• Revenge may be a dish best served cold, but Schadenfreude is a dish best served with a hot cup of cocoa.
  • It gives you something to sip and cover up the little smile you get as you nod along with their tale of woe.
• Apparently I’m a jerk because I refused to become part of the crowd of highly paid and highly trained technical specialists who were trying to figure out how to clear a paper jam this afternoon.
  • Four or five people beating on the thing is my signal to just use the printer down the hall.
• Doing your homework with me as your dad is a lot like having to pay the mob – there aren’t a lot of good excuses for non-performance.
• A peanut butter and tomato-jalapeno jelly sandwich makes a tasty snack.  It’s also something the dog won’t filch, at least not twice.

Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. – The Gospel of Mark, Chapter 15, Verse 13*

Full story here.

*Yes, I know the young man was a Muslim, but the sentiment fits.

• Boo saw a picture of a lady with an intricate tribal tattoo on her upper arm today,  pronounced that she was a Frankenstein, and insisted that it was true because he could see the stitching on her arm.
  • I can’t wait until he’s old enough to read some of my books.  He’s going to get a lot out of them.
• Girlie Bear watched one of those shows where they try to show the best restaurants in the United States for a given type of food.  This one was for barbecue.  It occurred to me that a lot of time and trouble is expended trying to perfect Festhahnchen* and shashlik.
  • And for that, my tummy is eternally grateful.
• It is nigh unto impossible to quickly wash a white truck to the point that it is not off-white streaked with gray.
  • I knocked off the big chunks and the salt, and that’s as good as it’s going to get until spring.
• It shouldn’t be difficult to find a new pair of sneakers for a five year old boy, should it?
  • It took an hour.  We tried on four pair before we found a pair that fit properly.
  • Apparently children’s shoes have gone the way of women’s shoes.  A 2 in one brand was the size of a 3 in another.
  • The shoe store didn’t help by having a basketball goal for the kids.  Every time we’d turn our back, Boo would be off trying to improve his free throw percentage.
  • How good is my 1911 holster from Michael’s Custom Holsters?  Good enough that I was able to securely and discreetly carry while contorting my body up, down, and around to find a size 2 1/2 wide tennis shoe, wrestling several pairs onto Boo for fitting, and repeatedly getting up off the floor at an odd angle.
• For once, the shoe store had a pair of shoes that fit me, looked OK, and were reasonably priced.
  • Usually, if I don’t order my shoes on-line, I either leave the store discouraged or end up with something that would fit in at Ringling Brothers or a bowling league.
  • Size 15 isn’t that big, I tell you!  Why don’t shoe stores stock a better selection for those of us with slightly larger feet?
• I learned today that Moonshine will put himself into his kennel with little to no fuss if offered a slice of cheese.   Apparently bribery works.
• Irish Woman and I spent an hour tonight discussing the project list for the spring and early summer.
  • Apparently I’m going to learn how to stain and seal concrete, plant cherry trees in planters, and possibly even apply stain to a fence using a power sprayer.
  • If my time estimate is right, I may be done with everything in time for the Kentucky Derby in May, assuming beautiful weather for every weekend until then.

*I know, I know, needs umlauts.

• Nothing is more fun than going to a customer and asking “You requested this back in September.  Do you still need it?” and having them have no idea what you’re talking about.
• It’s amazing how a few simple tasks can grow to nine and a half hours of work when given enough project management work.
• Somewhere in Columbus, Georgia, is an elderly man who used to work at the equipment issuing facility at nearby Fort Benning.
  • Our paths crossed twice:  First, when he issued me my cold weather gear for going to Bosnia, and then again when I returned and turned most of it in.
  • I owe that man a great debt for letting me keep my very expensive Matterhorn boots, which kept my feet from shrivelling up and turning into a muddy mess at the range today.
  • If I ever meet that man again, he’s getting a free beer.
  • The mud was ankle-deep and the color and consistency of butterscotch pudding today.
• Someday, I’m going to re-learn the math necessary to model my efforts to clean the mud off my boots and pants this afternoon.
  • “How long will DaddyBear work to get the mud off his boots before he realizes that all he has done is transfer it to the rest of his clothing and his hair?”
• Are the people who design pistol competition stages all evil geniuses, or does it just seem that way?
• Yeah, it was muddy, but there was no way I was going to lean down to shoot through a tube that sat at navel-level for me.
  • It was just easier to take a knee and wash my pants an extra time or two.
• I can safely report that the 1911 in .45 ACP was a much better choice for knocking down steel targets than the CZ-82 in 9mm Makarov.
• I can’t say that I shot a lot better today than I did last month, but my left-handed shooting has definitely improved.
  • Dry-firing left handed might be a pain, but I guess doing it as often as I can is paying off.
• Girlie Bear answered a late call last night, and ended up going with her shooting team to the state match this morning.
  • I hope she enjoyed herself, but the best thing for me was being complimented by the chaperone on how sweet and respectful she was.
• I can’t imagine a better way to spend my evening than having a pizza delivered, watching Bugs Bunny with Boo, and just relaxing.

• Dear Louisville Drivers – If it’s bad enough that you need to turn on your windshield wipers, it’s bad enough that you need to turn on your $@#!!@#$ headlights.
  • Especially if your car is the same color as the driving surface due to a fine crust of road salt.
  • On the plus side, I swore at you all in four languages tonight, and I needed the refresher.
• The White Death was falling upon us this evening.  I expect to start seeing food riots in downtown Louisville any minute.
• Maybe my people skills need a little work.
  • When told that one of my assignments for the year will be to fix a recurring problem in my work area, my first question was “How many people can I fire?” and my oft-repeated statement was “This is not a technology problem.”.
• Irish Woman showed her love tonight by having a wonderful baked pasta dish ready for dinner when I got home from work.
• I showed my love tonight by making her a warm fire so that she could warm her tuckus.

• The only good part of finishing  a jar of moonshine is realizing that now you have an extra pickle jar for next summer.
• Girlie Bear is in a funk because she has to go back to school tomorrow.  Her carefree, sleep in until after sun-up, stay up until midnight vacation is at an end.
• Going back to work after a week and a half off isn’t as much fun as it sounds.
• My mood has recovered to my normal sunny outlook on life.  I may even smile at some drooling yokel who comments on how cold it is tomorrow.
• One of my mentors had his retirement get together today.  It’s going to be strange not having him around.

• I’m almost through my mid-winter irrational bastard syndrome.  It’s not related to the sunlight levels.  To be honest, I don’t know what it’s related to.  I just know that for a couple weeks after Christmas, I don’t care for human contact.  I’m getting better, but Irish Woman has had about as much as she can stand.
• Moonshine may not make it through the night.  While I was making biscuits for dinner, I put them on a baking stone, went into the other room to take care of something, and came back to an empty baking stone.  If the label on the package is true, Moonshine ate about 3000 calories and about 150 grams of fat.
  • He at least had the decency to look guilty.
• Looks like tonight might be a good night to bring the brass monkey inside.
  • They’re predicting wind chills of between 30 and 40 below zero Fahrenheit for the next few days.
  • We’re supposed to get between 4 and 6 inches of snow, too.
  • My guess is that Christmas break will be extended a day or two.  Buildings down here just aren’t built to stay warm when it gets that cold.

• Irish Woman talked me into some ‘family time’, which entailed journeying to the wilds of southern Indiana, there to partake of the waters.
  • By waters, I mean we stayed at a hotel that had an awesome indoor water park.
• A fun time was had by all, but there’s always a hitch.
  • Girlie Bear got a little car sick on the way up, and didn’t feel well the rest of the day.
  • Two Dramamine and 10 hours of sleep helped her to feel better.
• I wore a tee-shirt in the water park because you can use the 3 F’s to describe me, and I didn’t want to scare the locals.
  • Fuzzy
  • Flabby
  • Flourescent
• Going to a water park in December will give you some pretty clear fitness goals.
  • “I want to look more like that.”
  • “I never want to look like that.”
• A true mark of a loving wife:  Being exhausted from chasing Boo all afternoon at the water park, and still finding the energy to go down a steep hill to fetch pizza and beer for dinner.
• I shudder to think of the amount of stuff we will be taking on a family vacation that lasts more than a couple of days.
  • For an overnight trip, we filled up the trunk of Irish Woman’s car.
  • For our trip to Florida in 2015, I’m going to need a U-Haul.
• It is rarely a good sign when your wife wants you to take her to the indoor flea market and makes sure you take the truck.
• I’m surprised to find out how hard it is to give away a couple of old tube televisions.  None of our regular charities will take them.
• My plans for New Year’s Eve are to play video games with Boo, drink beer, and get to bed early.  I’ll know when midnight comes when I’m awakened by gunfire and fireworks.
• Irish Woman relented this evening and now agrees that we should stain and clear coat the basement floor.
  • The problem is that I never suggested stain and clear coat.  I just wanted to buy floor paint and put on a few coats.
  • Something tells me that staining the floor is a lot more work, but it’s a compromise.

• There is nothing like waking to the lilting tones of your work pager, joyously interrupting your slumber.
• I refuse to be held responsible for information I gather from a Java web application, across a slow VPN, while juggling two chat lines, two phone calls, and a five year old who wants a hug from dear old Dad, right bloody now.
• For those of you who are curious, the weather today at the Louisville airport was clear and cool, with a slight breeze out of the southwest.
• I’m not sure what our computer room is wired with, but it makes an excellent Faraday cage against cellphone reception.
• Project planning math:  Take the amount of time that the vendor tells you it will do a given task, multiply by 1.25, then round up to the nearest prime number and use that as the amount of hours it will actually take.
  • For back-out purposes, take your original estimate, multiply by the 2012 GDP of Zimbabwe, then divide by 1024.
• You know that little voice that tells you to do things when no-one else is at home?  Mine told me to GI the kitchen this afternoon.
  • Irish Woman’s hairy barbarian domestication program appears to be progressing very well.
• I’ve never felt so disgusted with myself as I did when I cleaned out and scrubbed our refrigerator today.
• Note to self – it is a pain in the hands to clean out pebbles of tempered glass from a bathtub.
• It’s an uncomfortable moment when, along with your darling wife, you open one of those family portrait Christmas cards, don’t immediately recognize the people, say “I know that woman from somewhere….”, then realize it’s from your Congressman.

• One good part of working the day after Christmas is that you are pretty much alone in the office and can actually get work done.
• One bad part of working the day after Christmas is that almost everyone else is out of the office and out of touch, which makes walking into someone’s cube and asking them what their major malfunction is a tad unproductive.
• It is good that Christmas only comes once a year, because I’ve been hitting the jam-and-almonds bars that Irish Woman made like a rat at the feeder bar in a cocaine study.
• I need a politically correct way to tell a vendor that his product is weak and his customer service representatives aren’t worth the rupees he spends on them.
• You know, it probably wasn’t very nice of me to go to my ex-wife’s house to drop off Girlie Bear and Little Bear wearing a tee-shirt that read “Jody did me a favor“, but I was in a mood.
  • If you get that joke without hitting the link, thanks for your service.
• Christmas was relatively relaxing, and I am eternally thankful for that.  Usually I’m punch drunk with exhaustion by the end of the day.
• I got coffee and ammunition for Christmas.  She loves me. She really, really loves me.