• Read “Ender’s Game” during lunch and after dinner tonight.  Not bad.  It’s a well written book, but I’m not sure I liked it.
• With the attack on the mall in Nairobi, Kenya, how long will it be before gecko45 and his band of commerce conquistadors gain new life as quick reaction forces for places like Mall of America?
  • I’m only half joking.
• Today, I used the term “psychic area network” to describe the communications pathways that allow me to not only intuitively know what someone needs, but also know before they do.
• Girlie Bear has now officially had more cell phones than I have.

• Irish Woman’s chicken and dumplings was exactly what I needed on a dreary, drippy day.
• I’m Scandinavian enough that when it’s mid-October, and the furnace isn’t working right, I will drop everything to get that piece of survival gear working.
  • On a side note, LED Maglites are very bright, and will make it impossible to work in a dimly lit basement if you happen to shine one into your eyes.
• Moonshine survived the day, but he’s been giving me guilty looks all afternoon.
• The dog ate my banana bread, my coffee was cold, it rained all day, and I had to drive to my ex-wife’s house in a pickup truck.  My life turned into a country-western song today.
• Once the rain stopped this afternoon, Irish Woman started putting up more Halloween decorations.  Apparently Crash doesn’t know that it’s fruitless to bat at the spider and its web that are on the other side of the glass window.
  • Not the sharpest tool in the shed, is he?
• Again, I think we’re doing the right things when it comes to raising the kids.  Boo walked around the house today singing “Another One Bites The Dust”.
• There’s nothing I enjoy more than arthritis and a cold damp day.  Thank goodness for good meds, warm drinks, and a fireplace.

• It’s finally gotten chilly enough that we’ve shut all of the windows and can comfortably use the fireplace.  It’s kind of nice.
  • It’s officially fireplace and bourbon weather.
• Not sure what the trees are doing.  Some have a bit of color, but for the most part, the leaves are going from bright green to dead brown and falling off within a day or two.  A lot of them are still very green and full of leaves, and by now they should be colorful and dropping tons of foliage.
• Boo’s first parent-teacher conference at his new school went well.  Academically, he’s mastering everything they throw at him, but we have a lot of work to do in the social skills area.
• Flirting outrageously with your wife at the department store is kind of fun.
  • Bonus points if you can get the group of college age females to giggle because of your antics.
• I must be doing something right as a parent.  When Girlie Bear found out that we’d bought a copy of “Beetlejuice” to add to our collection, she squealed in joy.
• I’m not a great master of time management, but it’s impressive how I will juggle things, shuck and jive, and negotiate in order to get a few hours at the range on a Saturday morning.
• I’m not exactly sure what they’re making good quality floating handguards for AR-15’s with these days, but they sure are proud of them.
• I don’t think it’s a good sign when I look at the shelves I built a decade ago and think “I need to rip the trim off of that and re-do it.”
• Irish Woman has begun her decoration rituals for Halloween.  So far, nothing that will cause flashbacks among young children has been erected.
• I took a vacation day today, and Irish Woman didn’t.  She slept in later than I did, which just seems wrong to me.

• I had to sit in my cube and keep my headphones on today.  All of my brain to mouth filters were off-line, and I need the paycheck.
• Step 1 – Take steroids.  Step 2 – Wait 2 hours.  Step 3 – Eat all the things!
• When you try to instigate a political argument with me, and I don’t respond one way or another, it either means I don’t care much about the subject or I don’t care much about you.  You make the call.
• Today, for the first time in a long time, I craved tobacco.  That’s not a good sign.
• Apparently one of my daughter’s teachers is a confessed socialist.
  • Well, nobody is perfect.
  • I told Girlie Bear that the guy is an idiot, and that she is not to argue with him.  Better to let him prove that he’s an idiot all by himself.
  • Apparently he’s proud that the house he’s buying is right next to some Section 8 housing.  Girlie Bear, who has lived in Section 8 housing with her mother, asked if he had a gun.  Tovarisch’ Teacher responded that, yes he did, and a big dog too.  So he’s proud of living next to the projects, but recognizes that the poor downtrodden proletariat might just decide that his stuff ought to be their stuff, and he’s not OK with that.  I guess it’s only OK if the men with guns and badges take stuff.
  • This all started with a conversation about food stamps, and Girlie Bear asserting that her teacher demonstrated that only about 10% of the federal budget goes to such programs.  I then demonstrated that 10% of $4 trillion is $400 billion, and that a huge portion of that is spent on people who are perfectly capable of providing for themselves, but choose not to.
  • I may or may not have used the term “starve to death in the cold” to describe my solution to that problem.
  • Did I mention that my filters were off-line?
• Irish Woman is a bit miffed that I always miss the uncomfortable conversations with the kids.
  • Boo said that he was growing up tonight, then said that his chest will be getting big like Mommy’s.
  • Irish Woman then had to explain to him that only women get breasts, while men get chest muscles.
  • I don’t think he’s buying it, but time should prove her right.
• Tomorrow I simply must have some coffee, for the sake of the children.

1:00 AM – Arrive home from work. Begin reading a book on the couch so that I don’t disturb Irish Woman while I wind down.

2:00 AM – Crash into dreamless sleep on the couch

6:00 AM – Phone ‘gently’ awakens me to tell me I have a doctor’s appointment downtown at 7:30.  Stumble about the house getting ready, without coffee or breakfast.

7:15 AM – Arrive at doctor’s office.  After check-in, am whisked off to see the bone bender.  After much questioning, poking, prodding, pulling, and whimpering, she congratulates me on losing weight, accepts my confession to being a bad patient for not coming in to see her sooner, and pronounces that my hiatus of arthritis treatments needs to come to an end.  After having six vials of blood taken, she prescribes steroids for short-term relief, a new anti-inflammatory to take the place of the one that’s not working, and a new self-injectable arthritis treatment that uses an auto-injector with a 17 inch needle.

8:00 AM – Arrive back in our neighborhood, and go to the grocery store.  Consider hunting down the engineer that ‘designed’ their parking lot and using him to fill in a couple of pot holes on the Bluegrass Parkway.

8:45 AM – Leave grocery store with fruit, milk, eggs, bread, and breakfast fixings.  Forget coffee and beer.

9:00 AM – Arrive home, make breakfast for Irish Woman and myself.  Have long discussion with Crash and Koshka on whether or not they truly love spicy pork sausage.  Take first six pills of steroids (not a joke, and yes, that’s the correct dose), and eat a good breakfast.  Neglect to make coffee.

10:00 AM – Lay down on couch to read again.  Start to dose.  Set 30 minute timer on phone.

10:30 AM – Wake up.  Notice that steroids are beginning to work because I can move both my knees and my jaw freely.  Also have an impulse to wash the basement.

1:00 PM – Finish washing the basement.  Get shower.  Talk with Irish Woman, who is trying to work on her, you know, job.  Get accused of creating a hostile work environment and threatened with HR action.

2:15 PM – Leave to pick up Boo from school.  Have nice chat with teacher about how Boo has to learn to keep his hands to himself, but that he enjoyed the discussion of Christopher Columbus.  I refrained from asking her if she also talked about Leif Ericson, although the thought did cross my evil little mind.

2:30 PM – Arrive at drug store to pick up my new anti-inflammatory.  20 minutes of shopping for Halloween stuff and looking at toys later, succeed in purchasing my medicine.

2:35 PM – Go to pharmacy down the road because they’re the only local place that sells Boo’s morning vitamin.  Spend 20 minutes looking at Halloween stuff and toys before completing purchase.

3:00 PM – Arrive home.  Spend a few minutes contemplating a cup of coffee and considering a cat nap.  Instead, draft a blog post about some minor plot element in movie that’s almost as old as I am.

4:00 PM – Girlie Bear calls to tell me that her JROTC activity for the afternoon is over and that she is ready for pick-up.  I advise her to mark the LZ with yellow smoke and prepare for me to utilize the jungle penetrator for extraction.

4:30 PM – Pick-up Girlie Bear and return home.  Daydream on way to house about a good strong cup of midrats coffee.  Consider calling someone I knew who served in the Navy to see if she will make some for me.

5:00 PM – Arrive home.  Make dinner of Bolognese sauce with italian sausage and onions, weird tied together like a Gordian-knot pasta, whole grain bread from the bakery, and fruit.

6:00 PM – Serve dinner.  To my surprise, Boo actually eats it.  Have rousing discussion of local personalities and politics, after which I can still proudly say that I’m not from here, so it’s not my fault.  Notice during dinner that I can hear very well. For instance, using echo-location from the quiet sounds a human jaw makes when it chews, I can tell that Irish Woman has 32 teeth and may have a loose filling.

7:10 PM – Clear table and do dishes.  Put away dinner.  Irish Woman puts Boo into tub and Girlie Bear goes back to homework.  Start to hear colors.  Not sure if that’s because of the steroids or if I’m just that tired.

7:50 PM – Read “Fox in Socks” to Boo as fast as I can.  The experience, for those of you who have not read this book to a child, is the literary equivalent of being in a kung-fu fight with Bruce Lee and 20 of your closest friends.

8:00 PM – Put Boo to bed.  Consider going straight to bed myself.  Boo begins nightly ritual of “I’m not tired!”.

8:15 PM – Irish Woman is up in the attic, pulling down Halloween stuff.   Assist her, but consider curling up for a nap right there in the hallway.  Get into a ‘discussion’ with Irish Woman after I suggest we tone our decorations down this year.  Last year, families with small children refused to come down our driveway.  Remind Irish Woman on several occasions that Halloween is a children’s holiday.

8:30 PM – Sit down to do a little surfing, and am assaulted by Crash, who needs a little attention before he starts his evening round of “Let’s Jump On The Other Animals and Make Them Growl!”.

8:35 PM – Noises from Boo’s room have ceased.  This is either because he’s asleep, or he’s chewed through the screen on the window and escaped.  Moonshine attempts to French kiss Crash while Crash still has all four sets of claws on my lap.  Hilarity ensues.

8:55 PM – Wake up in my chair and realize that the last 8 hours in which I was in a motorcycle gang on Mars was a dream.  Decide it’s time to go to sleep.

9:10 PM – ZZZZZZZZ

• Boo is officially over four feet tall.  If his growth rate follows the curve I think it’s going to, he will be taller than me sometime in his freshman year.
  • “Old age and treachery” may be my only acceptable tactic.
• I need to talk to Girlie Bear about using “knife hands” when talking with other JROTC cadets.
• Taking four small children trick or treating at the zoo was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun.
• Someone needs to take the mothers of America and explain a few things about costumes.
  • If you’re old enough to have seen the Wizard of Oz on the big screen, then you shouldn’t dress up as a sexy Dorothy for Halloween.
  • Dressing up with your kids is fun and creative and wonderful.  Dressing up in something between Portuguese cathouse and streetwalker and going to the zoo with your kids is none of those.
  • If your child’s costume looks like something out of “Blood Runs Red on the Highways”, then you might want to ask Junior to tone it down a bit before going to an event with toddlers.
• Boo has apparently learned to dance, and seems to enjoy it.  I have footage from the “disco” area of the zoo’s Halloween party tonight, and it is being carefully archived.  It will be trotted out when he brings home that special girl.
• We went to a wedding on Friday night.  It’s kind of nice to go to something like that and have it be done tastefully and simply.
• Reading an extremely well written history book can lead to you being up until 2 in the morning reading, then laying awake thinking “How did they survive that and come out OK?” for an hour.

• It is quite unnerving to drive a large truck so close to a jumbo jet that you can no longer see anything but the actual belly of it.
• It is almost as unnerving to be on the bucket of said truck so that you can inspect the rear engine on the tail of it.
• A large truck handles very differently after you load 1500 gallons of water into it.
• Buckets on booms, high pressure hoses, sprays that rebound right up your noses.  Sunshiny days, trucks that handle rough, this is a bit of my favorite stuff.
• It is always a good idea to know which end of the nozzle the spray is going to come out of before pulling  back on the trigger.
• Overheard on the radio:  “Please do not back up the truck when its rear end is pointed at the airplane.  STOP BACKING UP THE TRUCK!  STOP!”
  • It wasn’t directed at me.
  • No bad things happened, but it’s never a good thing when people come running so that they can witness something that looks really interesting.
• When one of the hinge joints on your jaw refuses to cooperate, it’s time to call the rheumatologist.
• If de-icing was done in gorgeous weather like we’ve had the past few days, I’d volunteer to transfer.  Of course,  it’ll only happen in January when it’s blowing and snowing.  That’s why it’s called ‘de-icing’ and not ‘de-sunshining’.
• I got my new barrel from York Arms today.  Time to buy the rest of what I need to complete the  upper.
• You know, after watching how the parks department and VA have been treated during the shutdown, I think I would support efforts to place all veterans and war memorials, as well as the entire VA, under the purview of the Department of Defense.  I’m not saying that the Pentagon isn’t a bureaucratic leviathan that squashes ants for fun and profit.  What I am saying is that when this happens again, it probably won’t be hard to get volunteers to keep the VA hospitals  and war memorials open and maintained.  My guess is that a Marine lance corporal or Army specialist would be a heck of a lot more respectful and polite to aged veterans than the jackboots that have been prominent so far.

• I watched “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” with Boo today.
  • That sack of rocks that Charlie Brown gets while trick or treating would come in handy if someone tried to mug the other kids for their candy.
  • The butt chewing that Sally gives Linus when she realizes that he’s an idiot sounds eerily familiar.
  • The World War I flying ace has obviously seen too much. He just needs someone to listen to him talk. What clued me to this was how music played on a toy piano caused such a quick and traumatic mood swing.
  • Linus  needs to realize that the Great Pumpkin isn’t in the pumpkin patch. He’s in the costume stores and the slasher flicks. He’s in the temporary candy aisles in the stores and the overpriced corn mazes. Yes, Virginia, there is a Great Pumpkin, and he is found everywhere people start shopping for Halloween as soon as the back to school sales are over.
• Well, the great storms passed through this weekend.
  • On a good note, I got to meet my new neighbor, who is apparently into ship building and menageries.
  • The money we put into waterproofing our basement and replacing the roof was well spent.  We probably got more than 3 inches of rain in a few hours, and the house was bone dry.
  • Lightning strikes that are almost instantaneous with the thunder boom are nature’s way of telling you to quit caulking the seams in the porch and go inside.
• Girlie Bear enjoyed her camping trip this weekend.
  • The adults cut it short because of the monsoon that was sweeping through, but only by a few hours.
  • I’m going to have to show her the trick of putting important stuff into ziploc bags when you’re going to be outdoors.
  • In related news, Girlie Bear will soon be purchasing her own cell phone for the very first time.
• Taking the Siamese cat and the labrador retriever to the vet at the same time wasn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done.
  • I noticed that my vet bills lately have been bigger than the payments on my first car loan.  I think we’re officially full when it comes to critters.
• I’m pretty sure that my circadian rhythm is set to “Calypso” at the moment.

If the webservers that serve out pages for such things as the National Park Service and such are offline because of the government shutdown, why are the computer systems that take tax money out of my paycheck still up and running?  It would seem to me that something that provides a service to the nation would be at least as important as something that parasitizes the nation’s lifeblood.