A Quiet Return

Because we cannot repair the loss of years away, homecomings are almost always conflicted. We are no longer at "home" in our former familiar place. And we do not live between two or more cultures, but rather in both. We are neither fully away, nor fully home. 
-- Charles Ringma

The entire blogger interface has changed.  I'm not sure what to make of that, but it sure doesn't feel like home.

Like many former bloggers, I fell under the spell of Facebook, with its simple-to-use interface that did not require you to sit for an hour or more each night composing a masterpiece or (in that case of weather observations), shooting 5 minutes of video, then spending an hour editing and mixing and rendering it.  I slowly stopped blogging.  But, of course, FB has now run its course and devolved into a platform designed to divide us and rile us up and to spread really, really old memes.  Ones that were already old before they showed up on iFunny months before making it to FB.  But I digress...

Because I became quite enamored with video back in the day of "CherkyB, Weather or Not," I'll be staring out with some posts that also include video.  I've taken up the hobby of tobacco pipe carving, so I'm sure I'll have a few on that (I've made four pipes so far, and three more blocks of briar burl were delivered today).  Right now, I am uploading a video on how to (kinda) make a handbell tree.  The Mrs. plays in a couple handbell choirs and asked me to make one for her, which I did with somewhat limited success.  It's a 27 minute-long video that took me hours to splice together.  I had to beg time off MaxieC to use his 22-core Xeon(tm) processor server to render it, as it was going to take around 50 hours to render on my 2-core laptop.  It will take around an hour just to upload that video to Youtube.

It's not clear to me that this blog will ever return to its glory days.  I'm just not that funny anymore, it seems.  I'm not sure why.  I assume it's due to having my magazines limited to 15 rounds.  I'm gong to give it a shot, though.  I could use a little catharsis.  And, of course, I plan to follow the old rule: never blog sober.  L'Chaim.

Traitor Joe's

I gotta tell you folks, I was pretty happy to be rid of Trader Joe's when we left San Schmose for Ft. TomCollins eleven years ago. But as more and more radical lefties moved into town, the clambering for a Trader Joe's got to be too much, and the f'ers built one.

Ugh.

I don't understand the the draw. I get that it is almost entirely virtue signaling, like a Whole Foods, or driving a Prius, or pretending that you actually think Hillary would have been anything other than an incompetent yet remarkably corrupt president, but really...why?

What can actually be accomplished by shopping at a Trader Joe's? You can't really make a meal from the food there, as they have sort of a random collection of bizarre things that only loosely resemble food. Or, perhaps, are derived from food, but some chef had a fever dream of making an all new flavor by taking perfectly good food and adding something no one else would ever imagine to it. Voila! Crap that upper middle class white womens can prattle on about, but that is an absolute abomination to those who view food as something you'd want to eat rather than just posture about. 

Why, just yesterday MaxieC was watching The Mrs. attempt to stir the Trader Joe's peanut butter into something resembling a spreadable food item - a task that took about ten minutes, as the sign of a "really good peanut butter" is how much it separates in the jar - when this little conversation took place:

MaxieC: "What is that?"
The Mrs.: "Peanut butter."
MaxieC: "Why doesn't it look like peanut butter?"
The Mrs.: "Because it has flax seeds and other good stuff in it."

 Flax seeds...and other...good...stuff.

The Chronicles of CherkyB: Episode 1 - The Journey East

Yes, the fambily is heading on a big junket across the eastern seaboard of these United States. It is sure to be disastrous, but thus far we can only guess as to exactly which iceberg will do us in.

Will it be that, somehow, despite all the promises to the contrary, we have even more luggage with us than we had the last time, and which caused us a great deal of trouble trying to get a larger rental car at the Hartford airport at midnight when it would not fit?

Will it be that three out of the four of us are sick with colds? (I'm the one who is OK. Thank you for your concern.)

Will it be that we miss our connection in Chicago, which happens to be the last flight out tonight?

I don't know. I just know that disaster looms.  These trips always entail disaster.

I've decided to implement a magic word that when said, means we must stop fighting and act happy. I think I can do that, as I am a paragon of self-control. I have not yet broken this news to the fambily - the news of the secret word, not the news of my legendary self-control. That, they know all too well. I have chosen the word, "artichoke."

I hope we don't happen to have stumbled upon the artichoke festival.

We're sitting in the truck right now, waiting for HannahC to get out of school. We left way early, cuz The Mrs. was out of her mind stir crazy to get going. Been sitting here 20 minutes already.

I'm writing this on my new Droid Maxx. It's hard to blog with no keyboard. Oh, here comes HannahC.

Off to the airport we go.

Why, I never

This past Saturday, we decided to take the day off from yard work and, "go do something fun."

What this means is that I spend most of the day driving while The Mrs. alternates between snoozing in the passenger seat and fiddling with all the HVAC controls to set the to the exact opposite of whatever I set them to, HannahC sits in the back listening to One Direction on her iPod, and MaxieC listens to mp3's of books on his iPod, whining about how we're not there yet and asking how long it will be until we get there, then "fact-checking" the response vs. the "time remaining to destination" he can read off the GPS nav screen. He has not accepted any concept of rounding to the nearest quarter-hour, nor the idea that if you can read the answer off the nav, there is no need to ask me the question in the first place.  I suspect he mostly just enjoys being annoying.

I have no idea which side of the fambly he gets that from.

We decided to take a run up to Breckenridge Brewery, as they brew the one and only beer that The Mrs. will drink anymore: Breckenridge Vanilla Porter. We'd never been to Breckenridge, being that it's a ski town and none of us ski, but it's right outside of Frisco, a place the Mrs. likes and had suggested as a possible destination to, "go do something fun."  Plus, The Mrs. has been threatening to take me camping near Frisco and renting a pontoon boat from the marina to go fishing all day on Fathers' Day, so I wanted to check out the reservoir (Dillon Reservoir) and the boat rental situation ahead of time.

Good thing we did that.  The water level is very low, and none of the floating docks are in.  The water is about 1/4 mile from where the rental dock should be.

We went up to Breckenridge and found the brewery pretty easily.  Well, we found the brew pub.  I'm not convinced the bottling operation is anywhere near that, cuz the building is just brew pub-sized.  Whatever.  The food was decent, and I ordered a Vanilla Porter (cuz they are fantastic), and The Mrs. ordered...

A Coke.

This angered HannahC, as we had just driven two hours to go to the home of her one and only favorite beer, and she didn't order any of it.  The excuse given was, "I don't want to drink at this altitude."  This is thin gruel, as the original discovery of Breck Vanilla Porter was at a little pub in Estes Park, where they had it on tap.  The elevation there is 7522 ft.  This was a mere 2000 ft higher.  But, whatever.  She just gulped down a whole bunch of mine, so she didn't have to count it as "drinking".

Other than lunch, Breckenridge was a total bust.  There's really absolutely nothing there in the town but ski shops and bars and t-shirt shops.  As The Mrs. kept saying, "This is nothing like Aspen."

I've never been to Aspen, given that I'm neither fabulously rich nor a raging leftists, but The Mrs. used to go there every summer for some music thing.

The Mrs. had found some open space preserve just outside of town that we were going to visit.  Supposedly, it had a lot of wildlife and sometimes even moose.  After lunch and a stroll through town, we set off looking for it.  We had its GPS location, but the street location given for it on the website was in the middle of town.  We drove completely around the periphery of where it was located on the map (which took about 20 minutes), and could find no entrance.  So, we went to the local gas station, and I topped off the old tank with about 20 gallons, and the rest of the fambly went inside to buy every snack food they sold and ask for directions.

The directions were, "I dunno.  I've never heard of it.  Drive up to Peak 8 and ask at the lodge."

So we drove back up the mountain along the road that bordered the open space (theoretically), only this time we went down every little dead-end side street along the way, still finding no sign of this place.  Finally, we ended up at the top of Peak 8 and found something that looked like a lodge but was actually a pricey condo resort, and the Mrs. went inside to ask for directions.

"It closed last year.  Doesn't exist anymore."

Grrr...

However, that's not the point of my story.  The point is that on the way home, I was driving along I-70 between the Johnson Tunnel and Denver along the section with the very long run of 4-6% downgrade slope, and there were signs that said, "Truckers make sure your brakes are working and adjusted," and The Mrs. asked me, "what does it mean that your brakes are 'adjusted'?"

Not being a big-rig driver myself, I went with what I knew.

Me, CherkyB: "Well, when you are pulling a trailer, you have to adjust the brake gain on the trailer vs. on the tractor based on how heavy the thing you are towing is and how good its brakes are.  You want them balanced so all your wheels brake evenly.  You see here, I have this thing right here to adjust that," and I point to my integrated trailer brake controller.

The Mrs.: [looking somewhat confused] "You mean, you can tow stuff with this truck?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes, of course."

The Mrs.:  "So, like, if we bought a boat or a camper, you could tow it with this truck?  You won't need to buy a different truck?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yes.  I can't pull one of those 30 ft 5th wheel trailers like [our next door neighbor] has, but I can pull anything we would ever buy."

The Mrs.: "Wow.  I had no idea."

Why, I never.

Is it just me

...or does everyone else snicker when they read the word, "proteins?"

This is apparently a new menu term.  I saw it multiple times today, and I can't remember ever seeing it before.  First was at lunch, at a local Thai restaurant, where the lunch specials came with "Your choice of Proteins chicken, beef, pork, tofu." (One doesn't expect perfect punctuation on the menu of a Thai restaurant.  In fact, I think it's actually required to include a bunch of errors in order to be "authentic."  The restaurant equivalent of "keeping it real.")

Then, when I got back to work, I read the flyer for the new, improved cafeteria menu, and the salad bar description said, "Crisp greens and hot Proteins".  And the next menu item also described Proteins.

Yeah - "Proteins" needs to be capitalized, I guess.

Still, though, whenever I read "Proteins," I think this.  It makes me not want to eat there.

Smart Cars

Those two or three of you who still read this blog know that I am a very, very humble man.  But, sometimes I just have to brag a bit about The Childrens.  Probably as a way to let everyone know what a wonderful, successful parent I am.

This is one of those times.

What follows is a completely true story that took place Monday.  We were sitting at a traffic light, and a Smart Car was sitting at the light on the intersecting street.  It had a complete vehicle wrap advertising a local shoppe, and on the front had either a nose or a bow tie.  I couldn't really see it that well cuz it was facing perpendicular to me.  But I made note to MaxieC:

Me, CherkyB: "Look!  A clown car!"

MaxieC: "Daaaah.  That's not a clown car.  That's a Smart Car."

MaxieC: "In fact, it's not really a Smart Car.  It's more like a stupid car.  You can't even fit any dead hookers in it."

Me, CherkyB: "Heh heh....wait...What did you say?"

MaxieC: "I said it was a stupid car."

Me, CherkyB: "No.  After that."

MaxieC: "I...uhhhh...I said...uhhh...you can't even fit your groceries in it."

That's my boy.

What a Rip

With heavy heart, I began to dismantle the old entertainment center this morning.  I got most of the "removable" parts off, and then I started trying to remove the glued in parts.  The entire top, with shelf, came off surprisingly easily, being held in with just a few screws and gravity.

MaxieC worked to dismantle the top while I strategized on the rest of the case.  He had a great time using the power drill to remove all the wood screws. Funny thing, though.  As we got farther and farther into the dismantling, I found more and more parts that were not solid wood.  In fact, it seemed like nearly everything was press board with a very high quality wood laminate on the surface.  The only things that turned out to be actually solid wood were the four corner posts and the trim frame around the top.  Everything else was fake.

When I bought this from a name-brand furniture store, it was sold to me as solid wood.  But the whole damn thing is fake.  Very high quality fake, mind you, but still fake. What a rip.

Well, when the entire purpose of carefully disassembling the piece is premised upon saving the wood, and then you find out that there isn't actually any wood to save, there's a tool specifically designed for that.  It's made by Milwaukee, and if you load it up with a blade called "The Ax" that is designed for demolition, well, hell, things get fun real fast.

MaxieC tried to bash it all up with a dead blow hammer, but achieved only limited success. I suggested he get the 12 lbs. sledge, but he didn't want to. You can lead a horse to water...

We then spent about an hour putting together the new, much much cheaper entertainment stand that will hold whatever goodies we get this Christmas.  It says the top can hold 200 lbs., but is not allowed to hold a tube TV .  Odd, as my tube TV doesn't weigh anything near 200 lbs.  The corner TV mount arrives via UPS on Tuesday.  Once I get that up on the wall, I'll probably have to decide on which TV Santa will bring.

Obsolescence, Get to Know It

There is nothing sadder than obsolescence.  Well, other than maybe friends and family dying.  Or a pet dying.  Or The Bills going to four Superbowls in a row and losing all of them.  Or, perhaps, one of your single friends telling you he's getting married.  Or having to sit through any of The Twilight movies after the first one.  Or going to the garage refrigerator only to remember you've run out of beer.  And then realizing you're also out of bourbon, too.

There are many things sadder than obsolescence, but still, in the greater scheme of things, obsolescence is sad.  Though in a good way, because it only happens when something better comes along.  Like how nobody eats a Whopper anymore since the Whopper with Cheese came along.

Hmmm.

Obsolescence is one of side effects of the great march of progress called "Creative Destruction" that happens largely in capitalistic societies where people are continuously striving for improvement.  Both incremental improvement and revolutionary improvement.  Creative Destruction is one of the best things ever to happen to society, and it has liberated more people from poverty than any Live Aid concert could ever hope to.

Still, it's sad when it happens to you.

For instance, when you bought a beautiful oak and cherry entertainment center that could hold an outrageously large 32" TV.  And you bought high quality furniture, because you didn't want any of that screw-together particle board crap.  No, you wanted something that was going to last and last.  And you took it from your first house to your second, then to your third.  And in the third house, it kinda ended up in the rec room in the basement, cuz there was a built-in nook in the family room that would hold a 43" DLP widescreen TV just fine.

And then one day, out of the blue, your son says, "I want an Xbox 360 for Christmas."

Well, the Xbox 360 is a fine piece of machinery, but tailored more for older children.  Ones who have graduated from high school and are still living in the basement.  We're a PlayStation household, having owned the original and then two of the PS2's.  And the PS3 plays Blu Ray, a big cost saver right there.

"OK, I want a PS3 for Christmas."

Well, son, the PS3 really wants to be run with an HDMI output onto a widescreen TV, and the rec room TV is a 14-year old analog tube TV, and it doesn't have any HDMI inputs at all.  Now, the surround sound system I have down there has 4 HDMI inputs, cuz when my old stereo reciever (though I bought with money I earned drying cars at a carwash between high school and college) died, I got it anticipating that one day we'd probably get a new TV and game system, but it can't convert HDMI inputs to analog outputs for DRM reasons..

"Yeah, OK Da.  We'll just get a new TV, too.  That'll be great!  Should we go shopping right now?"

You know the thing about a 32" tube TV with a beautiful oak and cherry cabinet?  There's not one goddamn person in northern Colorado who wants one badly enough to carry it out of the basement of someone else's house.

Another sad thing is that I'm old now.  It just happened kind of all of a sudden.  This blog used to be about all the fun little fix-it jobs I used to do and the wacky hijinx that ensued, but I have really slowed down a lot in the last couple years.  I hardly do anything.  And the thought of trying to lug this giant entertainment cabinet up the curvy stairs from the basement is itself awfully tiring.

Yes, I lined up three other guys to help, but still, I am struck with the futility of this.  There are a couple donation places that will take the furniture (but not the TV), and only if I put it in the driveway for them so they don't have to carry it out of the basement, but who will really want this?  No one.  Even poor people don't have tube TVs anymore, and the cabinet is useless for anything else.

So, I've decided to do something drastic.  I'm going to dismantle it and try to get as much good lumber out of it as possible.  It's a damn shame, as the tracks for the sliding doors that cover the TV are works of art just by themselves.  Time stands still for no one, though.  I need to take Ol' Yeller out in the woods and shoot him.  

I toyed for a while with the idea of cutting the top off and saving the bottom cabinet, but I'm not sure what I would do with it.  Who needs a cabinet with sliding drawers that have inserts to hold VHS tapes?  No.  It's a goner.  I'll try to be gentle, as gentle as one can be with a Sawzall...

For the Humor Impaired

It has come to my attention that I may have overestimated the intelligence of my audience.  I try to never do that.  When I write my posts, I try to picture myself with a blank stare, the only light glinting off a bit of drool escaping from the corner of my mouth, the rest of me with the dull patina of dirt and stupidity.  Oh wait, no, I channeling Christopher Moore.

But today, someone said to me, in the standard, hyper-critical way, "You know you spelled 'sanitary' wrong."

I blinked a bit to see if it was a joke, cuz I'm never really sure when humor will appear in an otherwise barren  landscape, but it was not.  It was a serious statement.

So I said, "I did that intentionally cuz it was about Santa.  Santa-ry.  That's what makes it funny."

"Ooooohhhh.  Santa.  I get it now.  No one is going to get that."

[Sigh]  Maybe I'll just go back to shooting videos about the weather and setting them to Yakety Sax.

Santary Products

MaxieC still believes in Santa.  This is probably not ideal, but here at the CherkyB household, I have surprisingly little input into such decisions.  I know, I know, you're shocked, Shocked! that this could be the case, but there it is.

HannahC is still mad at us, not for having ever led her to believe in Santa, mind you.  No, she is angry that we only were able to keep up the ruse until she was 10.  She believes we have cheated her out of a "magical Christmas" now that she knows the real deal.  And she has dedicated herself to making sure MaxieC doesn't find out.

Bless her heart.

Well, round about this time of year, purely by coincidence, a lot of little packages from Amazon seem to get left on the front porch.  The Mrs. dutifully brings these in and, if they are things she has ordered, she squirrels them away unnoticed.  However, if they happen to be addressed to me, she leaves them just inside the front door and announces their presence the moment I walk in from work.

Cuz, you know, I work.

Imagine,if you will, the excitement of a little boy who has just been reminded that there are unopened packages at the front door and that the person who owns those packages is now around.  There is jumping up and down.  There is hanging on my arm.  There is shoving of said packages into my face.

What there distinctly is not is any way to squirrel away the packages unnoticed.

However, I am a resourceful man:

MaxieC: "Daddy! Daddy! Open the package!  Open it!"

Me, CherkyB: "No."

MaxieC: "What is it? Open it! Open it!

Me, CherkyB: "No. I have to take this upstairs."

MaxieC: "Why? What is it? Why won't you open it?  What is it? What is it?"

Me, CherkyB: "Your mother has discovered that tampons are really cheap from Amazon.  Why don't you open this up and put it under the sink in the master bath upstairs?"

MaxieC [running away]: "Ewwww!!!  Yuuuck!!!!"

Cloudy with Salt

Watch "Cloudy with Salt" on YouTube

Watch "Lightning but no rain" on YouTube

Advice from a Stranger

I was sitting in the Sacramento airport in the A-terminal bar last week, having a bit of lunch while waiting for my flight home. You know, and maybe a beers. Hard to say for sure. Well, a feller sits down next to me and begins to talk to me.

Now, as you all know, I'm not a very friendly person. It's not that I don't like people. I'm just absolutely terrible at chit chat. I watch a little football, but I don't memorize any of the games. Other than that, I don't really follow sports. I follow politics, but I don't make chit chat about it with strangers (or, for that matter, with fambly anymore given how much of my fambly is raging leftists or, at the very least, buys into the popularly-held misconception that liberals are smarter than conservatives, or that conservatism is just thinly veiled racism, or both). While I am an astute follower of the weather, one runs out of weather observations rather rapidly. So mainly I smile and nod and pay close attention to see not so much if I can learn about the subject being discussed as I can learn about how to make idle chit chat without feeling like it's completely forced.

At this I am a failure.

But after a beers or two, I can nod and smile very convincingly, and I can inject wry little witticisms into the conversation for color. Like this:

"That's great. And I thought the best thing that could happen today was that .223 ammo went on sale at Cabela's, and if you order $99 or more of anything and enter the promo code "12FREE" on the checkout page, you get free shipping this weekend only. And you know how expensive it is to ship ammo. That stuff weighs a ton. It's like they filled the box half up with lead or something."

See that - useful information followed up immediately with sarcasm. It's like I have a gift, just not for chit chat.

(I'm required to tell you that Cabela's has not paid me any fee or consideration for promoting their sale. I just finished ordering some ammo moments ago, after Slushee text messaged me about the sale, so it was on my mind.)

Well, we're chatting some of the standard airport-bar chatter about whether you're going home or leaving home, and whether you're actually from the place you're going to or coming from. Blah blah blah. Then, out of the blue:

Guy at Bar: "So, how long have you been married?"

Me, CherkyB: "Wait! Don't tell me! I know this one! Uhhh..."

Bartender: "You damn well better know this one if you expect to stay married."

See, the thing is that I, CherkyB, am a man. Therefore, I remember things the way a man remembers things - I remember when they happened. I don't remember how long it has been since it happened. Somebody says to you, "How long has it been since the Declaration of Independence?" You go, "Hmmm...July 4th, 1776. It's January 2012. 235 and a half years." You don't just know that's how long it has been. And believe you me, the signing of the Declaration of Independence is a hell of a lot more momentous an occasion than any particular person's wedding - yes even more important than Princess Di's.

So, I'm doing math in my head. While taking shit from a bartender. Who I guarantee doesn't know how long he's been married, he's just making chit chat.

Me, CherkyB: "Oh, a little over 15 years."

Guy at Bar: "I made it 18 in mine. Lemme tell you something."

Me, CherkyB: "What's that?"

Guy at Bar: "Divorce. You should try it. It's like the best thing in the world."

Me, CherkyB: "Hmm."

Guy at Bar: "Yeah. I thought it was going to be horrible. But it turns out to be fantastic. Fan-f*^king-tastic. You really should try it. If you don't like it, you can always get married again."

Me, CherkyB: "Well...I'm not really thinking about getting divorced at the moment."

At which point I may have added, "because my darling wife is the best thing that ever happened to me, and we love each other more every day, and she's one of the last people who avidly reads everything I write in my blog," or, "I have kids."

One of those.

Guy at Bar: "Let me tell you - I was telling my girlfriend how I wanted to quit my job and start my own business, and the next day she had deposited $10,000 into my account to help pay for startup costs. And look at this:"

At which point he starts digging in his wallet and tossing credit cards onto the bar.

Guy at Bar: "This credit card is hers. This is hers. This one is hers. She pays for everything. You should seriously try divorce."

Me, CherkyB: "Well, I'm glad it's working out for you, but I can't imagine being without my dear, beautiful wife who hangs on every word I write on my blog so that she can discuss it with me and/or her mother as though it was some sort of literary masterpiece."

Guy at Bar: "Yeah. OK. I'm just saying. Hey, have you seen this online game? It's like a war strategy game where you have armies and have to equip them and fight battles against other players? It's the best. You've got to try it."

I bring out the best in people. It's my gift.

CherkyB, Father of the Year

Yes, it's a fresh new year, and this gives us the opportunity to grab the much-coveted Father of the Year trophy, even if just for a brief moment.

You see, yesterday for whatever reason, The Mrs. decided she would clean out her closet of all the "old clothes" that she "never wears anymore".

All you married people, of course, know that that is code for something that cannot ever be mentioned, not even in a whisper. But the fashion industry exists in large part to create a built-in reason to get rid of old clothes - they're "out of fashion" - so that marriage can exist happily without anyone ever having to mention the unmentionable.

She spent hours up there yesterday, and she even vacuumed the walk-in. When I went up there last night, she had wiped out about 90% of her clothes. It was vast expanses of empty hangers and space the likes of which we haven't seen since the moving van arrived the day after we got here.

Well, my darling Childrens spent most of that time sitting in the fambly room with me watching the last 6 episodes of Top Shot off the DVR (that we've been saving up for a special occasion) and waiting for the New Year, so they didn't really know the fury that was ongoing upstairs. Fast forward to this morning, where I am blissfully asleep in my nice warm bed when all of a sudden:

The Mrs.: [poke poke poke] "Hey, I'm going to see the king."

Me, CherkyB: [startled awake] "Huh? What? What king?"

The Mrs.: [speaking very slowly, as if to an idiot - which I hesitate to even write here, as this has actually been her normal way of communicating to me since she had childrens and decided I was largely superfluous, though she hasn't figured out how to replace my income yet and is thus filled with resentment] "Iiiiii'mmmmm goooooiiiiiinnnnggg sssshhhhhoooooppppppiiiiinnnnngggg. Alone."

Me, CherkyB: [rolling over to go back to sleep] "Great."

The Mrs.: "There's pizza in the garage fridge that needs to be eaten."

Me, CherkyB: "Bye bye."

Later, I got up. I was in the kitchen making my coffee, which is much easier now that we have a Cuisinart machine that does single-serving K-cups. MaxieC asked me where Momma was, and I said, "She moved out." He laughed and went back to watching TV.

A few minutes later, after some consideration, this happened:

HannahC: "Really, Daddy, where is Momma, and when is she coming back?"

Me, CherkyB: "I told you, she moved out. She's not coming back."

HannahC: "Oh, come on."

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah. She packed up all her stuff and left. She even packed up all her clothes. Have you seen her closet?"

[HannahC runs upstairs...checks closet]

HannahC: "Daddy! What's going on? Did Momma actually leave?"

Me, CherkyB: "No. She packed up all her old clothes to give to the Goodwill, and now she's gone out to buy all new clothes."

HannahC: "Daddy!!! You're a jerk!!!"

Then she burst into tears and ran into her room. I haven't seen her since.

Maybe she moved out.

A long, hard winter

So, I'm watching the NFL, as I am wont to do around this time of year, and then one of those things happened which is so cliché that I hesitate to report on it, given how you all will think I'm just spinning a yarn. But here goes:

MaxieC: "Dah?"

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah?"

MaxieC: "What's 'erectile dysfunction'?"

A long time ago, I heard on the radio (prolly from Dr. Laura) that the best way to approach uncomfortable questions of children is to answer them matter-of-factly.

Me, CherkyB: "Erectile dysfunction means you can't get a boner."

MaxieC: "A what?"

There are many drawback to being a homeschool parent. The most obvious being that I get to pay taxes to send The Childrens to a public school that they do not attend, and then I get to pay to buy tons and tons of curricula so that my hovering wife, bless her heart, can pick and choose the "best parts" from, say, 5 different math books, because god only knows that there are many ways to teach fractions, but only one of them could possibly be best, and who can tell which will be the best until you've tried them all? And, of course, having a wife who is always angry because she spends every waking hour with the precious little tykes - precious little tykes who have spent their whole lives with their mother and thus know absolutely every possible button to push for maximal annoyance. But, deep down in the list of drawbacks to being a homeschool parent is that your kids just don't pick up all the dirty stuff you normally expect them to learn from their friends.

One of which is the definition of "boner".

Me, CherkyB: "Well, MaxieC, a 'boner' is when your penis gets hard. Erectile dysfunction is when your penis doesn't get hard."

MaxieC: "Why would you want your penis to get hard?"

Oh, MaxieC, MaxieC, MaxieC, where to begin?

Me, CherkyB: "You remember that video with Howie Mandel? The guy from 'Deal or No Deal'?"

MaxieC: "Kind of."

Me, CherkyB: "You remember how the daddy has to put his penis in the mommy?"

MaxieC: "Oh gross!"

Me, CherkyB: "Well, your penis needs to be hard to do that."

MaxieC: "Yuck!"

Me, CherkyB: "And these pills make your penis hard if you have erectile dysfunction. They're called 'boner pills.'"

MaxieC: "Stop! Yuck! Gross!

Just then, The Mrs. walks in.

The Mrs.: "What the heck are you telling him?"

Me, CherkyB: "He asked what erectile dysfunction was."

The Mrs.: "And you're telling him???"

Me, CherkyB: "Yeah - he asked."

MaxieC: "I just saw the ad on TV and I asked, but I didn't know what it was, and now I wish I hadn't asked. It's disgusting!"

The Mrs.: "Up to your usual standards of parenting again, I see."

Me, CherkyB: "He asked. Am I just not supposed to answer?"

MaxieC: "I wish you hadn't."

I never get any support.

I feel like I've neglected you

So I weatherblogged.

CherkyB, Moron

Yes, that's right folks. You heard it here first. Except for those of you who heard the story earlier.

It started out innocently enough. My Goombah, Mugsy, asked me to go rifle-shootin' out at the range on account of how he wanted to shoot his new AR-30 at 200 yds. Well, given that I'm on sabbatical, I couldn't say "no." Plus, I wanted to shoot my new belly gun with the special Speer Gold Dot short-barrel +P personal defense ammo I had picked up for it.

Though not at 200 yds. A 3" barrel is not really the right equipment for 200 yds.

I decided it'd be fun to shoot my old elk gun that I bought on the spur of the moment when I went to a gun show with a co-worker who wanted to buy a .22 rifle (I ended up buying both a .22 rifle and a .300 Win Mag rifle, and my coworker bought nothing). I had an old friend who had been asking me every year to go elk hunting with him, so I just bought the rifle so's I could go.

And the closest we got to an elk was that we had to wait for some to cross the road before we could get to the national forest.

But that's another story. One that happened 11 years ago.

Now, me being Me, CherkyB, I bought a really nice scope for the rifle - a Leupold Vari-X III of some sort - and I had dutifully gone to the range to zero it in and learn how to shoot a rifle. I had never shot one before, so I bought Jeff Cooper's The Art of the Rifle, read it, and then tried to put into practice what I learned. This went alright until the night before the hunt, when my buddy's dad tried out my rifle and said, "Your scope is out of focus."

And I noticed that, at 100yds, it was slightly out of focus - which it had not been prior to this. I figured despite buying a very pricey flight case for it, United Airlines had knocked something out of whack. But not to worry, as these scopes come with a lifetime warranty. I'd just send it back, and they'd re-align it or whatever.

Except I never did.

In fact, I'm not at all sure I ever shot that rifle again after the elk hunt until this past Sunday. Now, I kinda have a recollection of shooting it once after the hunt, but I can't really put my finger on when that would have been. I think it's just been in the safe the whole time, with me cleaning and oiling it maybe once every couple years to make sure the bore doesn't rust.

So, at one point, Mugsy and I switch rifles, and the AR-30 is one hell of a sweet gun. Virtually no kick, despite being .338 Lapua Mag. As I was looking through his scope, I was thinking to myself, "Self, wow this is a clear image." Then I went back to my gun, looked through the scope, and said, "My scope is out of focus."

Mugsy's reply, "Good. Then it isn't just me."

Damnit.

Well, today I had a little time on my hands, so I looked up the tech support number for Leupold, then I got the scope off the rifle to look for a model number and serial number before calling it in. And then it went like this:

Me, CherkyB: "Self, I can't believe that people would make such a fancy scope with fixed focus and no way to adjust it. And now, I'll probably have to find the original receipt to get it fixed, and they'll probably say I damaged it and won't fix it for free."

Me, CherkyB: "Hmm...what's this knurled ring next to the zoom? I thought that was part of the zoom, but it doesn't turn when I zoom."

Me, CherkyB: "Oh...sweet Jesus."

Yeah, that's right. That knurled ring actually was a lock ring for the eyepiece, and when you loosened the ring, the eyepiece could be rotated. Which, yes - you guessed it, adjusted the focus.

Duh.

Sabbatical 2 - Day 1

I think it’s the parenting that will kill me.

Not that this is unexpected.

As almost none of you know, since I’ve never spoken of it here and only briefly mentioned on that killer-of-blogs, jumper-of-sharks Facebook platform, I am on sabbatical.

“What?” you mouth slowly to yourself, in that confused fashion you’d think by now you’d be used to, given the propensity of confusion swirling amidst your life, “I didn’t know CherkyB was an academic. I thought he, like, did stuff.”

For once, you’re right. I am not an academic, though “do stuff” is probably more than I’d like to commit to with respects to describing my job. For almost the past two years, I have been able to tell people that I am a “Power Architect.” Then, I get a blank stare and maybe a, “So you have a background in construction?” and I realize that, while being a “power architect” is an excitingly snazzy title compared to my previous one of “binsplit guy”, I’m still not really ready for the cocktail circuit with either of those titles.

Not that a proper title would, per se, make me ready for the cocktail circuit, as I can’t for the life of me pretend that socialism is the proper order for a sophisticated society rather than the evolutionary dead-end that it obviously is to anyone whose aspires to more than living off other people’s money. But I digress.

I am not an academic. I work for The Company. And one of the perks of working for The Company is that every few years, they give you a couple months off as a “sabbatical”. This has been a long-standing policy of The Company that started back in the days when it was a new and cut-throat industry, and you had no idea which companies would make it and which would not, and so you worked day and night to try to just stay alive. Thus, the danger of burning out was ever-present. Nowadays, it seems we have our act together pretty well and can accomplish substantially more without burning out, yet the sabbatical lives on as a time-tested tradition in much the fashion that we thought having The Company dump a large portion of money into our 401(k) every year was. Right up until they dialed that way back.

Today is officially my first day of sabbatical – my second sabbatical – but it comes on the heels of a 4-day weekend. So I’m already on my fifth uninterrupted day of family time, and I’m tired. The Mrs. Decided I should take The Childrens to their swimming lessons today so she could stay home and clean the house. This after I nearly died yesterday after sitting on the floor of the living room, which was the only clear space in the whole house, to go over the Colorado Big Game hunting regulations handbook with HannahC and was overcome with dust allergies that caused me to sneeze and cough and my eyes to water for about three hours until I could find the Benedryl (it was in with the dog’s medicines, of course). Apparently, that particular carpet has not been vacuumed since we took the Christmas tree down in January.

I used to vacuum a lot, but I have a rule that I won’t vacuum any room where I can’t see the floor. So now I don’t really ever vacuum. The Mrs. actually moves the vacuum around from room to room so that it’s in a different place every day when I come home from work, but she’s recently admitted that she never actually turns it on cuz she can’t vacuum a room where we can’t see the floor. She puts it in a room as a reminder to herself that she’d like to vacuum that room as soon as The Childrens pick up all their junk, but then she makes HannahC work on 4H projects all day long and makes MaxieC watch TV and play Playstation all day to keep him quiet so HannahC can work on 4H, and, well, not much progress is made on the floor thing.

I’ve only managed to go fishing once so far. I caught a single Bluegill. HannahC caught about 11, of which 6 were big enough to eat. It was one of those days where every time I went to put my line back in the water, HannahC would come romping up with another fish for me to clean, so I didn’t get to fish much during the peak catching time. We were there for about 2.5 hours and caught all the keepers in a span of about 20 minutes about 45 minutes after we got there. Then, nothing.

HannahC was using new high-technology bait - worms that have been fed something that makes them fluorescent green. Now, I don’t know if they are the glow-in-the-dark worms that I’ve seen at Sportsman’s Warehouse. We’ve been meaning to check each night, but always forget. These were from Walmart, and they cost about double what non-fluorescent green worms cost (which means they’re $3 for 12 instead of $3 for 24), but they’re big crawlers that you can cut in half before baiting a hook. I’m not at this point willing to declare that the fishies love the green worms more than regular worms, but they sure love them more than a Mepps Aglia gold spinner with a Berkeley Gulp Alive minnow trailing on the feather-dressed treble, which is what I was fishing. Scientifically formulated attractant that fish can’t resist, my ass.

Lure Researcher: “I’ve come up with a breakthrough formula of pheromones and long-lasting scents that promises to be the most powerful attractant the fishing world has ever known!”

Boss: “Do fish like it better than worms?”

Lure Researcher: “And I’ve slightly changed the formula of our slow-selling plastic swimbaits so that they can absorb the stank and stink for hours.”

Boss: “How does it do versus worms?”

Lure Researcher: “And we can sell them packed in little jars with extra liquid so that you can re-charge the swimbaits after you use them.”

Boss: “But does it work better than worms?”

Lure Researcher: “Well, like regular worms?”

Boss: “Yeah”

Lure Researcher: “Yeah, you know, it’ll depend on the individual fish, but yeah, probably.”
Boss: “How about them green worms?”

Lure Researcher: “Uhhh……”

Boss: “Aw hell, them green worms is cheatin’. Ship it.”

Around these parts, a “keeper” bluegill is only 6-8” long.

On an unrelated note, I’ve decided that for my upcoming birthday, I’m going to get me a high-quality fillet knife.

Those Two Little Words

Here at Me, CherkyB, I rarely wax philosophical. Lately, I haven't been waxing much of anything.

Saying that made me think about how I have never waxed my truck, despite having it over a year. Unless you count carwash wax. But I digress.

The past week has given me pause to reflect upon the power of two simple words in our language. You see, last weekend was what we like to call PMS Weekend. I've noted that before. Actually, a number of times, given it is a regular occurrence. The Mrs. was all crabby and blaming it on me, as per usual. She even rehashed the standard revelation:

Me, CherkyB: "Why do you have to be so nasty?"

The Mrs.: "I'm not nasty. You're the nasty one. You know why you think I'm nasty? You know what's different this time?"

Me, CherkyB: "Oh for God's sake. Don't give me that, 'I've just decided not to put up with your crap anymore,' line again. Every month you get really nasty, and then you say, 'I've just decided not to put up with your crap anymore,' like it's some kind of new behavior. It's PMS. In a couple of days, it'll be over, and you'll be back to normal."

The Mrs.: "It is not PMS. I've just decided not to put up with your crap anymore, and so you interpret that as me being nasty."

Me, CherkyB: "Yes dear."

[I might note that about a half hour later, The Mrs. came wandering into the room and declared, "You were right. It was just PMS." I thought I'd immortalize that here, but she'll probably deny it and insist she just decided not to put up with my crap anymore right up until the very moment her PMS ended, and then she decided to put up with it again "for the sake of the marriage."]

So, in the couple days leading up to that fateful moment, I got to use those two little words that all marriage counselors and self-help gurus tell you are the key to a lasting relationship. I know, I know, it's kind of cliché, but you all know that deep down inside, I'm a sappy romantic. I'm pretty sure I've talked about that before.

You all know what I'm talking about. The two magic words that make it all OK:

Right now.

"You have no idea how much I hate you...right now."

See? All better.

The real problem

I've cut way back on my drinking, and you should never blog sober.