Random ThanksWednesday Thoughts.

• --I'm halfway through my second six pack of Left Hand Brewery Milk Stout beer in as many weeks. Not only does it not suck, but it is my favorite stout, now. Yeah, it's that good. And they live up their tag line: "Dark and delicious, America's great milk stout will change your perception about what a stout can be."  I like many bitter beers, but most stouts out there can taste too sour for my preference. Not this stuff.
• --I stayed up until past 2:00PM after a 12 hour shift last night that ended (ostensibly) at 06:00AM. Why do I do that to myself?
• --Well, part of the reason was that I just realized that Having A Kindle Means Never Having To Delay Gratification, so when I saw yet another reference to The Guns Of The South and yet again realized that while I knew the story, I hadn't yet read it, I clicked Download, and started reading it 30 seconds later.
• --My sergeant called me at 4:30PM to borrow a .22 LR rifle to put down a sick cat. How the hell is it that: A: Our P.D. doesn't have one, and B: A sergeant in a Texas Police Department doesn't have one? 20 minutes later he brought it back with only one round left in the 7 round magazine. I didn't ask.
• --My brother dropped by shortly thereafter, and started digging through my refrigerator for a soft drink. All I had to offer was Topo Chico. He was unfamiliar, which was odd to me. What Texas boy, who grew up eating in taquerias, doesn't know the greenish-glassed goodness of that mineral water? I mixed him up an orange Italian soda with it.
• --Looking at the link to Topo Chico, above, I was surprised to notice that they were advertising it in a twist-off cap plastic bottle, which admittedly was the traditionally greenish clear color.  I've only ever gotten it in the returnable lift-cap bottles that feel so cold in the hand when you're hot.
• --The tag line that they say in their little video on the Topo Chico site is "¡Siempre cae bien!" This means something like "Always falls well," which I suppose means that it's a good pour. But I thought that I heard them say, "Simply dive in!" I've always heard that the tiny bubbles created by waterfalls create an aerated water that will not sustain buoyancy, and people have been known to drown when diving into waterfall pools. I looked it up once, curious of the myth, and found out that there's something to it. But what of carbonated beverages? They actually can lift things to the surface that don't normally float. Example? Toss a grape into a glass of champagne or fresh club soda. Bubbles form on the grape, lifting it up to the surface. At that point, the bubbles pop on the surface, and the now-unsupported grape sinks, and the cycle continues until the drink goes flat. So which is it? Would I float or sink in a vat of Topo Chico, were I to Simply Dive In? What if I dived into the pool at the bottom of a free-fall waterfall of Topo Chico?
• --How much would that experiment cost me?
• --I'll bet it'd really tickle to do that if you did it while skinny-dipping.
• --Having thought that thought, I'm afraid that I can't drink anymore TC until I've verified the source of it isn't a bottling plant at the base of a heavily-used waterfall.
• --I recently found out that a mentally-ill guy that I put in jail for an illegal weapon, just so that he could get some social services, got 37 days. A gang-banger that I arrested for Agg Assault Deadly Weapon plead it down to Deadly Conduct and got two days. That's not fair.
• --My daughter just got a "Show Rabbit" for Ag this week. That means that, while she's out of town with her sister and my wife, I've got a rabbit. If you're keeping count, the menagerie is now: 1 gold fish, 2 cats, 3 chickens, and a black (pedigreed) rabbit.