Carteach is holding a contest, and the result is donations to a good cause.

If you make a donation to the Wounded Warrior Project, he’ll put your name into a hat and then draw for prizes from the official goody bag.

Wounded Warrior provides services to help our wounded get back into normal life.  They do good work for those who have already given too much.

If you’ve got a few extra shekels, consider sending them to a good cause.  Who knows, you might just get something back.

The other day, Gibson Guitar factories in Tennessee were raided by federal agents.  The company reports that wood, computer files, and finished guitars were taken in the raid, but no-one will tell them the charges against the company.  Indications are that because the company had some wood from India that hadn’t been finished by Indian artisans, they were in violation of the Lacey Act.  Basically, if possession of the wood would have been illegal in the country it came from, then it’s illegal here.

Are all of you sure that the wooden grips or stocks on your guns wasn’t made from wood that could bring the weight of the government down on you? “That’s a nice stock on that rifle.  Do you have proof that the company that sold it to you didn’t break any laws in Turkey?  Why don’t you hand it over until you can prove it’s legit?”

Let’s think about that for a moment.  You have a commodity or product in your possession that you purchased on the legal market here in the United States, say some Brazilian hardwood, that you want to spend a winter making furniture out of for your home.  You bought it from a reputable outlet, and have no criminal intent and no reason to suspect that the wood was harvested, processed, or exported from Brazil illegally.   Some arcane aspect of the Brazilian lumber law makes someone think that your future dining room set might be illegal if you had it in Brazil.  Let’s say that Brazilian law says that a special tax on hardwoods must be paid, and you don’t have a tax stamp or something from your supplier to say that the tax was paid.

So your home could be raided, your wood, tools, financial records, computers, and anything else they think was related to this “crime” could be taken, and you could be charged with a crime for possession of something that is three or four levels of separation away from its origin in South America.  You didn’t cut it down or mill it.  You didn’t export it to the United States and sell it.  All you did was buy it and try to use it.  The law that you are accused of breaking is outside of the control of your elected representatives, so you can’t even appeal to them to get it modified or repealed.  But you’re the one who got raided.  And it doesn’t have to be raw lumber.  Can you prove that the Brazilian hardwood dining table you inherited from grandma was made from wood imported before these restrictions were put in place?  If not, when you are questioned, you are out a dining table, out a fine, and out of luck.

Now go back to those last two paragraphs and substitute the offending products with the following words:  gun, book, movie, recording, photograph.

If the government wants, it can try to impose the laws of another country, however diametrically opposed to our freedoms, on our citizens.  I support the efforts to stop over-logging of the world’s forests, both here and abroad, and I also recognize the need for our government to work with other nations to keep their cultural and environmental treasures out of the market.  But the consumer in Kentucky should not be responsible for the bad acts of others, which may have occurred thousands of miles away and decades ago.

Those of you along the Eastern Seaboard should be preparing for the imminent arrival of Hurricane Irene. Since you’ll get 500 storm tracks from 500 meteorologists all looking at the same data, you never know what this storm will do or where it will go.  Heck, I live in Kentucky, and Irish Woman and I are talking about what we should do if it makes a radical turn and comes over the Cumberland Gap.

Here are some tips for weathering the storm:*

1. Leave.  Staying in the path of a hurricane is the definition of idiotic.  Pack your kids and everything you care about, call a relative further inland and get out of Dodge.  Preferably a relative who lives two states towards the center of the continent.  Things you should take include heirlooms, food, clothing, weapons, pets, and liquor.  
2. Remember the liquor.  Living with your brother-in-law for a few days with all of your and his kids is going to be hard enough without trying to do it sober.  Don’t get sloppy drunk and for heaven’s sake don’t drink tequila.  Just a nice mellow buzz.  Bonus points if you share with said brother-in-law, especially if you break out the good stuff.
3. If you can’t get out, or your brother-in-law is already full up with the rest of the family, then you’ll have to sit out the storm.  While this is sub-optimal, it can be done.  Just be ready for Lord of the Flies for the next few days.
4. Arm your significant other and send him or her to the grocery store now.  They will need to fill up a cart with as much stuff as possible if you don’t already have half a year’s worth of food, water, liquor, medicine, clothing, books, board games, cat food, cat litter, and dog food.  Kiss them goodbye, as she may not return from this mission.
5. You’re not out the game, though.  Your job is to go the hardware store and get all of the other stuff your family will need to survive.  This includes tarps, visqueen, shingles, nails, nail gun, compressor, sheet upon sheet of plywood, flashlights, batteries, extra keys for the outbuildings that will soon be spotted off of Nova Scotia, tie down straps, bungie cords, 550 cord, sail cloth, gas cans, gasoline, 25000 watt generator, extension cords, and roofing tar.  All of this will be used to weather and water proof your home and survive the storm’s aftermath as much as possible, and in the event that you do get washed away, you can lash as much of the debris as possible together and sail to Scotland where the weather is much nicer this time of year.
6. Take all of the hardware store goodies, and start nailing, screwing, glueing, lashing, and welding them to the outside of your home, especially the windows and doors.  Note:  Have someone other than your family secure plywood to the last door to your home after you have gotten yourself and other members of your family that you care about into the house.  Anyone who gets there late should be advised to hole up in the tree house for the weekend.
7. Put all of the supplies you bought in the highest room of your home.  That way it’ll stay dry when the first floor or so become an indoor swimming pool.  Put an axe up there too so that you can cut your way out of the house once the storm has passed.  Remember, you’ve cut off all of the windows and doors from the outside for your own protection.
8. Remember, this storm has already been to the Caribbean, where the zombie menace originated.  Watch your spouse and children for evidence of zombie infection carried by the wind, and respond as necessary.
9. Once you have your supplies secured and every opening to your home has been boarded over, settle in for a nice quiet weekend of listening to the soft rain and gentle winds of mother nature re-landscaping your yard into a beautiful water garden.  Good movies to watch during this time include Storm of the Century, The Abyss, and of course The Shining.  If you prefer reading, I suggest Misery, Moby Dick, and The Road.
10. When the storm hits, keep your children up for every minute of it so that they can have the rare life experience of hearing shutters ripped off of the roof or the cap on the chimney embedding itself in the old oak tree in the front yard.  This is an experience that they will relive every time the wind blows for years to come.
11. Play games with the family to keep spirits up.  I suggest “Beer beer, who’s got the beer?”, “Where did Mommy hide her ‘medicine’?”, and “Who can sit quietly while Daddy tries to figure out how to get wet matches to light?”.

Hopefully you’ve found these suggestions helpful.  Good luck, and enjoy your North Sea adventure!

*Of course these are all tongue in cheek and are meant as a joke.  If you are in danger from the storm, I hope that you will be able to take care of you and yours.  Something tells me y’all are smart enough to get out of the way or to hunker down without losing your mind.

Well, final for now. I’m not going anywhere.

I had my last check-in with the surgeon today.  He says I’m doing about as well as can be expected.  I’ll still have a few weird things that need more time to heal or become the new normal, but otherwise I’m good to go.  I’m sleeping better, can breather better, and overall I feel pretty good.  He released me to go back on my arthritis treatments, so I’ll be feeling pretty good in a few weeks when I go back into the rheumatologist to get my Remicade topped off.

Now that I’m on the other side of the surgery and recovery, I’m glad I did it.  I was cautioned that the surgery only helped with the sleep apnea and snoring in about 60% of patients, so I guess I was in that 60%.  Irish Woman says I don’t snore anymore at all, even when sleeping on my back.  I wake up without the headaches and sore throat, and I feel like I actually got some rest.  I’ll be going back in for another sleep study to prove that I don’t snore anymore, but I’m doing that more for the doctor than for me.

I mentioned to the doctor that I’ve lost my taste for some of the things I used to enjoy, and he said that that should correct itself over the next few months.  I hope he’s right.

So, I’m back and as ornery as ever, but I don’t make funny noises when I sleep.  Hopefully this is the last surgery I have to go through for a long time.  The recovery on this one was a pain, in more ways than one.