Thursday afternoon thoughts.

--A north Texas Fox affiliate has started keeping a rogues' gallery of recent public mugshots from area departments. And it's greatness.

However, Sheriff Joe's Maricopa County S.O.'s page where you can vote on their best mugshot seems seedy to me. I know, I know-- both shots come from the published mugshots published by the sheriff's office. But in the MCSO case, it seems to me that THEM publishing the voting system and showing the results is unprofessional, and beyond the pale. There's a difference.

--When I mentioned to the girls that I was going to need their help grouting after a nap, I awoke to an empty house.

--Mom's coming back home from physical rehab, 9 days after the orthopedic surgeon cut out her left knee and replaced it with a titanium and silicone man-made one. The scar from her June 1 surgery on the other knee is tiny. It still blows me away that we can routinely do this kind of thing for people who aren't Steve Austin, or the president.

--Younger readers will assume that I'm referring to a wrestler when I say Steve Austin. Hang on-- [checking] He quit wrestling 12 years ago, and is now an actor? Tells you how much of a wrestling fan I am. (Which is to say: not at all.)

--If you told a kid today that a person required Six Million Dollars to get well from a major accident, they would just shrug. According to the Inflation Calculator, $6M in 1974 dollars would be $26.2M in 2010 dollars. It won't calculate 2011. While that's a big jump, I think that the bigger jump is the amount of money that we're willing to spend on medical care.

--Which is why I'm pushing my elder daughter toward medical school.

--My kids have begun taking daily walks while on Christmas vacation. The 13 year-old keeps an eye on the nine-year old. The nine year-old tells on the 13 year-old. They have a cell phone with them. It's a good system. They're actually pretty good kids.

--The wife and I are sojourning into Dallas tonight to see The Old 97s play. I've been a fan for almost a decade and a half, but have never seen them live. I'm looking forward to it. They've got some good guitar hooks, some excellent lyrics, and they can walk the line between country/rockabilly and good old fast-paced rock. Plus, I've always loved their irreverent cover of Marty Robbin's great song "El Paso."

--I like the way the drum stutters as he's making his way back to Rosa's Cantina.

--The moon last night hung like a question mark, but when I saw it setting, it wasn't bold as milk; it looked more like a tequila sunrise.

--I accepted a minor challenge from a friend the night before last, and did 12 minutes of Crossfit, thinking afterwards that I would do 12:30 the next day. Um, no. There seems to be a mass that has grown between my chest and my knees, making situps/crunches much harder than I remember them. Odd. I get that XFit is scalable to your ability. But it's probably smart to understand your baseline. We'll do 12 minutes again, here in just a bit, to see how many sets I get through. (5 pushups, 10 situps, and 15 squats, wash-rinse-repeat, during the time set aside.)

--My 13 year-old daughter came in while I was doing the sets, laughed at me, and started doing the cycles with me. The next day she wasn't laughing so much. But it still makes me a little smug that she does good pushups without a second thought. Most girls just aren't taught to.

--I need to test her for time on the disassembly-reassembly-function check on my 1911s again. She was pretty brisk at it, as a 9 year-old. I need to also check the 9-year-old out on that.

--Why is Steven Tyler suddenly in the news so much, lately? I've liked Aerosmith since I was in junior high, and he's their frontman, but they haven't really done much beyond rock power ballads for the last 20 years, and... and... okay, I'm an ageist. Tyler's a guy in his 60's who wears gender-ambiguous garb and goofy hats, and still clearly uses a great deal of recreational drugs. Grampaw should start to act his age, or sumpin'.

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