• Today I was informed that I need to spend the present-day cost of an AR-15 to replace the ball joints and control arms on my truck.  I’m investigating how much of that is parts and how much is labor and how hard it is to do it myself.  
  • It doesn’t look that bad.  I will need a couple of tools and a floor jack, and it looks like a good opportunity to replace the shocks at the same time.
  • I know, famous last words.
• It is amazing how big a difference in handling there was after putting new tires on the truck.
• I went into the hardware store to pick up some basic things, but came out after buying $300 worth of stuff.
  • I need to go to the hardware store alone.
• Going to the big warehouse store on a Saturday afternoon does a lot to destroy my faith in humanity.
  • Quote from one of the people who entered the store at the same time as we did:  “OK, kids!  Let’s go start hitting all of the free samples for lunch!”
  • If I can smell your perfume from an aisle over, maybe you used a tad too much.
  • I don’t care how old you are, it never hurts to have good manners.
    • Knocking fenders with Irish Woman’s cart because you want to get past her without saying “Excuse me, please.” is the opposite of good manners.
    • Yes, I stared a hole in your forehead over it.  No, I’m not afraid of your death stare.
    • Your powers are weak, old man.  When last we met, I was but the learner.  Now I am the master.
  • I won the “Who can guess closest to our total at the checkout lane?” game today by being within $2.  Oddly, I felt a great sense of accomplishment in doing that and getting out of the store without having to liquidate assets.
• The womanization of Girlie Bear continues.  I was stared down by Irish Woman after telling Girlie Bear that she was dressed too nicely to go to the movies with her girlfriends.
  • Apparently I’m supposed to just sit back and watch.  I’m going to counter that argument by looking into cloistered convent schools for the lass.
• Apparently we’re going to be planting more grape vines and putting in cranberry bushes this year in addition to the new raised beds and hanging planters I’ll be building.
  • A few more plantings and I might have to get crop insurance.

• Don’t look shocked that I don’t complain about my work schedule.  
  • Paycheck cashes just fine, so I’m ready to work when the time comes.
• I paid enough money today to buy an AR-15 at before-election prices to put new tires on my truck.  Tomorrow I will spend enough to buy a pre-election case of 5.56mm to get the brakes redone.
  • Oh well, can’t take it with you, and I need the truck to last at least another two years.
• Boo has been cooped up in the house all day due to school being out and the weather being cold and wet.
  • I’ll have to find somewhere indoors tomorrow where he can bounce around at full speed for a while.
• Moonshine needs to work some energy out too.  Maybe there’s an indoor dog park in Louisville?
• For once, the weather during the drive home sucked and the road was packed with skillful and polite drivers.
• My wife believes I know how to safely and properly rewire the bathroom.  This is not going to end well.
• I’m going to enjoy the first weekend in a month and a half that I don’t have to go into work.
• The after dinner movie tonight was “Chicken Little“.  It just seemed appropriate.
• I have been informed that my daughter will love me forever if I keep the truck running long enough for her to take possession of it in a few years.
  • It would be nice if she learned to drive a stick.
  • It would also be good to give her an older vehicle she’ll have to work on every weekend.
  • I also know for sure she won’t be racing anyone in that thing.

• It seems quite fitting that a man who had a great passion for sports was laid to rest today within earshot of a children’s sports field.
• I hope that it doesn’t take another funeral or wedding to get Irish Woman’s family together again.
  • She met family this weekend that she had never met before, even though they were close to her mother.
• I have decided that I do not care for modern church music.
  • I prefer the old standards, sung in the way that the author meant for them to be done.
  • I also prefer my scripture read, not sung.
  • The same goes for my prayers, unless it’s in Latin.
• Reading a couple of books on Roman culture and then seeing the rites of a Catholic mass up close reminds you just how much the Church has borrowed from Roma Invicto.
• I think I’m going to have to go to church more.  When my time comes, I want the priest to know more about me than what Irish Woman or Girlie Bear tells him.
• Finding the root cause of a problem you’ve been messing with for the better part of two months is a wonderful thing.
  • Always encourage people to follow hunches when they’re troubleshooting a weird problem.
• I came home tonight to one of my favorite meals.  Granted, I was 3 hours late for dinner, but baked pasta in marinara sauce and cheese tastes better warmed up anyway.
• I was informed by at least five people that if Boo goes to Catholic school, I will have several coaches for the various sports talking to me by the time he’s in 6th grade.
  • I hope he has more ability than I do.  I’m lucky if I know which end of the football bat is which.
• I really ought to go wake up Irish Woman and get her into bed, but she looks so comfortable in the recliner and it’s the first deep sleep she’s had in days.
  • She’ll forgive me for covering her up and leaving her in peace.

• Dinner last night was made-from-scratch chicken hunter’s stew over egg noodles.
  • Dessert was homemade made-from-scratch cheesecake with homemade strawberry sauce.
  • Girlie Bear ate like the antidote was in it.
  • Boo turned his nose up at it because it wasn’t pizza.
• A nagging cough and fatigue decided that I didn’t need to go to Knob Creek for the Day of Resistance rally today.
  • Did anyone go?  How was it?
• Ladies, when your loving husband buys you a piece of technology that has many accessories available, it is uncool to immediately rob him of the opportunity to buy them as presents by immediately ordering as many of them as you can.
• The quarterly official pictures of the kids were finished today when we were joined by Little Bear.  The next cycle will start again in 3 weeks.
  • When my grandchildren ask what their mother or father looked like as children, I’ll be able to say “Which week?”.
• With all the talk about what a woman should do when it comes to rape, I guess it’s time to have another talk with the kids on the subject.
  • The crux of it will be “It’s better to be covered in their brains and blood than in your own vomit and excrement.”
  • Also need to have the “No means No” talk with them.
• My ambitions for the day were cut short after the trip to get Little Bear and a trip to the hardware store.  After that, I just wanted to take my shoes off, kick back in my chair, and read quietly.
• I have it on good authority that Boo’s life ambition is to be a pirate Jedi super hero.  I believe that one of the local universities actually has a degree program that supports that.
• Somewhere in this house is a pair of bifocal glasses, sized to fit on the huge melon of a Norwegian-mix cave troll.
  • A cookie will be presented to the lucky person who finds them, with bonus cookies given for the speed in which they are found, up to a total of a dozen.
  • My spare set is scratched so badly that I see better without them.
• The mitre saw finally died.
  • Decided to upgrade from Black & Decker to Dewalt.
  • It’s already been broken in as Irish Woman is making more shelves for the bathroom.
• Note to self – Labrador Retrievers like the taste of small blueberry bushes.
  • One more project – Construct fence around blueberry bushes. – Do immediately.
• I either need to stop reading anti-gun websites and news articles, or I need to do more heart-healthy exercises so that I don’t blow an aorta or something.

• Not sure what evolutionary niche influenza virus sits in, but I hope it’s a damn uncomfortable one.
• When you can’t taste anything, canned chicken soup is nothing but a mouthful of lukewarm grease.
• For once I got to sleep 16 hours straight, but I had fever dreams about high school all night long.
  • There is no justice.
• Doctor says I should spend the entire week in bed.  We’ll see how this goes.
• One of the few benefits of being locked away from the family so I don’t infect them is that I can watch some of the movies I normally can’t.
  • Falling asleep while watching “Greg the Bunny” makes for some really cool dreams.
• For some reason Girlie Bear’s geography class spent today talking about my hometown in North Dakota.
  • Who knew Berthold was such an interesting place?
• Irish Woman appears to have gotten her bedside manner from Nurse Ratched.
  • Actually, that’s probably the best way to be when I’m not feeling well.  I’m not exactly a cooperative patient, and a sharp word here and there prods me into necessary action.
• Extra spicy chicken pad thai seems to be what it takes to break through to my taste buds.
• ZZZZZZZ

• Never underestimate the utility of intercepting someone outside the men’s room when you desperately need information or a decision and they desperately need to get in the men’s room.
• It takes a very special woman to let her husband go out and play Jihad Joe on Valentines Day.  Luckily,  I have just such a wife.
• A sliver of moon and the stars provided plenty of illumination to not knock myself silly or break my leg last night.  This may be the first time I’ve come back from night-time training without a self-induced bruise.
• Fire hot.  Fire from exploding junked-out car very hot and loud.
• Zip ties are a great way to control someone’s arms and gives the person holding the prisoner an easy handle for when they want the prisoner to move.
  • One note – When using zip ties as a handle to pull a prisoner up to his feet, make sure you don’t grab the end of the zip tie that pulls it tighter.  Lifting a big Norwegian up by that end of the zip tie will make his wrist and hand turn all sorts of really cool colors.
  • Note to self – cut off the zip tie before going into the Stop-n-Stab.  It makes the clerk nervous when you walk in wearing a pair on your right wrist half an hour past midnight.
  • Note to self – send note to manager of the Stop-n-Stab thanking him for his employee’s help with a pair of stout scissors to remove said zip ties.
  • Note to self – Find the pocket knife that is supposed to be in the truck.
• Did I mention that I have a wonderful wife?  She waited up for me, gave me a hug when I came home smelling like burnt rubber, and even made me a snack before we went to bed.
• Wake-up time came way too early this morning.

Update – One I forgot but which kicked over my giggle box last night:

• When detonating left-over pyrotechnics, it might be a good idea to check the port-a-potties underneath them to make sure that young ladies are not using them.

• It’s a sad state of affairs when you go to work before the doughnut shops are open.
  • In related news, I’m out of decent coffee at the house.
  • No, I’m not going to cut into my end-of-the-world stocks.  This is a mess-up in grocery shopping, not the apocalypse.
• Being organized and efficient only helps if you use correct information.  If you use incorrect information, being efficient and organized just means that you dig a hole that much quicker.
• Schadenfreude – The feeling you get when someone complains about having to do the really crappy thing that you told them they would have to do, but they discounted your advice and planned to do something else.
• Why must kindergarten teachers be so bloody cheerful on a Saturday morning?
• Today at the latest kindergarten preparatory meeting, we were told that Boo’s new school does not use the traditional methods for grouping children for learning.
  • Apparently they’ve taken the prudent step of not roping the children into set study groups for each subject for the entire year, and try to tailor who works on what with whom based on everyone’s needs.
  • When I was in kindergarten, we were all grouped together and organized by height and viciousness.
  • It was a simple system, and worked for most kids, but heaven help you if you were short or easy-going.
• If we have one more orientation meeting for kindergarten, we will have officially done more planning for Boo’s move to a new school than I did for most of my deployments.
• I found the reason that the bathtub has been draining so slowly and the washing machine has been making those picturesque waterfalls in the basement.
  • I won’t go into the gory details, but let’s just say that I’ve seen field mice without that much heft.
• Nap – A word used by another member of the family to describe what they want you to do while they use a power saw and a nail gun in the next room.
• Irish Woman and I are so romantic.
  • I asked her if she wanted jewelry, flowers, or chocolate covered fruit for Valentines.
  • She asked if I wanted alcohol, ammunition, or a new knife.
  • She completes me.

• Irish Woman finally decided that enough was enough, convinced me to stay home from work, and got me off my butt and into the doc-in-the-box. 
  • I’ve only been sick since last Thursday.  My immune system is just getting warmed up.
• Flu tests may violate the Hague Conventions.
• The doctor announced that I have the ick and should spend the rest of the day in bed.
  • I figured the couch was good enough and besides, I can watch Sherlock Holmes on Netflix that way.
• If you put enough hot sauce in it, canned clam chowder is edible.
• You know, I’m getting tired of how every time some jerkoff commits some heinous act, the fact that they have military training is not only mentioned, but highlighted as a reason they’re especially dangerous.
  • The military didn’t make me a jerk, I was that way before I got into the recruiter’s car to go to MEPPS.
  • Not everyone who joined the military is a steely eyed, highly trained special warfare kind of dude.  Most of us were just your average joe doing our job, which occasionally included some combat-type training.
  • Intimating that because this dickhead has something special about him because he’s a veteran is like saying that the networking guy who murdered his wife will be hard to track on-line because he took a few programming classes in college.
• So, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, when our embassy in Cairo was violated and our consulate in Benghazi was in flames, with four American citizens being murdered, we are supposed to believe that either the President didn’t bother to reach out to his Secretary of Defense, or the Secretary didn’t think that it was noteworthy enough to reach out to the President to make sure he was informed of everything that was going on or to give him options.
  • There is a third explanation, but no-one will ever have the means to find out if Panetta is lying.  And to be honest, I wouldn’t be surprised if the amateurs who are playing jacks next to the nuclear button are just that incompetent.
• I’m not sure if I’m only just noticing this or if it’s something new, but I think Koshka is stalking the puppy.  If I know my evil, psychotic Siamese, the puppy is in very real danger.  Maybe he should get a restraining order?
• Walt Disney was an evil genius.  We ordered a copy of Peter Pan the other day, and it just arrived.  I popped it in as an after-school treat for Boo, and he was completely transfixed for the entire movie.
  • It was released in 1953, when my mother was younger than he is now. Don’t tell me that some stories never get old.
• I’m not sure what Irish Woman has in mind, but the walls of my bathroom have lots of things sketched out in permanent marker.
  • Either she’s summoning something, or I’m not even close to being done in there.
• There’s nothing like hearing a waterfall in the laundry room to get the old heart pumping.

• Boo will be facing the gom jabbar on Saturday as we try to get him into the school that Irish Woman wants him to attend.
  • I’m saying that he might be human.
  • I’ve been instructed to be on my best behavior, so I’ll be making friends and influencing people.  Heck, I may smile a little.
• I had to tell Girlie Bear that a story where the protagonist fights against a repressive government dead set against the free expression of rights was probably not what her teacher was thinking of when she assigned a children’s story for a writing assignment.
• I should have named Moonshine “Lamont”.  That way when he messes up, I could look at him and say “You big dummy!”.
  • He’s actually a good puppy, and is not as destructive as he used to be, but I swear that if you look hard enough at his eyes, you can see the back of his head.
• I was advised today that I am not allowed to use the question “Are you illiterate or did you just choose to not read what I wrote?” when talking to co-workers.
  • I am also not allowed to ask a co-worker if they are deaf or just stupid.
  • Yeah, it was one of those days.
• Apparently we are going to be getting faster broadband in the near future, so my goofing off will be happening much more quickly.

• It was very nice to finally meet Freiheit and his family today.  I must get the recipe for his wife’s cake.
• Notes for the NFL:
  • The children from Sandy Hook Elementary did indeed sing very beautifully.  It was good to see that the tragedy they lived through doesn’t keep them from being used to score cheap political points.
  • Jennifer Hudson did the best Ray Charles impression I’ve ever heard.  Well done.
  • Alicia Keys gets an 80 on her rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner”.  She didn’t appear to lip synch, she seemed to be accompanying herself on the piano, and she hit the notes.  If she could have made it not sound like cool jazz at the end, I’d have scored her higher.
  • I can’t say I’m sad I missed Beyonce performing during half time.
  • Did anyone perform at the Super Bowl that hasn’t supported President Obama?
• I saw approximately  8 minutes of the Superbowl tonight before it was time to go in to work for a couple of hours.
  • I walked back in the door about a minute after the end of the game.
  • No, I don’t own a DVR.
• I normally double the amount of time I think I need for a task when I’m doing my planning.  I think that may be too conservative.
• The local news just showed an employee of my indoor range speaking in support of universal background checks.  I’ve reached out to their management to see if that is indeed their position on the new gun control issues.
  • I hope that this was just someone popping off.  The person they spoke to is not the owner or his wife, and to be honest, I didn’t recognize him.
  • I’ll name names once I hear from their management.