Since I’ve had some down time over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been able to do a bit of reading.

I started reading John Ringo’s “Legacy of the Aldenata” series. I’ve read “A Prayer Before Battle” and I’m about halfway through “Gust Front”. They’re very good reads, and they’re available for free download from the Baen Free Library. That is an excellent program they have there. I’ve been able to read up on some old Hammer’s Slammers editions that I missed, and I’ve discovered a few works by David Drake and David Weber that I hadn’t come across before. Go to Ringo’s WikiPedia page for direct links to his books.

I also got two Harry Turtledove novels for Christmas. I’m almost through “Opening Atlantis” and I think I may buy its sequel. Turtledove is a founding member of the alternate history genre, and although he’s not the best author and writer around, his storytelling is usually interesting and entertaining.

Both of these are pure escapism, but I am going to do some non-fiction reading when I’m done with them.

I’ve been reading “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen Ambrose off and on for a while, and I will finally find some time to just sit and read it. Since it’s non-fiction, and it’s history that touches on my home state of North Dakota, I want to be able to concentrate on it. It’s easier to fly through a novel, even a good novel, and still get the gist of the storyline. Historical non-fiction, for me at least, requires more careful reading.

Anyhoo, hope y’all had a good holiday!

Quick update since I haven’t posted in a few days.

We had a really nice Christmas Eve with the kids. This was the first Christmas I’ve had with Junior Bear in a very long time, and we also had Girlie Bear. Little Bear was at his Mom’s house, but I got to see him for a few minutes.

We had an early morning on Christmas and had a good breakfast of homemade blueberry pancakes and ham. MMMM Ham….

Baby Bear was, as expected, more interested in the wrapping paper than the presents, but he did very well. Junior Bear and Girlie Bear also got a small pile of their own. I’m the boring parent, so mostly the kids got clothes and books.

I got a new sweater and some other small stuff. Irish Woman got a claudagh ring and her very own iPod.

After we cleaned up the debris from presents, I took Girlie Bear over to her mom’s house so she could spend the rest of Christmas break with her. She then got to open more presents.

We made the rounds of the various families for the rest of the day, and when we were done, both Irish Woman and I were very tired and starting to feel crummy.

By the next morning, we were both quite sick. Irish Woman went to her office to gut her way through the day, and I headed over to the urgent care clinic. I was pronounced a classic case of sinus and ear infection. The doc threw a couple of prescriptions at me, and I went home to get some rest. Irish Woman went to the clinic after work, and she had bronchitis.

Lovely.

We flipped coins over the weekend to see who got to take NyQuil every night. The other one did the best he or she could do to get some rest and still be conscious enough to take care of Baby Bear or hear the fire alarm.

I’m feeling marginally better today. Still not approaching 100%, but I’m human again.

Junior Bear is at home working on some homework, or at least that’s what he’s telling me.

Both Irish Woman and I started rotations on pager support today, but hopefully things are slow enough that we won’t have too rough a time of it.

Overall, I had a good holiday, but the rest of the weekend was a waste. But I can’t complain.

Ford has announced their new Fusion, which comes in a very aggressive hybrid. The price for this car appears to only be a few thousand for the hybrid model over the standard.

My questions now come down to availability, reliability, and actual mileage savings.

If you can’t get the car, Ford loses.

If the car gets a reputation for being a garage junkie, Ford loses.

If the car gets significantly less gas mileage during actual driving as opposed to the best case scenario 41 MPG Highway, then Ford loses.

Here’s hoping this helps Ford pull its fat out of the fryer.

The local police arrested two young people for stealing packages off of people’s porches.

Luckily, it appears that most of the purloined presents will be returned prior to Christmas.

I’m glad to see that the two yutzes will have to face up to the people they stole from and return the loot.

Maybe if more of our young delinquents had to actually talk to the people they victimize and make amends for their crimes, we wouldn’t have as many problems with crime in our society. A little shame goes a long way.

New rules have been proposed that would make it too expensive to create hand-made toys for children.

I love to go to crafts fairs and get homemade toys for the kids, such as sock monkeys, wooden trains, and building blocks. My little ones have all loved playing with these simple, non-electronic, non-plastic toys.

Now, the people who make them can either pay an exorbitant amount of money to get them certified as safe or close up shop.

There needs to be some kind of exception for toys that are hand-crafted by local merchants.

Now, I’m going to go play with my blocks.

Looks like the authorities are looking further into Plaxico Burress’ life.

A recent search of his house found several guns and some ammunition. They also took the pants he wore on the night he shot himself.

Some of my gun buddies and I have discussed this kind of thing before. We’ve all seen the news features that talk about how a house was searched and a large cache of guns and ammunition were found and confiscated.

So what makes a large cache of guns and ammo?

I personally own upwards of 5 or 6 guns. For each of these guns, I own at least a few rounds of ammunition. For some of them, I own a lot of ammunition. When you shoot on a budget, and you find bulk surplus ammunition on sale, you buy it so you can go shooting during lean times.\

So it would be safe to say that I have a lot of ammunition stored in my house. Don’t worry, it’s stored in safe containers to keep it away from prying eyes and small hands.

But if my house was searched for any reason, would I be trotted out in front of news cameras as a gun nut? Would my small collection be put on a table along with the various boxes and cans of ammunition to show that I was a dangerous criminal?

Talk amongst yourselves. Topic – What consititutes a dangerous amount of guns and ammunition?

Interesting fact – None of them were created by the Franklin Mint.

A British tourist helping out at an archeological dig found a cache of ancient coins.

I can see the conversation now.

“OK, let’s see, shell casing, shell casing, bottle cap, bottle cap, shell casing.”

“Wait a minute, that’s not a bottle cap, it’s a coin!”

“Huh, what do you know, something that’s not trash thrown down here from the 2000 years worth of tourists and invasions.”

H/T to Blackfive.

Wreaths Across America has decorated the graves at Arlington, and it’s not only touching, but it’s beautiful.

Service organizations like this are always good to see. When Junior Bear was a Tiger Cub, we went to the Veteran’s Cemetary near our town in Arizona and helped to put flags up for Memorial Day.

When you do things like this, you see people from every walk of life spending a little bit of their time to do something noble.

and slowly adjusting.

My week long turn at 3rd shift went pretty smoothly. Work was pretty much sitting on my butt and watching monitors on my servers. We only had two or three small issues all week.

I got sleep when I could. Some days I slept from 9 AM until 4 PM, which was nice. On others, I grabbed as many cat naps as possible. By cat naps, I mean Timmy, Koshka, and I curled up on the couch and snoozed hard.

I fell off the caffeine wagon for the week, but have gone cold turkey again. Yesterday I had the sluggishness and headache again, but I’m better today.

Girlie Bear had a Christmas concert downtown on Wednesday, and 30 young children singing “Jingle Bells” in Latin is pretty neat, if I do say so myself.

Crews are working on fixing the broken underwater cable in the Meditteranean.

I wonder if someone has to be in the Med waiting for them sometime between 2 and 8 or they’ll have to reschedule?