I've never gotten used to it

Some day, maybe. I've learned to expect it, I suppose. I imagine this happens to everyone, though. It just happened to me a couple hours ago. There I was, in the friendly neighborhood liquor store, picking up some provisions, when the Bacardi rep tried to sell me on exchanging out some of the brands I had selected for Bacardi brands (in this case, to trade my Tanqueray for Bombay Sapphire) in exchange for a $5 rebate and a free shot glass. She was young and blonde and, uh, well put together, so I let her talk me into it. Plus, I actually like Bombay Sapphire better, but I'm not willing to pay the extra $2 for it.

While I was filling in the rebate form, she glanced over my shopping cart and said,

Blonde Liquor Girl: "Sooooo...you having a party?"

Me, CherkyB: "Uh. No. That's actually all just for me."

Blonde Liquor Girl: "Oh."

Me, CherkyB: "Well, it is a long weekend."

Blonde Liquor Girl: "Yeah. That's why I asked you if you were having a party cuz it's a long weekend and I saw that you had so much...uh...OK. It'll take 4-6 weeks to get your rebate check in the mail."

Of course, the most fantastic part of all this is that the Deschutes Brewery truck was out front, and they were giving away free hot dogs, and I was hungry, and Deschutes beer was on sale. I got a 12-pack of Mirror Pond. Mmmmm.

The shot glass turned out to be total shite, though. Plastic.

Those of you who follow my occasional updates on FaceBook know that I'm heading out to go dove hunting tomorrow morning. And, yes, as I explained to The Childrens, that means I'll be hunting those nice little mourning doves that go "cooo cooo" and wake you up at the crack of dawn. Like the one that laid eggs in The Mrs.'s hanging flower basket on the front porch.

Now, I've never been dove hunting before. In fact, I've only ever been elk hunting before, and that was just once. Why just once? I take you back nine years:

The Mrs.: "You spent a thousand dollars on hunting gear, and you'll probably only go once."

The Mrs. is quite prescient. She has never let me go again after that.

A while back, as I'm sure you all remember, I picked myself up a shotgun. Not because I had any particular use for a shotgun, mind you, but because I'm a man. And a man should own a shotgun. I also felt like I had enough pistols (for now), and enough rifles (given I'm not allowed to go hunting anymore), and I felt it was time to branch out some.

Well, up at work I've fallen in with this bad crowd of folks who honestly and truly own so many guns that they can't even name them all. The ringleader is a guy who used to be named Mark something-or-other, but that wasn't special enough so, I kid you not^*, he changed his name to Harrison Balzonya. He's taken pity upon me cuz of my sorry state of being so henpecked, and he's decided to teach me how to hunt doves, as you don't need a tag for that at all, and there are a number of places within a half hour of home where you can do it.

[It'll help if you read this paragraph with the voice of Carson Kressley in your head] Plus, the thing that is so very fun about hunting birds is that you get to dress all up in urban-chic camouflage, not in that dreadful orange that big game hunters wear.

Yeah, OK, Carson probably isn't a huge fan of camo hunting gear. But the accessories are a blast.


Mt hat doesn't match my clothes, and the gun isn't camo. But that'll be OK, cuz I understand that there probably won't be any doves where we're going hunting them anyways. It's a secret spot that usually mobbed on the weekends. I'll let you know if I kill anything.

^* as far as you know