• It occurs to me that my shooting club is where I go to watch other people shoot better than I do.
• For once, I went shooting, and it wasn’t hot, cold, wet, or nasty out.
• September is that wonderful time of year when you can shiver, sweat, and sunburn all in the same day.
• Nobody told me blackberry canes were so aggressive.  I felt like I was wrestling with a triffid when I was trying to get them organized and tacked up to the back of the woodshed today.
• As much work as the rough draft was, the editing is even worse.
  • I swear, I know how to spell and punctuate.
  • My English teacher from 9th grade is up in heaven right now, crying.  She’s going to be waiting on me with a few choice sentences for me to diagram.
• I took Boo to the doctor the other day.  He told his mother today that it didn’t go well because the doctor “put his hand around my throat and tried to choke me out”.

• The hand specialist took a look at my arthritic fingers, pronounced that I do have hands with bones in them, and to continue what I’ve been doing.  That cost me an hour of my life and $30.
• How to know you’re a geek:  Flatbed truck is in front of me on the way home from work last night.  The tarp covering its cargo is gone.  Its cargo is a mock-up of a SovietZSU-23-4 anti-aircraft gun.  As we drive along, I’m reciting to myself every fact I know about the system, its capabilities, its faults, and the countries that have fielded it.  That one-sided conversation lasts 15+ minutes before the truck and I part ways.  I then go home and read up on everything I can find on the Internet about Soviet air defense.
  • I’m not sure, but I may need a sponsor.
• How do I know I have a great wife?  Well, yesterday evening she presented me with three six-packs of good beer, and tonight I came home to homemade buttermilk pie.
  • Boys, I got me a good Southern woman this time.
• Quizzed Girlie Bear on physics and U.S. history tonight in preparation for tests.  She seems to have quickly learned that I’d rather hear “I don’t know” than a scientific wild ass guess.
• There’s nothing more romantic than your wife asking you to go on a date so you can go see the new baby hippo at the zoo.

• Got an email from the White House Secretariat for Propaganda today entitled “A Slide to the Left”.  It was about the number of ‘unemployed’ in the country since Obama took over, but I took it to reference the president’s politics since his reelection.  Turns out we were both right.
• Speaking of politics, it looks like the NRA has endorsed Mitch McConnell in Kentucky’s Senate race.  I’m going to have to do some research to figure out what gun control laws he’s opposed since he was sworn in during my junior high school days.
• I’ve decided that reading several books about World War I at once is not good for my psyche.
• It’s a great feeling of accomplishment you get when you fold six baskets of laundry.  I’m not sure why.
• When I started work today, I was planning on working three of the next four weekends.  Now I’m down to one.  Not sure if that’s good or not.

• When you tell your father that you need to be picked up at 9 PM from a fundraiser, that means he will be ready to pick you up at 9 PM.
• When your father calls you at 9 PM to tell you that he is at the ice cream parlor two blocks away from where you are, and that you should walk to meet him there, it does not mean to wait 30 minutes before starting your walk to meet him.
  • On the bright side, I didn’t have to share my ice cream.
• Today, Boo rode on the float for his school in the local fall festival parade. I walked alongside with the other parents.
  • Note to self – Converse tennis shoes are not proper walking shoes.
• After the parade, I volunteered with Girlie Bear’sJROTC group, and was placed on grill duty.
  • One side benefit of this job was that I will not need to trim the hair on my knuckles for a month.  They were nicely singed back after about 5 minutes.
• Apparently I got a little sunburned today.  Irish Woman seems to be taking a great amount of joy from that.
• Irish Woman gotChick-Fil-A for dinner.  I got smoked venisonbackstrap andherbed potatoes.
  • I offered to share, and she politely declined.
• I went over to my brother-in-law’s house tonight, and he opened up the gun safes to show me some stuff.  I now have new bucket-list items.
• Achievement for the day – Going to the DIY supply store and only getting the one thing we went in to get.

• It is a rather foolish thing to talk to your daughter about doing foolish things and then fall out of a tree while clearing away dead wood.
  • No worries.  I caught myself with my sternum and my knee.
• Wives get really inquisitive when you walk around holding your chest.
  • Seriously, honey, it’s just a bruise.
• It is amazing how much mirth my loving wife can find in my method of injury.
• My youngest son has been walking around, speaking with an upper class British accent for two days.  I’m not sure if it’s cute or annoying.
• There are few things better than leftovers from a cookout.
• Apparently Google Earth drove down my street today.  Now, everyone on the planet will know that I need to mow my lawn.

• I’m not known for my people skills, but when I offer to take more than my fair share of a workload, I get a little grumpy when someone tells me I’m making things difficult for others.
• When the high point of your day is a surprise random drug screening at work, that might just be a sign that you should have pulled the covers over your head and gone back to sleep.
• It’s a hard lesson for a young woman, but making Girlie Bear pay to replace the tablet computer she destroyed after owning it for THREE DAYS will hopefully teach her to take better care of her things.
• Whoever taught Boo to sing songs from “Frozen”, I am going to hunt you down and stake you out for the wombats to nibble upon.
• If you’re such a troll that you make a good woman, who is as tough as nails and as kind as they come, decide that her hobby just isn’t worth the effort anymore, then you deserve whatever fate befalls you.
• If you have to be told to not to use company computers and networks to seek out leaked photographs of young, possibly under-age, starlets, then maybe you shouldn’t be allowed to use company computers and networks at all.
• If you want to debate whether or not Americans have the right to be outraged when they see two of their fellow citizens beheaded on the Internet, then don’t come crying to me in indignation when someone finally finds something that you value to violate.
• Phase II of the back yard hold out structure, also known as the tree/play house, is complete.  The frame is up, and all I need to do now is make more money so I can put the sides and roof on.
• It’s good to work with people who understand that suggestions are just suggestions, and who don’t get emotional when you, after thoughtful consideration, decide to do something different.

• Formula for an exciting evening – Take two six-year-old boys, give them pizza, ice cream, and popcorn, season with a Siamese cat and a Labrador Retriever, shake well, and let sleep out in the living room.
• I listened to the audiobook of Larry Correia’s Hard Magic this weekend.  Now everything I read sounds like Bronson Pinchot in my head.
• The stereo at the pool was playing the Miami Vice theme song this morning.  I happened to be wearing a brightly colored tee-shirt and a two-day beard.  I’m sorry to report that Moonshine did not turn into an alligator while we were away.
• Note to self – When reading political news stories, which is just about all news stories these days, just read the story and do not read the comments.
  • The stupid runs deep on both sides of the aisle this year.
• I’m drawing the line at not buying gummy eyeballs for Halloween.
• By the way, if you makecorndogs in the oven as a treat, and leave about seven of them on the stove, you must realize thatcorndogs are like crack to Labrador Retrievers.
  • Of course, I got the “Who, me?  I don’t know what you’re talking about!” look, but he’ll crack under interrogation.
• Started cleaning out the garden beds tonight.  The cucumbers are done, and the tomatoes aren’t far behind.  We should know if the potato box worked in about three weeks.
  • When pulling a weed out of your pepper patch, make sure you’re not grasping a pepper plant that’s covered in almost mature chilis.

Haven’t done one of these in a while, so here goes.

I believe that if someone else has to pay for you to exercise your rights, then maybe you need to reevaluate what is and what isn’t a right.

I believe that spreading fear in order to move the masses one way or the other has become a growth industry in American politics.

I believe that stupidity should hurt, and real stupidity should be fatal.

I believe that there is a happy medium between Barney Fife and a jackbooted thug, and that we have swung way over into the jackbooted thug side of things in a lot of places.

I believe in American trucks, Texas barbecue, and Kentucky bourbon, but I’m a true internationalist when it comes to firearms.

I believe that if you let your vote be taken for granted, then you get the politicians you deserve.

I believe that running a lawnmower before 7 AM and after 7 PM ought to be a hanging offense.

I believe that if you can’t play by the rules, then you should go play your games somewhere else.

• If you’re going to insist that students use technology to take your course, then learn to use the technology.
  • Scanning in 40 pages of an old textbook and saving it in a Word document does not count as on-line instruction.
  • Don’t worry, I saved your 73 megabyte file as a .pdf and pared it down to 11 megabytes.  I advised Girlie Bear to share that with her classmates.
• When using a mandoline to cut up onions, be careful to not slice the end of your finger open. Onion juice in a deep cut is not fun.
• Putting onions in the dehydrator smells pretty good, actually.
• Nothing beats a call from the wife asking me to pick up a thermometer on the way home because Boo got sent home from school because he got violently ill.
  • He’ll be fine.  It’s just a stomach bug, and other than the occasional spell of being ill, he’s as chipper as ever.
• I’ve been playing quiet classical for him all day, and it’s been nice.  One hint, though:   There is only so much classical harp that one man can stand in an 8 hour period.

• The mystery of Girlie Bear’s missing cell phone was solved today when Irish Woman and I returned to the place we held her birthday party last weekend.  It was in a drawer in a coffee table.  When asked about that, Girlie Bear said she’d put it there so it wouldn’t get wet and she wouldn’t lose it.
  • That sound you heard at about 2 PM this afternoon was my cranium meeting the heel of my right hand. Repeatedly.
• My darling girl roasted herself at the car wash yesterday.  If her neck was any more red, she’d be mistaken for a native Kentuckian.
• What is it about suburban shopping centers that makes normally intelligent people turn into absolutedumbasses?
  • Seriously, a woman in a minivan cut Irish Woman off as she tried to park at the grocery store, then waved in a friendly manner as she backed up to let us in, then almost cut us off again after Irish Woman began to pull forward.
• It was probably not very smart of me to use the term “pond water” to describe Irish Woman’s rate of speed this afternoon, but in my defense, I had to get to work.
• When you walk out of your office at 11:30 PM, and you immediately start sweating, that’s a good indicator that this will be a good week to sit inside and work on the Great American Novel.
  • Or get caught up on laundry, cooking, organizing, dusting, and all the other things that the weather has just been too nice for this summer.
• It is good that the new donut shop near work is open 24 hours.  A small coffee gave me just enough of a jolt to get me home safely.