OK, you’re driving your 11 and 12 year old children to their mother’s house so they can spend Christmas with her.

It’s snowy, the wind is blowing, and it’s below freezing out.

Your truck somehow gets stuck in the snow. You are 10 miles of highway away from your destination.

Do you

A) Tell the kids to stay in the truck while you work to get it out and continue on getting your truck unstuck?

B) Call the children’s mother to come get them while you try to get your truck out of the snow?

or

C) Tell the kids to bundle up and walk the 10 miles to their mom’s house while you get your truck out of a snowbank and go on your merry way?

Guess what some trogladyte in Idaho did?

This idiot caused the cold, lonely death of his daughter, and almost killed his son to boot. I feel very sorry for the mother, who is innocent in this, and I really pity the son. He’s going to question himself over whether or not he should have gone with his sister or forced her to come with him for the rest of his life. And that’s not to mention the little girl that died cold and alone when the parent who should have died for her was warm in a nice heated truck.

But for the moron who put those two children on the highway and sent them on their merry way? I hope he gets life without parole and is forced to have pictures of his daughter taped to every flat surface in his cell.

This isn’t a momentary mistake that went wrong. This was an overt act of stupidity that he could have either not done or stopped at any time. It took those kids a long time to get too far away from their father for him to get them and bring them back. He could have stopped them and prevented a stupid mistake from turning into a tragedy.

I hope he rots, and I hope he lives a very very long time with what he’s done.

but it definitely got my attention.

Scientists are reporting that clusters of small earthquakes are happening with surprising regularity in Yellowstone Park.

So why, as a somewhat willing resident of Kentucky, should I worry?

Because Yellowstone Park is actually an active volcano, that’s why. If you believe the Discovery Channel, then if Yellowstone blows big, it’s the end of most of North America as we know it, at least for a generation or two. That’s a worst case scenario, but they make a good case that it has happened before and it will happen again.

I’m not running to Kroger to buy milk, bread, and eggs yet. But I do keep emergency supplies at the house in case of some kind of disaster. This is just one of those doomsday scenarios that never seem to end well when you think about them.

What do all of y’all think? If it’s just a series of small earthquakes that go nowhere, no problem. If it’s a major natural disaster, what do you think the consequences would be for the US and the world?

To noone’s surprise, as soon as the “cease-fire” between Israel and Hamas sunsetted, Hamas started rocketing and mortaring the area of Israel that butts up against Gaza. After a few days of this, Israel called in the fighters and helicopters and started making bad things happen to bad people. Unfortunately, because said bad people had intentionally mixed themselves in with civilians, a lot of civilians are being hurt and killed. And the media are howling about Israeli tactics that kill civilians. And of course, there are the more than slightly more than unfriendly demonstrations in front of Israeli embassies worldwide.

The Israelis have a lot to answer for in their history of relations with the Palestinians and the US, but they can at least say that they don’t park their military (read “valid targets”) next to their civilians (read “non-valid targets”) in order to either deter their enemy from firing on them or to give CNN something to crow about when civilians get hurt or killed.

Israel has, for the most part, been an ally to us in a sea of Mid-East opponents. They have counted to ten more times than I can count when Hamas shells their neighborhoods. So now, I say have at it when they decide to whack Hamas upside the head. They should, and I expect that they will, do what they can to minimize non-necessary casualties, but enough is enough. You don’t answer artillery barrages with diplomacy, you answer them with airstrikes and artillery.

how much marriage is like the Act of Contrition?

What have I done?
What have I failed to do?
In thought, word, and/or deed?

I am wholly sorry, and I humbly repent.

Please stop crying. Please?

Since I’ve had some down time over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to do a bit of reading.

I started reading John Ringo’s “Legacy of the Aldenata” series. I’ve read “A Prayer Before Battle” and I’m about halfway through “Gust Front”. They’re very good reads, and they’re available for free download from the Baen Free Library. That is an excellent program they have there. I’ve been able to read up on some old Hammer’s Slammers editions that I missed, and I’ve discovered a few works by David Drake and David Weber that I hadn’t come across before. Go to Ringo’s WikiPedia page for direct links to his books.

I also got two Harry Turtledove novels for Christmas. I’m almost through “Opening Atlantis” and I think I may buy its sequel. Turtledove is a founding member of the alternate history genre, and although he’s not the best author and writer around, his storytelling is usually interesting and entertaining.

Both of these are pure escapism, but I am going to do some non-fiction reading when I’m done with them.

I’ve been reading “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen Ambrose off and on for a while, and I will finally find some time to just sit and read it. Since it’s non-fiction, and it’s history that touches on my home state of North Dakota, I want to be able to concentrate on it. It’s easier to fly through a novel, even a good novel, and still get the gist of the storyline. Historical non-fiction, for me at least, requires more careful reading.

Anyhoo, hope y’all had a good holiday!

Quick update since I haven’t posted in a few days.

We had a really nice Christmas Eve with the kids. This was the first Christmas I’ve had with Junior Bear in a very long time, and we also had Girlie Bear. Little Bear was at his Mom’s house, but I got to see him for a few minutes.

We had an early morning on Christmas and had a good breakfast of homemade blueberry pancakes and ham. MMMM Ham….

Baby Bear was, as expected, more interested in the wrapping paper than the presents, but he did very well. Junior Bear and Girlie Bear also got a small pile of their own. I’m the boring parent, so mostly the kids got clothes and books.

I got a new sweater and some other small stuff. Irish Woman got a claudagh ring and her very own iPod.

After we cleaned up the debris from presents, I took Girlie Bear over to her mom’s house so she could spend the rest of Christmas break with her. She then got to open more presents.

We made the rounds of the various families for the rest of the day, and when we were done, both Irish Woman and I were very tired and starting to feel crummy.

By the next morning, we were both quite sick. Irish Woman went to her office to gut her way through the day, and I headed over to the urgent care clinic. I was pronounced a classic case of sinus and ear infection. The doc threw a couple of prescriptions at me, and I went home to get some rest. Irish Woman went to the clinic after work, and she had bronchitis.

Lovely.

We flipped coins over the weekend to see who got to take NyQuil every night. The other one did the best he or she could do to get some rest and still be conscious enough to take care of Baby Bear or hear the fire alarm.

I’m feeling marginally better today. Still not approaching 100%, but I’m human again.

Junior Bear is at home working on some homework, or at least that’s what he’s telling me.

Both Irish Woman and I started rotations on pager support today, but hopefully things are slow enough that we won’t have too rough a time of it.

Overall, I had a good holiday, but the rest of the weekend was a waste. But I can’t complain.

Ford has announced their new Fusion, which comes in a very aggressive hybrid. The price for this car appears to only be a few thousand for the hybrid model over the standard.

My questions now come down to availability, reliability, and actual mileage savings.

If you can’t get the car, Ford loses.

If the car gets a reputation for being a garage junkie, Ford loses.

If the car gets significantly less gas mileage during actual driving as opposed to the best case scenario 41 MPG Highway, then Ford loses.

Here’s hoping this helps Ford pull its fat out of the fryer.

The local police arrested two young people for stealing packages off of people’s porches.

Luckily, it appears that most of the purloined presents will be returned prior to Christmas.

I’m glad to see that the two yutzes will have to face up to the people they stole from and return the loot.

Maybe if more of our young delinquents had to actually talk to the people they victimize and make amends for their crimes, we wouldn’t have as many problems with crime in our society. A little shame goes a long way.

New rules have been proposed that would make it too expensive to create hand-made toys for children.

I love to go to crafts fairs and get homemade toys for the kids, such as sock monkeys, wooden trains, and building blocks. My little ones have all loved playing with these simple, non-electronic, non-plastic toys.

Now, the people who make them can either pay an exorbitant amount of money to get them certified as safe or close up shop.

There needs to be some kind of exception for toys that are hand-crafted by local merchants.

Now, I’m going to go play with my blocks.

Looks like the authorities are looking further into Plaxico Burress’ life.

A recent search of his house found several guns and some ammunition. They also took the pants he wore on the night he shot himself.

Some of my gun buddies and I have discussed this kind of thing before. We’ve all seen the news features that talk about how a house was searched and a large cache of guns and ammunition were found and confiscated.

So what makes a large cache of guns and ammo?

I personally own upwards of 5 or 6 guns. For each of these guns, I own at least a few rounds of ammunition. For some of them, I own a lot of ammunition. When you shoot on a budget, and you find bulk surplus ammunition on sale, you buy it so you can go shooting during lean times.\

So it would be safe to say that I have a lot of ammunition stored in my house. Don’t worry, it’s stored in safe containers to keep it away from prying eyes and small hands.

But if my house was searched for any reason, would I be trotted out in front of news cameras as a gun nut? Would my small collection be put on a table along with the various boxes and cans of ammunition to show that I was a dangerous criminal?

Talk amongst yourselves. Topic – What consititutes a dangerous amount of guns and ammunition?