• Good Day – Going to your favorite range to shoot a pistol match with good friends.
• Great Day – The range is having their Christmas open house, so you get a cup of good hot coffee to ward off the cold and wet while you shoot.
• Awesome Day – You get a call from the front desk of the range while you’re getting your safety briefing telling you that you won a gun from the drawing you entered when you got your cup of coffee.
• The best thing I can say about the weather today was that it wasn’t raining frogs.  Then again, shooting in nasty weather is probably good training.
• Like I said, the best I can say about my performance today was that I didn’t get DQ’ed.  I did better than I thought I would, though.  It’s been a long time since I shot anything other than paper; I definitely need more practice at shooting on the move after drawing from the holster.
• The new gun is a Chipmunk .22 pistol.  Basically, it’s a single shot, bolt-action .22 LR target pistol.  Honestly, it’s not something that I’ve ever considered owning, but hey, free gun!
• For once my mil-geek self did something right.  When Irish Woman was looking for something to use to hang the ornaments on the tree, I remembered that I had a roll of old tripwire downstairs.
  • Rather than be scandalized by this, Irish Woman seemed quite happy to use strong, thin, almost invisible wire to decorate the tree.
  • Now to boobytrap the lower branches against the cat.

• Today I had two vastly different experiences when visiting small businesses.
  • In one business, the owner was working the counter, and as far as I could tell, my friend and I were the center of his universe.
  • In the other, I’m not sure if the yutz who waited on me was the owner or an employee, but apparently it was more important to make jokes with other people in the store than to sell me something.
  • The first guy gained a new long-term customer.  The second guy may have just lost one.
• It’s not every day when I meet a gun store owner seems excited to meet someone from the local Friends of the NRA chapter.
  • Not only is he offering to let me put up signs and posters in his store, but he also says he’d be happy sell our raffle tickets.
• Script drafting rhythm:
  • Hour 1 – Stare at computer screen, trying to visualize how the procedure you wrote down on a legal pad is going to look in PERL.
  • Hour 2-3 – Wrote PERL like a boss!  Oh my gosh, this is awesome!
  • Hour 3:05 – Hit the wall like a bad actor in an over-powered Porsche. Go back to staring at computer screen.
  • Hour 4 – Go get some lunch.  Think.
  • Hour 5 – Get over issue from Hour 3:05.  Make a little more progress.
  • Hour 6 – Give up for the moment.  Realize that the solution to the problem will come to me at 3:27 AM when the antagonist in my dream will taunt me with it.
• Going to a Christmas party tonight made me realize what our home would look like if we didn’t have children.  And if we had time.  And money.
• It’s been a long time since I had good scotch.  I must do it more often.
• We took one of Irish Woman’s co-workers out to Claudia Sanders‘ the other night for real Kentucky cuisine.  It doesn’t get much more Kentucky than fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans with ham and onions.

• I’m not sure what was the low point of my day – being stuck four times to get four tubes of blood, being asked to leave the exam room while the doctor spoke to my daughter, or power-augering out the drain from our laundry room.
  • Yes, I know I have every right to be in that exam room while my child is in there, but Girlie Bear gave me that “Please!” look
• You know why plumbers are so expensive?  It’s because they’re worth it.
  • I saved a couple of hundred dollars by doing it myself, but for once I’m not sure I came out ahead.
• I got out a big bunch of tree roots from the drain, but it came along with a guest.
  • I’m not sure whether the thing that came up with the roots started life as a dryer sheet, a bleach towelette, or a baby wipe, but it was apparently the secret sauce on the clog.
  • Yeah, I don’t know how it got down there either.
• Tonight I followed a family tradition and made a dinner that my spouse doesn’t like while she went out for dinner with friends.
• I showed Girlie Bear how to make hunter’s stew out of good, high quality ingredients, which cause the meal to cost about $6 to prepare the entire meal.
  • I also discussed the cheap way of doing it, which would have brought the cost down to about $3 to feed a family.
  • She will be able to make both versions before she leaves for college.

It is never a good sign to be running a drain snake down a pipe and come back with tree roots.

That about sums up my day.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Pearl Harbor.  Remember that even after all these years, we still have young men and women far from home to defend us.  Please keep the casualties and survivors of December 7 in your prayers, and also please include those who serve now.

but Irish Woman has me tasting a new recipe for strawberry-cranberry jam, and this cartoon keeps coming to my mind.

I’d ask her to taste it first, but I wouldn’t put it past her to have built up a resistance to it over time.