More gun discussion

Barney brought up a good point in the comments on my "which pistol" post below. The Pro Carry does "feature" a full-length guide rod and a "bushingless" bull barrel.



A full-size 1911 with a GI (that is, partial) length guide rod takes about five seconds to field strip (and that's if you allow a little time for fumbling). The only tool I use is a plastic bushing wrench, and that's on one pistol with a tight bushing. It's not necessary, but it does save some time wrestling that little piece off.



It's that little silver-colored bit under the right end of the spring that we're talking about - that's the guide rod. It fits into that end of the spring, which sits under the barrel. The other end of the spring goes into the plug (which you can see under the left end of the spring). This is a "GI-length" guide rod setup, and the entire thing rides under the barrel, and the plug is held in place by the bushing (the black thing between the guide rod and the plug, below the spring).

Cosmetically, when it's assembled and the slide is locked to the rear, you can see the difference top image in that the guide rod does not protrude.



I've read several exhaustive discussions on the topic - the full-length guide rod requires a tool for assembly and disassemly, and that might be evil. It may be more prone to becoming screwed-up (if something full length bends, even a ilttle, the whole mechanism will be off).

However, that's really kinda irrelevant. If one wants an off-the-shelf lightweight 4-inch 1911, it's going to come with a full-length guide rod. One has some options, from several good names, if it's a major hangup.

I'm over it, though. I'll have a gunshop guy (assuming I can find a shop not populated by the dreaded Evil Gunshop Trolls) demonstrate the takedown, and if it's not rocket science, I'll work with it.

Incidentally, I assume a similar tool requirement for the Walther I'm contemplating. It seems to be of the same design as the P22, and there's nothing painless about field stripping that. Well, the stripping is painless, but the reassembly requires one to curse like a sailor.

Decisions

There is Mildly Unexpected Money inbound, and after the Priorities, I have some to play with.

This, of course, means a New Firearm.

The preliminary decision process was easy. I thought about another Garand, but I'm still looking for a place that will let me shoot FMJ and which has a big/long range. So that was out. I thought about a nice little .270 and scope, but, life being what it is, there's going to be plenty of money between now and my next chance to do any open-country hunting. So that left a new pistol.

I am choosing between two. I have always like the feel of a lightened 4-inch 1911, and so I'm thinking about the Kimber Pro Carry.



I love my 1911s, and this is a very carry-friendly pistol. I don't trust the shorter models, and I don't need laser grips and all the other available insanity. I like these, and I know I'd shoot it.

The other option is the Walther P99 in 9mm. (sorry about the retail link, but Walter's website was being special)



I really like the ergonomics on the P22, and I think I'd love the 9. They make a .40, but I have no intention of adding another caliber to the stable. I find the "QA" trigger concept interesting. I may go to a nearby range and see if they have one to rent.

The decision is probably just going to come down to which one feels best in the hand. Both are attractive, and both would be used.

I love these dilemmas.

So there I was

sitting at my desk, pretending to work whilst my employer pretended to pay me. The gal who sits next to me had, it seems, brought Candy to Share.

(This is awesome. I love candy. Sometimes, when the Mister is out of town, I live on nothing but coffee and Sour Patch Kids.)

She offered me some "chocolate Skittles."

And I accepted because, hey - it's candy. Check this out.



Y'all may want to avoid these if they come your way. I received them on Thursday, worked Friday and Saturday, and the vast majority of them are still on my desk, in the bag.

Because really, "brownie batter," "chocolate pudding," and "caramel," are not meant to be Skittles flavors. They start out tasting like a cardboard box, and leave a slight aftertaste of what the manufacturer intended. Slight.

Not a good thing. Consider yourselves warned.

The manufacturer, incidentally, seemed to too ashamed to admit to these. I found a review of them here.

Yikes!

Stupid Travid McGee novels...I've read them all three times or so and I still can get caught up and stay up way too late to finish one.

And now I've overslept. Off to the Salt Mine!

Valentine's Day

Has officially been declared a non-holiday here. The Mister is out of town and I have not felt overwhelmed by the urge to buy him pink heart-shaped motorcycle accessories anyway.

That's not to say I won't crack a bottle of wine and drink it with the dogs by candlelight this evening, though.

Cheerful news

I'd noted that some evil terrorist thug had run into some misfortune in Syria.

But I had to read through the story before I found the good part. It wasn't just your average run of the mill terrorist POS.

Western intelligence agencies long suspected Mughniyeh in the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, that killed 63 people. He also is suspected in the truck bombing that year of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, an attack that killed 241 people and preceded the U.S. military withdrawal from Lebanon

Oh, really? Killed a lot of Marines and Sailors that day.

From Military.com, we have this other juicy bit:

Mughniyeh was believed to have directed a group that held Westerners hostage in Lebanon. Among them was journalist Terry Anderson, a former Associated Press chief Middle East correspondent who was held captive for six years.

"I can't say I'm either surprised or sad," Andersen told the AP by phone from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, where he was sailing. "He was not a good man - certainly the primary actor in my kidnapping and many others," he added. "To hear that his career has finally ended is a good thing and it's appropriate that he goes up in a car bomb."

Terry Anderson was a Marine as well, incidentally. Mr. Mughniyeh apparently did not approve of God's Blessed Corps.



We know the Streets of Heaven are guarded by United States Marines, but I hope a couple of them were detailed to the gates of Hell to kick this fat fucker through. Good riddance.

Very nice

There are some good points to being an independent adult. Some even better points when you are such and your spouse is out of town.

Y'all know what I'm getting at, right?

Yup. Bacon for supper.



Bacon and mixed veggies and nothing else. That's a good thing. And I think I still have sufficient time to air out the house before the mister gets home.

[bummed]

I'm just going to bitch a little bit, 'cause that's where I'm at right now.

So the Mister is out of town, fixing problems in Houston. This leaves me at home with the dogs. One whom [cough black puppy cough] insists upon "acting out" when I'm on the phone by stealing shoes and racing through the house. The minute I hang up, he chills out and curls up for a nap.

Yesterday was my regularly scheduled Monday off, which meant I had to go back to work today. There's some sort of evil virus making its way through my workplace, which is probably linked to the fact that I work in an office full of sedentary people. Not that we have any choice about that, but the whole sitting at a desk thing is like having some sort of insect burrowing into one's ear all day long. Ugh. This is also my week to work Saturday, and that makes me so happy I could spit.

There are politics on TV. Mostly this is Barack Obama yapping about hope and destiny and some other shit that makes me think of an overwrought college freshman who's just taken his first drama class. Hillary was talking, too, but I lost interest and went out to smoke. I caught a little of John McCain, who I'm inclined to like, but who seems to irritate lots of Republicans by not being sufficiently Jesus-freaky/immigration-crazed/socially conservative.

God forbid the party that most of the country is pissed off at runs a candidate with some appeal to moderate America. That sounds like a terrible idea.

I probably should have watched the dog show instead. Then again, I'm just ornery enough this evening that I'd have ranted about that. It has happened before.

Alright. I'm off to bed before it starts to sound like a good idea to drink beer and buy firearms accessories online.

Driving with dog help

I had to zip over to my reserve unit today to do some stuff. Since Jack was being hysterical, I thought I'd take him along.

Now, if I could just convince him that I have my hand on the shifting lever because sometimes I need to move it, not to provide him with a place to rest his head.



[sigh]

It's fortunate he's cute, or, like his first owner, I could be tempted to leave him on the side of the highway.

T'was a fabulous day

to be home. And the weather was nice, too. Yes - I am rubbing it in a little for my northern readers.

(It is currently 1 degree F, with a windchill of -16, in Grand Rapids, Michigan)

In Fort Worth, however, it was around 70 today. Warm enough that when we took the Bad Dogs for a walk, there was panting.



And did I mention I wore shorts for this walk?



And a T-shirt?



I am not 100% in love with Texas, but when I'm walking dogs in shorts on the 10th of February, it's not all bad.

I'm going to go make up the guest room now, because that post may be just enough to push the Michigan crew over the edge and get them on planes.

It was fun

at Army school, but I'm glad to be home. I was promoted while deployed without the school, but successful completion was required if I wanted to keep my rank (which I do).

So off I went. I sat in some classes (which were less-than-exciting). Here's how one of my classmates felt about that.



I felt the same way. After a week of those classes, we trudged out to hang out in tents.



Fortunately, it was not a very long trudge. Then again, if it had been, I probably wouldn't have just dumped everything out of my duffel bag into my rucksack. The tents were pretty average.



The food, however... When I decided to take one for the team and claim the "tuna" MRE, I had no idea that it wouldn't suck.



How about that? Yeah, that's real, brand-name tuna. The mayo was normal, and the tortillas entirely edible. We postulated that perhaps the MRE manufacturers are being forced to consume their products now, which would explain the improvement. We've come a long was since the dreaded "four fingers of death" in my Baby Marine days.

And the cold should pass. Nothing that a few days of real sleep and warmth won't fix.

Home!

With a vicious little cold and a giant green bag of filthy laundry.

Out of pocket (New posts below)

I'm going to be out of the loop for a couple of weeks. I'll be back the second weekend in February.

Alas, there's no emergency need for an angry woman and a cranky old German Shepherd to fly to a foreign country and start quietly killing terrorists. I simply have to attend an Army thing at a location where, something tells me, there's not probably a lot of wireless internet access.

I'll toss up a post if I can, but I don't have high hopes there'll really be an opportunity.

You all stay safe, and those of you in primary states better not choose utter nutjob candidates in my absence.

Packed

I think. Maybe. I'm fairly sure.

If not, well, I hope I didn't forget anything real major, like, say, pants.

[pauses, opens duffle bag, digs to bottom and confirms presence of trousers. sighs in relief]

But there is one thing on the list I am not taking. Because they don't exist in our house and I could not find a suitable stand-in at WalMart.

Can you believe you can't get black shower shoes at WalMart? Hell, you can't even get hot pink shower shoes. You can get slippers that are shaped like shower shoes, but I don't think they'd work out well.

Anyway, I'm taking Teva sandals and, if there's no available post exchange, the world will just have to learn to cope.

But you know what is at WalMart? Check this out:



That's Wild Animal Crunch. I'm guessing it's throwing a few pennies per box to a worthy cause, but I think it's weird. Brings to mind crunchy little critter-based breakfast nuggets.

Wednesday

Traditionally a slow day at the office.

I made it out of bed and braved the chilliness to run this morning. But I'd like it noted for the record that it would have been a really nice day to stay in the rack.



Yeah, like that. Only with blankets.

Blah

Note to my Northern Readers: I am NOT complaining about January in Texas. It could be worse - I understand.

But...now is the time when I complain about January in Texas.

The cold isn't so bad, but because I'm in Texas, there seems to be a thought in the back of my mind that it shouldn't be cold at all. And y'all may remember me whining about the darkness when we did the time change. Well, it's still bumming me out. Dark in the morning, dark when I leave work (although there's starting to be a little light left in the sky).

So, yeah. Basically I'm just whining about winter. So let's take a little trip in our minds, shall we?

How about...the beach in April? With a black dog?



Yeah. That's nice.

It's almost tiki bar season again, and that's a good thing.

Oh geez...

Yes, the global economy had some sort of emotional breakdown that led our Federal Reserve Board to cut rates harder than they have in two decades.

We're in the middle of a truly fascinating presidential campaign that involves folks dropping out and other folks shrieking at each other.

We have a war - a couple of them, actually, going on.

And what's been at the top of the CNN and FoxNews pages all afternoon?

Yep. Heath Ledger is dead.

I actually rather liked Heath Ledger, and am one of the few red-blooded Americans who seem to admit to thinking Brokeback Mountain was a pretty good movie.

But come on.

I swear, sometimes our culture embarasses the heck out of me.

Not impressed yet

The stock market opened and, like a drunk getting out of a car after an iffy trip home from the bar, promptly went face down on the pavement.

I have two small retirement accounts, and about 35 years until I have any big plans for them, so I'm not going to hurl myself out a window (it would be anticlimactic anyway - we have a single-story).

I don't think this is the beginning of total social collapse, although I guess I could be wrong.

Probably not a valid reason to call in sick to work, anyway.

Given the wide-open presidential election and the increasingly divided outlook of Ameicans, together with the slow-mo implosion of our economy, I'm going to stay home today and bury ammo in back yard.

I've got just one comment

on tonight's Democratic debate in South Carolina.

This idea of taking all the "combat troops" out of Iraq scares the beejesus out of me.

From John Edwards:

And I have said in the first year that I am president, I will have all combat troops out of Iraq. All combat missions will end in Iraq, and there will be no permanent military bases in Iraq.

From Barack Obama:

...what I have said, and I've said repeatedly, is I want to be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in, but I want to make sure that we get all our combat troops out as quickly as we can safely. Now, the estimates are maybe that's two brigades per month. At that pace it would be some time in 2009 that we had our combat troops out, depending on whether Bush follows through on his commitment to draw down from the surge.

Both of these gentlemen are big on the idea of removing "combat troops." Neither of them are stupid, so that tells me they recognize that some troops will remain.

Just not combat ones.

Well, you know...from a personal perspective...I would really not prefer to be one of those non-combat troops wandering around Iraq when the combat ones go home.

I say this personally, with tongue in cheek, but think about it. Who on earth thinks that we should leave any sort of military presence in that country without a robust, viable and potent offensive force to protect that presence and its mission?

My personal image when I hear this is of a civil affairs team, in some tiny little town way out in the boondocks, counting how many houses have running water. And when something goes bad...although that team has some medium machine guns and is comprised of soldiers...it's not many people and the guns aren't very big.

When you're doing that kind of work, it's real nice to know there's a rifle company or a tank platoon close enough to come to the rescue.

But it's not about my anecdote, it's about reality. We do not leave an unspecified number of "non-combat troops" in a real dangerous country with some vague mission and bring all the gunslingers home. That's a recipe for disaster.

These gentlemen are either:
A - lying to pander to their base
B - fools

Mrs. Clinton weaseled hard on the question, but at least she didn't pick a theme that would baffle any thinking person.

From Hillary Clinton:

It is not going to be easy. Withdrawing troops is dangerous. That's why I've been working to make sure that we knew all of the various steps we would have to take, because it's not just bringing our troops and equipment home. We have more than 100,000 civilians there, working for the embassy, working for businesses, working for charities.

All quotes lifted from the second page of the CNN transcript, about three quarters of the way down. Love her or hate her, I think she "gets" the situation as it really is.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not saying a whole lot about this contest, but I am going to go ahead and point it out when potential commanders in chief says things that could put my comrades' butts in a sling.

Sundays

are meant for football and couch naps, and that pretty much describes my day.

I grew up in Michigan, then lived in Minnesota for a few years after the Marine Corps. That Minnesota cold is serious cold. Watching this Packers game...it was enough to make me go put on a sweater. I remember that it felt as though the wind just picked up speed coming across the Dakotas. In Green Bay, it's had an extra state to build up even more momentum. [shivers]

We've kicked off Operation Fish Oil here with the dogs. Casey's got the real problem skin, but everybody could use extra it, so we're putting two 1200mg capusules in with the big dogs' suppers. Sparky gets one.

Except that these fish oil capsules are so yummy that Sparky was busted stealing them from the big dog dishes (he's allowed in the laundry room while we're putting out dog meals).

I hope this stuff works, because it sure makes for even worse dog breath.

Free Money!

Today's BIG NEWS is El Presidente's announcement of a plan that is most likely going to lead to FREE MONEY FROM UNCLE SUGAR!!!

Well, "free" in the sense of first the guvmint took it, then they decided to give it back. 'Cause apparently, if they take our money, we can't spend it, and us not spending money leads to people not having jobs.

I'm no economist, but if the fate of our nation depends on all the taxpayers who make less than $85,000 a year buying consumer electronics in a brief frenzy, then we are in a world of shit.

This is, of course, all speculation. But it's a pretty hard-core speculation party. CNN's front page has two stories "above the fold" on the subject, the boys on The High Road are well into the new gun vs. crates of ammo debates...

Here in the Bad Dog household, we know that Uncle giveth, and Uncle taketh away, and he can promise almost anything, but until the check is signed and on the kitchen counter...we're not ordering $1,600 in squeaker toys just yet.

(although our canine financial advisors are telling us that prices on squeaker toys are going up, and we should buy 'em cheap and stack 'em deep while we can)



I dunno about all that. Other canine suggestions for surprise checks include $1,600 worth of vanilla pudding.



Ugh. That would be a lot of pudding.

So there I was

with a wet beret on my head, listening to my elderly dog gnaw on a giant beef knuckle. And I do mean gnaw. And gnaw and gnaw and gnaw.

No Individual Walks tonight - I was lazy and went to Kroger for grapefruit and pudding instead. I was briefly overwhelmed by guilt, but I've moved beyond it. Okay - the guilt actually forced me to share a big pan of little smoked breakfast sausages with them, but then I moved beyond it.

Speaking of sausages, I cooked them in the kitchen. And every time I walked into the kitchen, I was encountering a very odd smell. Bad veggies, I thought. But where? Given the canine situation here, we don't keep a whole lot of food on the counters.

I'm not much of a housekeeper, but I do pay enough attention that I'd be aware if there was a rotting potato on the floor. And it wasn't the dishwasher. I was perplexed. And a wee bit disgusted. The only object in the general stench vicinity is a wicker basket full of garlic.

It sure doesn't seem to go bad in the open air. But the smell seemed to be coming from that area. So I looked...and I moved some garlic...

Do you know that if you buy limes for a cocktail party in the late summer, then bury five of them under garlic in a wicker basket, they'll pretty much petrify? But even if they're petrified, after several months they do grow a bit of an odor...

Sorry, no pics.

So the limes are in the trash, and I feel as if I've accomplished something. We'll call that a win for today.

Bathroom Madness

Mister Abby is out of town (in the military sense) so I am here alone. This means, of course, that the household is on a heightened state of alert. All doors are secured, the mines in the yard are armed at all times, and I'm particularly alert to out-of-the-ordinary sounds.

I was perched here in the kitchen after we did the Evening Walks (yes, plural - each dog got their Very Own Walk tonight). Then...what did I hear?

Not so much a "house-settling" type of noise. It was more of "physical contact with interior wall" sort of noise.

(Yes, I had a brief flashback to the Last Days in Tampa)

After I realized it was pretty unlikely I had critters in the attic, I started inventory of the Bad Dogs. Sparky on the couch... Jack flopped in the entry... Where was Casey???

The sound came again and I realized it wasn't coming from the corner of the attic, but from the shared wall between the gun room and our master bathroom. I stepped quietly into our bedroom and peered through the bathroom.



Now picture a mildly guilty-looking German Shepherd in the middle of that scene.

You must understand, we've been blaming the TP fiascos on Jack for months. And it is annoying. Toilet paper gets expensive, but moreover, it's one of those things you adjust to consuming at a certain rate. And, at least for us, that rate is not supposed to be a 12-pack a week.

So we've taken to trying to remember to shut all the bathroom doors and keep spare rolls locked up more securely than loaded pistols. Blaming it on the puppy.

And it turns out she's been framing him. Now I have to wonder about everything else we've been blaming on him. Perhaps if we set up cameras we'd find out he's not the one getting up on the counter, and not the one who's taken to eating the occasional paperback.



What a Bad Old Dog.

Of course, she got spoken to. Not shouted at, and certainly not thumped. Age has its perks, even in the dog world.

And, as a note, that's the new Charmin Ultra Strong (which I didn't realize was a new product when I bought it - it was next to the bigger package of Charmin Ultra Soft). And it might be stronger than average toilet paper (it's certainly less soft than average). But it is not strong enough to hold up to G. Shep teeth.

EDIT: Okay, all of you who've been clicking on the top picture to see what scandalous magazines are in the Bad Dog Head...it's the Fall 2007 edition of the Garand Collectors Association magazine. Like I'd let a copy of Shaved Goats Quarterly appear in a blog photo...

Shameless Plug

Ladies and gentlemen...I have for you forbidden fruit. I have for you...something the San Francisco Film Commission would rather you not see.

Oh yes - you are intrigued, aren't you?

I won't hold out, I'll share this forbidden video with you. But first I recommend you gather your high-school age friends, children and associates around the screen.



Ha! Got 'em! Now that they've seen the super-groovy new Marine Corps commercial, there's no hope. Tomorrow they'll be at the recruiting station and in just a few short months they'll be referring to the bathroom as "the head" and opening the fridge to hunt for "chow."

It's actually a pretty nice spot. The Mister and I have gone back and forth to figure out what we think about the use of the Silent Drill Platoon for this spot - are they they stars? Shouldn't the Marine Corps be marketing the guys in the dust?

Then, for work-related reasons, he had to try to dig up the Marines who were in the commercial to find out if any of them were from certain media markets. No fewer than three of the guys in that TV spot are in Iraq now.

So yeah, they're shiny on the pretty TV ad, but they're the real Marine Corps.

Our Devil Dogs tails are wagging.

Edit to add: Oh, yeah. The Silent Drill Platoon is made up of grunts, and nuthin' but grunts. Learn more here.

Mitt

Seriously, isn't he just the Republican Party's answer to John Edwards? Great hair, nice smile, etc?

I get the appeal of most of these candidates, I think. Wouldn't vote for most of them if you jabbed me in eye with a sharp stick, but I like to think I understand how they might seem wonderful to a certain demographic.

But Mitt? In Michigan?

'If I am president, I will not rest until Michigan is back. Michigan can once again lead the world's automotive industry,' said Romney, 59, the former governor of Massachusetts who left Michigan decades ago for college. [emphasis added]

Apparently, he's going to singlehandedly bring back the good old days of the good wages and guaranteed job at the GM plant.

I love my home state, and the pages and pages of foreclosure notices in my county's weekly papers are heartbreaking, but that line is a load of crap. Those good old days are gone.

I have no idea how to fix the one-state recession that's been going on in Michigan for years, but I'm offended that this yahoo wandered around up there promising everything but a pony under the Christmas tree (and if this primary had happened three weeks ago, he'd probably have done that). Michigan's got real problems, not pass-through-and-smile-and-say-nice-things-at-the-carshow problems.

I'm going to chalk his win up as a hysterical show of hometown pride. Romney was born in Michigan, and the only president ever to come out of the state was actually never even on a national ticket, so we'll call it sentiment.

Also a pity that Michigan didn't get to hold a real Democratic primary. A big smack in the head with an ax handle to the DNC for that. Michigan's primaries are reasonably open and a full and open set of same-day primaries could have provided good information.

Michigan, WTF???

Is my home state, about to cast its lot with Mitt Romney?

With something like 2% of the vote in, the CNN crew is nearly peeing themselves in anticipation of getting to "project" ol' Mitt.

Jesus, Michiganders. It's been a long time since anyone has accused y'all of making wise long-term political choices, but come on....

Rantin' and Ravin'

Shortly before lunch, I had a guy pop up on my "problem screen," so to speak. My problem message went a little something like this:

Customer entered shipping address incorrectly. FedEx delivered package [12 days ago]. Customer has contacted FedEx and wants to know when we're going to reship his package. Please follow up.

Well...I did a little examining. Yes, indeed, Mr. Customer had typo'd his shipping address. It happens. Most of the time, they notice it pretty quickly and call in. I can fix your screwup if we haven't sent your crap out. And I can even (usually) fix your screwup if your crap is enroute.

But if your crap has been delivered as labeled - more than a week ago - ...well, bub, you're out of luck.

I left the polite version of the TS speech on the gentleman's voicemail.

Hi, this is Abby with Crap Unlimited, calling about this order you placed. Unfortunately, I don't really have any good options for reshipment, since we provided the shipper with the address you gave us, and they delivered it as addressed. If you'd called in before it was delivered we'd have had more options. There really isn't much I can do, but you can give me a call at...

Of course, he called back like 20 minutes later, but wanted to talk to my boss. Because, obviously, I suck and do not feel his pain.

(I was not in trouble, BTW - nothing to be done. But if there's anybody in Fort Worth who wants to pay me even marginally more to do almost anything else...well, the email link is on the left. I can run a floor buffer)

After Mr. FatFingers, I went to lunch. I was out of smokes and went down the road to the gas station to fix that. However, their "computers went down," and the salepeople apparently are not empowered to do cash transactions.

[sigh]

Off to the next gas station (approximately 43 left turns away). I parked and found my way to the back of a line eight people long. As I advanced to the "on deck" position, a woman popped in from the parking lot. Looking irked and in a hurry.

She's here, I thought (like a fool), to get her change from pre-paying. Not worth getting worked up about. I could wait, she could cut in line.

She directed her irkedness at the poor old man behind the counter.

She had, it seems, given him $10 to put on pump 7. Which he'd done. Except she had been confused, and was in fact parked at pump 11. She wanted her $10 on 11.

The gentleman looked horrified. He'd put it on 7, and, times and gas prices being what they are, someone had considered that a nice Happy Tuesday gift. The $10 was gone.

That's not my fault, she said huffily. I want my $10! On the right pump!

You stupid waste of flesh, I thought. It is your fault. You're too stupid to buy gas. And if you get gas, you'll just drive home and call some poor customer service drone and annoy her because you don't know your own address.

I'm okay with stupid. We're all stupid sometimes. But it's stupid and arrogant that makes me insane.

Doing something stupid should equal shame. Not huffy demands about what you're owed because you're an idiot.

I do stupid things with startling regularity, but I like to think I recognize that and act appropriately contrite and humble when I'm begging someone to bail me out.

The annoying thing about "winter"

Such as it is here in Texas, is the lack of satisfactory sun for napping.

Fortunately, I have resourcesful dogs, and they spend the first half of the day migrating slowly around the library/armory, soaking up whatever sunbeams they can find.



It's a rough life. For me as well - this is my monthly three-day weekend. Don't hate - I'll be paying for it with a 12-9 this Saturday.

From time to time

I look at the world around me, and it's confusing. I think, self - we could blog about all this confusion, or we could sit on the couch with the husband and take naps.

That's been the story the past few days. Even this evening - still a big old fascinating world out there, and I'm absolutely hypnotized by a Legally Blond marathon on TBS.



Yes, I do prefer the sequel.

It's been slow

And there's hasn't been much to say.

I'm still trying to figure out the New Hampshire thing from the other night - was it just me, or was Big Media really bummed when Barack Obama didn't run off into the night with a 20-point win and the Democratic nomination tucked under his arm?

I'm also still trying to get ahead of the untidiness that is Bad Dog Central this week. I'm off to do some dishes before I shower.

Need some advice

Casey the G. Shep is working up another case of the very dry skin. I'd like to try to prevent the whole itchy/raw/infected situation we wrestled last summer, and I'm thinking I need food supplement. She's already on some OTC joint stuff.

For the skin I'm thinking some sort of cod liver or fish oil. What says the pack?

True Love

Baby, you're so sweet, I could just eat you up...

TYLER, Texas (AP) -- A man killed his girlfriend, then filleted and cooked parts of her body before calling police to tell them what he was doing, authorities said Sunday.

I've been paying attention to the crime in Texas since we've moved here, and mostly it's more brutal, but less creative, than the crime in Florida. This one pretty well covers both bases, being vicious and weird.

Authorities believe Shearer, 21, was abducted from her home Friday night and killed. Her death and mutilation was apparently the beginning of a crime spree that also included McCuin allegedly stabbing the boyfriend of his estranged wife and breaking into a business.

That is one feral SOB.

Army Drowsy

I love this reserve unit I landed with - it's a great group of people. But it makes for some long weekend days.

I came home today, ate and curled up on the couch with a blanket and a small dog. Can't beat a couch nap. I caught the first five and last ten minutes of the Steelers/Jaguars ballgame, and it looked like a fun one.

Most annoying - because this is Texas, and because it is a good unit, I really can't bitch too much with my 38-mile drive to drill. Some of these people commute from different timezones.

Know what's amazing?

The fact that you can order Pizza Hut online.

You don't have to talk to anyone stupid, you can just click click click, and there you go!

Also, you can specifiy extra toppings on all or only on a portion of your pizza. How cool is that?

No, I probably don't get out enough.

Scratching my head

Is tonight's headline from Iowa

Iowa voters call for change, vote for character and hope?

or is it

Voters in Iowa go big for two guys who spent a lot of time having coffee with them?

I have got to tell you, I just don't know.

So it begins

Well, gang, the actual counting part of Election '08 begins tonight in Iowa.

For some odd reason, after Iowans "caucus," and after...New Hampshirites? New Hamphshirians? New Hamsters? vote, several of the candidates will be judged "unelectable," and the rest of the nation will be offered a steadily dwindling slate of choices.

I cannot stand the primary system, can you tell?

Anyway, I'm a giant geek this way, so I'll be looking forward to watching the news this evening, which should be beyond hysterical in its coverage of what 36 people in a church basement outside of Waterloo think.

I don't know if we've got any Iowans who hang out here, but if so, please understand that I don't have anything against you - it just doesn't seem like a logical setup to me. But if you are an Iowan, particularly one who does this whole caucus thing, I'd love it if you dropped a comment to tell us a little about it.

I am grumpy, but intrigued.

Busy day

After four days away from work, the whininess level today was high. Swear to God, if I ever work in customer service again after this, it'll be for a medical supply company or something where lives really do depend on the product.

I did get to finish off a fun project - an Army buddy who is one of the most talented people I know is applying to several MBA programs, and I wrote a couple letters of recommendation. I enjoy doing that - I've worked with some good people and helping them try to get where they want to be is gratifying.

The monthly depressing ordeal of wrestling bills was also completed. Good news - electic waaay down, gas only slightly up (let's hear it for keeping the house uncomfortably chilly!). Bad news - still no money for truck-lot ammo purchases.

And best of all...received news that Cousin R and her longtime companion, Mr. Really Great, have decided to make it all official and get hitched.

I was an only child, but I grew up never more than a couple miles from Cousin R, who is exactly four days older than I am. We're close members of an already close family, I love her like I imagine one would love a sister, and the fact that she's delirious with happiness makes me smile.

And, of course, the fact that she and Mr. Really Great are getting hitched means we have another lab in the family! Yep - Dog Cousin Allie is now going to be Canine Family.



She may only be marrying him for his dog, but she's a Very Good Dog, so that's cool.

For Joseph

..and in the spirit of learning something new, we here at Bad Dog Central bring you...video. We think. We hope. An ongoing discussion in comments about the takedown procedure for a pistol prompted me to see if I could do this. If it works, we should have two video clips - one on takedown, and the second on reassembly.


OK. Once you have it apart, you clean it. Then, if you're me, you force your poor, tortured spouse to take six videos of you jabbering and trying get the darn thing back together.



If you watch these, let me know if they work smoothly for you or not. If video is a winner, then there may be no limit to the hours of canine hysteria we'll be able to share.

Another one bites the dust

As we fling 2007 onto the scap heap and tear open a shiny new 2008. Last year was an adventure, and this one promises to be entertaining as well.

I avoided too much wild and craziness last night, so I'm munching on donuts and feeling superior. The Mister, on the other hand, is suffering just a little.

I hope y'all survived your evenings in good shape.

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?)

Fun with the black puppy

So I came home an hour early. Perhaps I was thrown out for an astonishing lack of pre-Christmas productivity, or perhaps I made a up a good story and split - I'm not telling.

The Mister had been home, but was out on an error. He left the satellite TV radio tuned to the salsa/merengue channel, though.

And loud.

So I've been salsaing with Jack. You can't beat dancing with a puppy for fun before a four-day vacation.

One day more...

Tomorrow....

When the shrieking customer says, You put the wrong address on my package and now my son won't have a Christmas gift? That's unacceptable! What are you going to do about it?

I will not reply, I'm sorry you don't know your address and entered a South Dakota ZIP for your Virgina home. I'm sorry you managed to reproduce. I'm going to go home and drink wine.

When the shrieking customer says, What do you mean that's still on backorder? I need it for Christmas!!!

I will not reply, What kind of asshole buys their loved ones that [weird piece of crap object] for Christmas?

When the nonconfrontational sales agent tries to play dumb and transfer me a customer whose package is obviously lost, and says, He's got a pretty serious FedEx issue and I'm not sure what the story is.

I will not reply, You know exactly what the story is, and you know he is not going to get his package by Christmas. You tell him. You think I like being bitched at all day?

And finally, when my boss shoots me an email and says, This customer called in about his order from two weeks ago and has a credit card issue, please contact him.

I will not shoot one back and reply, His credit card got declined and you know it. We've been calling him every day for two weeks. You contact him and tell him he's not getting his items in time for Christmas.

UPDATE: You know, the worst thing about all this is that I have to find a way to say, about 50 times a day, to a stranger and without laughing....Sir, my name is Abby, and I understand there's a problem with your package...

Everyone is a critic

A brief comment to popular author Dean Koontz.

Although the gang at Bad Dog Central enjoys your novels, particularly the constant themes of hope and self-reliance, we do have a bone to pick. It is a source of great joy that dogs are often featured prominently in your novels. Casey in particular enjoyed the German Shepherd in The Taking.

However, the gang feels a little slighted by your obvious adoration of golden retrievers. Sparky points out that if you want to emphasize the unconditional love that endears dogs to humans, you could find no better case study than the Yorkshire Terrier.

And Jack simply thinks there's not much a golden can do that a black lab can't do with less shedding.

Anyway. We all enjoyed The Darkest Evening of the Year, staying up far too late last night in order to read it cover-to-cover.

In fact, this morning I found that one of us had enjoyed the covers perhaps more than the individual pages. Perhaps the cover is liver-flavored?



Apparently, the picture of the author's late golden on the flyleaf was of particular interest, as Jack seems to have claimed it as sort of a dog-bed pinup.

Venting - progress

It is, they say, a digital world now. And I suppose they're right. At the conference I attended last week, I heard a senior officer proudly proclaim that ran a "digital brigade."

The Army has indeed embraced technology. In my early Marine Corps days, they had just begun to require direct deposit of pay. Everything was still done with real paper, though.

Not so anymore, and definitely not in the Army. In the Modern Army, we have systems. Oh good Lord, do we have systems.

The greatest of them all, the big granddaddy, is Army Knowledge Online (AKO).

The Army's Enterprise Portal, Army Knowledge Online (AKO), is a primary component of the Army Knowledge Management (AKM) strategy and The Army Transformation. As the single point of entry into a robust and scalable knowledge management system, AKO is strategically changing the way the Army does business. By enabling greater knowledge sharing among Army communities, AKM fosters improved decision dominance by commanders and business stewards in the battle space, organizations, and Army's mission processes.

AKO is mandatory. It "embraces" a mildly-secure email system that is also mandatory. AKO requires frequent password changes, and all passwords must be between 8 and 37 characters, include at least two capital and seven lower-case letters, a number of numerals equal to the number of letters divided by your paygrade, and several special characters.

This password periodically, you will learn, must be reset using your Common Access Card (CAC). First you must go to an ID card facility and ensure your CAC has current "certificates," then if you don't want to drive to an Army facility, you must buy a card reader, download the approved CAC software from the AKO website, and figure out how to install it. Then you must log in with your CAC, remember and enter your 4-16 digit CAC pin, and change your AKO password.

You do this so you can then access all the ancillary systems and fulfill requirements.

You can create special IDs and satisfy classroom requirements (driver ed, risk management, brain injury). You can download more software and figure out how to have a "digital signature" so you can sign paperwork that is a requirement. Best of all, you can gain access to the Great Big Security Website to try to sort out your security clearance issues (because that is also a requirement).

The Great Big Security system is adorable. Really, it's been making me giggle like a pedophile at Chuck E. Cheese for the past few days.

See, I've had a security clearance (a boring one, not a Tom Clancy novel clearance) for years now. And at some point, apparently, I used this goddam Great Big System to enter the information required for renewing it.

And when I did, I was forced to set up (you're going to love this term - it's precious) Golden Questions. You know, to really really verify who I am in case the Muj steals my social security number.

1 - How many brothers do you have?
2 - What is your mother's maiden name?
3 - What was your first pet's name?

This is really, really not complex. I know all of these things, and cannot fathom a point in my adult life when there would have been any confusion about any of them.

But can I supply the correct answers? Apparently freakin' not. Of course, pointing out that there really isn't any way my clearance is expired and that there's a large trail of evidence to that conclusion isn't an option. I must access the Great Big System and interact with it.

Which cannot happen unless I can figure out how on earth I may have chosen to indicate my only-child status whenever it was I set these Golden Questions up.

So I have a toll-free number to call the Security Clearance People, who I am sure have some really charming system set up for those of us who cannot answer our "Golden Questions."

They're going to waterboard me. I know it. I'm going to be out in my garage, shivering and spluttering while grim-faced DoD civilians stand over me.

"The dog's name! Give us the dog's name!"

Scruffy! The dog's name was Scruffy!

Sometimes when I don't blog

...it's because you all really don't want to know.

The Mister was diagnosed by the crack Navy medical team down at JRB with some sort of nasty foot skin condition. Does that sound like fun or what? Ointments are involved.

Jack stole a string of shiny plastic beads off the Christmas tree. I'm not sure if he hid them in the yard or actually ate them. If he ate them, I'm not sure if it was as a string or in smaller pieces. Trust me, I will take pictures if this develops into a Great Pooping Moment.

The annual gift-buying debacle is almost at an end. Now I'm left with wrapping. Super. As an American, I should be better at expressing my love by people stuff, but I really suck at it. I love you, here's a nice flashlight just doesn't seem to cut it. [sigh]

I'm trying to have a gift for my Dad delivered to a remote location Up Home. Of course, it seems to be traveling with a signature requirement that I did not request, and so now I have to call the delivery company and shriek. In short, I am being forced to become one of my customers.

My (paternal) grandmother is back in the hospital. Third time in less than a month. Nothing makes you feel like a jackass more than deciding to stay in Texas for Christmas and having your Grandma in the hospital back home.

What I have learned in retail

during the year's runup-to-Christmas

1 - hope springs eternal. Even if the Perfect Gift is out of stock and due in on Thursday, someone in New Hampshire will try to corner me into promising I can have it delivered Friday.

2 - cheap knows no season. Less than a week before the Big Day, there are still folks who want to whine that super-budget-freight-saver shipping won't get their items to them on Saturday.

3 - desperation opens wallets. If your son wants some weird item, and you feel like a bad father to start with, you will pay $50 for overnight shipping to ensure you don't screw up Christmas.

4 - preparedness must feel very good. The happiest people I talked to today were not buying Christmas presents. No darlin', they'd drawl (and I could hear the smile). I'm doing some shootin' in February and just want to be ready.

5 - I love our FedEx corporate liasion guy. He's wonderful. He calls me with solutions, and on the off chance I ever meet him, I fully intend to hug him.

I expect things will fall off for our sales folks, but I get the awful feeling the next four days will be like having sharp sticks jabbed in the eyes of the Fixin' Problems Department.

And, finally, I'm not really one to point fingers, but some people buy other people some weird crap for Christmas. I'm just sayin'...

The tree is up. For now.

Well, it's up. And it's decorated.

Before decorating, we had coffee and snacks. Which was pretty tempting for one of us.



We finally ended the torment and got down to business.



Oh, he's been pretty good so far. But you can just tell what he's thinking by his posture - I'm going to eat that tree while you guys are at work tomorrow.

It's been cool here, so Casey spent the evening out in the yard, pretending to be a timberwolf or some such herding dog fantasy. Sparky was unimpressed with the entire proceeding, and stayed on the couch.



Wake me, he said, when Santa Paws shows up with the squeaky toys.

Lord help me...

It's the third Saturday of the month, and we all know what that means. Yep - I'm at work.

I've been here 40 minutes and have already been told that I have ruined Christmas.

This was explained to me by a woman who was obviously (by the background noise) working in the kitchen in a house full of family.

[sigh]

Lady, if your family is in your house, and you're all going to have dinner together, your Christmas has not been ruined.

Harumph.

Another gray and cold morning, wherein I get out of bed and Jack dashes hopefully to my running shoes and looks at me - Mom, are we going to go outside and jog?

Alas, pupster, no. We are going to have cofffee and do pushups, and you're not much help with either.

The Evil Corporate Masters are holding the Annual Holiday Party this evening, and we have all been expressly instructed to act responsibly. I suppose that rules out tequila shots and gunfire, so I don't know why I agreed to attend.

Ah, the joy of being at home

Yesterday was a little nuts. After I finished what I had to do at "Port Wood," I dropped by their dental clinic to try to get an exam.

(One of the primary measures of effectiveness for Army Reserve commanders these days is the deployability of the unit. This means that there is a neverending barrage of requirements to go get a shot, get your teeth looked at, draft a family care plan, etc. I will be truly impressed if (and only if), when the deployment actually occurs, this leads to an increase in training time and allows us to skip the days spent at the immunization clinic at the mobilization station. I somehow doubt that will be the case.)

Of course, that wasn't going to work, so I drove like the proverbial bat out of Hell to get back up to join some other folks in getting a dental exam here.

I pulled that off and was declared in possession of deployable teeth (let's here it for flossing!).

Then, because it's a digital Army, I went to the ID card facility because I did not have sufficient functioning certificates on my ID card. This was preventing me from using my ID card to log in to the great Army Online Thing.

[sigh]

Got a new ID card (with certificates!). Then I called it a day and came home. Opened the door, walked in, and found this:



That, ladies and gentlemen, is/was my Sibley Guide to Birds. Not my little Sibley guide that covers the eastern half of the US, but my big one.

That #4 on my bird book "special" list. If he'd eaten 1,2 or 3, it may have been a walk out into the back yard with a 9mm and a shovel.

The annoyance level was elevated by the fact that my bird guides aren't just reference books, I record the birds I see and ID in them.

So now I have a pile of pages stacked on top of the gun safe to go through when I have some free time (ha!) and move my notes over to one of my other guides.

We're going to skip trying the whole kennel concept, and I'm going to just use a loop of logging chain and couple cinder blocks on Jack during the day, I think.

One more thing about that...

This whole exploring-a-new-and-giant post thing might not be so hard if it the entire middle of the state wasn't choked in some sort of cold, dreary mist/fog that's been getting steadily thicker.

I like this sort of weather under most circumstances - I'm a kind of dreary, grayish gal myself. But it's not much for reading roadsigns and looking ahead for building numbers.

In one cheery note, the apparently almost-blind woman at the 7-11 up the way carded me buying cigarettes. I'll take that, thank you very much!

On the road again

Your tax dollars are hard at work, funding several days of me galivanting around central Texas. Stop it - you know you're envious.

I'm holed up in an only-mildly-scary motel right outside a major military installation that sounds like Port Wood. I have to attend a group hug for an upcoming training evolution tomorrow, and so I've already driven on base, and found a couple different ways to get to where I need to be in the morning.

I've never been to Port Wood before, and I was, as I usually am when I end up on a major Army installation, overwhelmed and lost within minutes. The Army, ladies and gentlemen, is big. I mean, really, really big.

Port Wood has two whole divisions and all the associated support units. And it's big.

My Marine Corps days involved Okinawa and 29 Palms - even Pendleton was huge in my book, and Pendleton does not have anywhere near the sheer number of people these big Army posts do. I've been amazed by the amount of people, and the sheer quantity of stuff, ever since I crossed over from the Marine Corps.

(Do you know that in the Army, you get brand new polypro long underwear? Nobody's ever worn them before, and you get to keep them when you check out of a unit! How's that for the wasteful luxury of a large organization?)

However, I think this motel is located at the corner of Crack and Gang, so I'm going to go check my route to tomorrow's location once more time and find somewhere to buy a paperback. Then I'm going to barricade the doors and wait for sunrise.

MY CAMPING TRIP

By Jack The Black Dog

First we left Sparky and Casey at Aunt Melissa's but they didn't leave me and I thought for a while they were going to drive out somewhere and leave me by the side of the road because somebody did that to me one time. But they did not do that and instead we drove for a long time and then stopped at someplace called Burger King. I did not get to have a burger but I got something called chicken fries and they were great because they were chicken but with no bones so I could eat them.

We drove a little more (I had to ride in the back of the truck which was not as much fun as being up front but I had more room). Then we all got out and we were in the place with all the pine trees and I was allowed to run run run.

Do you know what is in the woods that's great? Sticks. The woods is just full of sticks. I did get in some trouble for taking the sticks Abby piled up by the round pit thing, but those were apparently the only special sticks that I couldn't have.

Later they tied me to a tree and took their guns and went for a walk, but they came back real soon and said something about not being able to give corn to pigs so I guess they were done hunting.

Then they untied me and built a fire and cooked meat and potatoes and I got to have some. It was very hot but it was good. Then I got to sit by the fire by them and listen to the country radio station from Louisiana.

Then we went to bed and before we went I heard a bunch of coyotes running and making noise but I didn't try to go hang out with them because I had a good spot to sleep and I think coyotes are mean.



We all slept in the truck and they had sleeping bags and I had my bed and they said it was my job to protect them from coyotes but none came because I don't think there are any animals in that woods.

Then this morning we got up and I ran around and ate some more sticks and we came home. I did not get any chicken fries on the trip back so it was not as much fun.

The end.

Still here

We pushed our departure to Saturday morning when the Mister, victim of circumstances beyond his control, missed a vital phaseline in the scheduled execution of our departure plan.

There are lots of moving parts these days. Army stuff, job (both current and possible) stuff, family health stuff...

So an evening at home isn't all bad. It offers the opportunity to sit around and drink beer and try to figure out what on earth is going on.

You know, when I was a kid, I thought grownups had everything figured out. I don't know if I thought there was a book, or a briefing, or what, but I figured that all the big people who could write checks and drive knew what was going on.

What a joke. And what a revelation, when we finally realize that everybody we've ever encountered has just been winging it.

Not kidnapped

Just lazy. And really, what am I doing that all of us aren't this time of year? Suddenly realizing that it's time to get moving with this Christmas stuff, trying to find the exact Christmas-related item I'm looking for in the attic, and thinking about the Tree Issue.

We've got lots of space and a good spot for the tree, but I keep thinking of it, then looking at Jack, then putting the whole issue off for another day.

Tree + Puppy = Endless excitement.

I think we'll buy it early next week, and then the challenge will be to find a selection of ornaments made entirely out of rocks or something equally dogproof.

In the name of putting that off and spending a precious weekend doing something entirely useless, the Mister and I will be heading out to look at the pig situation tonight. Casey and Sparky are staying with their Aunt Melissa, but we're taking Puptard with us.

This should be an adventure.