My goal for this night is to wake up with the same number of mammals in the bed as when I fell asleep. Between cats, kids, and a puppy, it gets kind of crowded.

• The high point of my day was when the waiter at breakfast dribbled hot coffee down my hand, wrist, and crotch.
• Last night I tried a new recipe for pumpkin bars.  At least I thought it was pumpkin bars.  Turns out it was pumpkin bread.  The difference is that pumpkin bars batter expands maybe 25% when it cooks.  Pumpkin bread doubles in size.  The resulting mass obstructed my view of the baking dish, but it tasted good.  I’ll make it again, but next time, I’ll use a more appropriately sized dish.
• You know you’re hosed when the vendor looks at your problem, gives a couple of suggestions, then suggests that you just chuck your current solution and buy a new one, and you agree with them.
• I had a heart to heart talk tonight with Shadow about the puppy.  I think he’s finally accepted that the the little ball of fur and teeth isn’t going anywhere.
• Apparently Boo got into his first true fight at school yesterday.  I’m not sure who started it, but my son drew first blood.
• Girlie Bear is preparing for her JROTC formal.
  • She has asked and received permission to ask a boy on her rifle team if he’d like to go to the dance with her.
  • Irish Woman and Girlie Bear are scouring websites for ideas on what kind of dress she wants.
    • Apparently girls are wearing the “I wanna be a ho” starter set this year.
  • I need to drink more.  I’m being calm, but doing it sober isn’t easy.
• We’ve made the decision that when we buy Irish Woman a new car this spring, we’re going to trade in both her car and the minivan.  I will drive the truck for a couple more years, then trade it in on something.  Don’t worry, I will always be the Minivandian at heart.

Dear people on Interstate Highway this evening,

I hope y’all enjoyed your drive home this evening. Yes, the weather wasn’t great, but no one tried to kill me with stupidity tonight.

However, here’s a hint: those red, white, and blue flashing lights mean something. They mean “Get the hell out of the way!” The reason everyone was moving so slow was that there was a pretty gnarly accident ahead of you, and those nice men in the big red trucks and white vans were trying to get there BEFORE SOMEONE DIED!

Luckily, I observed all this from the sanity of a gas station and decided taking back roads would be a good idea. Hopefully everyone to home OK.

Cheers,

DaddyBear
aka ‘The Ass in the Brown Truck Who Insisted on Getting Home Alive’

• Started the day by baking 8 dozen snickerdoodles and a double batch of fudge brownies.  I’ve had worse mornings.
• I’ve been itching all day to go back to Indiana and buy the used M1A I looked at yesterday.
  • But I’m in the middle of building a long range AR
  • But I own nothing else in .308, so I’d have to start stocking yet another caliber
  • But $900 is a lot of money, even if the gun retails new for $2000
  • But I haven’t even started Christmas shopping.
  • Being responsible sucks sometimes.
• What do you give twin boys for their birthday?  If you’re Irish Woman, you give them a toy keyboard and a toy guitar.  Hopefully she doesn’t invite that family to Boo’s birthday party, because payback is an area-effect weapon.
• Cost of a new remote for the DVD/Radio/TV/Whatever sound player – $40.  Cost of a new DVD player – $40.  Cost to rig the old one to work for a few months – $0.05.  Guess which one I went with.
  • Paper clips and duct tape for the win!
• I wandered around BigBoxGrayMercantile for a couple of hours today while Girlie Bear was visiting her mother.  The electronics department had people in it but I didn’t see a lot of big screen TV’s moving.  The sporting goods area, however, was hopping.  As I was browsing their sale on muzzle-loader accessories, I saw three M&P-15’s head out the door.  I guess Smith and Wesson beats Samsung this holiday season.
• Taking a look at our preparations, we need to add to our legumes, whole wheat flour, and corn meal.  We are good to go on just about everything else, and we’re not too shabby on the things we need to improve on.
  • That’s a pretty good feeling.
  • Christmastime is a great time to rotate a bunch of stuff due to baking and sales.

• Today I got to work with a chainsaw and a splitting mawl.  That alone made it a good day.
• All of the odd sized pieces of firewood have been cut down to size, and that which needed it have been split.  Looks like we have about 1/4 of a cord, which means I’ll be calling my wood man for a cord.  After deer season is completely over, I’ve been invited out to a friend’s property help clear out oak and cherry trees that have fallen over in the wind.  A couple truckloads of that will round us out until at least the end of winter.
• Irish Woman started decorating the house for Christmas today.  So begins the madness.
• Irish Woman bought herself a bicycle today.  As you can see, no-one will be able to say they didn’t see her.

• After procuring a velociped for the wife, I took the opportunity to check out one of my gun stores.  I looked at a lot of things, but ended up buying 200 rounds of Federal .223 FMJ.  It was running 46 cents a round, which is pretty close to what I spent at Walmart the other week.  Unfortunately, I can’t shoot out of the ammo can of Federal XM855 I got until I have time to go out to Knob Creek.  My indoor range is picky about using ammunition with a steel penetrator.
• Pad thai for dinner is always a good idea.
  • I wasn’t paying attention to prices for .223/5.56 until a few weeks ago.  Anyone know how this stacks up to pre-election, both 2008 and 2012, prices?
• I have a batch of cranberry bread in the oven, a double batch of snickerdoodles in the fridge for baking tomorrow, and the fixings to make brownies and pumpkin bread.  The house is going to smell good for days.
• Thanks to a Facebook friend, I’m enjoying one of these tonight.  It’s really good, but I think next time I make them I’ll substitute the brown sugar with graham cracker or ginger snap crumbs.

If you want to lose the sin of pride, especially if you are prideful about your mad housekeeping skillz, just clean your hardwood floors with a power scrubber. The funk that thing finds will deflate even the biggest ego.

Also, why all these animals aren’t bald by now is beyond me. I could have knit a playmate for Moonshine from all the fuzz I swept, vacuumed, dusted, and scrubbed up this morning.

• Worked from 6 PM to midnight on Sunday.  Went into the office for a few hours on Monday.  Worked third shift on Tuesday night.  Going to be working sort-of second shift tomorrow.   Had to consult the phone to see what day it was when I was awoken by a call today.
  • My circadian rhythm chart must look like Mambo Number 5.
• Attended Girlie Bear’s “Winter Chorus Concert” last night.
  • I know the setting had great acoustics, but why did it have to be held in a church halfway across town, on a school night, at the peak of rush hour?
    • Do teachers really believe that students have no classes but theirs and that all adults end their work days at 2:30?
  • Why do singing instructors demand that their students learn to sing songs in languages they do not speak?  Girlie Bear’s group sang something in what I think was Portuguese.  Other groups sang in French, German, and Russian.  If they’re learning the language, I can see it.  Otherwise, they may as well just be singing weird scales. It’s not like there aren’t thousands of good songs written in English.
  • I don’t care if this is your special little snowflake’s last year in choir.  You’re in a church for the concert.  Act like it.
  • To the nice man who came to the concert in an argyle sweater, a leather duster, and a Crocodile Dundee slouch hat, complete with faux crocodile teeth in the band, I must say this:  You must be one of the nicest, richest, most talented human beings on earth to have the confidence to go out in public like that.  Cheers!
• Falling asleep with “Blazing Saddles” playing on a loop on the laptop makes for some really… interesting dreams.
  • No, I was not Mongo, nor was I Governor William J. LaPetomaine
• My stress level was reduced today when my beloved Irish Woman returned from the doctor’s office to announce that some rather worrisome things were in fact only annoying, not life threatening.
• A half empty bottle of Coke Zero makes a heck of a good chew toy.  In unrelated news, I mopped the floor in the hallway just now.
  • It is good that he is cute and good natured.
  • I did, however, tell him that if he chewed a hole in my leather jacket, I’d use his tanned hide to patch it.
  • Y’all know I’m talking about the puppy, not Boo, right?

Prayer for the Protection of Religious Liberty

O God our Creator,
from your provident hand we have received
our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
You have called us as your people and given us
the right and the duty to worship you, the only true God,
and your Son, Jesus Christ.
Through the power and working of your Holy Spirit,
you call us to live out our faith in the midst of the world,
bringing the light and the saving truth of the Gospel
to every corner of society.

We ask you to bless us
in our vigilance for the gift of religious liberty.
Give us the strength of mind and heart
to readily defend our freedoms when they are threatened;
give us courage in making our voices heard
on behalf of the rights of your Church
and the freedom of conscience of all people of faith.

Grant, we pray, O heavenly Father,
a clear and united voice to all your sons and daughters
gathered in your Church
in this decisive hour in the history of our nation,
so that, with every trial withstood
and every danger overcome—
for the sake of our children, our grandchildren,
and all who come after us—
this great land will always be “one nation, under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

All rights are the important rights.  The right to worship, or not to, as you wish is fundamental.  When one right comes under attack, they are all under attack.  The government that can tell you that you may not worship in the manner you wish to, or compels you to act in a way that violates your conscience, can also tell you that you must worship or that you may not act as your faith and conscience dictate.

• There is no better way to remind yourself as to why you quit smoking than to be stressed, frustrated, and pissed off, stop at a Stop-n-Stab, buy a pack of Marlboro Reds, and try to smoke one in the parking lot.  
  • Yes, it’s been one of those days.
  • No, I didn’t finish it, and the pack went in the trash.
  • Yuck.
• The wood shed is done.  At least it’s mostly done.  I need to put up a couple more braces on the inside, and I will have to construct the doors for it come spring, but it’s up, solid, and ready to be filled with firewood.
  • No pictures other than the one I put up earlier.  I’m not particularly proud of the job I did on this one.  It’s rough, it’s not fancy, and it’s not pretty.
  • It did, however, give me an idea on how to construct some storage bins that I need to make this summer.
• Next big outdoor project – Knock down, remove, and replace a 20+ foot by 4 foot by 2 foot solid concrete retaining wall that is listing about 10 degrees outward.
  • I may nibble at that one over several months.  Of course, if my neighbors and wife were of a more forgiving nature, I could probably crater it in a few minutes, but they have hangups about pressure waves and loud noises.