• Lifting 15 to 18 kindergarteners, one at a time, up onto a horse, then helping them down, is quite a good all-body workout.
• We had to convince Boo that we were in no need of the following additions to the family today:
  • Sheep
  • Alpaca
  • Turkey
  • Rabbit
  • Chicken
  • Horse
  • Duck
• Boo did get a thorough pat down before we got into the car to go home.  No contraband mammals or avians were noted.
• Taking a class of young children into a corn maze means that a lot of adults do a lot of head counts.
  • Same number of children came out as went in, so I guess we did OK.
• Girlie Bear left for a three day camping trip with her JROTC group.  Imagine 5 adults and 50 teenagers going out to a few cabins in the woods.
  • A few of these kids took more stuff with them than I used to take for several weeks of TDY or field problem.
  • I would be going as a chaperone if I didn’t have to work. I hate to pass up a chance to mortally embarrass my daughter.
• There’s something to be said for leaning on the bed of your truck, looking at a rainstorm coming in, and shooting the breeze with your brother-in-law.

• When your wife gets less sleep than you did because you “had a rough night”, it’s not a good sign.
• When your first thought upon getting out of bed is “Now there’s a pain I’ve never had before”, it’s not a good sign.
• I honestly tried to be productive today, I swear I did.
  • Others conspired against me, that’s all.
• It sucks to be right sometimes, you know?
  • Apparently saying “This isn’t going to work” and then it not working makes me a jerk.
• Maybe asking “Is that the security conference where the guy expounded for an hour about how to survive the zombie apocalypse, or the one where half the participants spent eight hours learning how to pick padlocks?” might not have been the most “people skill” thing I could have done.
• When you come home from work and go with your wife to Walmart so that you can calm down and lower your frustration level before interacting with the family, it’s not a good sign.
• I spent my evening eating pizza and watching “The Wizard of Oz” with Boo.  I found myself rooting for the flying monkeys.
• My advice to the Republicans in Congress is simply this:  Go ugly, early.  The President and his side of the argument will have no qualms about being insulting and untruthful.  Fight fire with fire.  If you’re going to take the hit for the shutdown, at least enjoy it.

• Phrases heard Saturday night while assisting with training at Fort Knox:
  • “Big badaboom?”
  • “Kaboom?  Yes, Rico, kaboom.”
  • “Where’s the kaboom?  There was supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!”
  • “Someone should be making a decision right about now!”
• Girlie Bear had her debut as a role player at Fort Knox this weekend.  She was a little intimidated at first, but was enjoying herself by the end of the night.
• She especially enjoyed when she was picked as a high value target to be snatched up and hauled away.
  • Luckily for me, the cadre running the training decided that it would be best if I was given a role that allowed me to go along with her.  She didn’t need me, but seeing as how part of her role is to scream at the top of her lungs “Daddy!  Daddy help me!” the entire time she’s being dragged away, I just needed to be close, that’s all.
• Give a small group of soldiers access to trip wires and booby traps and tell them to make life hard for their fellow soldiers, and they will start giggling like kids at Christmas.
• Note to self – stop telling Irish Woman the posted time for training to be over when going to Fort Knox.
  • I told her we were supposed to be done sometime between midnight and one.  We didn’t get back to the truck until after 3:30.
• Moonshine put himself into a world of hurt today by eating half the pan of rice krispie treats that Irish Woman and Boo made on Saturday night.
  • It was the first time Irish Woman had made them with Boo, ever.
  • The other half got thrown out.
  • He’s still alive, but that’s probably only because she remembers how cute he was as a puppy.
• Crash has decided that if he is told “no” when he is trying to filch food, then it is adequate to sink low to the table and stay still for a few moments before trying again.  I’m going to have to correct that.

• Ironic Norwegian hipster names for children:  Ole and Lena.
  • If you don’t get it, ask a Scandinavian for an explanation.
    
• Life is fickle.  One night you’re a mason jar 1/3 full of apple pie moonshine, the next night you’re packed full of tomatoes, onions, peppers, and lime juice and sitting in a hot water bath.
• I succeeded in cutting up a couple dozen jalapeno peppers tonight and didn’t rub my eyes.  I’m proud.
• Interestingly, the juice from the peppers that has soaked into the skin on my hands burns a bit, but it feels kind of nice.
  • The soreness in my fingers seems to be easing up a tad.
  • I can, however, pinpoint each and every teeny tiny cut and nick on my hands at the moment.
• It is good that the props for the Halloween shindig at the zoo were supposed to look like they were painted by children, because that’s the best I can do.
  • Yeah, coloring inside the lines has always been a challenge.
• Apparently Girlie Bear borrowed a pair of colorful suspenders to wear in her school pictures.  Luckily, the pose we bought didn’t feature them.
  • Seriously, Mork from Ork would have been proud to wear them.

Short version – I feel like absolute dirt.  My attitude and outlook on life reflects that today.

Long version –

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
Our bruised arms hung up for monuments;
Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings,
Our dreadful marches to delightful measures.
Grim-visaged war hath smooth’d his wrinkled front;
And now, instead of mounting barded steeds
To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,
He capers nimbly in a lady’s chamber
To the lascivious pleasing of a lute.
But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks,
Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass;
I, that am rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty
To strut before a wanton ambling nymph;
I, that am curtail’d of this fair proportion,
Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at me as I halt by them;
Why, I, in this weak piping time of peace,
Have no delight to pass away the time,
Unless to spy my shadow in the sun
And descant on mine own deformity:
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:
And if King Edward be as true and just
As I am subtle, false and treacherous,
This day should Clarence closely be mew’d up,
About a prophecy, which says that ‘G’
Of Edward’s heirs the murderer shall be.
Dive, thoughts, down to my soul: here
Clarence comes. — Shakespeare, Richard III

• I guess my little girl is growing up.  When given the choice of spending the day at the zoo with Boo and our niece and nephew, Girlie Bear chose to stay home and get her homework done and clean her room.  She wanted to go out to a friend’s house tonight and do stuff with friends tomorrow, so she wanted to get her work done early.
• The trip to the zoo was wonderful.
  • Couldn’t have asked for better weather.
  • Having two other children for Boo to ping off of at the zoo made the trip easier.
  • We already have a request from Irish Woman’s niece to watch “The Wizard of Oz” and “The Jungle Book” the next time they stay over.
  • The baby addax was out on display today.  All three kids squealed in wonder at how “fluffy” it was.
  • Watching a polar bear swim underwater is quite amazing.
• Quote of the day at the zoo:  When asked how you tell a daddy lion from a mommy lion, one of the kids stated:  The daddy lion is asleep, the mommy lion is awake.
  • Irish Woman seems to believe that this is a good way to differentiate in humans too.
• When your son comes home from an anime ‘con dressed up in a schoolgirl outfit, complete with bright blue skirt, the correct thing to say, as a father, is “Nice legs”.

• I took a computer based training module the other day on “effective communication”.
  • I was encouraged to use “positive” language, and “I am positive that the maker of the CBT should be dipped in egg batter, rolled in corn flakes, and french fried” is not what they were looking for.
  • It included a scenario where I was in charge of a team of people, all of whom had a unique style of communication, and had to find the best ways to communicate my expectations to them when my managers found that the project was a shambles.
  • Apparently “If you people don’t pull your head out of your lower alimentary canal and start producing in a very short time, I will fire the lot of you and replace you with the next crew of house-trained simians.” wasn’t the correct response to elicit peak performance from my team.
  • This is why DaddyBear refuses to be in charge of people unless he can absolutely help it.
  • It would seem that my leadership style, while appropriate for a group of self-motivated, competent professionals, doesn’t fit well in a world where you have to care about “feelings” and “self esteem” and worry about people who look to others for direction in their lives.
• My ancestors would be proud that I had the emotional control to attend a church festival tonight and do it stone cold sober.
  • Boo has developed a taste for hot dogs, pepperoni pizza, and lime snow cones.  He can also vibrate at a frequency that almost lets him walk through walls.
• On a more positive note, I was successful in revising the curriculum for one of the classes I teach at work with less than two hours notice before teaching it today, and it went quite well.
  • Here’s a hint, folks:  If the corporate safety department devotes a few moments in annual training telling us to not do something, and we continue to do it, they will make it a company policy and add a 15 slide mandatory lecture to said annual training on the subject.
  • What used to be done in less than 2 hours, including class time, breaks, and hands-on demonstration of competence in not bumping into aircraft, now takes almost 3 hours.
  • I successfully retrained 10 people about not driving down taxiways and runways, as well as avoiding collisions with stationary airplanes and the jet blast of moving airplanes this week.
• You know how there are parts of your life that you wall up and walk away from?  It’s never fun when someone comes out of left field and tries to smash down those walls because they think they’re doing the right thing.

• To whomever made copies of my debit card and distributed it to several other people who all tried to buy gas in multiple states on September 12, I hope your grandmothers all die when their bordello catches fire.
  • Luckily, only one relatively small transaction made it through my bank’s fraud protection.
  • i do not, however, have a debit card at the moment as a new one is being made by my bank and shipped to me.
• It’s a good day when I get to use quotes from “Quigley Down Under” not once, but twice, in conversation.
  • For those playing at home, they were “I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn’t know how to use it.” and ” don’t know where we’re going, but there’s no sense being late.”
• It was parent’s night at Boo’s school tonight.  We were happy to hear that his new teacher seems to have him in hand already.
• Not paying attention during a staff meeting can be very embarrassing.
• Is it cruel to check your daughter’s grades on-line, see that she’s doing very well, and draw out the “We really need to talk about your performance in school” speech at the table before breaking down into a smile that tells her it’s OK?
• Summer pushed back a bit today.  It got hot and muggy enough that we’ve closed the house back up and turned on the air conditioner.  Oh well, highs in the 70’s will return shortly.
• I’ve seen five wooly worms that are almost all brown.  If folklore is accurate, that means a relatively mild winter.
  • My bones, on the other hand, are advising that I stock up on buffalo meat, firewood, and fur coats.
• Peter has a new book out.  It’s going into the “Read as soon as you can” pile.  He’s a great writer, and this is a subject that is near and dear to his heart.  I’m really looking forward to reading it.
• My co-workers complimented me on the portraits of the kids that I have on my desk.  I’m proud to say that they were all taken by my lovely Irish Woman.  If I could only get her in front of the camera more often.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. — Preamble to the United States Constitution

• Apparently purple is not a color that Moonshine likes.
  • At least that was the only color of sidewalk chalk and crayon that he didn’t eat last night.
  • He also ate the boxes.
  • This is going to be interesting.
• Crash seems to be fitting in quite well.  Today he climbed the living room drapes, hid in ambush on the curtain rod, and jumped straight down onto Koshka as she walked through the room.
  • Koshka refuses to cooperate with the investigation, so I suspect she is looking for her own justice.
• There are very few things as satisfying as showing someone the email exchange where they discussed work that needs to be done after they deny all knowledge of it.
• Going to a high school open house makes me hope that my daughter marries someone she meets in college.  In Sweden.
• I really hope that tempura paint washes out of Boo’s school shirt.  He only has two  (more are on order) and today was art day.