• I woke up like a bear with a sore head today, and things didn’t improve.
• The next grinning idiot who wishes me an unsolicited “Happy Holiday” is going to wish his father had gone out drinking the night he was conceived.
  • I too wish for peace on earth and over-consumption for all.  I just don’t need people being cheerful about it for a month straight, OK?
• Note to charities:  Just because I dropped $20 into your collection bin once upon a time doesn’t mean I want endless junk mail from you.  I’m about to start sending back your pre-paid envelopes full of torn-up solicitations.
• The puppy discovered that he likes peanut butter sandwiches today.
  • I hope he also learned about his own mortality too, because the next time he steals Irish Woman’s lunch, he may become a place mat.
  • Never saw a dog eat a sandwich that quickly, but it was funny to watch him try to get the peanut butter off of the roof of his mouth.
• While waiting out the two hours that Girlie Bear was spending with her mom this evening, I sat in the parking lot of a cheap grocery store.  While there I saw two screaming matches between its patrons, one of which resulted in both parties jumping in their cars and leaving squealing black marks on the pavement as they sped off into the night.  I also witnessed what appeared to be the local non-licensed pharmacist / distiller conducting commerce.  At least I assume that was what he was doing, but maybe he likes selling individual sandwich bags and quarts of distilled water.
  • I figured that I probably ought to go find somewhere else to be, so I did.
• Tonight the puppy learned that if you keep nipping at a bigger dog, eventually that bigger dog is going to take a chunk out of your butt.
  • He’s OK, but he decided it would be best to just go to bed in the aftermath.
  • The two older dogs are both pleading innocence.
• You know, I didn’t realize that Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog played for the Colts, but that’s what I saw on my television when I went to watch the game today.  Apparently my plans were overruled.
• It’s been raining for three days straight.  A few more days like this and I’ll need a whole bunch of gopher wood.

• Irish Woman learned last night that she cannot drink the way she did in college.  Or a decade ago.  Or last year.
• Being the designated driver is a lot more fun when you only live a couple of miles from the party.
• The smell of bacon frying seems to be a hangover cure.  I did not know that.
• Now I remember why almost of my shopping is done on-line.
• Moonshine the Wonder Pup has a standing vertical leap of 3.5 feet, which is enough to snatch a piece of pumpkin spice bread off the table and knock the canister of puppy food off the kitchen counter.  I must make a note of this.
• Of course Boo’s birthstone is a diamond. What was I thinking?
• I wasted spent about an hour with Irish Woman dragging retrieving all of her Christmas crap decorations from the attic.
  • That’s an hour of my life that I’ll never get back.
  • Bad thought to have when you’re at the bottom of the attic stairs and she’s at the top:  “I wonder if she could get out if I folded this thing up?”
    • I might have been able to get out of the state before she found a way down and began her quest for revenge.
• My plans to go to Knob Creek for a few hours today were scuttled by three days of rain.  Even though it was slowing down today, the range must have been a slimy mud hole.
• Irish Woman is preparing for the first Hobbit movie by re-watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Not sure how that will help, but I’m not going to complain about watching those movies again.

National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific

They fought together as brothers in arms; they died together and now they sleep side by side…To them, we have a solemn obligation — the obligation to ensure that their sacrifice will help make this a better and safer world in which to live. — Chester Nimitz