• I don’t often cuss at work, but I at least had the wherewithal to do it in Russian when I did it today.
• When a southern woman cocks her head to the side at you and lifts the index finger on her dominant hand to emphasize her syllables, you have exactly seven and one half seconds to get out of the blast radius, assuming a standard nuclear trigger.
• Hope is not a plan, and “someday” is not something I can put in a project plan.
• Note to vendors: Kissing my ass is not necessary.  All I require is for you to do what you contracted to do and not lie to me.  Is that so much to ask?
• Mothers of America:  If your mother wouldn’t have let you go to a chorus concert in that skirt, you shouldn’t be letting your daughter to to a chorus concert in that skirt. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” has no place in middle school.
• Karaoke and lip syncing to Beyonce, Michael Jackson, and ABBA weren’t part of any school musical program I remember as a child.  Apparently that has changed in the intervening years.
• It’s a good thing I’m a forgiving soul, because all of the people who got up to leave the audience while Girlie Bear was being recognized for being in the chorus program for all three years of middle school will survive to see the dawn.
• Listening to about 50 middle school girls sing in Latin is quite nice, actually, even if they learned the song by rote.
• I always have worries about Girlie Bear growing up, but having seen the boys who are in her peer group tonight, I may not have as much to worry about as I thought.

Tonight on the way home from work, everyone in Louisville knew I had somewhere to be and slowed down accordingly.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you see here is all a homeowner needs to keep things up and running:

• WD-40
• Velcro
• Expanding foam spray
• 550 cord
• Duct tape
• Multitool

• Whoever came up with the idea of giving away samples of food at the grocery store on a Saturday morning ought to be drug out into the street, beaten with a frozen carp, and then left to die while tied tightly to a storm drain cover.
• I never thought I’d be glad to see $3.65 a gallon for gas.
• Apparently me wearing a gun to the grocery store and other errands is becoming normal to Irish Woman.  She asked if I was going to carry the revolver, the CZ, or the big gun (1911) yesterday.
• My grandfathers are spinning in their graves.  I went out and paid good money for dirt this weekend.  Granted, it was compost, topsoil, peat moss, and potting soil for the garden, but it was dirt.
• Pro-tip – Do not wear contact lenses while mixing up compost, topsoil, peat moss, and potting soil in a big garden bed, or you will have the sudden and immediate urge to scratch the back of your eyeballs out.
• Lightning, thunder, and flickering lights might just be nature’s way of telling you it’s time to shut off the computer and go to bed.
• Hint to history professors who do podcasts:  Do not try to do a podcast while eating your dinner.  Seriously, dude, I could hear you chewing as you looked at your notes and the clinking of silverware on crockery was a dead giveaway.
• Bad thing #1 – The tub was draining very slowly and I couldn’t find my drain snake after drain cleaner and a plunger didn’t work.
• Bad thing #2 – After acquiring a new snake to clean out said drain, I fished it down the drain about two feet and proceeded to get it well and truly stuck.
• Bad thing #3 – While trying to remove said drain snake from said drain, the snake broke.  So I had a clogged drain and a sharp pointy piece of metal sticking out of it.
• Bad thing #4 – Growling at Irish Woman as I came back up from the basement with a set of vise grips to get hold of that sharp piece of metal and by God drag it out of the drain.  I think I said something along the lines of “My hair isn’t long enough to clog a !#!@ drain.”
• Good thing #1 – After dragging that piece of sharp metal out of the bathtub drain, I realized that there was an access port for that drain in the basement.  I got it off with no issues, drained off the resultant water into a bucket while only getting about 1/3 of it on me and my clothes, and found the clog.  It was quite intricate and gnarly.  I think I will call it Herman if it survives its first night out in the trash and gains sentience.  It may have a future in Kentucky politics.
• Good thing #2 – I got the plumbing back together without causing Irish Woman to call a plumber, a first in our relationship.
• Possibly bad thing # 5 – I informed Irish Woman and Girlie Bear that I expected both of them to report to me by 0800 tomorrow morning with regulation high and tights and that they were henceforth forbidden to use anything but baby shampoo to clean what was left of their hair.  I based this directive on the fact that I don’t have hair as long as what I found in the drain, and that it was all held together with what can be best described as the remnants of too much feminine hair care product.
• Possibly good thing #3 – Irish Woman didn’t knife me in the kidney when I didn’t laugh with her after directing her to stop using conditioner and to get a Marine haircut.
• Is it ominous to you other married men when your wife comes to you and asks how many board feet of 2×4 you have in your work area?

• Today, I had a computer remind me that even though it’s designed with mathematics and logic in mind, it is on occasion completely irrational and illogical.  It was almost as bad as working with people.
• Boo got measured today.  He was in the 95+ percentile in every possible way.   Obviously Irish Woman’s plot to breed height back into her gene pool is succeeding.
• Hell knows no wrath like a four year old who has to have two tubes of blood drawn, especially when it takes two attempts at the finger stick.
• I had to make him strong, didn’t I?  It took me, Irish Woman, and two nurses to hold Boo down so that he could get five immunizations after the blood draw.
• Ice cream has psychic healing properties.  Several minutes after getting a strawberry shake, all sins were forgiven.
• Apparently I overstated how spicy I wanted my fried rice when I ordered it.  My innards feel like I swallowed butane.  Hopefully I don’t have vindaloo dreams.
• Siamese cats have no respect for personal space when chicken is involved.

There is a not-insignificant feeling of freedom when you finally realize that it’s OK to tell someone that you can’t care about their problems more than they do.

Last week, Ambulance Driver observed that a man can tell he’s getting old because a pretty young thing smiles at him because he reminds her of her father.

DaddyBear’s Corollary –

A man can tell he’s reaching a certain age when the head trainer assigns the pretty young thing to work with him so she can pretend to be his daughter during a training mission.

Yeah, I got reminded of my age tonight.

The only thing more nerve racking than going through a job interview with complete strangers is going through a job review with people you’ve known and worked with for years.  They already know your strengths and weaknesses and will definitely know if you BS your way through a question.