posted by daddybear71 on April 10, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/04/10/musings-365/
Musings
- Well, Irish Woman’s pool is finally starting to happen in ways that involve more than writing checks.
- Oh, the check writing will never end, but now other things are happening too. See if you can spot where this makes me a happy bear.
- I will be paying to upgrade the electrical service on the house because the 1979 breaker box in my basement is full. Apparently we need electricity for the world’s most expensive cattle trough, and my suggestion to hook up an exercise bike and a generator was vetoed.
- I cannot have the plumber out to add a new outdoor water spigot where I want it because pieces and parts of the above ground cistern have been stacked in my garage and I am forbidden to touch them. That means that my darling Irish Woman will have to string together a couple hundred feet of hose to fill her artisanal sump once it’s assembled.
- The excavating company was out yesterday to do site prep. I now have a 24 foot hole in my yard, ranging from half a foot to 2.5 feet deep. Luckily, the limestone shelf upon which Kentucky rests is just a tad deeper than this. Around here, the sound of a jack hammer is ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching.
- The dirt from said hole is piled up in a nice berm between the hold and the street. Irish Woman, the love of my life and mother to my spawn, says that it will be planted with flowers and grass so that it screens her bluelight-special-looking above ground pool from the street. This is a desperate scheme to convince me that we are not shooting the value of our new property behind the ear by doing all this.
- I, on the other hand, am considering where to site the AT-4 and M-60 teams on it to keep the Soviets from advancing across the black top. Let the godless Communists stay on their own side of the street.
- Additionally I have about a ton each of gray and brown sand piled up at the end of my driveway. You know, that little bit of concrete that makes it easy for me to get my truck in and out? Yeah, not usable for the foreseeable future.
- I do know where I can get some sandbags, and the boy needs his character built a tad. Hmmmm.
- The nice man, and I’m not being sarcastic about this, he’s a saint, from the excavating company had a really rough day yesterday. First, he had to deal with me. That alone earns him a lot of brownie points. Second, he was sideswiped on the freeway during one of his multiple trips to get stuff for the project. The dude who hit him apparently didn’t stop, so he has to deal with a hit and run report to the police and his insurance company. Next, he backed his trailer over a retaining wall and flower bed next to our driveway. I’ve been assured by my darling wife that this will be fixed at some point in the vague mists of the future. Finally, Irish Woman brought him a couple of burgers when she discovered that the poor man had not had lunch. Unfortunately for him, he discovered that Burger King is now serving Whoppers a nice medium-rare after a couple of bites.
- I am assured that this addition to our house will make She Who Will Not Be Denied happy for the rest of her life, and that she will take care of it and it won’t be a bother and it will bring peace and tranquility to our house. Now, look closely and you can see my excitement about this project.
- I am assured that at some point, I will be able to put in a sauna, which is what I want. I’m sure that license to do this will be granted by Lady Voldemort a couple of weeks before my doctor tells me that saunas will kill me.
- Cleaning up the highway with the Boy Scouts went very well. There is a cadence to these things:
- The boy discovers a piece of trash nestled in the grass alongside the road.
- He and his pals examine the bit of flotsam, poking it with various sticks and grabbing utensils.
- He then attempts to pick it up with said grabbing tool. He gets extra points for snagging it in the most inconvenient manner. This will necessitate multiple tries and debates on the best method between him and his compatriots.
- He then announces what he found. Loudly.
- The advertising jingle for the product, if known, is then sung or chanted at least once. If it has a tag-line, he will sing this out for several minutes after, or until something else catches his attention. Marketing works, my brothers and sisters.
- Mothers, who are along to act as speed bumps by standing a couple of inches out into the road wearing bright clothing, will be mortally embarrassed by how many beer commercials their sons know by heart and by pointing out how many of the brands they have at their house.
- If the article is not identifiable, is rather gross, or is at all interesting, a debate will ensue between him and the Scouts nearest him to ascertain the object’s identity and discuss it at length.
- The object will then be placed into a trash bag. 50% of the time, he will want to present a dissertation on his findings to the adult holding the trash bag. The other 50% of the time, the trash will be dropped on the ground, causing the cycle to begin again.
- Spring break began yesterday. I am puttering around the house today, and we will be heading off to the mountains for a few days. Irish Woman told me that she rented a cabin. My vision of what we are going to be staying in was a few rooms, roughly furnished, with electricity and running water. What she rented is a 3 story, 3 bedroom/bath wooden house with a gas grill and both a jacuzzi and pool table. There’s nothing like roughing it for a few days.
- Pictures from the rental agency include several outside, second story posts with rather prominent claw marks in them, so I’m guessing that either there is a local bear population that has learned that suburbanite tourists equal easy food or that the raccoons in the area have mutated. More on this to come after we get back.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 30, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/03/30/musings-364/
Musings
- Apparently, the project plan for my latest endeavor at work was written by Kafka. After a 3 day cocaine binge. During a practice run of the Apocalypse.
- We’ve hit that beautiful part of spring here in Kentucky where it’s too nice to stay inside, but too chilly to hang out on the deck and work.
- Getting sick was not on my agenda for the week.
- Woke up Monday with a bit of a headache and feeling pretty crummy. Since I have it on good authority that I am allergic to everything that grows in Kentucky, and the snow has melted, I assumed it was hay fever. Took two allergy tablets and a 10 hour nap.
- Woke up on Tuesday feeling like something scraped off the bottom of a burn barrel in Tegucigalpa. Still had my sense of taste, but a low-grade fever, chills, body aches, and headache all came to party. After a telehealth visit with my doctor’s APRN, during which I self-reported my own vitals, I drove to the doctor’s office and got tested for flu and Covid. Upon returning to my 3-bedroom-ranch-of-solitude, I took a random assortment of medications and vitamins, drank a hogshead of cold water, and passed out until Wednesday.
- Woke up Wednesday feeling slightly less subhuman. What woke me was a cheerful message from my doctor’s office that I was negative for both flu and Covid. So, I assume that I either have plague, malaria, or a head cold.
- By Thursday, all I had was the feeling of being run over, repeatedly, by a wooly mammoth in heat, along with the inability to speak in much more than a hoarse growl.
- Today, I’m just tired and back to being my wonderfully grouchy self. It’s sort of a cross between a bear, a cape buffalo, and a siamese cat.
- Irish Woman is glad that I’m up and around, but has reminded me that I am not on the “can have a pissy attitude this week” roster at the moment. She has offered, on multiple occasions, to adjust my attitude if that’s what I need. Where would I be without her?
- The components for Irish Woman’s pool arrived this morning. All of the things I had ‘organized’ in the garage were ‘reorganized’ to make room in front of the garage door for sundry boxes, bags, bundles, and bull—-. She is convinced that she will be floating around, drinking a fruity drink, by Kentucky Derby. I am convinced that I will never find anything in the garage ever again.
- This weekend’s activities include picking up trash with the Boy Scouts along an overly-used two-lane rural highway, an archery tournament with Boo, hopefully putting 75 strawberry plants into dirt, doing the weekend laundry and housecleaning, and watching at least one classic monster movie for family time. Everyone always told me that things would start to slow down as I got older. If I ever get my hands on those lying so-and-so’s, I’m going to be on the 11 o’clock news as the quiet neighbor that never had trouble with anyone until ‘the incident’.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 19, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/03/19/musings-363/
Musings
- Note to self – When your wife asks if you think she’s pretty, do not answer: “Were I not a married man, I would take you in a manly fashion” unless she’s as big a geek as you.
- Asked at the dinner table – What’s the difference between a hormone and a pheremone?
- DaddyBear’s Answer – A hormone makes it so you can grow a mustache. A pheremone makes you not care if she has a mustache.
- I’m not saying that putting the strawberry beds together wasn’t hard, but when you’ve slapped boards together to make dirt-holding containers in which to grow a cup and a half of produce every year as often as I have, it comes pretty easy.
- The blackberry frame I put up, apparently, resembles a gallows. Hey, you build what you know.
- You know you’ve married the right woman when she agrees that a used bourbon barrel would make a good addition to our patio furniture.
- Went to the big gun store this weekend, and they actually had a lot of ammunition. An ammo can of .308 was as much as a decent rifle in .308 used to cost, but hey, there’s ammo.
- One good thing about all the work to remove movies and books that some find problematic is that it motivates me to check to see if I already own a physical copy of it and correct the situation if I don’t.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 10, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/03/10/musings-362/
Musings
- Now that the latest round of political silliness is over in Washington, I’m looking forward to previews of next season. Here are some leaks that I’ve been able to
make up from whole clothget from insiders: SPOILER ALERT!- That crafty Jill Biden (Secretly a doctor, not sure if witch or otherwise) is going to do an homage to Weekend at Bernie’s, except this time, Bernie Sanders is actually going to be helping her wheel her husband around the West Wing. Hijinks will ensue as Kamala Harris continually tries to find, fix, and fornicate her way to the top.
- Nancy Pelosi will start a major subplot as she desperately searches for a virgin, or at least someone of semi-questionable virtue, in Washington DC to sacrifice on the altar of eternal decrepitude. Mitch McConnell will play the part of a greek chorus as he stands by and clucks his tongue at her.
- Kamala Harris, safe from Pelosi’s machinations, will continually up her game as she tries to knock Joe Biden out of the White House. This will be filmed in a series of shots where she talks directly to the camera and describes her latest scheme to bump the old man off. Think Scooby Doo meets Spy versus Spy meets Pinky and the Brain meets Dirty Jobs.
- The Christmas episode will be fantastic. Dr. Jill and the entire White House press corps will decorate Grandpa Joe, with Jen Psaki circling back around to place a bright red star on top of his pointed little head. Kamala Harris will feature heavily in this episode, as Willie Brown appears as the “Sugar Daddy of Christmas Past”.
- The season finale will be off the hook. Literally. The episode will center around Joe losing the nuclear football and ripping the red phone to the Kremlin out of the wall during a tantrum started when he is denied a second pudding cup after his morning nap. The entire cast will search the White House high and low as a clock counts down to when a badly-worded Groundhog’s Day presidential proclamation will unleash nuclear armageddon.
- I’d like to thank the National Weather Service for announcing a winter weather advisory at 3:11 in the morning. I’d like to thank the local emergency announcement program for alerting me, via text message and robocall, to the coming descent of white death onto the hellscape of the greater Louisville area at 3:12 in the morning.
- For various reasons, my mind equates “phone ringing at 3:12 AM” as “somebody is hurt, someone has died, or work is on fire”.
- After acknowledging both the telephone call and the adrenaline dump, I fell back into a stress-dream-filled sleep for a few hours. There’s no sleep like “Hey, you remember that one time something happened and you can’t even tell a therapist about it?” dreams.
- Irish Woman is trying to set me up. “I don’t need anything for Valentine’s Day” indeed.
- I know my darling wife is likely to be involved in my death somehow, but I’m not going to make her inevitable acquittal that easy.
- For the record: pearl stud earrings, pearl and diamond pendant necklace, and lavender roses.
Posted by daddybear71 on February 14, 2021
https://daddybearsden.com/2021/02/14/musings-360/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 