- Today, for the first time in 15 years, Irish Woman and I did a major part of a project together and not only did we do it without having a spat, we had a rather enjoyable and smooth day of it.
- Driving a fifteen foot Uhaul truck with a blind spot big enough to park my pickup in was rather nerve racking, but there weren’t any close calls as we made our way to the wilds of Southern Indiana and back to pick up the new counter tops and cabinets.
- Well, no close calls that I’m aware of.
- I didn’t think that moving a twelve foot piece of counter would be complicated, but I was wrong.
- Tonight, I decided that “You can have two of these a day” means I can take an extra anti-inflammatory before bedtime.
- Gentlemen, the correct thing to say when your wife points to a detour sign and says, “Is that where we’re going?” is not “I know where I’m going, dear.”
- In unrelated news, the Indiana Department of Transportation is wholesale ripping out entire interchanges on Interstate 65, including one that I just used a couple weeks ago.
- We may have a good fruit year. The peaches and nectarines are loaded with blossoms, and the almond tree looks like it was flocked with petals. The apples and cherries should be busting open soon, and the bees are already hard at work.
- This spring, I’m going to do an experiment to try to figure out which is best at choking out its neighbors – honeysuckle, spearmint, or crab grass.
- The other option involves gelled gasoline under pressure, but that would cause Irish Woman to get “the look” on her face. It would, however, be glorious.
All posts in category Uncategorized
Musings
Posted by daddybear71 on March 21, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/21/musings-185/
Saying Goodbye
Koshka, 1998 to 2016
Posted by daddybear71 on March 19, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/19/saying-goodbye-2/
Book Review – Warp Resonance
Cedar Sanderson, author of the Pixie For Hire series, has put out a great collection of short stories, Warp Resonance. These five stories deal with female characters, ranging from a young girl on a frontier planet to a woman who reminds me of a old-style Texas Ranger, who go through experiences that show you their strengths and fears.
Throughout these vignettes, her main characters are female and heart-breakingly human. For example, in the first story, a young woman stands up to her abuser and leaves him. Sanderson does an excellent job of making the reader see and feel her fear and anxiety as she finds a place in a strange, new world. The author repeats this feat of connecting the characters with the reader in each of her stories, culminating in a tale of childlike trust and earnestness in wanting to help an alien in need.
The best part about collections like these is that the author introduces the reader to new universes that could be expanded into books and stories of their own, and I hope Mrs. Sanderson uses these stories as springboards into longer, deeper stories. The characters and settings she creates in Warp Resonance grab you and leave you wishing for more.
If you’re looking for a good book to enjoy in front of a fire or on a warm afternoon, I suggest Warp Resonance.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 18, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/18/book-review-warp-resonance/
Snippet
Here’s a scene from the second Minivandian’s book. My goal is to have it out before Independence Day. Hope y’all enjoy.
DaddyBear the Minivandian held Ruarin’s hand as they walked across the gangplank connecting their ship to a wharf at Dovlinia harbor. He could feel his companion’s hand shake a bit, and her palm was cold and clammy.
“We should have waited for a better tide and taken a larger ship, my lady,” he said soothingly, “I hate to see you in such a state.”
“We would have sat for weeks in that reeking cesspool the Islanders call a port,” Ruarin replied, her tone betraying her discomfort, “I traded a little seasickness for getting home before the solstice.”
The pair stepped onto the wharves planks, moving aside to let other passengers disembark. Merchants from the Islands bustled onto the dock, then turned to wait for their wares to be unloaded. Soon, a small crowd gathered, made up of people from the ship and locals watching out of boredom. The dock was in good condition, but a grime of soot and salt lay upon everything that did not move. A lone seagull sat upon the top of a piling, watching the crowd for anything that could be stolen.
Ruarin let go of DaddyBear’s hand and gently touched his bearded face.
“Just let me look out on the water until the world stops moving under my feet, and then we can go,” she said quietly.
DaddyBear took her hand in his, then kissed it gently.
“Stay here while I get our things,” he replied, “If you need anything, I will be near.”
The Northman watched as a gang of men and boys walked up the gangway and began hauling bundles of goods and baggage from the ship to the wharf. Their clothes were not much more than rags, and their bodies betrayed a life of hard work and meager food. Thick iron rings encircled their necks, leaving marks on their skin from where it rubbed as they worked.
A tall, thin man in black leather breeches and a filthy woolen shirt stood nearby, bawling out orders to the workers as they unloaded the small ship. The short whip in his hand beat a tattoo against his thigh as he hummed to himself between shouts.
The ship’s master approached DaddyBear. He and his wife had done as much as they could for Ruarin during the three days it took to cross to Eire, and he hooked his head in her direction as he addressed the Minivandian.
“How is your lady, my lord?” he asked, his voice raspy from shouting orders during their entry into the harbor.
“She’ll be all right in a few moments,” DaddyBear replied, “Travelling by ship on rough seas just didn’t agree with her.”
“It’s not the first time I’ve seen a conjurer have trouble crossing water,” the sailor said with a knowing nod, “Perhaps she’ll do better next time.”
“Perhaps,” DaddyBear said. He pointed to the work gang unloading the ship. “What’s that around their necks?”
“The slavers put those on their chattel hereabouts,” the ship’s master said sourly, spitting on the dock, “Those men are truly damned. They’re worked to death, then replaced with some other unlucky soul.”
“I didn’t know Eire allowed slaves,” the Minivandian said, watching as several men carried a large pallet of cloth down the gangplank.
“I’ve only ever seen it here in Dovlinia, my lord,” the master replied, “and only in the past year or so.”
“I’ll have to ask Ruarin about it,” DaddyBear said, spying their baggage on the ship’s deck, “Come to think of it, I think I’d rather carry my own bags today.” The Northman waited until there was a break in traffic down the gangplank, then walked back up to gather their things.
As DaddyBear went back aboard the ship, Ruarin looked out at the small, rocky islands that lay a few hundred yards from the shore. As she watched, a large sea bird plunged down into the green water, then returned with a struggling fish in its beak. The air was filled with the sound of the surf crashing against the islands, the cries of the birds as the squabbled over some trifle or another, and the quieter sound of water lapping against the docks.
Ruarin’s stomach, which had been doing somersaults ever since they had left the port of Poole, was finally settling down, and it no longer felt as if the dock was rising up and falling beneath her. With a sigh, she looked about for DaddyBear. Spying him on the ship, she smiled.
“Always making sure things are done to his liking,” she said quietly. Shrugging, she turned and walked toward shore.
I’ll just take a step on my homeland, she thought, noting the brightly painted tavern signs at the end of the wharf, then I’ll wait for him there. It’s been too long since I’ve been home.
As Ruarin went, the tall slave boss watched her pass. He examined her from the bottom of her green woolen dress to the top of her auburn hair, and a grin parted his lips to show several yellow teeth separated by black gaps. Ruarin noted his leer, but ignored him, turning her head to block him from her vision.
Not to be deterred, the foreman called out in a thick Northlands accent,
There once was a lady from Eire,
Whose hair was the color of fire.
Her looks are so fine,
She ought to be mine,
I wonder if she is for hire?
Hearing this, Ruarin rounded on the man, her green eyes blazing and her cheeks flushed.
“How dare you!” she demanded, her tone harsh.
“Just a bit of fun, girlie!” the thin man said with a knowing smile, “I wasn’t getting your attention any other way, now was I?”
“You filthy bogshite! I am finally returning home, and the first man I speak to is a piece of garbage who insults me?”
“Now, now, no need to get testy, trollop!” he retorted, “I was just having a bit of fun.”
Ruarin’s eyes narrowed, and her hand went to the hilt of her dagger. “I ought to have the guards come and take you away, you scum! If you were even worth the effort, I might set your hair on fire for talking to me like this!” she shouted.
A look of anger passed over the man’s countenance, and he raised his whip hand and held it back is if to strike the Lady of Eire.
“You little tramp! I am Ignatz, Lord Ottvar’s gang boss!” he said in a menacing tone, his lip curling back from his rotten teeth, “You better learn your place before I GLERK!”
His threats were interrupted as DaddyBear the Minivandian jerked him up by the back of his shirt. In his surprise, Ignatz let his whip fall to the dock with a hollow thump. His boots, filthy from walking through the streets, dangled a foot above the dock.
Lifting the man up to eye height, the Northerner said, “Is there a problem, my lady?” His voice, though low, was filled with menace.
“This… gentleman decided it would be worth his time to harass me,” Ruarin said, “And when I objected, he decided to insult me.” At her words, DaddyBear brought the man’s face closer to his and shook him like a rat.
“You took it upon yourself to dishonor my companion and lady, did you? You insignificant little slaver, I ought to take that whip and lay your back open with it!” he snarled, his voice rising to a loud growl.
“Slaver? There are no slaves in Eire!” Ruarin exclaimed.
“Tell that to our little friend here,” DaddyBear replied in a more gentle tone, “He’s the boss of that gang that’s unloading the ship.”
Ruarin grabbed the thin man’s shoulder and turned him toward her. DaddyBear’s fist did not, causing the shirt to tighten around his neck.
“I just do my job!” Ignatz sputtered, “Lord Ottvar allows for slaves in Dovlinia now!”
“We’ll see about that,” Ruarin hissed, the tips of her fingers poking into his chest.
“In the meantime, what shall we do to him to atone for insulting you, my lady?” DaddyBear asked, shaking his prisoner once again, “Shall I beat him for you, or do you wish for parts of him to go missing?”
Ignatz’s eyes widened a bit more at that, and he began to struggle against his captor.
Ruarin considered the pair for a moment, then shrugged.
“No, if I wanted him hurt, I’d do it myself, and he’s not worth the effort. I think he’ll think twice before harassing a Lady of Eire again, won’t you, Ignatz?” Ruarin replied, poking him in the chest again.
Ignatz nodded emphatically, his words cut off as DaddyBear jerked him a few inches higher. Ignatz kicked at the tall Northman, but his eyes were beginning to roll into the back of his head as the front of his shirt cut off his air.
“Well, if that is what you wish, my lady,” the Minivandian said, “then I will leave him whole.” He took a step to the side of the wharf, dangling Ignatz over the water.
“But this filth needs a bath, so I’ll do him a service,” he said, releasing the almost limp slave driver and watching as he dropped into the harbor with a plop. Ignatz bobbed to the surface, spitting out water and grabbing at the dock’s pilings.
Turning, DaddyBear picked up their bags with one arm and offered the other to Ruarin.
“Come, my lady,” he said, “Let us get some refreshment, then I shall hire horses for our journey to your father’s home.”
“That sounds wonderful, my lord,” Ruarin said with an impish smile. She took the Minivandian’s arm, and together they walked down the wharf and stepped onto the soil of Eire.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 17, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/17/snippet-7/
Quote of the Day
O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever lived in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy,–
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue–
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.— Antony, Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 1, by William Shakespeare
Posted by daddybear71 on March 15, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/15/quote-of-the-day-162/
Musings
- Note to self – Get to the Pinewood Derby a few minutes earlier so that Boo can do a couple trial runs before checking his car in. A wheel that’s on just a tad too tight is going to make for a very slow run down the track.
- Boo was a good sport about it, but he definitely wasn’t happy about the situation.
- Two words to not use when talking about my life are “allow” and “grant”. Remember, kids, the default setting in my kernel is “yes” when it comes to “Can DB do something, without harming someone else, without the government or nosy busybodies sticking their noses into it?”.
- Irish Woman and Girlie Bear are down with the crud. I am not known for my bedside manner. To quote a doctor that Irish Woman used to work with: “If you want warm and fuzzy, get a puppy.”
- I help with illnesses, not feelings.
- If you write a program, and your variables are, literally, $firstVariable and $secondVariable, then I will have wild fantasies about hunting you down and flaying you with a broken Corona bottle.
- Tonight, the final pieces come out of the kitchen and I start repair and prep work for the new cabinets and fixtures. Please do not expect me to be capable of much more than picking up a small pencil tomorrow.
- There are fewer things more frustrating to me than looking at process documentation that I wrote months ago and finding a rather ignorant mistake in one of the commands.
- When other people tear stuff out of an old house, they find bottles of bourbon, maybe the proceedings from a bank job, or possibly a first edition Mark Twain novel. What do I find? Decades-old mouse nests and the fuzzy, greasy, horror from under the cabinets.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 14, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/14/musings-184/
Helping Out
NFO sent up a flare about a situation where somebody needs help, and I’d appreciate it if everyone could kick in a few shekels, if they have them. Our family went through an apartment fire in 2003, and the charity and kindness of a lot of people went a long way toward helping the kids get their lives back together.
To thank those who contribute, I’m going to do a give-away.
- The first 10 people who donate $10 or more to the campaign and send me the receipt at daddybear@daddybearsden.com will get a free, autographed copy of Escort Duty.
- The first 5 who give $25 or more get autographed copies of Escort Duty and Via Serica.
- The first person to donate $50 or more gets a copy of Escort Duty, Via Serica, and Tales of the Minivandians.
What the heck. I needed to order more books anyway.
If you’ve got a little bit to spare, please help.
Update – Joe posted a while ago that Hank didn’t make it. He’s going to leave the campaign active for a few days, and the give-away will remain open until he closes it.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 12, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/12/helping-out-2/
Blind Squirrel
President Obama recently showed some signs of awareness of the world around him when he criticized our European allies for the mess Libya became after its dictator was overthrown in 2011. Mr. Obama seems to feel that, had the Europeans only done more, Libya wouldn’t have evolved into even more of a cesspool than it already was.
However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves in applauding the President for his sentience. His only self-criticism appears to be that he trusted the Europeans too much. You see, he’s not really angry; he’s just very, very disappointed.
The kicker, to me, is this quote:*
“Free riders aggravate me”
President Obama was commenting on the negligible amount of money Great Britain spends on her national defense, but he could have been talking about any of our European allies.
NATO member nations have ridden on the back of the American taxpayer for three generations. From 1940 to 1992, this was a good bargain. First, we needed to liberate Europe. Next, we did not want to have to come back to liberate Europe again, and it looked like the Soviets were going to try to extend their empire to all points east of Liverpool and Reykjavic. European NATO countries contributed much toward the goal of containing the Communists, and that problem eventually melted away.
But in the almost quarter century since then, NATO has become a farce.
Let’s take a look at a few numbers from 2014, when there were 28 members:
- The United States spent about 3.5% of her GDP on national defense. This included world-wide commitments, not just the defense of central and western Europe. This was the highest percentage spent in the alliance.
- The next highest percentage of GDP spent was a four-way tie between Greece, Turkey, France, and the U.K., who spent 2.2% apiece.
- The average expenditure for NATO was 1.41 %.
- If you take the U.S. out, it was 1.33%.
- 57% of NATO members spent less than that average. This included large, prosperous countries such as Germany and Canada.
- Almost 40% of NATO members spent 1% or less of GDP on national defense. Germany, arguably the largest economy in Europe, was among them.
Here are those same numbers from 1989, when there were 15 members and the Communist threat was just beginning to dissolve:
- Greece spent 6% of GDP on defense, the largest percentage in NATO.
- The United States spent about 5.5% of her GDP on national defense. This included world-wide commitments, not just the defense of central and western Europe.
- The next highest percentage of GDP spent was the U.K. at 4.1%
- The average expenditure for NATO was 3.19 %. If you take the U.S. out, it was 3.02%.
- 40% of NATO members spent less than that average. This included large, prosperous countries such as Germany and Canada. However, Germany was just under that average at 2.9%.
- No NATO members spent less than 1.3% of GDP
To put that in perspective, the only NATO country currently spending at least the average percentage from 1989 or more is the United States. None of the other members, old or new, even approached it. Almost half of current members spent less than the smallest 1989 contribution, 1.3%.
Am I suggesting that anyone needs to spend as much as they did during the last truly dangerous year of the Cold War? Of course not.But this is ridiculous.
I’m not an isolationist, but I’m also not a sucker. The United States is being taken advantage of, and we’re not the ones bordering Russia and the Middle East.
If the United States is going to be involved in the security of Europe, then the Europeans need to pay their own way. European money needs to pay for more of Europe’s peace.
Hopefully President Obama’s replacement realizes that the rest of the world is perfectly happy with us picking up the check earlier than the last year of their presidency.
*I’ll let the irony of this particular president expressing that particular sentiment just sink in without further comment.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 11, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/11/blind-squirrel/
Today’s Earworm
I told Girlie Bear that she had Edie Brickell hair today. She didn’t get the reference.
By the way, I once used this song as the basis for an English/Philosophy paper, and got an A on it.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 10, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/10/todays-earworm-692/
Musings
- There is nothing that helps my tolerance of other human beings like sitting in the Social Security office for two hours just to be told that I’ll have to come back with Girlie Bear to get her a new social security card.
- Apparently her birth certificate and my driver’s license wasn’t enough to prove that a) she exists and b) I’m her father.
- Today for lunch, I indulged on something meaty, salty, and greasy.
- I chose a double cheeseburger over just chomping down on one of the annoying twits I dealt with this morning.
- Of course, Girlie Bear’s high school hasn’t posted last semester’s grades to her university. It’s only a few thousand dollars worth of scholarship. Nothing important, if you think about it.
- No, no, that’s OK. Park your car in the left lane of the freeway at rush hour, during a torrential downpour. I always like devoting 45 minutes of my life to sitting in traffic and listening to podcasts.
- By the way, speaking of podcasts, inviting in a journalist who writes for the modern equivalent of TASS to discuss why she likes Bernie Sanders is uninformative and not newsworthy. Get me someone who works for a Fortune 500 company and used to be part of the Young Republicans, and it’ll be interesting.
- Our next door neighbor moved out of his home of 70 years the other day. It’s going to be strange to not see him every afternoon when I get home.
Posted by daddybear71 on March 10, 2016
https://daddybearsden.com/2016/03/10/musings-183/
DaddyBear
DaddyBear’s Den 