Woke up this morning feeling pretty low. My allergies had kicked me right between the twins.

A long shower. two Aleve, a Claritin, and a cup of coffee later, I at least felt human. Spending time feeding Baby Bear and listening to him growl between mouthfuls helped my attitude.

Had to drive through the traffic for the Ryder Cup. Took 45 minutes to drive the 5 minutes to the freeway.

Got Junior Bear and Girlie Bear over to a friend’s house for the day. Still no school, we’ll find out on Sunday night if they go back on Monday.

Because of traffic, didn’t get to the office until almost 9 AM, so I had to park in the remote lot. The long walk gave me a lot of time to think about why I came to work at all.

Got to the top of the stairs in our building, and the smell of rotten eggs greeted me. Luckily for me, everyone else can smell it too. Either a pipe has broken somewhere, or someone shipped something they shouldn’t have.

I’ve spent the morning doing small work and drinking more coffee. Hopefully the afternoon will go well.

This weekend should be OK. I’m working a fund raiser for Girlie Bear’s PTA tomorrow morning, and I’m planning on going to the range on Sunday after church.

The Canadian agricultural minister apparently doesn’t know that you don’t make jokes about people dieing.

Dude, please remember that everything you say will be held against you. Don’t joke about people dieing from food poisoning, and for the love of God don’t hope that one of the casualties is one of your opponents.

Saw a good post by Phil over at Random Nuclear Strikes.

Politicians from both parties resisted regulation of the financial markets, for whatever reasons. Now that the market has had the carpet pulled out from under it, and we’re paying to keep the lights on in institutions that are deemed critical, the roaches are scattering.

My only real beef with this whole process is the fact that these government rescues always seem to include some really nice golden parachutes for the executives of these companies. If you’ve run your business into the ground so bad that the government is stepping in and buying you out, why do you still make more money that some small countries?

Well, another day when the kids don’t have school.

I spent yesterday getting over working a 3rd shift watching our servers in an area that has had power problems. Apparently the generator backup had issues, and they wanted several people on site at all times to shut down servers if the power went out again.

Luckily, the generator was repaired, and I didn’t have to do another midnight to 8 shift last night.

School is still out in Louisville, although power seems to be returning to a lot of the area. I spent almost an hour yesterday morning looking for a gas station that had both electricity and gasoline. Got lucky and was able to fill up with less than half a gallon of gas left in the tank.

Junior Bear and Girlie Bear have spent some time in the last couple of days cleaning up our yard. Lots of leaves and small branches to clean up. I also introduced Junior Bear to a pool skimmer net to use to get the leaves out of the pond. The cherry tree next to the big pond shed almost half of its leaves in the storm, and had turned the water to the color of strong tea. The fish seem to be OK, but it can’t be good for them, so we got the leaves out.

Going to start picking up cut up wood from people we know who lost trees soon. May as well stockpile it either for late in this winter or for next year.

OK OK! Fall is finally here, and I’m totally stoked!

The hot and humid Kentucky summer is dieing, the trees are starting to turn, football is here.

And last, but not least, the pumpkin spice latte is back at Starbucks. My favorite spicy goodness has returned from it’s summer long hiatus!

Went to the arthritis doctor this morning. She put me through the usual range of motion exercises/stress positions, and after that I confessed to being the shooter on the grassy knoll. We discussed my general health and progress in treatment.

Overall, I’m in pretty good health. I’ve dropped 8 pounds since the last time I went in, and my blood pressure is good. My cholesterol and glycerides are a tad high, but she says that my medication may be the cause of that.

Of course, my diet isn’t always the best, so an adjustment to that might help.

We discussed adjusting my medication a bit, and then I got a bill of good health.

Overall, I feel OK, but not great. The soreness in the joints is a bit rough sometimes. I take some over the counter pain meds every morning, but it takes an hour or so for it to kick in. The 1/2 mile walk from the car to the desk is done pretty much clean, and sometimes I’m limping by the time I get to the computer.

Not that I’m complaining. There are people I work with who use a cane, or are on crutches because of injuries. One of my co-workers just returned from a successful fight with cancer, and she’s still weak as a kitten. But she still makes the trudge in from the parking lot. I can’t complain because because my joints are sore.

Sent in my application for the Fort Knox hunt this morning. Two of my friends and I go out every year for a weekend in the woods. This is a draw hunt, so it’s in addition to the normal hunting seasons.

I love going out to Fort Knox to hunt because it’s some of the prettiest land in the area. The areas we’ve been assigned to are basically woods and hills that haven’t been disturbed in any meaningful manner since the 1940’s. We’re talking oaks as tall as 5 story building, gently rolling hills, and clear cold streams.

So far, I haven’t gotten a deer out there. I know they’re in the area, because we see their bedding down areas and tracks, but no luck so far. Lots of other critters show their faces. We’ve encountered foxes, a coyote or two, and squirrels the size of small dogs.

Mostly, I go out to get away from the noise. It’s always perfectly quiet in our area. No traffic, no phones, nothing.

So, here’s hoping we get drawn for the hunt. We normally get drawn to go in late November or early December, so it’s kinda frosty.

Apparently, a farmer in Utah decided to get the attention of his exaburbs neighbors. He dug some holes, and put some junker cars hood down in them, making a “Redneck Stonehenge”. Luckily, it’s just a little ribbing, not something malicious. Apparently his neighbors liked the idea of horses and cows grazing in the fields behind their houses, but didn’t like the other aspects of living next to a farm, such as dust, critters, and smells.

Good for him.

I’ve always maintained that if you own land, if you’re not causing actual harm to the neighbors, then you should be able to do what you want with your land. By harm, I mean that you are destroying or damaging something physical on the neighbors land or are endangering the living things that inhabit the neighbors land.

That’s why I will never live in a subdivision that requires a covenant. If I want to paint my house purple with paisley shutters, then I will. If I want to park an old car under my tree so that I can work on it, I will. I don’t need some neo-fascist homeowners association telling me what to do on property that I’ve worked hard to buy and use.

This situation reminds me of a local situation that happened a few years ago. Apparently the owner of a large farm near Louisville wanted to develop his land into a large subdivision, take the money he made, and retire. His neighbors didn’t think that was such a great idea, so they fought him on re-zoning the land and won. So, in a fit of pique, he fenced off a few acres of his land near the main road and his nearest neighbor and put goats and pigs inside the fence. As expected, the smell was kind of bad if you didn’t grow up on a farm. It was bad enough that the neighbors complained to the authorities and the local news stations, but since it was zoned for farmland, they couldn’t do anything.

Over time, the situation has died down, and luckily for the farmer, he didn’t try to start a development a couple of years before the market dropped out. He still keeps a few pigs and goats on the land, and allows construction companies to park their equipment next to the hogpen. The neighbors still don’t have a development next to their small farms/country homes, but I’m not sure that soccer moms in minivans are worse than sows with piglets in the next yard over.

So, I’ll stay living in the few neighborhoods that don’t require a contract to live in them, or will be moving out to the country myself. And if my neighbor wants to run an actual farm on his land, so much the better. I’ll be the neighbor with a large house in the center of my property and clear fields of fire out to the main road.

Now, get off’n the property!

Question – Why is it that the 30 minutes of snoozing I got this morning once the Irish Woman had left with Baby Bear were the most restful I got all night? Was it because I had the entire bed to myself, or was it because I knew it was the last sleep I’d get for 18 hours?

Baby Bear had his first official illness last week. He’d developed the sniffles over the weekend, and we’d treated it at home with vaporub, saline drops, and the dreaded brain sucker-outer. Unfortunately, it developed beyond that, and we ended up taking him to the doctor on Thursday. Double ear infection. Ick. So we begin a short course of antibiotics. Hopefully this doesn’t become a normal situation with him. Girly Bear and Junior Bear had a lot of ear infections as babies, and it wasn’t fun.

Curiously, Baby Bear was for the most part still the smiling happy baby that he always is. I do hope that stays as the normal situation with him.

He’s doing better, and is still the apple of his mom’s eye.