- Today, our family took part in that most holy of Catholic traditions – the parish picnic.
- Irish Woman made three cakes for the cake booth – a lemon cake with raspberry sauce, a dark chocolate cake with cherry sauce, and a yellow cake with bourbon-caramel fudge icing and pecans.
- Somebody apparently liked the looks of the yellow cake, because it got bought up before the picnic even began.
- I worked the “Frogger” booth, in which a plastic frog is placed on the downhill side of a small teeter-totter, and children whack at the uphill side with a padded mallet. A prize is won if they can get the frog into a bucket a few feet away.
- I had more close calls with head and hand wounds in four hours than I ever did in the Army.
- I may have to check with the Air Force, but I’m pretty sure some of the older kids put frogs into low earth orbit.
- After listening to hours of…. music played over the public address system, I can now tell all of you the following is true:
- If there’s a problem, I won’t solve it.
- Billie Jean is a gold-digging ho.
- It is quite all right to stop believing
- I do not wish to watch anyone whip, let alone nay-nay.
- If I ever find this Macarena chick, I’m going to be on the local news with someone saying “He was always such a nice, quiet guy.”
- If everything in your life is blue, you need to go outside more often.
All posts in category Thought for the day
Musings
Posted by daddybear71 on July 17, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/17/musings-205/
Musings
- There are few things more daunting than the pile of email and sticky notes one finds when returning from a week of vacation.
- My goals for today were to get caught up at work, come home and write for an hour, go to help set up for the church picnic, then come home and write some more.
- I went 1 for 4. I didn’t get any writing done and I’m still buried at work.
- I’m not sure what Boo did today at camp, but from the condition of the laundry I did tonight, he may have been wrestling with pigs.
- Bud Light – It’s what you drink when the bottled water is all gone and you can’t, as a man, bring yourself to drink a cotton-candy-mango-kiwi Capri Sun.
- I was going to comment on President Obama’s remarks from the Dallas memorial service today, but at this point, I’d only be feeding the troll.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 12, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/12/musings-204/
Musings
- This weekend I travelled to the wilds of Tennessee and attended LibertyCon 29. This was the first such gathering I’ve been to since I was 18. I must say I had a lot more fun this time.
- Of course, anything is better than listening to 30- and 40-somethings argue with teenagers about whether Picard or Kirk made the better starship captain.
- There were people there who like all kinds of different things attending the con, and I didn’t see any evidence of drama or bad behavior.
- Please, thank you, and excuse me were common. You’d think there would be a lot more socially challenged individuals wandering about, but if there were, they adapted quite well to the situation.
- Seriously, even among the big-name authors, I saw no ego.
- With all of the interesting things I saw and great people I met, the highlight of the weekend was listening to Tom Kratman, OldNFO, and BRM tell war stories over tea.
- Next year, I’m definitely going to get a room at the convention’s hotel. The ability to go lay down for a little while will come in handy.
- I’ve found that having somewhere quiet to rest has become a very important day-to-day goal.
- I listened to the first half of Joe Haldeman’s “The Forever War” during the drive home today. Either this guy is psychic, or such things as the breakdown of civil society and the creation of the Taurus Judge were wholly predictable from the early 1970’s.
- He wasn’t spot on, though. A long-barrel, single-action .410 revolver is not going to blow somebody’s arm off. Then again, he might have had a vision of Taurus’ marketing campaigns.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 10, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/10/musings-203/
Musings
- My mind has gone back and forth all day between “Wow, this is really great information!” to “Don’t be that guy!” to “Brains!!!!”
- Friends read your books. Good friends tell what they think of your books. Great friends help you write your books. Awesome friends present you with an exquisite dagger because they think a picture of it would make a great book cover.
- Work on the next Minivandians book continues. The short vignettes are finished, and the first 1/3 of the longer, more serious story is done. I’m telling the story of what happened to Ruarin and DaddyBear after the battle at the end of the first book. Hopefully, I’ll have it off to alpha readers by the end of August.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 9, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/09/musings-202/
Thought for the Day
Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 8, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/08/thought-for-the-day-232/
Musings
- There are worse ways to spend a day than making and canning applesauce.
- I have informed Irish Woman that saying “We’re making baby food!” while we are making said homemade applesauce is not cool.
- Also, I had to inform her that the applesauce did not need bourbon to flavor it.
- I am no longer allowed to tell Boo that if he wants to walk around the house singing loudly in a soprano, I can make him into a castrati and make it official.
- I will be heading to LibertyCon next weekend. Look for me to be the big, fat, hairy bald guy trying to maintain personal space.
Posted by daddybear71 on July 2, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/07/02/musings-201/
Musings
- Hubris – The condition by which a guy from North Dakota thinks he can drive through rural Kentucky without using the interstate highway or GPS and not end up 25 miles and an hour’s drive beyond his destination.
- I miss the wide open west, where roads are laid out in straight lines, not trued with a snake having a seizure.
- Good luck is coming upon a country roadside stand selling peaches picked this morning. Great luck is discovering that they have used science fiction and western paperbacks for $1.00 apiece.
- Use of the term “Brownian motion” to describe my families efforts to pack up our campsite was not met with familial approval.
- I now have permission from Irish Woman to hunt raccoons. This was precipitated by the loss of a relatively new crock-pot, complete with locking lid, to the ministrations of trash pandas on Saturday night.
- I’m starting the budget for a suppressed .22 pistol as we speak.
- To the drunk who decided to walk through our campsite at 11:30 last night and urinate in front of Irish Woman’s car, you’re lucky it was her that caught you.
- Sometimes, being a pack rat pays off. While looking for something completely unrelated, I stumbled across my old Boy Scout’s uniform shirt I bought when I was Little Bear’s den leader. Now that I’ve been
suckeredtalked into being pack secretary, this will save me the arm and a leg a new one would have cost.
Posted by daddybear71 on June 27, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/06/27/musings-200/
Musings
- Just for once, I’d like the blood of the dead to cool before someone on either side of the political and social divide starts dancing in it.
- Apparently someone calling into 911 and pledging allegiance to a terrorist organization, along with said organization claiming responsibility for his heinous acts, means that we need to have tighter gun control in this country.
- Apparently a natural-born citizen who decides that last night was the perfect time to slaughter a bunch of people is the perfect reason to restrict immigration by people like his mother and father.
- Ever notice that it’s never Northern Plains Lutherans who are on the national news with the reporter calling them by their first, middle, and last names?
- Irish Woman’s “Summon Rain” spell worked wonderfully. The garden got a good watering with the sprinkler this morning, then we got a nice downpour at dinner time.
- Apparently the trick to getting yard work done around here is to get everyone out as soon after sun-up as possible, work like mad for a few hours, then reward labor with air conditioning and water gun fights.
- Girlie Bear got her first firm estimate on how much her first semester of college is going to be. Oh, but how the financial scales have fallen from her eyes!
Posted by daddybear71 on June 12, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/06/12/musings-199/
Musings
- Time to write “She had dark blonde hair.” – 8 seconds, including visualization.
- Time to write “She had hair the color of burnished bronze.” – 37 minutes, not including time spent cursing.
- Chapter outline: Unexpected meeting. Transfer of deep knowledge. Foretelling of future exploits.
- Chapter draft: “Hey, bro, ‘sup?” “Not much. How’s your mama?” “Fine, man, fine.” “Cool. See you later.”
- Girlie Bear worked her first day of adultish employment today.
- She was doing well to stay awake through dinner.
- She was not amused when I hugged her, told her I was proud of her, and that she only had half a century or so until she could stop.
- Did y’all know that if you tip a push mower on its side so that you can clean the clippings out of the exhaust chute, it will probably destroy the engine by leaking buckets of oil?
- Neither did I, until yesterday.
- My neighbors should be glad to know that my lawn mower has thoroughly fumigated our street through a prodigious application of thick, white smoke.
- In other, totally unrelated news, $BIGBOXHOMEIMPROVEMENTSTORE is having a sale this week.
Posted by daddybear71 on June 6, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/06/06/musings-198/
Musings
- I’m not a superstitious man, but I swear that a section of smooth, clean sidewalk came alive today, reached up, grabbed my leg, and forced my right ankle to roll over far enough that the sole of my boot touched my calf.
- The sound my ankle made as it rotated back was rather unpleasant, although at the time I was just trying to stay vertical.
- Note to self – Before picking up the snow-shovel in the garage to put it away for the season, check to make sure Mr. Wasp is not resting on the handle.
- Secondary note – While I am not allergic to wasp bites, they do not make for a fun long weekend.
- Tertiary note – Find where we tucked the benadryl away during the kitchen remodel.
- As an independent voter, I’m appalled.
- The two major parties are running an overbearing bint, who has spent most of my lifetime acting more like the overbearing head of an HOA than as a statesman, and the jerk who pulls down his pants and does the watusi on the subway to get little old ladies to move and give him a seat.
- The Democrats are still having fun trying to get their crazy uncle who had too much of the brown acid at Woodstock to sit down and be quiet. Amazingly enough, he has a lot of people who think his quotes from Das Kapital are worthy of their attention.
- The Libertarians have nominated a guy who uses a double entendre as a campaign slogan, backed up by a guy who was for gun control until he was against it. They stand on a platform that seems to have been put together in a dorm room after somebody scored a dime bag of pure kush and an eight-ball of coke.
- The other parties are turning into the usual quadrennial mish-mash of cranks, commies, and just plain annoying twits.
- There are over 300 million of us. Is this really the best we can do?
- It occurs to me that never in my adult life (I was too late to vote for Reagan) has there been a presidential candidate I wanted to vote for. All of the election choices I’ve made have been to vote against someone.
- How to make it rain on a Thursday – Wednesday at dinner, tell your wife that there’s only a 30% chance of rain and you’ll mow after work tomorrow.
Posted by daddybear71 on June 2, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/06/02/musings-197/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 