• Am I the only Labrador Retriever owner that has to say the words “Go out in the yard!  You’re a water dog!” on rainy days?
• Labrador Retrievers are actually capable of eating an apple. I stand corrected.
  • However, I must point out that ingestion is not the same as digestion.  We’ll see how this ends.
• Irish Woman’s sister came over to hem Girlie Bear’s dress and properly fit it to her.  I was in the kitchen, silently chanting “She has to grow up.  Do not freak her out.  She has to grow up.”
  • My job as a father is to teach her to be a good, self-sufficient individual who will tear off the genitals of any man who dares hurt her, make sure she has all the tools she needs to do so, keep her from getting pregnant before she’s ready for it, and keep her off the stripper pole.
  • So far, so good, but the hard part is just beginning.
  • Why did the price of guns and ammunition go up just as my daughter started going to dances with boys?
• Hmmm, a day or two of steady rain, followed by a cold front.  Yeah, this can’t end well.
• The large creek / small river that runs about a mile behind our house is up out of its banks and getting deeper.  If this keeps up, President Obama may come in for a photo-op before going to Valhalla to play a round or two.
  • Come to think of it, the creek flows right up against the golf course, so he could kill two birds with one stone.

• Girlie Bear’s ski trip was cancelled at the last minute.  The fact that it was in the 60’s at 7 this morning  probably had a lot to do with it.
  • Winter is coming back.  There’s a violent storm to the west of us.  Looks like we’ll only catch the edge of it, but there’s snow behind it.
• Moonshine weighed in at just over 26 pounds at the vet today.
  • He was born in September.
  • I think I may let him take up smoking to stunt his growth.
• I noticed this morning that the hippie dippie grocery store in my neighborhood has moved across the street and someone is turning their old storefront into a Dunkin Donuts.
  • I may have lost my taste for sweets, but I have not lost my taste for huge honking cups of coffee with cream and sugar.
• Freiheit was nice enough to invite me out to the KDPL match this morning.
  • They were already shooting when I got there, so I just wandered around and watched the different stages.
  • I think I’m going to try it out next month.  It was fun to watch, and when is shooting not fun?
  • Of course, Freiheit and I have no idea what the other looks like, so we never connected.
  • Hopefully we will finally get to meet at the Friends of the NRA meeting in a couple of weeks.
• After a while, I wandered back up to the main range and met a friend from Jihadistan.
  • She and her husband were trying out their new-to-them Mossberg shotgun and practicing with their revolver.
  • Remind me to bring both of them to a gun fight.  They ate up their target.
  • They graciously let me take their position on the firing line after they were done.
  • Today, Knob Creek was the busiest I’ve ever seen it without a machine gun shoot going on.
  • I saw men and women shooting today of all ages and apparent backgrounds, and it looked like a lot of them were first time shooters.
  • KCR still has a lot of guns up on the shelves, and their ammunition stocks seem pretty full up.
    • I did hear someone mention that the range was limiting customers to 200 cartridges per purchase, so that may be how they’re keeping from being cleaned out.
    • Their prices weren’t too bad compared to normal, but their prices are usually a tad higher than the dealers in Louisville.
    • Then again, if you can’t find your ammunition at Knob Creek, it’s probably not available on the market.
  • I confirmed the zero on the AR-15, practiced with the CZ-82 and Mark III pistols, and zero’ed the Mosin’s new Mojo sights in at 100 yards.
    • I’m dead on at 25 paces with the Mark III, but the CZ-82 is grouping about an inch high and three inches to the left of POA.  Have to look up what I’m doing that might be causing that.
    • The AR is good to go at 100 yards.
    • The Mosin is even more fun to shoot now with a Timney trigger and Mojo sights.
      • Yes, I’ve put more money than I paid for the rifle into improving some aspects of it, but it’s a lot of fun to shoot and the ammunition for it is still cheap when compared to .308 or .30-06.
  • I guess it’s good that I didn’t rush out and buy a bunch of stuff with the rest of the herd, because my gun fund is going to have to go toward a new washer.
    • 22 years on the same machine isn’t too bad.  It stood up to over two decades of hard, everyday use.
    • Wish they still built them like that.
    • Guess I’ll be adding my own private stimulation to the durable consumer goods market in the next few days.
    • Good gosh, what are they making washers out of these days?  $1200 for a machine that turns dirty clothes into wet, clean ones?

• A friend of mine, who was lukewarm at best on the subject of guns the last time we talked about it, now owns a pistol, likes shooting it, and has taken his concealed carry class.
  • He got it at Christmastime.
  • That was a great thing to hear as the day began.
• “Wow, I didn’t know it could do that!” is not something you want running through your mind when you’re troubleshooting a problem.
• Girlie Bear and I stacked a cord of firewood last night.
  • Tonight, she’s excited to be going on a field trip with her JROTC class tomorrow.
  • Tonight, I’m reminded of all those mornings I haven’t been up exercising.
  • However, I have decided that I need a truck with a lifting bed.  The gentlemen who delivered the firewood had one and it took them all of 3 minutes to drop it all in the driveway, get paid, and be on their way.
• Girlie Bear is going skiing in Indiana tomorrow.
  • Not sure how that works, but apparently you can ski in Indiana.
  • It was almost 70 degrees here today.
  • No amount of man-made snow and grooming is going to prevent her trip from being a slushy mess.
• You know how when you bathe a dog wet they usually look like a drowned rat?
  • Moonshine doesn’t have that problem; it’s all muscle under that double coat.
• The National Guard must be doing something this weekend. Our neighborhood had helicopters and transport aircraft flying over it all day.
  • If they fly much lower, they’re going to scrape off our new roof, and Irish Woman will hunt them down.
• I don’t know who’s more excited about Girlie Bear’s first formal dance next weekend, her or her aunts and Irish Woman.
• It’s a sad state of affairs when you look at an ammo can full of cartridges and have to say “I can only take 60 of these to the range tomorrow because I don’t know when I’ll be able to get more”.
  • Oh well, there’s always .22.

Tonight’s bedtime story was “Green Eggs and Ham“, by Dr. Seuss, brought to you by the National Statin Council, who ask “How’s your cholesterol?”.

• Got up at oh-my-Lord-thirty this morning.  Still going with no caffeine all day. 
  • Hide the breakables and easily offended.
• Stopped by one of my gun stores on the way home.
  • They actually had 3 AR-15’s of one sort or another on the wall, along with several tacticool shotguns.
  • However, they were completely sold out of AK variants, as well as magazines for AR’s and AK’s.
  • Some AR accessories were to be had, but not much.
  • Glocks were nowhere to be found, but Beretta, S&W, and Ruger pistols were available.
  • Bolt action rifles and hunting shotguns were available with good numbers and selection.
    • People aren’t buying guns to go hunt wabbits.
  • Ammunition was available, but expensive.
    • Federal FMJ .223 was selling for more than twice what it was going for just prior to the election.
    • The half barrel that held 12,500 XM855 5.56 cartridges a few weeks was empty and being used to hold used gun cases.
    • Common pistol calibers, in both FMJ and hollowpoint, were available but had a price increase of about 30 to 40 percent from just prior to the election.
  • Pistol magazines were available, but not for all of the pistols I could think of while looking at the display.
  • A Chip McCormack 1911 magazine was priced at $40, about double what I paid for one last year.
  • The gentleman behind the counter said that things were busier than Black Friday every day for weeks, but that since Saturday things have slowed somewhat.
    • It’s not back to normal at this store yet, but they can at least keep stock on the shelves.
    • After work on a Monday, I observed about the same crowd in the store that I’m used to seeing in there on Saturday afternoons.
    • Does this jibe with what y’all are seeing elsewhere?
• Dinner tonight was chicken fried rice made with left-overs.
  • Am I the only one who feels funny about scrambling eggs and putting them into a chicken-based dish?
  • Fried rice is one of those dishes that seems to be more than the sum of its parts.  I swear I only put in enough of the ingredients to make four or five servings.
    • I now have enough to feed the Mongol hordes and still have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.
  • Boo turned his nose up at it, but he at least tasted it.  Progress is progress.
  • Dinner conversation centered around the gun buying panic and gun control in general.
    • In 2005, Irish Woman came very close to putting her foot down and telling me I couldn’t have a gun in the house.
    • Now she intelligently discusses gun control and gun safety.
    • I’m so proud.

Note to self – A glass container of Carmex lip balm that goes through the laundry in the pocket of a pair of my work pants will make that entire load of laundry smell wonderful.

Note to self – Yes, an iPhone, set on vibrate and leaned up against the glass in a kitchen window, does indeed sound like electricity arcing when someone calls you.

Note to self – Put the kitchen back together before Irish Woman wakes up from her nap.

Note to self – Frying pans full of browned meat and onion tend to be rather hot

Related note to self – Find out if silvadene is available over the counter.  Also, need to learn to crochet or knit so I can make a set of oven mitts that fit my over-sized paws.

• That head cold I’ve been fighting since the day after Christmas seems to have migrated into my chest.  On a positive note, my sea lion impression is coming along wonderfully.  
• My regular doctor was able to squeeze me in tomorrow morning.
  • The good side of that is that I will probably start feeling better sometime tomorrow night.
  • The bad side of that is that she loves to prescribe shots of steroids, which are injected with much malice and glee into my rump.
• Recipe for surviving the night:
  • Sudafed
  • Mucinex
  • Hot lemon, honey, and bourbon toddy
  • Hot shower
  • Cough drops
  • Warm bed
• Irish Woman has been cooped up at home for two days with a four year old boy, a fourteen year old girl, and a 4 month old black lab puppy with a tummy ache.
  • She’s working from home and the kids are still off for Christmas break.
  • I’m going to cut her loose tomorrow night so I don’t wake up to see her standing over me with an axe.
• Girlie Bear has purchased her gown for the JROTC formal.  It’s not too modest, but not too slinky.  She’s also wearing low heels with it, and wants to get her hair and nails done for the event.
  • What happened to my tomboy?  I distinctly remember having a tomboy who would fight me when I tried to get her into a dress.
  • I’m fine.  No really, I’m fine.  My eye always twitches like this.
• During a meeting today, I remarked that I was “all about being compassionate”.  My co-workers asked if DaddyBear was home and if they could talk to him.
• Dear electronics manufacturers – “Up to 8 hours of use on one battery charge” means 7.5 hours, not 5
• Our experiment in canning meat now includes ham, chicken, and barbecue pulled pork.  We’ll see how this turns out in a couple of months.
• Apparently my salsa, japaleno dill pickles, and Thai chili dill pickles are a hit.  I’ll have to make more of them next year.

• I’m not sure if Moonshine is a labrador retriever or a beaver.  He’s been chewing on the stack of wood next to the fireplace all day.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang may be my favorite Bond film, after Goldfinger, of course.
  • “Zis is X, as in X und bacon!” – Comedy gold!
• I should have refrained from drinking coffee before playing Operation with Boo today.  It sounded like I was tapping out an intelligence report from behind enemy lines.
• Monk Cake is so good it might be a sin.
• In the last 48 hours, we have gone through a bunch of bananas and almost a dozen large apples.   The lady at the grocery store must think we’re keeping monkeys or something.
• I know it’s wasted time, but spending the evening playing video games with the 4-year-old was very satisfying.
• Sprinkling bird seed on the outside window sills around the house so the birds would come right up to the window made for the best feline television I’ve ever seen.
• The roast beast vegetable soup turned out really well.  We got enough to have a good meal with a loaf of fresh-baked wheat bread, then I canned three quarts of it.
• Has it occurred to anyone else that the slowness of NICS checks is creating a new five-day waiting period to purchase a firearm?