08:58 – Today I’ll finish the lab session on worms and start the lab session on bugs. Tonight, of course, I’m hoping to shoot some reindeer that I can dissect, but that’ll be for the next lab session, on Chordate structures.
11:35 – Barbara didn’t give me many ideas for good gifts for her this year, so I had to come up with something myself. I decided to give her a handmade gift. It’s a sheet of 14 sticky labels. (Avery 5162 or Maco ML-1400, for any of you who still haven’t bought something for your girlfriend/wife/SO.)
This coupon entitles Barbara Thompson to insist that her husband, Robert Thompson, do something she wants him to do, whether he wants to do it or not, for a time not to exceed three hours. A maximum of three coupons may be redeemed in any one calendar month.
Serial #: 01
Expires 12/31/12 at 23:59:59. Not transferable. Photocopies not valid.
14:55 – I just asked Barbara, “By the way, does that pet store you go to across from the library carry live mice?” She replied, “I don’t think so, but it doesn’t matter. I’m not having live mice around here!”, to which I replied, “Don’t worry. After I’m finished with them I’ll feed them to the snakes.” Heh, heh, heh.
Actually, when I’m finished with them I’ll give them to Colin to play with. Either that, or I’ll just step on them or put them down the garbage disposer.
Reindeer? Aiming low this year, Bob? I thought you always went for the Big Target, Santa himself.
Nah. I’ve already slotted in a politician for the H. sapiens dissection.
Besides which, that old bastard moves so fast that it’s not so much a matter of aiming for him as just spray-n-pray. The only time I had any luck at all was one year when I cut loose with the ZSU-23-4 and there was some black smoke coming out of Donder’s asshole.
But tonight once again the whole neighborhood is helping me by putting down a rows of landing lights along both sides of our street. I think this year instead of going for the crossing shot I’m going to set up to nail him head-on as he comes in for a landing.
Are those landing lights the plastic milk jugs with candles? They do that here in this town, too.
Far as I know, we don’t have an reindeer up here, but we do have, believe it or not, llamas, camels, donkeys, sheep, goats, cows, horses, etc. just down the road here, and although I have lived up here for nearly fifteen years now, I have yet to see a moose or a bear. Despite much hiking, canoeing and x-c skiing.
I would definitely forget Santa this year, Bob; word has it on the old boyz mil-spec net that he is going this year with close-air support and AC-130 Spectre gunship ops teams, maybe some A-10’s. Intel has advised him that your place is the one dark spot on the terrain below.
Well, in that case, I guess I’ll use AMD for my next system build.
AMD is nearly always a better choice than Intel. Intel guys always gave us wrong info. They were slow, too. And expensive.
Nice idea for the labels; wouldn’t work here, though; I already do tons of stuff during the year that she wants me to do that I don’t wanna do.
Zero here this morning, but sunny. And we are having a white Christmas. Yay.
Hmmm. I don’t remember ever doing anything a woman wanted me to do if I didn’t want to do it.
Well, not counting showing up at a church (a church!) to get married. But that’s the last time I was in a church, not counting a couple of funerals and one wedding where they held the reception in the church activity room. (Actually, I think it was the sanctuary, but they used chairs instead of pews and just cleared them away.) At least it was a Unitarian Universalist church, which is the nearest thing to atheist. That was the time when I accidentally stepped on the mayor’s foot, continued my turn, and knocked her on her ass. She was a liberal, and I couldn’t stand her policies, but it really was an accident. That was also the time the minister invited me to attend services, to which I replied, “Not fucking likely; I’m a radical atheist.” She said that was fine, that they had lots of atheists as members.
Oh, and the minister that married us insisted on doing counseling first. Barbara sometimes had to physically restrain me, literally, to prevent me from strangling the son of a bitch. And my cooperation with his “counseling” consisted mostly of him asking questions or making statements that were none of his fucking business, to which I’d reply, “That’s none of your fucking business.”
I thought about sharing your labels idea with my wife for a chuckle, but then thought better of it.
This was not a joke. It’s probably the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever given Barbara. Well, if you don’t count the set of crow-foot, flank-drive flare nut wrenches I gave her one year.
God bless Tiny Tim and…. Tom Lehrer!
When Mrs. OFD and I were about to be married in Holy Mother Church (after our JP wedding in this place here: http://www.richmondvt.com/home.php ) we had to do the pre-Cana combination of group yakking and counseling and suchlike, with a bunch of couples many years younger than us, as though we were complete noobs knowing nothing at all about anything at all, to include money and sex. We put up with it up until the final night when they were gonna show us some piece of shit PC-type film, PC as you might imagine it set up by religious studies professionals or something, very treacly and boring. We snuck out and that was that.
Meanwhile, for our wedding to take place at all in Holy Mother Church, it took two years of hassles engaged in by our priest with the diocese, with lost paperwork, etc., due to Mrs. OFD being a widow and me having been married before (to a Jew!) and since divorced, and finally had to be signed off at the Vatican, believe it or not, by his Holiness Johannes Paulus Secundus.
Got her and MIL gift certificates this year for Cheap Joe’s art supplies online; they are both artists who have had their stuff in shows and galleries in New England, upstate NY and Noveau Brunswick. Got Princess some offbeat books on offbeat Montreal, where she is living, working and studying for the next four or five years. Unless she changes her mind and goes to Germany for a year or more to learn German, adding that to the other nine or so languages she knows fluently. Sports stuff for son and grandson, gift cert for DIL, no other ideas for her.
Dinner pending in a few hours at son’s and DIL’s, with MIL, grandchildren, and whoever else shows up. I made cornbread-sausage stuffing, mashed potato casserole, and cranberry-ginger sauce. MIL is doing the turkey and veggies, and somebody better be doing a dessert or two or three.
Temp up to 8 now, a heat wave.
Merry Christmas all you damn scrooges.
Ding Dongs Merrily on High
The coupons are a very thoughtful gift, even when compared to flare wrenches. Though personally I prefer fair wenches, but different strokes…
You mistakenly left off the “cannot be combined with any other offer” and I question the three per month allowance. Seems a bit high. I would have gone for no more than three per quarter.
I notice that the coupon says Barbara is allowed to insist. It doesn’t say anything about her husband actually doing the desired chore. I approve of loopholes!
My wife and I debated the morality of buying a live mouse as a play toy for our cat.
We ended up getting one, and the payoff was way beyond what we expected. The cat went so wild with it.. catching it, releasing it and letting it scurry and hide, then fetching it again. Clearly the cat was trying not to hurt the mouse (which would end the fun early.) The mouse was still alive and healthy after a full day (we even fed it, and it happily ate..). Eventually the mouse escaped to the woods behind our house alive, likely to be eaten by an owl or hawk.
Anyway, the $0.50 mouse was a much much much greater hit than probably $100 of miscellaneous play toys we ever tried.
RBT wrote:
“I’m a radical atheist.”
Okay, I give up. How is a radical atheist different from the common garden variety?
RBT wrote:
“Nah. I’ve already slotted in a politician for the H.
sapiensneanderthalensis dissection.”There, I fixed that for you.
He wants to shoot down Santa and I don’t.
And I’m not all “that” common! 😀
I made cornbread-sausage stuffing, mashed potato casserole, and cranberry-ginger sauce. MIL is doing the turkey and veggies, and somebody better be doing a dessert or two or three.
Need another guest? I am coming to your house for Christmas so set another chair. I will even sit at the kids table.
Temp up to 8 now, a heat wave.
Never mind. I think I will stay home.
Have you tried some ‘nip for that cat ? Here is John Scalzi getting his cats higher than a kite:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1996Btsnyrc&w=560&h=315
The big one is a 20 lb maine coone. I’m not sure that you him high on ‘nip.