New Years' Eve

I'm staying in tonight, just me and the mutts...and their damned Wubba toys.

I will get even the person who got them each one. She knows who she is.

The dogs have this game down to a science now. It starts with Belle playing with one Wubba doll in the living room. Murphy takes the other one and goes to his dog bed down the hall with it. As soon as he squeaks it though, Belle jumps up and bolts through the house to "rescue" that Wubba from Murphy. (I'm sensing something maternal going on here.) She returns with that Wubba in her mouth and she carries it back into the living room and gently sets it down on the rug where she begins to lick it and caress it. At this point, Murphy runs in and grabs the other Wubba and takes it back to the bedroom. He squeaks that one and Belle is off to the rescue again. A minute later, she's back with the second one and Murphy is already going after the first one again. These idiots have been at this non-stop for almost half an hour now. But at least they're having fun amongst themselves and leaving me alone.

As for me, I just cooked a rather mediocre steak dinner and I plan to retire to the gun room to read more adventures of Allan Quatermain as I sit beneath a rack of Martini-Henry rifles and sip Irish whiskey. The fire it lit in the stove below and it's warmth will fill the house until near dawn.

Earlier today, I did get to the doctor and had my surgery stitches taken out of my leg. But alas, the doctor apparently saw his shadow as I've got at least three more weeks of crutches before he sees me again and the leg is nowhere near prosthetic-capable. It sucks to be me, but just a bit--I did wake up this morning, after all. So no complaints.

Of course if I look out my window and see one more cloudless day with little to no wind, I am going to figure a way to work my plane's left rudder pedal with a stick or some such. I couldn't buy a decent flying day in the days before the surgery and now that's all I'm seeing here. THAT warrants a complaint, truth be told.

Meantime, I'm amused by tales of scumbags like Branden Mattier, who, after getting caught red-handed trying to defraud the charity fund for the Boston Marathon Bombing victims out of 2.2 million dollars, has now filed a lawsuit against the State Police who nailed him, claiming that they did not have the permission of the charity fund to use their name on the fake check that they busted him accepting. Wow. That's not only too stupid for words (someone needs to pull this wanna-be pro-se litigant aside and explain the concept of "standing" to him) but it shows an incredible lack of remorse that his sentencing judge can only weigh against him when he's convicted. But he is from Massachusetts, home of countless other fools who think that America will be a better place if only we let the likes of Elizabeth Warren, John Kerry, Barney Frank and countless drunken Kennedys run everything. In a Bizarroland like that, he might even win his case, see his criminal charge dismissed with an apology, and get elected to the next open US Senate seat.

But enough of that. I need to get up to the gun room and finish my shopping list of replacement parts needed to put my newest SKS back into deployable condition. Who ever thought that one day anyone would actually be trying to restore an SKS? I mean, that's about as far-fetched as the concept of paying money to buy bottled water to drink...or at least it was a decade ago. Times do change, don't they?

Just four hours to midnight now...and then half of my redneck neighbors try to shoot the moon down and the dogs can go berzerk.

Happy New Year to you all, each and every one.