I was worried this might happen.  Looks like Knob Creek Gun Range is at least partially submerged in the Great Ohio Valley Deluge of 2011:

The lowest point in that photo is the bridge that you take to cross Knob Creek to get to the parking area and range.  I’m pointing this out because the water is up over the bridge.  H/T to WHAS for the heads up and photo. 

KCR sits about two miles inland from the Ohio, but the creek empties directly into the big river.  When the Ohio backs up, all of its tributaries flood.  This isn’t the first time KCR has had to close due to the creek coming out of its bed, but this is the worst I’ve ever seen.

If this doesn’t clear up by May 7, Derby Day, the first Annual Derby Day Shootenanny may have to be cancelled or postponed.  I’m not hopeful.  The weather critter is predicting another 4 to 6 inches of rain this week, and more next week.

Today is ANZAC Day.  Today we commemorate the brave men of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps’s involvement in the Gallipoli campaign of World War I, which was an attempt to knock Turkey out of World War I and open the Bosphorus to Russian, British, and French shipping.  By the time that the British high command realized that the fighting at Gallipoli was going nowhere, almost 150,000 Australian, New Zealand , British, French, and Indian soldiers were dead or wounded.

As far as I know, I have no familial ties to Australia or the rest of the Commonwealth.   But I do remember my mother and her mother making ANZAC Cookies every April.  It was only later in life that I learned just what those hard, sweet cookies meant.  I did serve with some outstanding Diggers from Australia once or twice, and if their great-grandfathers were half as resourceful, professional, and friendly as the soldiers I met, then a lot of good men had their trial by fire on the shores of Gallipoli.

If you’re interested in learning a bit about the Battle of Gallipoli and the soldiers who fought on both sides, the 2005 documentary “Gallipoli” was very well done.  I also came across this poem a few months ago, and thought I’d share.  It was written by an Australian soldier who was convalescing from wounds received at Gallipoli.

We’ve been together 10 years, and she’s finally hit a home run on gifts.

Beer, bullets, and whiskey.  Not to be consumed at the same time, though.

Tomorrow is Easter.  For Christians, this is the most important day of the year, a day of renewal and hope.

When Easter swung around in 1996, I was at a really low point.  I’d been deployed to the Bosnia peace effort for about 3 months, before which I’d been away from home for four months, and before that I was TDY 6 of the preceding 8 months.  Homesickness and burnout was becoming a factor in my decision making process.

I was deployed as an individual augmentee rather than with my unit, so I was a stranger among strangers.  The people I worked and lived with were good soldiers and welcomed me, but I was starting to feel the “On the Road Again” burnout as I was sent from one unit with a short term requirement to another.  Arizona to Georgia to Germany to Hungary to Bosnia to Croatia to Bosnia then back to Hungary is a pretty rough estimation of my travels up to that point.  It will tell you something that running into one of my drill sergeants from basic training was the high point of those three months.  Every so often I’d come across or work with someone from school or someone I’d served with in Germany, but for the most part it was new faces every couple of weeks.

The work I was doing didn’t help my mood either.  I went from working on mountaintop outposts that were surrounded by mine fields, to providing security and other duties at mass graves investigations, to walking foot patrols in villages that were situated along the line between the forces that had ripped Bosnia to shreds.   You don’t get a very good opinion of humanity when you spend your days seeing just how inhumane we can be.

I was also pretty low because I’d made a call home on Palm Sunday and had been told that I should stay overseas as long as I could.  My wife had decided to stay in our home in Arizona until I came home, but then she was leaving and taking our son with her.  She’d just had too much time with me away from home, and thought that if she was going to be a single parent, she should at least be able to be single again.  After that, I walked around in a daze for a while.  Luckily, one of the guys I shared a room with in Taszar took me to the chaplain and kept me from doing anything stupid.

So I was pretty much at the bottom of a well looking down when Easter came a week later.  Of course, I had duty that day.

As we assembled for work, we were all wishing each other a Happy Easter.  We got our assignments, and settled in to do whatever it is that intelligence people do when they work.  After an hour or so, the first sergeant gave us a quick speech about how he knew we were all away from home on a holiday and he appreciated how hard that could be.  The battalion chaplain then took groups of people outside to do a quick Easter service for those who wanted it.   After everyone who wanted to attend services had been taken care of, the chaplain announced that something extra was in store.

The chaplain’s assistant, a young soldier from Minnesota named, and I kid you not, Sven, went around and passed out brown paper bags with bunnies and carrots crayoned onto them.  His home church in MiddleOfNowhere Minnesota had put together Easter baskets for all of us.  Each one included some candy, a few personal items like toothpaste or soap, and a card from the child that had put it together.  Mine was from a little girl named Erika, who wished me a happy Easter and hoped that I would be safe and come home soon.

I really think that getting that card, carefully written by a 7 or 8 year old girl who I had never met, was the point at which I looked up at the light and started climbing out of that well.  The fact that someone had taken a few minutes out of her time to wish me well let me know that even though rough times were ahead, something good was left in my world.  As I sat there munching on a peanut butter cup, listening to the joy that the people around me were feeling, I started to feel better.

We all wrote back to the Sunday school classes that had sent us our treats, and Sven bundled them up and sent them back to his pastor.  I’m told that getting our return package of letters caused as much excitement in Minnesota as getting Easter baskets caused in Hungary.

So to all of you, Happy Easter.  When the rock rolls away and you see the warmth and light, you remember that life isn’t all darkness and grief.  And a heartfelt thanks to the parishioners of the Lutheran church in little MiddleOfNowhere, Minnesota.  You all have no idea how important that little card was to a heartsick soldier far from home.

There are few better ways to spend a cold, rainy afternoon than cuddled up on a couch with a 3 year old watching Disney movies.

A man in Florida was punched in the face after he made a comment about codpieces to a “testicle photographer”.

Ummmm, Teacher?

I know English well enough to be able to dissect that to mean “One who takes photographs of testicles”.  But for the life of me, I can’t figure out how you apply that particular title.

Is he a medical photographer, who takes pictures for medical records and research?

Or is he into some weird photo-journalism kink that you wouldn’t normally discuss at the local book store.  Heck, I’m not sure I’d discuss that particular fetish in a busy leather bar.

As to why the photographer decided to smack the other man, I have no idea.  A codpiece joke would seem to be par for the course.  Either way, it might be better if I don’t know exactly what’s going on here.  That which has been read cannot be un-read.

Probably not a lot of content tonight.  I’m just too pooped to pop.

Last night, after BooBoo was in bed, I logged into work to do some stuff that needed to be done during off hours.  I thought it would take two or three hours.  Due to bad planning, oversimplification of what had to be done on my part, and things taking a lot longer to do than I expected, it took six and a half hours.  After three hours of sleep, it was time to get up and do it all over again.

Then I tried to fix a simple problem on one of our servers this afternoon, and correcting some file system issues turned into “oh crap, I better make a backup before this gets worse”.

I’m tired, played out, and mind fried.  I’m not going to say that all of this wasn’t fun though.  I didn’t get into system administration and IT in general because I like creating project plans.  When things don’t go exactly as planned, but don’t fall completely into the crapper, this job is fun.

But always remember Rule # 1 – Always have a backup copy before you start changing stuff.  Otherwise something that’s fun and exciting can turn into a career limiting event.

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I’d registered for the Lucky Gunner BloggerShoot over Memorial Day weekend, but I didn’t have a lot of confidence that I’d be selected to attend.

Imagine my surprise when I got an email from Lucky Gunner tonight announcing that I’d been approved!

So I will be spending Memorial Day weekend this year travelling to beautiful Knoxville, meeting other gunnies, and making lots of smoke and noise.

Hope to see a lot of you there!

It’s Derby Time here in the land of beautiful women, fast horses, and strong whiskey.  While Kentucky has grown on me over the years, I can’t say I’m a fan of “The Fastest Two Minutes In Racing”, or the foofora that leads up to it.  The only benefit I see is that this is the only time of year that the city fathers actually do anything to clean up our roadways.  Kind of like your mother spitshining the house because Grandma is coming to visit.

Anyway, the following was originally posted in 2009.  Enjoy!

Whoopty Freaking Doo!

It’s Thunder Over Louisville this weekend, and I have never been happier to live on the other end of town.

I’ve been to three of these collective insanity episodes. What a great idea. Let’s get a couple hundred thousand strangers together, throw in sun, liquor, and explosives, and then try to get them out of downtown Louisville all at the same time. Hopefully a race riot doesn’t break out in the middle of it. This year I think they’re trying to set a new record for obnoxious twits getting on camera flashing gang signs while some poor reporter tries to put a good spin on the whole thing.

Here’s how a day at Thunder goes:

You get up at 6 AM to throw some food down your neck and load the car. The kids are still sleepy, so they move in slow motion. By the time you back out of the driveway, you can feel the throbbing starting in your temporal lobe.

When you get either downtown or across the river to watch it from Indiana, you park about 2 miles away from the event. All of the things that you didn’t want to bring but were deemed necessary by your spouse are then strapped to your back and you trudge to the waterfront.

If you’re there with family or friends, it’s a fun afternoon. The two times we’ve done it with the Irish Woman’s family, the kids have really enjoyed playing with the cousins. The family will usually rent a few camper spaces in a lot over in Indiana, and it makes the day much better if you have a place to relax that’s not crowded and actually has a flush toilet.

If, on the other hand, you try to do this alone, you’re continually either allowing your kids to run off with strangers or you spend the day trying to not end up on an Amber Alert interview.

While you’re enjoying your afternoon, the air show is going on. Sometimes you look up and a neat military or civilian aircraft is going overhead. A lot of times you look up and a bunch of nutballs are flying way too fast, way too close, way too loud, and way too low.

Then you get hungry. You discover that all of the food you brought is gone, so you end up satisfying your hunger with a deep fried Snickers, a funnel cake, and steak on a stick. Wash all of that down with a $5 Pepsi.

Now you’re broke. And the nearest port-a-potty is half a mile away, which isn’t that bad because that’s how long the line for it is.

Then it gets dark. You’re shivering because your sunburn is bleeding off the heat from your body. You and your kids and family watch 20 minutes of fireworks that are pretty impressive. Hopefully the wind is blowing away from you, or you get to inhale the smoke from all of those fireworks to add to your later case of black lung that you get just from living in IndiUcky.

Then you begin the death march back to your car. If you’re lucky, you don’t get mugged or lose a kid in the crowd. Extra points if your kids are so tired and worn out from running around all day that you end up carrying one or more of them, along with all of the things that your wife wanted taken along, but never got unpacked. Last time, I wondered if it would be better to just strap Little Bear and Girlie Bear to my backpack with bungie cords rather than have to pull them along.

Once you get to your car, you strap the semi-conscious kids and wife in, re-pack the car, and spend an hour getting out of the parking lot. On at least 3 occasions you will be scolded for your language by the wife.

You then spend 2 hours trying to get to the interstate to get home. If you parked in Indiana, welcome to a 4 hour ride home, since it makes no sense to let people just come over the river on the bridge that leads directly to Louisville. No, the powers that be will make you drive 25 miles west, then get on a bypass, then get on the interstate that leads you home.

If you parked in Kentucky, welcome to a road company remake of Road Warrior, in which you get to watch nuns cut people off and then threaten their lives. It still takes 4 hours to get home, but at least you have a show to enjoy on the way. The city always has some Rube Goldberg plan for getting people out of downtown without World War III breaking out, but I’m pretty sure they’re actually trying to reduce the population using car accidents, shootings, and starvation.

If you’re lucky, you arrive home in that sweet spot where you’ve caffeinated yourself enough after a 16 hour day that you make it home without falling asleep and killing your entire family, but you’re not so wired that you can’t fall asleep for 4 hours after you get home. Good luck on that balancing act.

Congratulations, you smell of old beer, sweat, and SPF 200 sunblock, and you’ve survived another Thunder over Louisville. OK, your kids will sleep all day Sunday, and you and the wife won’t speak to each other for a couple of days, but wasn’t it grand to spend quality time together?

No thanks. I’ll stay home tomorrow, maybe cook out, but definitely stay away from all things Thundery. If I’m feeling froggy, I might go to the range and make my own Thunder.

Scene 1 – A doctor’s office in Minot,  1977

Pediatrician – “Mrs. Bear, you might consider having your son’s tonsils out.  They’re huge!”

Scene 2 – Military Hospital in Germany – 1993

Physician’s Assistant – “Wow, Sergeant Bear, you’ve got some pretty large tonsils there.  Too bad you still have them.  When things slow down, you ought to make an appointment with the EENT and have those taken out.  You’ll have to find a month where there’s nothing going on to get through the surgery and recovery.”

Scene 3 – Doctor’s Office, Louisville Kentucky – 2005

DaddyBear – “Doctor, how do my tonsils look?  I’ve been advised to remove them in the past, but what do you think?”
Doctor – “Wow, those are huge!  Do you snore?  Let’s get you into the sleep center and see if you have apnea.  Do you know what a CPAP machine is?”

Scene 4 – Same Doctor’s Office, Louisville Kentucky – 2011

Doctor – “Gosh, your tonsils are huge!  I thought we did something about that.  Go get another sleep study so we can justify surgery to get them taken out and may be a few other things to get rid of that snoring.”

So here we are.  Sometime in the next couple of months I will be going under the knife to have my tonsils and other parts of the back of my throat removed.  Hopefully my snoring and continual coughing due to throat issues will be alleviated.  I’ve alerted my boss that I will be taking two weeks off, and I plan on putting my feet up the entire two weeks.  No trips with the family, no working from home. I will be eating soft comfort food, taking good pain relievers, and watching a whole bunch of cartoons in between naps.

I’ll keep y’all updated in case posting here suddenly stops or gets really weird, like a conservative Jim Morrison poetry slam.