I had to laugh… Apparently some insightful people in Lafayette, Louisiana decided to fill the lock cylinders of several prominent retailers with glue, just in time for “black Friday”.
I’ll have to remember that one for next year…
You’re all sick. You know that? Messed up. Not right in the head. At least one burrito short of a combination platter.
Right now, it’s a shade after 6am. And while I’ve been up since 8am yesterday – yes, you read that correctly – you freakin people woke up two hours ago so you could get your place in line outside of Best Buy or Circuit City or Staples or Target by 6. And now those poor saps are opening the doors, and you’re all flooding in like a herd of cows. And you’ll spend the next ten hours pushing, shoving, gnawing and biting your way through the stores, around the aisles and to the registers. Tackle rival shoppers, beeline for the checkout counter, swipe credit card, repeat.
I think it’s funny, and a little sad. Sure, there are good deals on black Friday. Sure, you might save some money. And maybe that money in your bank account is worth the extra effort/frusteration/headache.
I prefer to sit back and watch from my little bubble. The bubble only I can see! I’ll laugh at you for being good little hoop-jumpers, collecting your rebate forms and counting your pennies. And I’ll weep for you for selling out to the commercialized secularized sterilized liberalized despiritualized thing that Christmas has become to our society. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still going to give gifts this Christmas, and Kelly and I do use it as an excuse to buy each other something special…
But we know that the line has to be drawn when the excitement and busy-ness and stress of “the season” start to crowd out what it’s really about: spending time with our families, celebrating the anniversary of the birth of the most important, influential, perfect person who ever lived. And, as we did this past Thanksgiving, praising and thanking God (yes, I used the G-word!) … ahem … thanking God for all the blessings we enjoy throughout the year.
If nothing else, the last few days have been – well – varied.
After Kelly and I spent Saturday in a super-fun class, Dad and I packed our gear and headed South on Sunday. We arrived at our hunt club at about 2pm, did some walking and GPS mapping, and prepared for Monday morning’s hunt by eating a lot of food and going to bed early…
Total deer bagged Monday: Five. Deer seen by Dave Monday: Zero. Much as I expected, I sat in the woods for somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 hours, and didn’t see so much as a hoofprint. Execpt, of course, all those deer that everyone else was harvesting.
Today? Brake job. Replaced my front pads and rotors, which was a very effective way to eliminate that pulsation in my brake pedal, and the shimmy in the steering wheel when hitting the brakes beyond about 50mph.
Alpha this evening, then back here to start in on a batch of Spiced Cranberry and Zinfandel Sauce. Dang it smells good in here…
I have what feels like a splinter on the top of my tongue. I have no idea how it got there. But it hurts some kinda stupid…
While I don’t remember anything of the sort, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised if I had a dream that my nightstand was a giant popsickle.
After spending Saturday working on computers and Sunday morning at church, I headed for the range with Dad for some practice with our hunting handguns. Seeing as we’re going to be sitting in the woods right about this time next week, and seeing as we haven’t really been able to practice all summer, I’m figure’n this was a good idea.
Let’s just say that sighting in a handgun that’s 16″ long and fires a rifle round isn’t quite like sighting in a 12-gauge shotgun. You can’t just go out, blast a few slugs downrange, see that it’s shooting just like it was last year, and go home.
Just as I expected, I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. I had enough trouble just keeping the shots on the paper, let alone hitting the bull’s eye! I went through about 25 rounds before we realized that my front sight might have been a bit loose. So we tightened it up, but that didn’t tighten up my groups…
So after spending Sunday afternoon cleaning up my apartment – and a glorious cleaning job it was… man that place was dirty! – I sat down at the reloading bench and started in on prepping 60 more rounds for practice this week. Cases lubed, resized, trimmed, deburred and cleaned. Tomorrow morning, I’ll prime them, powder charge them and seat bullets. And Dad and I will hit the range again Wednesday and Thursday…
And hopefully I’ll hit something more than the grass on either side of the target!
It takes a while to scroll back through the archives, but I can more or less remember when I decided I was a Libertarian. I was sitting in Mr. Donnegan’s Government class, in the front-right-hand seat, sucking up the broad-brush descriptions of positions on moral and fiscal and right and left. He coated the board with a diagrams and spectra, with a tendency to write downhill.
Despite my limited-government ideology, I ended up holding my nose this past November 2nd. I managed to convince myself that, at least for this four years, libertarianism just isn’t practical when there are 2-4 supreme court nominations up for grabs. I followed the SCOPE guidelines and “voted my issue” despite my dislike of government intrusion and our current crop of politicians who seem not to care.
Then, this morning, I called Meril Lynch to set up a new account. The lady on the phone politely informed me that she’d need to ask me some questions that are required by the US Patriot Act. Apparently they need to know my employer, and how much I make each year, and whether or not I have any peculiar rashes – before they can set up a mutual fund account.
Bullshit.
Once you grow that Libertarian gland, you can’t keep it from firing off at times like this. I felt my pulse rise as a burst of Libertarian adrenaline zapped through me. No, I don’t want to tell you these things. No, I don’t think the government needs to know what shampoo I use or how often I have conversations with inanimate objects. Of course, I wanted my mutual fund account, and I figured that the Privacy Invasion Act of 2001 (or, as Dubya likes to call it, the Patriot act) probably applies to all the other mutual fund companies too, so I coughed up the goods.
But I felt violated. Like a guy in a black suit and dark sunglasses had just rifled through my file cabinet, then spent a few minutes pawing around my safe deposit box too. And as long as I wanted my new account, I had to let him check me for rashes too. Full cavity search.
And this is how the cookie crumbles, and everyone goes along with it like so many pigs to the slaughterhouse. We answer the questions. We fill out the census bureau surveys. We pay the government “their share” of our income. We crank out the tax dollars to live on the land we own. And we always make sure we abide by the zoning regulations.
It only gets better when we start a business – we pay for the privelige to set up shop. We pay for the privelige to hire employees. We pay for the privelige to buy a big mahogany desk, set it up in a corner office and stand at the window, picking our noses and hoping the glass is tinted. Then we charge everybody else sales tax on behalf of the same people we’re paying for the privelige to do so.
This is the system that’s been set up for us – it’s been carefully crafted, time worn and proven so that there is no way to function in this country without giving in and doing it “The Government’s Way”. No, you may not open a bank account without a full cavity search. No, you may not own a car – or a gun, or an ATV, or a dairy cow, or in some states, a can of pepper spray – without registering it. No, you may not ride in an airplane without your papers – ahem, I mean your ID card. No, you can’t even buy a piece of property from another private citizen, build a house on it and live there without giving us our piece of the pie.
So much for freedom, I guess…
OK people. I don’t see quite why this is a big difficulty point / stumbling block / concentration of retardedness. When you’re driving at night … and you can see another car … turn down your bright lights.
Simple, right?
Apparently not for one idiot that I happened to have the good fortune to be behind on my way down to the ambulance base tonight. At first, I thought he was just yanking on the high beams at random. Then I figured maybe his little blue “your high-beams are on, dumbass” light was broken. By the time he finally turned off, I was convinced he was just an idiot.
After watching for a few minutes, I realized that – for the most part – this genius was trying his best to flip his high beams off in the presence of oncoming traffic. Trouble was, there were several cars in front of him, and I’m sure they were none too happy with a) his high beams in their mirrors and b) his constant indecisiveness as to whether or not he should be irradiating them now. Or now. Or maybe now.
After a while, I got fed up. I’ve been in front of enough people who didn’t seem to realize that blasting your high beams at someone in front of you isn’t polite. Or safe. Or civilized. And now, I had the pleasure of being behind one. Let the games begin! I started following his lights with mine. I dropped back far enough that my high beams would smack his mirrors nice and square, then flipped ‘em on any time he cranked his up into the eyes of the poor souls in front of him.
It was tough to tell if he got the message. After a while, he seemed to learn that cranking your brights into the car in front of you is naughty. But he still popped ‘em on every once in a while, more or less at random. Maybe he was just making sure they still worked. Because you never know what might break in 20 seconds of smooth, uneventful driving.
Stupid people everywhere, man…
I’ve been so busy this last week that I’ve actually had to schedule time out to breathe. And eat food. So naturally, when faced with fires to put out, busy days at work, evenings planned out to 5-minute resolution and an occasionally-recognized need to sleep, blogging has taken a back seat.
Tonight, however, is my “me night” – during which I tie up all the loose ends and tattered remains of my personal life that have also taken a back seat. Little things – like paying bills. Or taking out the garbage. Or standing in my apartment, realizing that it looks like someone detonated a low yield nuclear device, and taking an hour out just to put stuff away.
Cleaning? Ho no, that’ll take a whole weekend at the rate I’m going.
Occupying yourself this much has a tendency to wear on you. That’s why I try not to do it. Seriously – most weeks are not this crazy. Most weeks, I don’t get that “my head is going to explode” feeling. But this week, there were just a few extra straws on this camel’s back.
Now it goes without saying that two things go out the window on weeks like this – sleep and proper nourishment. By some combination of good planning and sheer dumb luck, I’ve managed to get a decent amount of sleep this week. But food? That’s another matter. Breakfasts have consisted of Quaker Instant Oatmeal cereal, nuked in a mug and inhaled sometime between dressing myself and grabbing my car keys. The week’s evening dining has depleted my once-formidable supply of frozen entrees. Which brings me to the true subject of this post…
Do not, under any circumstances, ever buy frozen fettucine alfredo. Alfredo sauce is not fast food. It was never meant to be fast food, or to be microwaved from -5°C to piping hot in under 4 minutes. Alfredo sauce was meant to be hand crafted, conjoured up from cream and cheese and fine spices. I’ve done it, and it’s not easy. It’s not supposed to be, damnit.
This is the reason the frozen fettucine alfredo sat in my freezer until last – until there was no alternative. Aye, there’s the rub. For when you leave the frozen fettucine alfredo until last, you suddenly find yourself with no alternative. And unless you want to choke down instant oatmeal for dinner, you’d better plan on nuking up that heinous defamation of Italian cooking.
Note to self: Hey Self, how’s about after you get back from this weekend’s short-notice trip to Virginia, we schedule in a trip to the supermarket to buy some real food?
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