Friday night at Bad Dog Central

The kids left today. Mr. Abby took them to the airport, where they had to check in at 0600. Reverse planning lead to a 0420 wake up. Ick. After they left, I went back to bed for a couple of hours. That leaves us now with him knocked out in bed and me puttering around with the dogs.

I'd like to throw out there that because there are no short people in my house anymore, I am shirtless and the TV is off.

Jack recently found a stick in the yard. Actually, it looks like a one-by two stake about 16 inches long. He likes it. It's his new toy. He carries it, rolls with it, chews on it, and just generally thinks it's about the coolest thing on dry land.

(please spare me the horror stories about dogs and splinters - I know. But it's a big mean scary world out there, and much as I do not require children to wear elbow pads to walk on sidewalks, I do not take sticks away from dogs)

Anyway. Because they were alone today for the first time in weeks, I let him bring the stick in the house this morning in the vague hope it would keep him from chewing things up. This failed miserably (one bamboo rug, one megapack of pipe cleaners and two boxes of .223 ammo), but that's not the point of the story.

While I was out having a smoke, Casey apparently decided it was about time she reasserted her Alpha Canine status. I walked back in from the garage to find both big dogs lying in the entryway. She had one front paw on his stick, casually, and he was staring at it like a starving guy eyeballing a pork chop.

She just walked through the house like a queen. Carrying the stick. He was inches behind her. Then she picked a fleece dog bed (yes, there are two in the living room, and there are two in the bedroom), flopped down, and proceeded to gnaw loudly on the stick. While he watched, miserable.

Heh. You go, old dog.

Minneapolis

A bridge in a river reminds you that things can be pretty random.

I drove over that bridge daily for a couple of years, and lived about two miles from it for another. Minneapolis was home, where we lived and worked, from 2001-2004. In a lot of ways, it's still "home." We were living in Minneapolis when we got married, we bought our first house just north of the cities.

We still have friends there, and I hope the ones we haven't heard from were somewhere else yesterday afternoon.

Lazy

Enemy of productivity and fitness, thy name is ceiling fan.

I prefer to run in the mornings before work. It's not as hot, and I don't have a gut full of coffee and a day's worth of smokes clinging to my lungs. However...the new bedroom has a ceiling fan. And when my alarm goes off at 0710... You cannot beat lying around half-asleep and tapping the snooze button with a good ceiling fan going. It's nice.

[sigh]

It's also going to have me out pounding the pavement when I get home from work. Which will suck. But that 40 minutes of lying under the ceiling fan and dozing was worth it.

One more...

Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the new, improved, cancer-free, Abby's Mom.



She's the one in back.

The ugliest wallpaper in Texas

is GONE.

Gone gone gone.

Of course, now we've got the endlessly attractive bare drywall look going on. That's popular these days, y'know.



That's Casey, dreaming of a nice, neutral theme for the kitchen. Like, oh, I dunno...off-white paint.

Things that make you say "huh."

You come home from the Harry Potter movie, and find this:



Huh. I think Casey was trying to tie Jack up with the goal of dumping him in the pool. Or there was a home invader and our return interrupted binding-and-gagging.

"High-traffic areas"

The ones referenced in the post about the chore list? Well, it seems that Sparky in particular has taken to shitting...well, not in the grass. He likes to keep his feet dry and clean, so he prefers to stand on the pavers and shit right over the edge. Or to squat on the edge of the pool deck and shit in the crushed stone border.

[sigh]

It also doesn't help that Casey is the poopingest dog I have ever encountered (must be how she eats like a horse and keeps the lean figure), and thus always races three feet past the patio and dumps a steaming heap in the yard.

My Mom is waaaay into dogs (I come by this naturally), but I still didn't want her to encounter a canine landmine within her first ten minutes here. I made that clear to the kids - "Hey, minute 16, she steps in dog crap, that's cool. But not the first ten minutes."

Of course, now she's been here a few hours, and I think she had to leave her shoes out back. Oh well - one hangs out at Bad Dog Central at one's own peril.

That's better

Mom is on deck and the cleaning frenzy has officially ended. I didn't have to beat any children - they followed simple instructions to a "T."

Mom looks good - which is especially wonderful since I haven't seen her since Christmas, when she was just getting into the chemo and things were rough. Now she's got hair, and looks just plain better - kinda the way you'd expect someone to look like when chemo is in the rearview and the oncologist says things look clear.

That's pretty freakin' awesome.

This part is always an adventure

I'm not much of a housekeeper. Ok, actually I suck. And, fortunately, I have a mother who isn't overly judgemental. But I don't know if there's a woman in America who doesn't feel the need to clean, and a certain domestic fear, when her mother is enroute.

So that is what we've been doing. Every guest we host here has been an excuse for another major push toward "moved in." I think we finally got the last box out of the house about an hour ago.

Of course, with the kids and the Bad Dogs home all day, there can be no finishing touches until tomorrow afternoon. This necessitates a list for the chilluns.



Mr. Abby will pick Mom up from the airport tomorrow, and I will try to convince my Evil Corporate Masters to cut me loose an hour or so early.

ugh...

Sorry, y'all. We're not a year old here yet, so you all haven't been through this part of the summer with me yet. We're now at the point where I haven't really watched the news in weeks. Unless I catch something on my brief morning web surf, I have no idea what's going on in the world.

They say there was some sort of debate last night - I didn't watch it. The candidates all make my eyes bleed, and there's more than a year left until they go away. For once I didn't mind the cartoons.

There's also apparently some article in the New Republic about the faceless hive mind that is The Troops, and rumor has it the article would make my blood boil. I thought about reading it, but realized TNR is a subscription website and I don't give enough of a shit about reading some numbnuts' take on the world to out and buy the current magazine. I'd rather give my money to Home Despot or an ammo company.

I'll have something for y'all eventually, I swear. Until then, I'm just going to be running in the morning, working in the daytime and hiding from the cartoon network in the evening.

Oh yeah - and cleaning. 'Cause Mom is coming to town Thursday night. Ugly wallpaper, your days are numbered.

I need a helmet

I drink coffee all day, so I was in the restroom at work (again). I was tucking my shirt in and glanced down.

Something didn’t look right with my dark green T-shirt. I paused, mid-tuck. Huh – thought I – is this on inside out?

Why, yes. Yes, it was.

This particular shirt has those semi-pronounced seams and no tag, so there’s really not much difference. And the people I work with are…less than observant.

But I had a cup of coffee and a couple of cigarettes with the Mister this morning before I left. I would have expected better.

Paying the piper

Abby's Mom is coming to town at the end of this next week. And Abby's Evil Corporate Masters were starting to look as though they thought working on a Saturday might be a Good Thing.

Better to be in control of one's own destiny, so I volunteered to work this Saturday instead of waiting to be volunteered to work next Saturday. This netted me last Monday off, but now I have to jump in the shower so I can go work noon-til-2100.

Ick.

Upside? Gets me out of the house, bails me out of home improvement and provides an excuse to avoid a new-guy type social function the Mister is participating in. Downside? Another day spent indoors behind a desk doing nothing much even remotely important.

Then again, the place I work does not have the constant, neverending, incessant, fingernails-on-chalkboard background soundtrack of shitful cartoons 24/7. Silver linings, and all that. I best go wash my filth so I can leave...

Speaking of T-shirts...

This morning, Mr. Abby is wandering around in one I bought him half-in-jest a few years ago.

It's an awful turquoise blue and says in big white lettters across the front, "Feminist Chicks Dig Me."

I don't self-identify as a feminist (or much of anything else, for that matter), but the poor guy definitely didn't marry what would probably be considered a conventional woman.

Mostly, though, it's just fun to watch people take a second look on the rare occasion he wears it in public. Mr. Abby doesn't look like the sort of who feminist chicks would dig, it seems.

Team player

I got a call from one of my coworkers this morning as I was wandering around sweating after my run.

"Try to wear red today!" she reminded me.

[sigh]

Somehow, the place where I work has developed some sort of collective "habit" of wearing red shirts on Friday as a visible demonstration of our support for our troops.

Can we just stipulate that the Bad Dog household, and Abby specifically, has got our troops' collective back? Love 'em. Been 'em. Sleep with one of them on a nightly basis. Troop support - covered.

But! I strive to be On The Team, and certainly want to encourage those who demonstrate their support in some of these more esoteric ways to go ahead and do so - hey - it's better than ignoring our troops.

So off I went to closet. Neither Mr. Abby nor I wear a lot of red. I had a Santa hat, a leather motorcycle suit, and a shirt depicting the famous work of art Dogs Playing Poker.

After much searching, I found an atrocious old red Marine Corps recruiting T-shirt. With weird sleeves. But hey - I'm on the team.

Hatin'

I'm having a cranky evening. I could kick puppies. But I won't.

In the interest of not sowing hate and rage around the internet, I will share, instead of my rage, a picture of what I ran across this morning when, as I was wandering around with my coffee, I noticed I had only one dog.

Apparently, they believe that Girl Child's futon is just perfect for group sleeping.



A smarter woman than I would have stolen a bed dog and returned to the rack. Alas, I didn't. But to spare y'all any more griping, I shall go now.

Oh! In good news, my Texas DL did arrive today. Crappy picture (although not the worst ever, by a long shot), and I think it's the flimsiest driver license I've ever had. Old Lone Star State ain't wasting any taxpayer money on those, let me tell you.

Okay - one more gratuitous black dog pic. He's trying wearing his ear in the European style.

Sanity Check (new posts below this one)

I'd become utterly certain that some major manufacturer either is, or recently was, making a lever gun in .30 carbine. Am I insane?

I tried to price check this mystery rifle (which I think I thought Marlin made in a 336-style) tonight, and it appears I may have dreamed it up. I found Marlin's model 62, but that's not what I was thinking of.

Can anybody help me out, or am I just nuts?

I'm going to leave this on top for a while to give total strangers the greatest possible chance of straightening me out.

Family Values, Bad Dog Style

"Hey, honey," I said. "Where are you taking the boys? We're eating soon."

"We're going to go throw knives in the back yard."



Oooookay, then. Girl child consented to be dragged out to throw one knife, which she found anticlimactic. I took a smoke break and stood on the back patio and watched (you cannot beat this for cheap entertainment).

"Hey, Abby!" they chirped. "Do you want to throw a knife?"

"Nah, that's cool, guys. If I want to put holes in cardboard, I have my ways."

Knife-throwing as quality father-son time? Hey, you take it where you can get it these days, I think.

Finally! An answer

Many of us gun people run into folks who ask tiresome questions like, "why do you need all those guns?"

Most of us are, in truth, kinda lost with this one. Really, there's a basic idea that about four firearms ought to pretty much cover every real need (your shotgun, your centerfire rifle, your sidearm, and your .22).

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have here the perfect answer.

Abby, they can ask, why do you need all those guns?



Because we're short, and bringing the ladder in from the garage to open a vent is a pain in the ass, that's why.

Feel free to use this one in your own life.

And in one, final burst of usefulness...

we did a Home Improvement Project (we're really not this productive, usually, but Mr. Abby checks in at the New Duty Station tomorrow, so we thought we should knock this one out).

There was a path from the back patio to the pool, but it consisted of those 12-by-8 thin concrete rectangles. And it was apparently laid out by Big People, so everyone in our household had to leap from rectangle to rectangle. Funny, perhaps. Convenient, not so much.

So we wandered down to Home Despot and had a pallet of things loaded in the truck (props to the Despot - like the one in Tampa, the one here provided a 10% military discount). Then the fun began.

We removed the stupid rectangles, laid out the pavers, wetted the ground, picked a trench along each side, removed the pavers (setting one of them in a steaming pile of dog poo, which made for much fun when we picked it up again), picked the entire area, removed the dirt and grass, leveled the dirt, scraped the dirt, tamped the dirt, added sand, leveled the sand, scraped the sand, tamped the sand, laid in the pavers, leveled the pavers, added more sand, spread out the sand, and then went out for tacos.

That last part is vital.

And now we have...a path. We'll give it a few days and see how the sand settles. Ideally, the pavers will stick up maybe half an inch. It's flush now.



The pavers are heavy little suckers, too. Not so bad to carry, but scooting them around on the base layer of sand was tiresome.

The kids were even forced into productivity, carting the unwanted dirt away in the Rubbermaid containers you see in the background. Somewhere in the last five years, we lost track of our wheelbarrow. Which is a pity, because although other things can be made to work, there's really no substitute for a wheelbarrow.

So, as part of my ongoing effort to tell you which home improvement project you might want to undertake yourself, I give pavers a "lots of work, but very do-able." As opposed to tiling large rooms, which is rated, "highly hazardous to a happy marriage." Or cutting and installing baseboards, rated, "super easy if you have the right saw. Goddam impossible if you don't."

We're here to help, really.

Notes from a range trip

1 - WalMart still rocks on ammo prices, but availability was limited. However, y'all Texans have something called "Academy," and that's pretty cool. I got bent over on the soft point .30 carbine (but we knew that was coming). I got some cheap SP 55 grain 5.56 cheap, though. That was a winner.

2 - Alpine shooting range. I'd heard some grumbling around the internet that I seem to recall indicating the place sucked, but I thought it was fine. Not fabulous, but fine. The range officers were non-annoying, and it wasn't crowded. My only complaint - I was shooting with kids (of limited skill) and had a new gun, so I'd have appreciated a 25-yard line.

3 - I didn't pay any extra, and I didn't send along a 12-pack, but the Civilian Marksmanship Program sent me a carbine that shoots. I did a fast cleaning on all the metal bits, and put the M1 stock on after a couple of (far too) quick coats of BLO. My stripping job was good, but I'm going to need to use a little steel wool and more (slowly applied) BLO to make up for shoving it in a case tackey.

3b - I mean, it really shoots. I fired ten rounds and made some sight adjustments (all grouping nicely, although vertically, since I was dropping the sights), then Mr. Abby whined his way onto the bench. He fired five rounds that one could have covered with a quarter (I should have saved that target) just a shade to the right of the bull. It was 50 yards and off the bench and he's a good shooter, so I'm more impressed with the rifle than the shooting. But I'm happy with it.

4 - If you've been letting the kids shoot seven or ten yards with pistols, then suddenly all that's available is 25, it's a little rough on them. Particularly when they're out of practice. I'll have to find somewhere indoors with adjustable lanes to rebuild their militant self-esteems.