• The day started off with a trip to a game farm in Indiana to shoot pheasant with my brother-in-law.  It ended with an evening alone with my youngest son.  It was a good day.
• Quote of the day goes to our host at the farm:  You can make all the plans you want, but all you really do is follow the dog.
• It’s been a long time since I hunted birds with a shotgun.  It’s good to see that I can still hit the broad side of a barn.
• An inexpensive Morakniv is an excellent tool for removing breasts from pheasants.
• I took Boo to the park this evening to take advantage of the nice weather.  There was quite a crowd.  I heard people speaking English in a variety of accents, Spanish, and Hindi.  I guess suburban Kentucky is a bastion of intolerance and exclusion.

I don’t know what is funnier:

• Irish Woman screaming like a little girl when she realizes that she’s not petting Timothy, the outdoor cat, when she steps out on the porch.  Rather, she is petting an opossum who is raiding Timmy’s food dish.

— Or —

• The fact that she yelled “I’m so sorry!” to the opossum because it was as freaked out about it as she was and it scampered off into the night.

Looking at footage and pictures from Kiev, and it’s heart rending.  Ran across this piece somewhere tonight, and the last stanza stuck in my head, so I had to look it up and share.

Testament (Zapovit)

When I am dead, bury me
In my beloved Ukraine,
My tomb upon a grave mound high
Amid the spreading plain,
So that the fields, the boundless steppes,
The Dnieper’s plunging shore
My eyes could see, my ears could hear
The mighty river roar.

When from Ukraine the Dnieper bears
Into the deep blue sea
The blood of foes … then will I leave
These hills and fertile fields —
I’ll leave them all and fly away
To the abode of God,
And then I’ll pray …. But until that day
I nothing know of God.

Oh bury me, then rise ye up
And break your heavy chains
And water with the tyrants’ blood
The freedom you have gained.
And in the great new family,
The family of the free,
With softly spoken, kindly word
Remember also me.

— Taras Shevchenko

• I gave up today and went to the urgent care center.  Four days of progressively feeling worse is my limit.
• The doctor says they’re getting a lot of people coming in with the crud like me, but not a lot of flu so far.  Maybe horrid weather is good for keeping people from going out and spreading the plague.
• In and out of the clinic in 20 minutes versus two hours of waiting in the primary doctor’s waiting room while I watch pharmaceutical saleswomen in short skirts get in ahead of me.  Decisions, decisions.
• The pharmacists at the drug store looked and sounded worse than I do.   That doesn’t bode well.
• I got home to find that Girlie Bear did not realize that once you mix the cheese sauce into macaroni and cheese that you no longer need to cook it.  Luckily, it didn’t burn, but it is a tad…. crunchy.
• Now, if you all will excuse me, I’m going to take a nighttime cold remedy and float off to the world of fever dreams.

• You know your wife had a rough day when all you can say to her after she tells you about it is “When was the last time you revised your resume?”.
• Winter returned to normal patterns here in Louisville today.  It was gray, foggy, wet, and chilly.
• Some days, there just isn’t enough aspirin.

• Know what will wake you up from a sound sleep and get you to run across the house like a fool in a hurry?  A loud buzzing noise coming from your furnace when the temperature in your house is only 60 degrees.
  • That’s better than a cup of strong coffee right there.
• Well, winter is over.  I dropped $400 on a new blower motor this weekend, so next week it’ll be sunny and 72.
  • Parts were about $250, and there was a small surcharge for calling the repairman out on Saturday.
  • Now that I’ve seen how it’s done, I’m pretty sure I could do it myself.   Of course, now that I know how to do it myself, that new blower motor will outlast me.
• I’m not sure how old the motor he replaced was, but it was old enough that General Electric manufactured it in the United States.
• Of course, the replacement microwave was too small when it arrived.  When have we ever been able to do something only once around here?
  • Luckily, BIGONLINERETAILER has a very liberal return policy, and BIGGRAYBOX retailer had the exact model Irish Woman wanted in stock.
• For those of you playing at home, that means that I’ve spent north of $700 that I wasn’t planning for over the past five days.
  • I’d like to say that my budget can absorb things like that easily, but I was taught to never lie.
  • We’ll get back a bit of that when the microwave we ordered on-line gets back to the seller.
  • Oh well, that’s what the emergency fund is for.
• It’s rarely a good sign when your wife sends a link to plans for something she wants, and you immediately realize that you’re going to need new tools and skills to make it.
  • I always wanted to learn how to put in pocket screws from scratch.
  • I’m worried, though.  After this, all that’s left is joinery, and that can get expensive fast.
• A good side effect of Irish Woman making her own butter is that there is always a cup or two of fresh buttermilk in the refrigerator for biscuits or pancakes on Saturday or Sunday.
  • Girlie Bear was amazed when I pointed out that the double batch of pancakes we made this morning cost less than $3 to make.
• It’s rarely a good sign that 20 minutes into working with a group of people, you start thinking “I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue” over and over.

• Girlie Bear learned a valuable life lesson the other day – It is a bad thing to put an empty Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave and turn it on for four minutes.
  • Apparently she needs coffee as much as I do.
  • I was actually impressed.  I had no idea that our microwave could heat glass enough that it would weld itself to the glass rotating tray.
  • Of course, this ruined the microwave and shattered the measuring cup, but she was trying to find an excuse to do $135 worth of menial labor for me anyway.
• Going to the grocery store the evening before a snow storm and Valentine’s Day, which also happens to be the full moon, was an adventure.
  • The french toast fixings didn’t seem to be in short supply, but I got the last bunch of bananas.
  • People who linger in the greeting card aisle, looking over each and every option, touching their lips as they read one that is rather poignant or whatever, are very annoying to those of us who choose by the “Hmmm, that one’s pretty.  She’ll like that.” method.
  • I won’t say that people in Kentucky don’t understand the term “stranger”, but I know more about the lady who was behind me in the checkout line than I knew about Irish Woman after two dates.
• Koshka’s existence now consists of finding a heat register to sit in front of, finding a lamp with incandescent bulbs to sit under, or finding a lap to sit upon.
  • In related news, it is difficult to type properly with a Siamese cat sitting on your right forearm.
• Irish Woman’s Valentine’s Day gift shipped today, and should arrive just in time tomorrow.
  • Nothing says “I love you” like a new microwave.
  • I am a romantic devil, aren’t I?
• Before you ask, no, that’s not the actual present.  I’m smart enough to go to my wife a week before Valentine’s Day, demand she send me a link to what she wants, and buy it.  Again, romantic devil.

• I’d like to say that I was a world shaker and a life taker at the pistol match on Saturday, but I was taught not to lie.
  • The best thing I can say is that I didn’t get disqualified, which is something, I guess.
• You know things aren’t going to go well for you when one of the first things that happens in a course of fire is your magazine falling out the bottom of your gun.
  • It happened twice on the same magazine.  That magazine is now a modern art piece in the bottom of a trash barrel.
• If you are ever held as a hostage and human shield and you see me coming around the corner armed with a 1911, I’m pretty sure your best bet for survival will be Stockholm Syndrome.
• Old, bad habits are hard to break, especially when you’re frustrated and in a hurry.
• Freiheit and I tried out the Chipmunk pistol that I won back in December.  It points easily, is pretty darn accurate at close range, but I can’t see where I would ever use it unless I was looking for a challenge while squirrel hunting.
• Irish Woman and I watched the opening ceremony for the Olympics the other night.
  • Someone needs to tell the athletes that there are literally hundreds of professional grade cameras surrounding them at the ceremony, so they can put away their cameras and cell phones and march with a little dignity while the world watches.
  • Someone needs to tell the American athletes that mugging for the camera is not why they’re there.  They were one step short of throwing gang signs.
  • Whoever picked out those sweaters our athletes were wearing needs to undergo some tests for color blindness, psychiatric issues, and drug use.
• I bought Boo his first cap pistol today.  It came with a gun belt and holster.  He’s been working on his draw and doing dry fire drills ever since we got home.
  • It’s a blued, break-open, actual metal model with mother-of-pearl handles.  When he’s done with it, I’m going to put it away for his son.
  • We already started having talks about pointing it at people and cats, and I haven’t bought any caps yet.  Those will come when he can play with it outside.

Woke up to a chilly house and no power.  Luckily, chilly is a relative term, and a fire in the fireplace and everyone wearing a sweater was enough to keep everyone comfortable.    Guess some of that money we’ve been pouring into the house is paying off.  Power came up after a couple of hours, so that’s another beer I owe the linemen.

Here’s what our back yard looked like this morning.

• This weekend it was shorts and long-sleeve tee shirt weather.  Last night it started snowing.  Got to love weather in Kentucky.
• We got about 4 inches wet snow, with some drifting.  That’s just enough to make shoveling hard work for Girlie Bear.
  • Manual labor is good for the character and the soul.
• For once, the roads were plowed and perfectly safe to drive on this morning.
  • I still passed two or three accidents, which just goes to show that no matter how hard you try to make things nice, there are some who will find a way to screw it up.
• Girlie Bear is starting to moan about having to go to school into late June as the number of snow days increases.
  • My record was the 9th grade, where we went to school until the weekend before the 4th of July.
• Taking the kids sledding after work was probably one of my better ideas.
  • 10 trips up and down the sledding hill will tire out a 5 year old boy.
  • Irish Woman reports that he gave her precisely zero grief over going to bed tonight.
• You know how there are some sounds that will cause the hair on the back of your neck to rise and cause you to reach for a weapon?
  • Normally it’s something tapping at the window, or the sound of the hinges on the door when everyone is home.
  • I’m adding a new one to the list:  Moonshine howling while he’s asleep.  Thought for sure we had a lycanthrope in the house tonight.
• It took me longer than normal to find him, because I took the logical step of looking for him on the floor.
  • How silly of me to not look for him in Girlie Bear’s bed, under the covers.
  • Every damned mammal in this house is spoiled rotten.