• One should not use the word “monkey” and “football” when describing someone else’s project plan.
• You leave an Irish Woman alone with lumber and tools, and you come home to a new set of shelves installed in the bathroom.
• My test results from my physical came back.
  • At least physically, I’m normal.
• I had an idea for a fictional story entitled “Valley of the Fudds” today.  I may have to put some work into that.
• I have decided that I do not like the new car smell anymore.  The smell of solvents and paint just seems to turn my stomach.
  • I’m too used to driving vehicles that smell of coffee and old oil.
• The cost for the picket fence I’m going to put up once the weather turns in the next week or two is going to be around $500, plus my time.
  • To put that in perspective, I only paid $200 for my first automobile.
• I wish the weather would make up its mind.  Every joint in my body is throbbing, and every time I move it sounds like I stepped on a section of bubble wrap.

The Prayer of Saint Francis of Assissi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury,pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen

Habemus Papam

• Remember that rain I mentioned the other night?  It rained pretty much all day yesterday and into the night.
  • Guess who forgot to roll up the driver’s window on his truck Sunday afternoon?
  • Guess who found that on Tuesday morning when he left for work?
  • Perkele
• Note to co-worker:  “Send me a meeting notice for the planning session” does not mean “Send me a completed schedule with my tasks highlighted.”
  • No, really, it’s OK.  I didn’t have anything else planned that weekend.
• I have decided that I do not care for pear hard cider.
  • I like pears, and I like hard cider.  But pear hard cider is weak and flavorless.
• Am I going to hell for making sarcastic remarks about the people who were calling into the easy-listening call-in show on the radio tonight?
  • Caller – “Hi, I’d like to dedicate “I Will Always Love You” to my ex.  She cheated on me with a Marine scout-sniper platoon, gave me three kinds of STD, and put me desperately in debt while I was deployed, but I just can’t get her out of my mind”
  • Me – “Dude, the best thing that ever happened to you was for you to find out how big a psycho hosebeast she was.  Quit carrying the torch for her, touch it to the pile of wood she’s tied to, and quit being such a @#$!!@”
  • Maybe I should have my own  call-in advice show.  “DaddyBear tells you what you need to hear, along with the hits of the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s, tonight on ‘Smarten Up, You Dolt!'”

#!/usr/bin/ksh

while true

do

#Remind yourself of the base rules when dealing with other people

echo “All people have the right to hold their own convictions and opinions, no matter how much I disagree or how much they piss me off.” >> /dev/brain/controlcenter

echo “Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t make them a weak-willed, ignorant, poorly educated, badly bred, and horribly raised troglodyte.” >> /dev/brain/controlcenter

#Silently let off a bit of steam

echo “You, sir, are the unholy spawn of a coupling between a Tazmanian dwarf walrus and an Armenian hairless yak.  You should be coated in rancid strawberry jam and left to be nibbled to death by pigmy koala bears in the midday sun!” >> /dev/null 2>&1

echo “play_earworm /memory/longterm/music/soothing/Eine_Kleine_Nachtmuzik.mp3” >> /dev/brain/auditory/input

sleep 30

#End the conversation and get back to work.

echo “Well, I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree.  Good day, sir!”

echo

done

exit 0

• I traded in the Caravan today, but I shall forever be the Minivandian.
• We ended up buying the car we test drove on Saturday.
  • It’s amazing how easy it is to drive a new, small car after driving my old, broken-down truck for a few months.
  • Irish Woman is getting used to driving a stick again.
  • Girlie Bear saw the car and had absolute happiness in her eye.  Apparently she believes that eventually the shiny new car will be hers to drive.
    • Of course, by then, it will have scratches, scuffs, door dings, and a worn-out engine, if it happens at all.
• Today was the least stressful experience I’ve ever had in buying a new car.
  • It’s nice to walk into the dealership with your financing taken care of, have the price for the car you want to be pretty much set in stone, and work directly with a sales manager.
• While we waited for all the paperwork to be drawn up, we window shopped in the show room.
  • Remember what I said about how expensive pickups were?  They have nothing on luxury SUV’s.
  • The dealership taunted me by having the truck I want in the configuration I want at a reasonable price.  Here’s hoping they have something like that when I come back in a few years.
• It’s kind of nice to read a book and see the names of friends doing extraordinary things.
• Taking a 4 year old to a pizza buffet and watching him try to make up his mind of which one he wanted to devour first is one of the more fun things I have done lately.
• You know, I wish I was surprised that when I tuned the TV to a network dedicated to programming for young children, the most common advertisement was a trashy, over-sexed commercial for the St. Patrick’s Day from a chain of liquor stores.
• Tomorrow, my primary task will be to drive around the airplanes and not hit the airplanes.

• I need to do a better job checking my schedule.
  • I thought I had to start work at 7 this morning, but it was really 8.
• In the bathroom update, I am batting .333 on first time success in getting lights to work.
• DaddyBear Rain Spell – Wash the minivan so that it can be traded in.
• Boo gave us a scare this afternoon when he disappeared from playing on the porch.
  • We found him in the truck, moving all the knobs on the radio and climate control.
  • Honestly, we only found him because he started honking the horn and giggling like a fiend.
  • 30 more seconds would have meant a call to the police.
• Why did I have to look at new trucks yesterday?  I’ve been haunting the local dealerships’ websites all evening, even though I know I won’t be buying a new truck for at least two years.
• I think spring has sprung.
  • At least I hope so.  The fruit trees are going to bud out in a few more days of this warmth, and a freeze would destroy the entire crop.

• We told Boo to take it easy on Moonshine because he doesn’t feel well.
  • Boo asked if Moonshine would be molting.
  • Note to self – He’s smarter than he looks, but his information is a tad off.
• Note to bathroom fan manufacturers – You fail as a human being, and I hate you.
  • Please hire someone who speaks English as their primary language to write the English installation instructions.
    • The sentence structure and word choice is odd enough that I can’t tell if it was the French speaker or the Spanish speaker who wrote it.  Maybe it was a third-party, perhaps someone who grew up speaking Khoisan.
  • If one paragraph says to follow badly drawn figure 2, then the next says to not do what figure 2 looks like, then what exactly am I supposed to do?
  • If your instructions say to make a 11 by 9 inch hole in my ceiling for your fan, your fan should be able to fit through an 11 by 9 inch hole in some way, shape, or fashion.
  • Also, stop using whiz-bang boutique bulbs for the lights in the darn thing.
    • Seriously, lightbulbs are a problem that was solved almost a century ago.  Even if you want me to use a miniature CFL, the ones that just screw in are 1/4 the cost of the ones you designed your fan to use.
• A hand-held electric jigsaw does an excellent job cutting a hole in the ceiling of a bathroom that is clad in wallboard and a 1/2 inch thick layer of plaster.
  • However, I have been coughing up miniature ceramic teacups all afternoon.
  • What is this ‘mask’ thing you speak of?
• While I was fighting with the bathroom, Irish Woman went to a meeting with the group that is trying to organize a food co-op in our little village.
  • She swears there were no hippies in attendance, including the person who is running the thing, but I swear she smelled of patchouli when she came home.
  • First it’s a food co-op, then it’s a “Save the three-toed Bulgarian tree aardvark” committee, and before you know it, we’ve got full-blown hippie drum circles on Main Street.
• We went and test-drove cars this afternoon.
  • We’ve settled on the Ford Focus hatchback.  Now we’re down to negotiating features.
  • I would prefer a five speed manual.
  • Irish Woman wants a moon roof.
  • The only car they had with both was black with black interior.
    • Rather than bake all summer long, I’ll probably give on the manual transmission.
    • I don’t really care about the moonroof, and it’s cheaper to pay for Irish Woman’s car to have one than to hear about it not having one for the life of the vehicle.
  • The Focus has the easiest clutch I’ve ever driven. It would be great to teach Girlie Bear how to drive in that car.
  • The thing comes with Sync, Ford’s built-in computer system.  Borepatch has written about it several times.  Guess I’ll have to learn how to lock it down or shut it off, if that’s even possible.
• While we were at the dealership, I thought I’d take a look at the new trucks.
  • Apparently Ford is upholstering their pick-ups in fine Corinthian marmot leather, lubricating them with natural oils pressed between the thighs of hairy virgins, and plating their engine components with an alloy of rhodium and diamonds.
  • Who in blazes decided that a pick-up truck ought to cost $50,000?????
  • I must point out that $50k is an easy and low number to divide into the value of our house.
  • It’s also more than what my parents paid for any of the three homes they owned.
  • Looks like I’ll either be buying another brand, buying a used truck, or selling several children and a hound dog on the black market to finance a new truck when the time comes.