Preparation

The Mister just took off with the Senior Dogs to drop them at their Bed and Breakfast for the weekend.

So Jack and I are left to round up the food portion of this outing. Normally, I wouldn't be able to keep him out of the cooler and the dry goods box. But since the other two got to wear leashes and disappear, he's very concerned, and is pacing around the house whining.

Yes, Jack. Daddy took Sparky and Casey and left us here forever. [roll eyes]

If only we could communicate with them for just a couple of minutes...

Listen, boy. They're going to Dog Camp, and you get to go camping. So just chill out, mmmmkay?

Routine maintenance

I tried to think of a dog-related title, but all of them involved butt-licking. Since this is one of those updating-the-blogroll posts, I thought it would rude to associate our blog friends with the licking of butts.

Which I have entirely managed to do now, so I think I'll just get down to business.

I was inspired to do a little updating when I found out that Rustmeister, who tends to come around when we're talking about things-that-go-bang, has a new place. Rustermeister's Alehouse, open for business!

We love Morning Glory around here. She's a supporter of our fine warriors downrange - as she should be, as her daughter is among them. Go, visit, thank her for raising a Soldier!

Holly's Histrionics...is almost too eclectic to blurb here. Suffice it to say she's very clever, a fellow North Texan, and not shy about pointing it out when she notices insanity in the world around us.

My Own Woman strikes a chord with me - she's a nurse (and I grew up surrounded by those) who is, like the rest of it, looking for the meaning of it all. She's aided in that search by a pair of Yorkies, so we know she's a patient and tolerant soul.

For all of your totally gratuitous meat pics, and fabulous still lifes of Koran abuse, drop on over to Horseshoes and Hand Grenades. I like Daddyquatro's sense of humor.

That's going to have to do it for the evening. A little blog maintenance is better than none.

Now, if I could just bring myself to do some Workspace Maintenance...



Yes, that is the most horrifying thing you've ever seen. And yes, that minty 3 Musketeers bar is fabulous.

Well, it's that time again

It's Friday night. Thanks to my Evil Corporate Masters, I have a four-day weekend.

Hey - you've all been great employees, so we're going to close on Christmas and New Year's Eve!

Awesome! Hey - are we getting paid?

No, you have to use PTO. Unless you haven't been here a year, in which case you have PTO but aren't allowed to use it!

Gee, thanks for the short holiday paycheck!

Anyway, I'd rather have time than money (although the mortgage people don't see it that way), so we're taking advantage of the time off and we're going camping.

(Yes, we used to go hunting. But we suck and the animals are all hiding, so now we call it camping.)

The Senior Dogs have reservations at some canine bed and breakfast, and Puptard is coming with us. Tomorrow is packing day, tonight is sitting around drinking coffee and eating leftover Christmas candy.

Today's news

The assassination of Pakistans' once-and-perhaps-future prime minister Benazir Bhutto is a dark thing.

It is a sad thing - her candidacy and the support for it hinted at progress in Pakistan. The country could define "fragmented," but there was real support, groundswell support, for a woman of education and prestige to help push all of Pakistan further into the modern era and onto the world economic stage.

There are forces of darkness in Pakistan - it's where the Taliban came from. The area called Waziristan - you'll find it labeled "Northwest Tribal Area - Ungoverned" on many maps - is probably where Bin Laden lurks, and it's been no-man's land for hundreds, if not thousands of years.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and the "dictatorship" of Pervez Musharraf is not a sure thing - he walks a fine line to maintain control of a military and security service with Taliban sympathizers in its ranks.

It is a country vital not only for its support of our country's agenda in the region, but the security of which is vital to the safety of the world.

It will be touch-and-go for some time there. It will be a challenge to read between the wallowing, wailing lines of the media to try to see what is really happening there, but I think it's worth paying attention to.

Any developments there could also, incidentally, make the discussions among all our aspiring commanders-in-chief very interesting.

New rifle thoughts

I've done a bit of poking around to figure this out. I have an FEG SA2000-M rifle. These are, it seems, a Hungarian rifle imported during the Bad Old Days of the AWB, and were manufactured (or at least heavily modified) specifically for US sale.


(image swiped from the highly informational folks at The Guns Network)

Therefore, they have the dubious distinction of having been somehow modified to accept only a proprietary 10-round magazine.

This is, of course, not necessarily a positive thing. Other than that, what little information I have found seems to indicate they are, in general, a good, servicable rifle.

It appears there is a conversion option, but information is scanty as to whether this is one of the easiest things in the world or a very difficult one requiring talent and specialized equipment.

For the time being, I think I'll let that ride. I've ordered a couple spare 10-rounders, and I think that will be entirely sufficient for my needs. I do reserve the right, if I eventually decide it's necessary, to get down with my bad pseudo-machinist self and start making modifications.

But I am thinking of some slightly more traditional wood furniture for it to wear. Hmmm...

Fair play

So. It comes to our attention that Mike Huckabee went hunting. It appears he may even have been successful.

Huckabee's team brought back three pheasants — one of which the candidate claimed he personally shot — and promised they'd be "cleaned and eaten."

This is all fine and good and pretty much par for the course. What caught my eye was the picture. It's a still from the beginning of the CNN video. Observe (the still, that is).



Now, there was a big brouhaha over an distinctly unflattering picture of the junior Senator from New York recently.



I found that whole shriekfest tacky in the extreme, and it one of the few times I've been tempted to shoot the bird to the whole Sexist World Intent on Oppressing the Sisterhood, and get behind Hillary.

However, I think I shall simply call for justice and equal time. The Huckabee hunting photo makes a fairly handsome man look like...well, the punchlines write themselves. But I think we must, in the interest of the all important fairness, make fun of it.



In this picture, Mr. Huckabee looks like a gap-toothed, double-negative employing, stained-tanktop-wearing yahoo.

So there.

For the first gift of Christmas

my true love gave to me...

A nice snuggly bathrobe.

And for the second gift of Christmas, my Yorkie gave the me...

this slightly disturbing package.



That's right, folks - gifts are here often go BOOM.



That would be a Hungarian AK. Someone (and I do have my suspicions that it's not Sparky) decided that the gap in my arms collection was too large.

So now I have something totally new to learn about. Which is cool.

And the Mister?

Santa brought him some sort of integrated taillight thingamabob for his motorcycle, among the usual assortment of clothes.

And socks. Socks were big this year.

Santa Paws was here!

I am not kidding when I tell you that I had to drag Casey back to bed at 0553, because she heard the Fat Man in the Red Suit and wanted to see what he'd left.

It turned out she was right to be excited.



Santa had apparently also heard about Sparky's toad issue, and brought him an amphibian he could handle.



And since this is, we believe, Jack's first Christmas, there were a couple of things he wasn't aware of. Including the fact that although Santa puts things in his stocking, those items are still in their original wrappers.



Because the bones ARE better if you take the plastic off.

Santa Paws is Coming To Town

And one of us is soooo excited....



(yes, the scale is all weird in that one, but is that an impressive display of canine acrobatics or what?)