Yipee!

Look what's coming to Bad Dog Central!!!



(that'd be the M1 carbine)

Monday, by 1030. I think perhaps I shall get up with the Mister and sit in a lawn chair in the front yard, drinking coffee and waiting on the Big White Truck of Joy.

I say again...

I knew this town was evil when I was there.

BAGHDAD – Coalition forces captured a key suspected Special Groups financier May 28 in Mahmudiyah, about 15 km south of Baghdad.

Intelligence sources led Coalition forces to the residence of the individual believed to be a key Special Groups financier. He is suspected to be the primary financier between Iranian intelligence elements and Special Groups criminals in Mahmudiyah and southern Baghdad and was reportedly distributing funds to weapons smugglers supplying criminals in those areas.

Every so often some little piece of info will trickle out that makes me really happy to have gotten out of there in one piece.

I do remember a few good guys down there - hopefully a few will still be around once all the rats have been rooted out. The region from Mahmudiyah west to the Euphrates is the last thing you'd expect to see in Iraq - green and fertile farmland. It would be nice to see that producing for the whole of Iraq, and not merely serving as tall grass for evil bastards to lurk in.

Hovering ain't natural

and that has bene proved yet again by a helicopter crash on a hospital roof.

Fortunately, it appears from local news reports that there were no deaths, and only minor injuries for the two folks onboard during the training evolution.

I love a good helicopter ride, but they do seem a little bit complicated and prone to fall out of the sky.

This caught my eye because it was in downtown Grand Rapids. Fortunately, not at the hospital where Mom works in the emergency room, however.

Her hospital is getting the overflow. Heh. She's got a couple of days off, so I know one ER nurse who is most likely not answering her phone today.

WTF is THIS???

Calling all my people out there who might know anything about Texas lawn pestilence! I noticed this...weird crap this morning.



I fear a fungus. It looks like...ash or something similar. And there are several spots of it around the front. Just the front, of course. Not the back or the sides where we have some sort of "undesirable" (but much more hardy) grass.



Any ideas out there? What might it be? What will it do? Should I just treat the entire front lawn with diesel fuel now, burn it to the dirt and lay down astroturf?

Cheese for morons

I loves me some cheese, so I picked up a package of pre-sliced swiss at the store the other day.



This was pretty good cheese. Nice flavor, nice texture. A great sitting-around-munching-on-cheese choice. I was doing just that when I flipped the package over and perused the text on the back.

At which point I realized that apparently, some people need serious instructions to execute even the simplest tasks. Check this out, for those of us who cannot figure out how to open a package of cheese...



I was going to comment on the number of non-english speakers who might still struggle through this process, due to the one-language instructions, but then I realized that even folks who speak strange sub-Saharan dialects could probably work from the pictures.

It was nice to know that the good folks at Kroger are committed to helping even the very confused access cheese. But what about post-access? What if you used the pictures, got the cheese open, ate some, and then became confused?

What of this extra cheese, you might wonder?

Relax. Kroger got you covered, with a little block of helpful text I like to call "concept of bag."



I think that's readable, but if it's not, here you go:

This recloseale package is a convenient way to store unused cheese. For best quality keep refrigerated and use within 3 to 5 days after opening.

This is good info, because I cannot count the times I have dumped unused cheese into the dryer, left it there for a week, then been disappointed in the quality when I wanted to finish it off.

Plotting...

For the week ahead. If I was a better adult, I'd have this figured out so that the kids did all the housework while I hung out at the range. In fact, a couple of years ago, I could have gotten away with that. Now, though, they're smarter, and they'll probably catch me sneaking out the door with my Black Bag O' Joy.

Hmmm....

In other news, we have business days again, so I'm back to constantly checking to see if the CMP rifle has shipped.

Memorial Day

We'll be cooking out in the backyard with the kids and the dogs. I hope all of you are doing something similar.

This day is about the ones who didn't make it back, but it has always seemed to me that they wouldn't begrudge us spending it enjoying our friends and family.

But do think of them. Remember them.

MAJ Gregory J. Fester
SPC Michael J. Stokely
SGT Paul A. Saylor
SPC Joshua P. Dingler
SGT Thomas J. Strickland
SFC Class Lawrence E. Morrison
SSG George R. Draughn Jr.
SFC Robert L. Hollar Jr.
SSG Jason A. Fegler
SPC Joshua J. Munger
SPC Benjamin A. Smith
SGT Regina C. Reali
SPC Cheyenne C. Willey
1LT Benjamin T. Britt
SPC William Lopez-Feliciano
SGT Kenith Casica
SSG Travis L. Nelson
SGT Matthew D. Hunter
1LT Garrison C. Avery
SPC Marlon A. Bustamante
SPC Anthony C. Owens
PFC Caesar S. Viglienzone
SPC Andrew K. Waits
CPT Shane R. Mahaffee
1SG Carlos N. Saenz
SPC Teodoro Torres
SGT Nathan J. Vacho