Happy Thanksgiving!

On this day, I am thankful for my health, I am thankful for my family, and I am thankful for my friends.

Everything else is just details.

Have a happy Thanksgiving, my friends. Eat well, laugh often and never miss a chance to hug and kiss those you love.

LawDog

Thought for the day

One of the duties of a best friend should be to immediately delete the 'History' folder on your computer upon your death.

Just saying.

LawDog

The Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month ...

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Please join me in two minutes of silence at 11:00 this morning.

LawDog

Best. Blogmeet. Ever! Part the First

Miss Fatale and I headed towards Blogarado on Friday from Bugscuffle, but due to work-related delays, had to overnight in Amarillo, arriving at the shooting pit noon-ish on Saturday.

OldNFO, AEPilotJim and Farmdad had set up a pistol range with poppers, falling steel, and paper; a rifle range with a half-size steel silhouette at 240 yards, and paper at shorter distances; and the piece de resistance: fifty-five-gallon drums at 500 and 950 yards.

And the guns. OhMyGawd, the guns.

I was admiring the falling plates when someone stuck a revolver in my paw and gestured downrange. When the damage was done, I looked down at the pistol I had been shooting with wild abandon to discover that I held a Smith and Wesson Five Screw Hand Ejector.

No wonder the trigger was so nice.

You name it, it was probably fired -- including the Internet's Most Famous Bersa.

Towards the end of the day, AEPilotJim pulled me to one side and revealed a small plastic jar of black and white granular substance. Much chortling ensued as we stealthily secreted the jar in an inoffensive red picnic cup and placed it on top of a blue barrel located at the hundred-yard rifle line, then we went to the three newest female shooters and innocently invited them to participate in the "time-honoured" ritual of "just shooting a cup of red Jello-O. Makes a nice red mist to mark the end of the day's festivities, don't you know".

I may have to work on my innocent expression, because all three of them regarded me with great suspicion ... but they came to the rifle range; where we put them on various scoped pretties and let them fire at will at the red cup.

Breda was the one to nail the cup full of Tannerite, producing an absolutely wonderful, tooth-rattling "BOOM!" and knocking the barrel arse-over-tincups to the equally-thunderous cheers and applause of the spectators.

Followed by Breda asking -- confusedly -- "Did I hit it?"

Heh.

Shooting was followed by some of the best gravy on the face of God's little green dirtball -- and some chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and so forth, all washed down with home-brewed beer and story-telling.

Sunday to follow.

LawDog

The Warrior Song

"The Warrior Song" is a chesty piece of music which reminds me of the cadences we used to sing when I was going through Basic Training, lo these many decades ago.

Cocky, arrogant, proud -- it glorifies those who fight war, and as such, it will not appeal a lot of folks.

Probably including most of Congress these days.

*sigh*

I think it's fantastic.

It is dedicated to every member of the United States Armed Forces, past and present

If you like it, you can buy a copy from iTunes at 99 cents a pop - and any profits derived from such sales will go directly to the Armed Forces Relief Trust.

If you are currently on active duty with the US Armed Forces, send them an e-mail and they'll send you a free copy.



Even if you don't like the music, the money goes to a truly worthy cause.

LawDog

See. This. Movie.

Zombieland.

Chris and I went to see this movie, laughed ourselves silly, then took Reno and Tole to see it.

There is some gore -- it is, after all, a zombie movie -- but less than some others I've seen recently, and there's quite a bit of cussing and swearing, but other than a brief shot of a set of pasties, there's no nudity.

There are, however, guns galore, including some brief scenes of what I think might be an HK MP7; and you will gain a whole new appreciation for the fine art of the double-tap.

*snicker*

LawDog

My last two weeks at work in one picture:

Sometimes I get to be the cat, but more often these days I seem to wind up as the guy in the box.

*sigh*

I wonder if Coeur d'Alene is hiring?

LawDog

Tab 'A' goes bloody where?!

Dad inherited in full measure the Scottish instinct for engineering combined with the Mohawk flair for construction. An admirer of his once remarked that you could "Put Jim on a desert island with three monkeys and a hammer; come back in six months, and he'd have two ships in the water and a variant model on the production line."

He never came across something he couldn't build (or tear down). And what was happily referred to as "Ethnic Engineering" was a particular specialty of my father's -- I have fond memories of a white-faced MIT School of Engineering graduate having to sit down abruptly after coming face-to-face with what Dad had done to an oil-derrick with gaffer-tape, baling wire, and thirty feet of bamboo.

Anyhoo, any child of my father ought to be able to suss out a Made-In-China shelf kit in less than an hour.

Grr.

LawDog

Barack Hussein Obama was sworn into the office of the President of the United States on January 20th of this year.

The Nobel Committee ceased taking nominations on February 1st. Same year.

Now, check my math, but I believe that is about eleven (11) days -- more or less.

Prior to being President, Barack Obama had a fairly normal run as a Federal Senator -- some more lustrous, some less so -- and before that he was a State Senator and a "community organizor".

*blink, blink*

Eleven days.

LawDog

Oy!

I was stunned today to discover that my good friend Peter, from Bayou Renaissance Man, went and had hisself a bit of a cardiac rodeo.

The good news is that -- apparently -- the incipient infarction was caught fast enough that no heart muscle died.

The bad news is that he's about to become Good Friends with Mr. Triple Bypass -- first thing tomorrow morning, apparently.

Folks, if you could take a brief moment out of your day to send good thought to a good man, I'd surely appreciate it.

LawDog

Heroes are where you find them

Peter over at Bayou Renaissance Man remembers a friend.

LawDog