When I was 16, I thought to myself that I wanted to be a caring father who listened to his children and took their feelings into account on every decision.

I have a 16 year old son now. This morning I told him to take the extra bass out of his voice when he speaks to me. I also considered if it was too late to send him to military school.

Apparently, I’ve evolved.

• Irish Woman has been watching a TV show called ‘1923’, in which Harrison Ford plays one of the Dutton men from the Yellowstone franchise. He’s apparently married to Helen Mirren (lucky bastard), and there’s some danger of losing the ranch. He has a nephew/son/cousin/I really can’t be bothered to find out, who is a troubled war hero, and has taken 5 years to get home with his English wife that nobody knows about. In the end, a bunch of folks get killed, some deservedly, and the camera fades to black.
  • If you’re of an age and saw Legends of the Fall and Far and Away, you’ve already seen this show.
  • Mmmm, Nicole Kidman and Helen Mirren in the same movie might bring about the apocalypse, but I’d go happy.
  • I really need to get Irish Woman to go and work some of the farms my family has in North Dakota. Let her deal with cattle and all that for a few weeks, and we’ll see how many more half-ass cowboy soap operas she wants to enjoy.
  • Come to think of it, I need her to winter over in a place where the snow starts in October and melts in June, and then we’ll see how much those “I Survived Alone in Alaska” shows on Disney+ she continues to watch.
  • Yeah, I’m a little cranky this morning, why do you ask?
• The flood waters are receding, but a good chunk of Kentucky continues to be underwater. We only got a little water in the basement, which a vacuum, 2 big fans, and a dehumidifier took care of. Others weren’t so lucky.
  • One part of the flood that’s gotten a lot of attention is the Buffalo Trace distillery, which was submerged by the Kentucky River.
  • One thing that occurs to me – At least a few of the barrel houses at Buffalo Trace have at least one floor that is below ground. Looking at news footage, at least the first above-ground floor of those barrel houses is underwater.
  • That could mean that at least 2 floors worth of bourbon barrels in multiple barrel houses is submerged in flood water. I’m pretty sure all that is going to have to be destroyed. The whole point of wooden barrels is that they allow water and alcohol to seep through them.
    • We’ll know I’m wrong when Buffalo Trace releases a limited “Great Flood” line of whiskey later this year.
    • An odd thought – As Gen X ages, products that appeal to our nostalgia will start to appear on the market. Distillers could get ahead of this by releasing a “Smells Like Teen Spirits” line of top-shelf whisky, rum, vodka, and tequila.
  • All distilleries sit on a water source, so others might have a similar problem if the flooding was bad enough.
  • In other news, I did a little, well, let’s not call it panic, buying yesterday. I’m good from now until the end of the decade if we don’t have another party like Thanksgiving 2022.
• There’s nothing like 10 hours spent in a hospital waiting room to put a nice spin on your day.
  • I did get to watch a southern grandma use a knife hand when addressing a young jerk who was playing a loud video game on his phone and yelling obscenities at it. That made up for the leg cramps from sitting on that uncomfortable chair.

• Through absolutely no fault on her part, Girlie Bear scheduled her wedding the same weekend in San Antonio as the NCAA Men’s Final Four basketball tournament.
  • I guess that explains the cost of airline tickets, hotel room, and automobile rental.
• We took Irish Woman and the Young Prince down to see the Alamo the morning after the wedding. I figured a little history education would be good for the boy.
  • He really enjoyed it. They’ve added quite a bit to the plaza, and it’s got a lot more educational content now.
  • However, ESPN was just starting to broadcast from Alamo Plaza when we left. To say the crowd was large would be a gross understatement.
  • There probably haven’t been that many rowdy people in front of those walls since 1836.
• When looking at a statue of Jim Bowie, the Young Prince asked, “Is that the guy who came up with the knife?”
  • Just at that moment, Irish Woman caught up with us. She asked, “Is he related to David Bowie?”
  • There are two kinds of people.
• We walked over to the San Antonio Riverwalk, which was thick with basketball fans. My newly minted son-in-law directed us over to an area that is usually quieter.
  • You’ll never guess where all four teams, along with their cheerleaders, bands, and throngs of adoring fans, were holding a pep rally.
  • Did I ever mention that my beautiful wife bleeds Kentucky blue, and the Duke fight song was playing just as we got there?
    • She’s still pissed about 1994.
    • Funny story – A ‘friend’ tried to convince me to name the Young Prince “Christian”. No, I did not know its significance, and yes, he most certainly did.
• After that quieted down, I started hearing chanting. I couldn’t be sure what they were saying, but it was close enough to “No Justice, No Peace!” that I decided happy fun time in downtown San Antonio was at an end.
  • Note to self – Check a personal protection pellet thrower next time you fly. All I had was a CRKT folder I’d checked in my bag almost as an afterthought.
  • Ladies, when your husband gets his game face on and starts herding you away from a crowd, that is not the time to start making new friends. It makes the little vein in his forehead throb something fierce.
• We visited the hotel bar a couple of times this weekend. Sometimes, when you’re marrying off your one and only daughter, you need a beer.
  • Irish Woman noticed that the bar had a bottle of Elmer T. Lee bourbon. This used to our go-to. It was reasonably priced (around $20), and tasted good. It hasn’t been available in Kentucky liquor stores for about a decade and a half.
  • Of course, Irish Woman imbibed. It was like she found someone who could make fried chicken just like her meemaw did when she was a kid.
  • Did y’all know that a serving of top-shelf bourbon costs $30 in San Antonio? I sure didn’t, but my wife’s happiness is worth every penny.
• The trip home was positively boring compared to the trip to Texas. The most exciting part was seeing the tornado damage to the Cincinnati airport after we landed.

• Nothing says “Let’s get ready to go on a trip!” like tornado warnings at midnight the night before you leave.
  • We were OK, but our old neighborhood got tore up a bit.
• Nothing foreshadows how your day is going like leaving for the airport an hour before you absolutely have to and barely making it to your flight due to traffic.
  • Is it a bad thing when the cause of the backup was two pickups being pulled onto a wrecker and a second wrecker with its cables running into the holler next to the interstate, all of which is bookended by a 50 foot rip in the guardrail?
• Gentlemen – It is a bad thing to mess up your wife’s birth date on her plane tickets. TSA has neither a sense of humor about such things, nor a willingness to help.
  • Irish Woman had to go back to ticketing to fix it, then do her best O.J. Simpson impression to our gate, which was at the end of the furthest terminal from security. She made it, barely.
  • I’m worried about what other O.J.-style skills she may be considering. Please note, if I am eliminated in a rather sticky manner this weekend, I deserved it.
  • Irish Woman has joked that 1996 must be the birth year of my mistress. At least, I hope that was humor I saw in her eyes.
• We were supposed to have a two-and-a-half hour layover in Dallas, but due to weather, the pilot flew us to Dallas from Cincinnati via Kansas City and Laredo. We landed at about the time the doors for our next flight were closing.
• Being the seasoned travelers we are, we tried to get booked on the next flight to San Antonio, along with several hundred of our closest, newest friends.
• After standing in a line that wrapped around the terminal for 2 hours and moving a total of 30 feet, we decided that Plan B would not work, so we moved to Plan C – Rent a car and drive. Hey, it’s only a few hours between DFW and San Antonio, right?
• Arranging a rental car was relatively easy. Notice that I did not say inexpensive.
  • Did y’all know how expensive a last-minute, one-way car rental is?
  • Did y’all know that when you save money by prepaying for your car rental, you can’t get a full refund when you are no longer flying into the airport you originally planned on using and have to cancel?
• Getting our luggage out of the airline, open the other hand, was an adventure in and of itself. After… speaking… Yeah, that’s it, speaking with a small man with terror in his eyes about how we got our bags back, he put in a request to have them retrieved. He was brave enough to tell me it would take between 30 minutes and 3 hours to get them.
  • Pro tip – When a customer says they no longer with to do business with your organization that day and would like their belongings returned to them, do not try to argue with them about how they can’t. That is especially true when the customer acknowledges that they will not be getting any sort of refund for the services your organization has not provided.
  • The gentleman with the frightened eyes had an issue finding our luggage, because it had been rerouted in their system to be loaded onto a plane.
  • American Airlines, may the brass allergy outbreak on the insides of their mothers’ thighs clear up soon, helpfully rebooked us on a flight the next day. Did I mention that they didn’t tell us about that?
  • For some reason, Irish Woman used her Human Relations voice immediately afterward to talk to me about my people skills. Not sure where that came from.
• After securing our rental car from an adorably pleasant young woman, we went on “The Quest to Get Off of DFW” and find some food while the airplane minions gathered our baggage. It is at that point that I realized that I hadn’t eaten in 24 hours, and hadn’t had any coffee in almost 36. Suddenly, any bit of grilled critter slapped between two pieces of bread with a bit of tasty grease sounded good.
• Once we had acquired said greaseburgers and some bubbly caffeine, we retraced our steps back to the airport, all the while entertained by plumes of smoke emanating from the pits of Mordor, locally called DFW airport. After retrieving our luggage and playing “Rental Car Jenga” to get it all in the trunk, we repeated “The Quest to Get Off of DFW”, and headed south to San Antonio.
• We arrived in San Antonio after being on the road, in one way or another, for 18 hours. A quick query on my cell phone showed that it would only have taken 16 hours to drive. Taking into account the time to stop for gas and such every so often, it probably would have been about the same time to drive as do whatever it was that American Airlines did to get us sort of to our destination, and I would have had my own car and about $2000 still in my bank account. Lesson learned.
• After driving around San Antonio for a few hours today, I have to say that the Texas highway department doesn’t have a hair on their collective asses if they don’t partner with Mattel and paint all of those elevated highways orange.
• I told my soon-to-be son-in-law that there were no give-backsies with Girlie Bear. I think he thinks I’m kidding.

• There’s something awesome about having a teenager when you’re in your 50’s.
  • You get to share all the things you enjoyed as a kid because they’ve come back in vogue.
  • You have the wisdom to know what does and doesn’t work, so you can guide him to better experiences, but still be there when he ignores advice and goes it alone.
  • You can watch the light behind his eyes die as you hand him a list of chores to accomplish before sunset on the third day of his spring break.
• Trying to fly out of Kentucky in early spring is a lot like watching a close horse race. You’re betting on whether the flight will make it off the ground before the wrath of god descends on the Commonwealth.
  • Being seasoned travelers, Irish Woman and I have a contingency of getting in her car, along with all of our luggage and the Young Prince, and driving 20 hours non-stop to get to our destination.
• One sign that you’ve truly been domesticated is that you get pleasure from how well the new carpet cleaner works compared to the old one.

• Not sure which indicates that I’m getting older more – The fact that I looked forward to going to breakfast yesterday at Cracker Barrel with Irish Woman, or my excitement in seeing that the polymer/wood rocking chairs were on sale out front.
• 30 years ago this month, I felt a rather large sense of accomplishment at successfully completing a really ugly assignment. Today, I felt almost as good at having both the dishes and the laundry caught up at the same time.
  • All I’m saying is that 20-something old me would never have been pleased to see that quarts of beef and chicken broth were on sale for less than $1 at Kroger.
• I found out just how much of a light weight I’ve become last night, as my neighbor served me two small servings of bourbon and I woke up feeling like I’d been on a 4 day bender.
  • Not sure if I should remedy that with more exercise of my alcohol consumption faculties or not.
• Starting to think about what to grow in the raised beds this year. I’m considering going full all-spikes-no-food to get back at the critters that decided I didn’t need tomatoes last year.
• In other news, the local deer were very grateful for the bowl of too-old-to-use apples I tossed into the side yard, but wanted me to know that the bird feeders need refilling.

• Well, after two years on his high-school bass fishing team, several hundred training trips to a local lake to learn boat handling and casting, several dozen fishing tournaments, most of which included at least one night in a hotel, Boo finally caught a fish. Too small to keep and bring to a weigh-in, but hey, fish.
• We stayed at the lodge at a nearby state park for this tournament. Even there, Kentucky people couldn’t get away from basketball. I didn’t need to turn on the television to know how things were going due to the exuberance of the rest of the folks staying there.
• We seem to have finally come to real spring here in IndiUcky. All of the trees are in full bloom and trying to choke me out.
• When the line to get into the ladies room at a Buccees is 30 deep, you know things have well and truly gone sideways.
• Boo and I listened to the first part of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy on our way back from the lake. You change the early to mid 1990’s to the early 1980’s and change Ohio/Kentucky to North Dakota, and I’m seeing a lot of parallels here.
  • I mentioned to my youngest son that there’s a better than even chance that Mr. Vance might be on the ballot on his first ever presidential vote in 2028, and suddenly felt a bit old.

• I didn’t expect to have “Being OK with Germany ramping up their defense spending and manufacturing” on my 2025 bingo card, but here we are.
• The job search continues.
  • Applying for IT jobs as they come across the dashboard. The less said about that, the better.
  • Got an email this morning asking if I’d be interested in applying to be a uniformed Secret Service officer in Washington, D.C. The salary range they gave was quite good for Kentucky, but would have me living in a rented broom closet in rural Virginia and eating day-old Circle K hot dogs in the D.C area.
  • “Must be willing to temporarily relocate to an undisclosed overseas location” does not make for good feelings on the part of someone who’s walked down that particular trail before.
• Had another line of thunderboomers come through last night. Ellie the beagle/lab mix cowered under the blankets and required reassurance that the world was not ending. Sophie, the beagle/dachshund mix, stood at the window and raved at the gods, daring them to try to end the world on her watch. Moonshine, the hound emeritus, slept through the whole thing.

Irish Woman just told me that she is putting a different ‘quilt system’ on the bed.

Now I’m sitting here wondering if this new ‘quilt system’ has been approved by OSHA and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Which IETF RFC does it fall under?

Has it gone through quality assurance and end-user testing?

Has she arranged for a change control and customer impact coordination meeting?

Budgeting shouldn’t be a problem, because she’s spent the equivalent of a generous USAID grant on quilts over the years, but has she done an environmental impact study?