Snowflakes in Hell

… who thought An American Carol kind of sucked?  I mean, the politics of it might be compatible with what I believe, but it just wasn’t funny.  Airplane was funny, because it was a great send-up of the airline disaster flicks.  An American Carol was a send-up of Michael Moore.  But Michael Moore is a parody of himself.  If you parody a parody, is it funny?  I didn’t think so.

UPDATE: I will say though, it was funnier than Canadian Bacon, which was also a movie that just wasn’t funny, even though there were some very funny actors in it.

Answering Breda’s call:

Pictures of me at 2 and 12.  I was once glued to oversized headphones before those clever Japanese relieved us from the burden (and before bassophiles brought them back).  The 70s and 80s were rough on the eyes.  Fortunately, we have put that sad chapter in our nation’s fashion history behind us.

My bank name has tracked exactly to the name of our Hockey/Basketball arena in Philadelphia.  First it was the CoreStates Center, then CoreStates got bought out by First Union, which got bought out by Wachovia.  So I wake up this morning and find out my bank has failed, and is now owned by Citigroup.  So the Citigroup Center it is, and it will appear that’s who I’m banking with now.

The Garand and CMP match this morning were rained out.  Drat.  I spent several hours last night loading up .223 to shoot my AR in the CMP match, and got up at 7:15 to make the match.  Oh well, some days you eat the bear, some days the bear eats you.  I’ll try again next month.

Bitter and I are attending a Friends of the NRA event tonight.  Since Friends is a program to raise money for the NRA Foundation, I can’t do any EVC electioneering outreach there.  But I can introduce myself, handing out my business cards, and hoping later I might get a few people signing up to my e-mail list.  Outreach is going more slowly than I would like.  One problem is the people who have time to do this tend to be older, and tend to not have computers and e-mail.  It’s hard communicating with these people and getting information to them.  I kind of feel like I’m in the wrong generation for trying to get people involved in local efforts.  We can bring a lot of new ideas, and new methods of organizing to the gun rights issue, but that doesn’t do us much good if the people I’m trying to reach don’t have the means to integrate with it.

… they didn’t have the internet when I was a kid.

In a supreme act of Ubergeekitude, I’ve tethered my laptop to the iPhone and am posting this from the car.  Bitter is driving, obviously.  I’m hoping to make it there in time to attend the legislative policy committee meeting.  I’ll have more to report on later, but blogging will be a bit light today.

Time to crack out the Maßkrug.  Trink, Trink, Brüderlein, Trink!

Masskrug Bier

Time to head back home.  After spending a weekend with Superman learning how to fly, it’s going to be awfully hard going back to being Clark Kent again.  Trip time is about 6 hours.  See you all when I get there.

Our first stop on the way to Blackwater is at the Blackhawk headquarters.

After this stop, we board the bus again and take a ride in luxury down to North Carolina.

I’m in my hotel suite in Norfolk.  I figured a suite would be good if other bloggity types wanted to come over.  It was also all they had left.  I’ll be having dinner with an old friend, then hitting the hotel bar if anyone wants to join.  At least I hope this hotel has a bar.  Not to worry, though.  I do have a backup plan.

Tomorrow the trek to Blackwater begins!

Sebastian and I spoke while he was headed down to the tip of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He promised me that he would take photos of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge & Tunnel system since I have never seen it, and I was looking forward to it.

He also mentioned that it was apparent he crossed some kind of weather system line since it very suddenly got hot and humid in southern Delaware. I suspect the haze in the photos is evidence of the humidity and not camera quality.

Greetings from Bridgeville, Delaware. Home of Ralph and Paul Adams Scrapple company, and a former employer of mine (long story). Just making my way down the Delmarva. Should arrive in Norfolk in a few hours.

It’s time for me to depart.  Next stop, Norfolk, Virginia.  Home to a healthy portion of the United States Navy, among other things.  I’ll be traveling down the Delmarva, crossing the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel.  I’ll be seeing more of Delaware than most people should ever really see, but hey, at least I can carry in Delaware, and lower Delaware is home to Dogfish Head Brewery.  After Norfolk, we’re in the hands of Para, and will be on our way to a formerly secret location in North Carolina, that’s home to Blackwater.

I will be blogging while I am down there, but I’m going to ask Bitter to add a bit of filler for times when I’m offline.

My patio awning is all rotted to hell.  Both the roof and the fascia board were put on wrong, causing the roof to curl up at the lip, making a pool of water looking for some place to go.  Well, it found a place

I’m home from work today because we have some contractors coming over today to give us estimates.  I thought about doing it myself, but I think I would probably take too long.

I asked Bitter to head out and obtain, for our sacreligious three bean chili, some cheap beer.  I said “Maybe a 12 pack of Rolling Rock or something.”  What she got was an eight pack of Rolling Rock, since the local bar (thanks to Pennsylvania’s byzantine liquor laws) only has limited 12 pack selection.  Well, eight pack would be fine, except that they are bottles of beer apparently marketed to midgets, at seven whole ounces a piece.  So really, the eight pack is like a four and a half pack.  I told Bitter:

“These are the .223 of beer.  I mean, sure, it’s beer, but it takes twice as many to knock a man down.”

I’ll be sticking to my full house Victory Hop Devils from this point forward.  It might not be the prototypical “cheap beer” but it’s cheap enough, and it’s a hell of a lot better than Rolling Rock.

Well, I was getting ready to head to the range to get some chrony readings for a .223 load I wanted to try, and then some thunderstorms rolled through.  Damn.  Took the power out, which is why the blog was down.  Power is back on now, and I’m making a three bean chili.  At least the parts of it that didn’t end up on the floor.

See, Bitter opened up the cans for me, but I didn’t know she had one of those safety can openers.  You know, the ones that open the can from the side rather than from the top.  So about and hour later, I go to pick up the can of crushed tomatoes, and my brain failed to register “open can!” so I proceeded to spill the contents all over the floor, the stove, and myself.  Ooops.

Anyways, for dinner tonight, Chili, Texas toast, and cheap beer.

UPDATE: I loved the Chili, beans and all.  Bitter considers beans in Chili to be sacrilidge.  To avoid reigniting The Civil War, we decided that we could cut out some of the beans and add more meat.  It’s a compromise we can hopefully live with.

Finally got my iPhone. Had a few problems getting the number porter over from T-Mobile, but I’m posting this from the phone, so it’s working fine now. Still getting used to the touch of the screen keyboard, and the rancid taste of Kool Aid in my mouth.

I played sideline mallets in high school band.  Yep, I’m a band geek, and still have the jacket and letter to prove it.  Someone must have put some video up on YouTube, because you can see me, 17 friggin years ago, in a high school band competition.  I know it’s a competition because Nov 2 1991 was a Saturday, and Fridays were football games, and Saturdays were competitions.

On the sideline mallets, I’m the second in from the right.  The girl one in from the left I had a horrible crush on.  The first song in our show was “An American in Paris” by George Gershwin, followed by “Take the A-Train” by Duke Ellington.  I seem to remember the other one was the theme from Twin Peaks, then another bit called “Va Va Voom”.  The funny thing is, I think if you put me in front of a set of mallets today, I could probably still play bits of that show.

From band geek to gun nut.  It’s funny sometimes the directions life goes in.  The really funny thing is, I still enjoy competition, even though I suck about as much at shooting as I did at sideline precussion.

A friend of mine has a mysterious pyrotechnic, or at least we think it’s a pyrotechnic.  It’s basically a giant cake with a fuse sticking out of it.  It was found in his dad’s basement.  No idea what it does, or how old it is.

We’re thinking it’s either going to put on a nice pyrotechnic display, or blow a giant hole in the yard.  Needless to say, it can’t be set off in our quiet suburbs.  Has anyone seen such a pyrotechnic device before?  Any idea what it does?  Should I be scared?

Since Bitter got here I’ve been telling her “Hey, missy!  Get your b**ch @55 in the kitchen and make me some pie!”  Well, yesterday as a Independence Day treat, she made some chocolate banana crap pie.  It was so bad that we threw the rest out, rather than torture our taste buds with any more.

So now she needs to get her b**ch @55 back in the kitchen, and make me another pie!

One of my neighbors around the corner seems to have cornered the market on contraband fireworks, because he put on a pretty impressive display.  I heard a scream come from the guy, but I think it’s because he got sprayed with a glittery firework, because he resumed setting them off.  Either that or he’ll wake up tomorrow with a hangover, and no thumb.

To everyone in my neighborhood lighting off contraband fireworks: your wonton disregard for laws against fun, and the politicians and buraucrats who wish to protect you make you great Americans.

Today our office is closing at 1:00, so there is little time for blogging.  This Sunday I have an IHMSA match, where I’m hoping to shoot smallbore and field pistol.  Field pistol means reloading some .44 special rounds.  I’m trying a new load, so sometime before dark I want to get out and crony it.  Getting some small bore practice in is also called for, I think.  I’m also compiling the results of the E-Postal match, which will be up later today.

I’m guessing we won’t be seeing Clayton at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous any time soon.  Say what you will about Reno, but Washoe County has a hell of a shooting range.  I’m not much of a gambler either, so that aspect of the city is no attraction to me.  I did find the automobile museum to be worthwhile, as I’m assuming Clayton did as well.

No, I’m not talking about that guy who used a .22LR to try to bore a hole in his house for installing a satellite dish, and accidentally shot his wife.  I borrowed my friend Jason’s nail gun to get some last minute baseboards installed in the loft area, where the builders and previous owners have so far neglected to put them.  Baseboards are one of those things I thought were mostly decorative, until you see what happens to drywall when you don’t have them, especially on corners.

After using a nail gun, there’s no way I could ever go back to a hammer.  I’m not sure how civilization made due before the nail gun.   The Amish don’t know what they are missing.  Clearly a barn raising could be done before noon if they adopted this technology, and then they could spend the rest of the day drinking, if the Amish actually drank.   Perhaps this is why they eschew technology, because with all the spare time, what are you going to do?  Drink, and watch TV.  It’s a vicious cycle.

Now we just need to finish the painting in that room, and get Bitter’s stuff put up there, and we’re good to move on to painting the bedroom.  Before too long, I might not feel like I’m living in a warehouse!

Bitter arrived with the moving truck on Thursday.   On Saturday, the movers came to move everything from the truck to my living room.   The first picture was taken after Bitter had already moved and put away a good portion of the kitchen boxes.

The kitchen stuff is getting put away first.  Naturally, since we’ve both been living on our own for a while, there’s a lot of duplicate equipment.  Most of my knives and silverware are inferior to hers, and so are departing.  Same with pots and pans.  Of course, now we have four fondue pots, two food processors, and two bread machines.  Not stuff that’s typically thrown out, so I’m guessing we’ll be craigslisting a lot of it. 

Of course, we both had the same type of Corelware, so now we just have a lot of it.  She has a lot more cooking stuff than I do, such as a press for making raviolis, actually, I think there are two of those.  One in case you want to make a flat ravioli, and another for making folded ones.  It’s a good thing I have a big drawer in the kitchen for stuff I almost never use :)