If you put trays of cherries and strawberries in the food dryer overnight, you will wake up to a house that smells absolutely, sinfully delicious.  You will also wake up with an insatiable craving to go to IHOP.

Today is Memorial Day here in the United States.  Lots of people have thanked me for my prior service today, and it’s much appreciated.  But today isn’t my day.

Today is the day we remember those of us who didn’t come home.  The sons and daughters, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters who cashed the check that they sign the day they take the oath of enlistment, good for anything in their life, including the giving of that life.

There are ceremonies going on across the nation and overseas today to honor these dead.  In years past I’ve quoted poetry or Shakespeare, but today I want to highlight a memorial that isn’t spoken of much.

At Fort Meade in Maryland, there is a memorial to those members of the signals intelligence community who have died on duty.  The work of these young men and women was classified at the time of their death, and it wasn’t until 2001 that the NSA declassified their files so their sacrifice could be fully known.

I came up in the Army going to buildings named after these warriors and living on streets with their names.  It was only after visiting this memorial that I understood why no-one would tell us why so-and-so had a street named after him.

If you’re ever in the DC or Baltimore area, take a drive up to Fort Meade and visit the National Cryptologic Museum and spend a few moments remembering these 161 brave men and women who not only died for us, but did so behind the veil.

Size – One
Activity – Target Practice
Location – Knob Creek Gun Range
Unit – Girlie Bear
Time – 9 AM to 12 PM
Equipment – Rossi .22 single shot rifle

Today, I took Girlie Bear out to Knob Creek to teach her about shooting rifles.  She’s been practicing with a BB gun for the past year, and today I introduced her to gun powder.  She did well, and seemed to have a really good time.  The sound of high powered rifles spooked her a bit at first, but by the end of the morning, she didn’t even flinch when someone was shooting one near us.

Rossi Combi-Rifle – $120
Box of .22  – $8
Range Fees – $15
This Smile – Priceless

Even though I’m not a dog guy, now that we’ve had Blue and Shadow for about 10 years, I guess I’ll have a dog forever.

For my next dog, I was considering going smaller than the Labradors we have, something the size of a beagle or a full sized dachshund.  Not a yap dog, but not something I need to have shoed twice a year.

But the other night, I came across this breed that I have never seen before:

It’s a Caucasian Shepherd.  You take the guard dog part of a German Shepherd, the herding instinct of an English Sheepdog, the temper of a Grizzly Bear, and the coat of a Siberian Huskie.  You mix all of that up, and pack it into a dog that’s as tall as me when he stands on his back legs.

The breed’s weight range is 102–180 pounds (46–82 kg.), although individuals over 220 pounds (100 kg) are not uncommon, and the height range is 25–29 inches (64–78 cm.)

  Irish Woman doesn’t think it’s such a good idea, but I’ve been subjected to her two drool beasts.  Now I want a dog that I can put a saddle on and take BooBoo for a walk.

I’ve seen British soccer fans square off against each other outside a pub.

I’ve been stared down by a Kentucky fan in a Walmart parking lot for wearing a Duke tee shirt.

I’ve seen Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia get ready to restart their civil war over right of way on a mountain road.

I’ve even heard tell of a certain librarian that can kill a man at 10 yards just by looking at him.

But you’ve never seen a look of wrath like the one I got when I disturbed 8 toddlers during naptime when I picked BooBoo up this afternoon to take him to a doctor appointment.  If those kids had had their way, I would have burst into flame and melted into the floor.

Do I think the freedom movement in Iran has a snowballs chance in hell of success without either the military changing sides or someone outside of Iran supporting them militarily?  Sadly, no.  But that doesn’t diminish the respect I have for the bravery to stand up to a brutal dictatorship, even if you only protest in the street.

A high school teacher in Georgia has the balls to seem surprised that someone might be offended when she walked several students dressed as members of the KKK through the school cafeteria. 

OK, they were doing it for a history class, and like it or not, the Klan is a part of history, especially in the deep South.  So I have no problem with students studying the group and its impact on the South. 

But to let them dress up and walk around the school wearing sheets and hoods takes either a huge amount of arrogance or an enormous amount of stupidity.

What’s next?  Having some students dress up in brown shirts and others wear the Star of David when you study World War II and the Holocaust?

Maybe the clean cut kids could dress up in Red Army uniforms and escort the hippie kids to a specially made “gulag” behind the gym.

Or perhaps this twit could have her cranium removed from her nether regions long enough to be handed her disciplinary paperwork and then reassigned to teaching somewhere else.  Better yet, put her in charge of making sure there are no cigarette butts under the bleachers on the football field for every high school in the county.  Once she’s got that accomplished, there are a few grease traps in the cafeterias that need her highly educated attention.

An accident on I-35 in Minnesota released thousands of honey bees out of a cargo of 17 million.  The resulting swarm was described as “a black cloud”.

Does it show that I’ve been a dad to young children when the image I got in my mind when I read  this was the swarm of bees from Winnie the Pooh?

Of course, this means that there will be thousands of bees in that area who weren’t there before.  I know it’s late spring and most blossoming is over, but it would be interesting to see if there’s any correlation between this large influx of pollenators and the size of any crops in the area in the fall.  Just a thought.

Do not fall asleep listening to Vicious Circle.  The dreams you will have will scar you for life.

Warning, listening to Vicious Circle while awake can also scar you for life. You have been warned. 

The cherry tree in the front yard has been sitting there pretty much dormant for the last 9 years.  It’s been a pretty good shade tree, and screened the front of the house well, so we left it alone.

And now comes the payoff:

It’s positively drooping from all of the fruit on it.

Girlie Bear and I went out for about half an hour tonight and got all of the low hanging fruit.  We got more than a gallon.

Irish Woman has promised me a cobbler for dessert tomorrow night, and what we don’t eat tonight or tomorrow will go in the dryer for snacks.

We love fresh fruit, and this looks like a good year for it.