Well, Girlie Bear’s middle school had their open house last night. Just a tour and some get-to-know-us speeches from the principal and teachers.

I ended up taking Baby Bear with us because the Irish Woman was swamped with work stuff at home. I only expected it to last a half hour or so, but it ended up being a 2 hour engagement.

I have to say that I’m quite excited about Girlie Bear going to this school. It’s clean, appears to be in good condition, and has a reputation for order. We’ll have to invest in khakis and polo’s for her, which I’m not thrilled about. But I prefer my children wearing something close to a uniform if the alternative is to have all of the other girls dressed in the “I wanna be a ho” starter set and have her ask me why she can’t wear skirts that would be better used as belts.

Thankfully, Baby Bear behaved himself throughout the evening. No fussing, no crying, nothing. I kept him entertained byletting him maul one of the brochures they handed out. He was quite heavy by the end of all the tours, etc., but I can’t complain about a baby who’s patient for 2 hours.

But when we got back to the car, he let loose and kept crying until he fell asleep in our driveway. He was tired, hungry, and over stimulated, and he told me in no uncertain terms that it was all my fault. He was OK once we got him into the house and took care of his needs.

So, my baby girl is going to middle school next year, and my baby boy is excellent in public. Nothing to complain about here….

Looks like the Pentagon has come up with a bomb that is full of randomly flying rocket powered flaming tennis balls!

Just think of the civilian applications for something like this!

Cave monsters menacing your small midwestern town? Toss a canister of these down the old abandoned mine shaft they’re coming out of.

Aliens taken over your colony base? Bomb it from orbit with a series of these and watch the fireworks!

And I may have finally found a solution to those !#$!@! moles and gophers in my lawn. Fourth of July, cooler of cold beer, and a stack of self propelled rocket balls being thrown down gopher holes. Ahhhh, now that would be a good use of an afternoon!

DUDE!@#!!@????

They’re giving away the Eucharist for free, but only one per customer. Come on, dude, just share with everyone else in the church.

Today is the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I. I tried to explain to my daughter last night why that was so significant, and she had a hard time getting her ‘tween mind around the joy that flowed through the world when the guns finally fell silent. I spared her the gruesome statistics of how many were killed or wounded, but I did try to tell her just how awful it was for everyone involved, and how glad they were when the war was over and they could go home.

Most of the Irish Woman’s Kentucky family never served. Her father served in World War II, and so did a couple of her uncles, but they’ve long since gone on to better places. Their sons stayed out of Vietnam, and none of the grandsons chose to join. Hoosier Dad served in Korea, and we’ve shared a couple of beers talking about it, but he’s about it for that side too.

So I’m kind of an oddball in the family. I fly the flag most days outside our home, I pay attention when I hear a bugle call in the distance from one of the cemetaries. I don’t dwell on it, and since most of the family has nothing in common with that part of my life, I don’t discuss it with them. It’s kind of lonely sometimes, but they wouldn’t understand, and I don’t know how I could get my point across to them when discussing why certain things are important even if they don’t put money in their pockets or make their lives easier in a direct way.

I took the Irish Woman and the kids to a local veterans cemetary a few years ago to find one of her uncles who died as part of a bomber crew in World War II. We found the marker, and left some flowers. The Irish Woman commented that she couldn’t remember the last time someone had talked about visiting this particular grave. For some reason that didn’t surprise me.

The next year, we went to Washington DC on Veterans Day. It was just me and the Irish Woman, and we walked the mall and visited Arlington. She didn’t seem to understand how holy the place was until she saw me stop and wait respectfully for a Navy officer to finish his visit to a grave and salute it. We visited the Vietnam War memorial . She began emotional when I pointed out soldiers in the wall with names that come from her side of the family. Then I showed her the wall at the Korean memorial, and how the ranks of young men and women whose portraits are engraved there will always remind us of how many we owe so much to.

Since that time, she has become more appreciative of why I always want to pull down her decorative flags to fly the Colors. She doesn’t ask why when I want to go down to the Fort Knox museum on Memorial Day for a ceremony. And while she doesn’t understand why I cry during certain movies or TV programs, she knows to just let me snuffle a bit and get on with life.

Members of my family have been serving this country since our first ancestor got off the boat from Europe. Sometimes they’ve just been technicians and clerks, and other times they’ve been combat soldiers. I was raised by veterans near a military base, and several of the men I model myself on carried scars home from faroff places named St. Lo, Luzon, and DaNang. I was fortunate to serve in a lot of places where I could do some good, and I wouldn’t have missed a moment of it for anything. No, I wasn’t Sergeant Rock, but I wasn’t Gomer Pyle either, and I sure as heck wasn’t some long-haired, peace sign waving hippie.

Tonight, I’ll sit down with my kids and look at my photo albums of all the places I’ve been and the people I served with. Some of them still stay in touch, some of them have been lost to the four winds that is PCS/ETS. I remember them all, and always will. I do this with my kids so that they don’t get a romantic vision of the military, good or bad. If they choose to join up after they graduate, I want them to do it with both eyes wide open.

Blackfive has two excellent articles about Veteran’s Day. I suggest you go read them and think for a moment of the grandfathers, fathers, brothers, sisters, sons, and daughters who have stood ready at a moments notice to protect you and allow you to live in peace.

Apparently, a pilot in the UK had a stroke in mid-flight, and had to be guided to the ground by the RAF.

And afterwards, I’m sure the inside of his plane had to hosed out and his pants changed. I’m also sure the upholstery on his pilots chair had to be replaced when the pucker factor ripped it off of the frame.

That effort took balls, both on his part and the air traffic controllers. I can’t imagine what went through his mind when he realized that he couldn’t see and he was thousands of feet in the air.

Glad to hear it all turned out OK, and I wish the gentleman good health and a swift recovery.

Well, the first true blizzard of the year seems to have hit the Dakota’s over the past day or so.

It’s kind of early for such a strong storm, but I remember a lot of Halloweens where I wore a snowmobile suit under my costume for trick or treating. It gets cold and snowy up there early, and I don’t remember a single year where our school year wasn’t extended at least a week because of snow days.

Although the danger of such a strong storm, especially to people who were caught out driving or outdoors in it, are great, the plains need the moisture. The more snow they get this winter, the better. Especially if they have a slow warming in the spring and all that water doesn’t end up in the Mississippi or the Red River as a massive flood. Got to recharge that aquifer.

Early storms like this can be gruesome. Trees that haven’t lost their leaves will break under the weight of snow build up on branches that hold the snow instead of letting it slide off. Wildlife might not have finished their migrations to winter quarters, so you’ll see some die-offs of geese, ducks, deer, antelope, and other animals. People who tried to drive through the snow are already stuck on highways waiting for help. Here’s hoping it gets to them in time.

I’ve been in strong storms like this, and it’s no fun. I remember being sent home from school early when I was in the 4th or 5th grade because of an approaching storm, and having to carry/drag my brother from snow drift to snow drift and tree to tree through winds so strong we had to crawl under them. Not sure what my teachers were thinking by letting us walk home, but we’re lucky the only thing we got was frost-nipped ears and noses.

And losing your power in a storm like this can be a killer. For some reason, one of the houses we grew up in had electric heat, but a gas stove. If the electricity cut out, I would have to turn on all 4 burners and the oven, which kept the kitchen at least warm. Not fun, not fun at all.

Cattle always end up having problems with such strong early storms. Come the spring, if this storm is the beginning of true winter, a lot of farmers are going to find some of their cows frozen standing up in some low spot in their pasture. Cows tend to bunch up for warmth when they’re caught out in the open in a snow storm, and the herd will head to low ground to get out of the wind. Eventually, they’ll freeze to death and get buried by drifting snow, and in April the whole herd will be uncovered as the snow melts. Not a pretty picture.

So, to my family and friends still living in the Great White North, stay warm, stay together, and stay safe. Remember, 30 below keeps the rif-raf out, and only the best come north.

Last night, I fell asleep too early to hear the speeches, but the results were waiting for me this morning.

Barack Obama will be the 44th president of the United States in January.

While I don’t agree with some of the tactics he and John McCain used in their campaigns, and I really don’t like some of the reports of fraud and intimidation I’ve heard, the election seems to have been relatively clean overall.

I’m not going to congratulate Obama. He’s signed up for a tough, thankless job that will only get worse as he goes along. I hope he has more up his sleeve than hope, because he’s going to need it. If he can manage to be a good president when 2012 rolls around, I’ll congratulate him then.

My opinion of the man hasn’t changed, but he has 4 years to convince me that his presidency wasn’t a mistake.

If more than a couple of the following things come true under his watch, then he’s failed:

1. A major terrorist attack occurs somewhere in the homeland, and he does not respond in kind to those who conducted the attack.
2. The economy continues to go into recession and stays anemic for more than a year.
3. Either Iraq or Afghanistan becomes a failed state again. He’s been handed a relatively finished product in Iraq, and he has to figure out what to do in Afghanistan.
4. The crime rate in our country continues to climb, and he does nothing to try to stop it.

Anyhoo, the next 4 years will tell us if all of the hype was deserved. I don’t care about his approval ratings, or whether or not he’s skewered by the press. I want to see results based on what I feel is important for the country as a whole and me as an individual.

I may not respect the man, but I do respect the office he will be holding. For the sake of the country, I hope he exceeds my expectations and earns my respect.

LiveScience is reporting on a fungus that has been discovered in the rain forest that turns cellulose directly into fuel.

Use of high-sugar food crops for fuel helps to drive up prices and clamp down on the amount of food on the market. If we could make fuel from agricultural waste such as stalks and sawdust, then we’d be a lot closer to energy independence without hurting the food supply.

Then the corn could be used for the correct product, instead of fuel.

On November 4, 1979, the American Embassy in Tehran was violated by a controlled mob. This was no spontaneous escalation of a demonstration into an international incident. It was planned and approved by members of the Iranian revolutionary movement.

This deliberate, premeditated attack on American sovereignty was used to humiliate our country for 444 days. The reason the Iranians felt they could, and indeed did, get away with this was because we had the weakest excuse for a president we will ever see in the person of one James Carter. This weak willed individual allowed that 3rd world sh**hole to drag us around by the nose for over a year.

A man or woman that deserved their office would have turned Iran’s oil and agricultural industries into smoking holes that glowed in the dark for about a century and a half. The cost to the world economy would have been worth it to see the rest of the cave dwellers in the world learn that to mess with us is to invite annihilation.

Another solution would have been for the CIA to seize every single known relative of the Iranian revolutionary movement’s leadership we could find and offer to exchange them for our people and the heads of the people who violated our embassy.

Instead we got to watch on the evening news night after night as American diplomats were paraded before the cameras. We also got to listen to Carter bleat on about how he was still trying to get the hostages released peacefully.

Hopefully we never have to go through something like that again. And if we do, I pray that we have a real leader in the Oval Office instead of some blithering idiot who should have stayed on his peanut farm.

This election finally starts to end tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I don’t care if you’re in labor. Get out of bed and vote.

Take a deep breath, folks, it’s almost over.