Frickin' ramfrazzin

--Blue Screen Of Death started to appear on the home computer yesterday. I've been doing battle with a trojan virus since.

--G****** ph***ing piece of s*** adopted ******g ****pipe of a furball regurgitator alleycat brought another wounded choad-pecking juvenile grackle into the house, which then spent five minutes caroming off of s*** in my house before I could finally connect with an umbrella handle, to send it flying into my desk, and then leak ichorous ******g black blood all over my tile that I had just mopped, up under the edge of the desk.

--A local church lady and I talked about how to help a sad sack in the neighborhood, recently. Between us, we figured out that we'd both been lied to. Those church ladies make your neighborhood run, even if you're not of their faith, or of any faith at all.

--Our weather continues to be spectacular. My elder daughter and I are about to go shooting, now that we've got some .22 WMRF. My wife didn't understand why I was saving a couple of 1 gallon cans. She keeps throwing them in the trash, and I keep fishing 'em out. Great reactive offhand 100 yard targets.

--Night before last, I just pulled out one of these from the deep-freeze, and popped that 5 lbs of homemade goodness into a 400 degree oven for about 75 minutes.  Considering that we'd made those when we had purchased a bulk tub of high end (very fine-grained) ricotta and better-than-average mozerella, along with very good quality pasta on which we had poured some homemade sauce, my excellence-to-effort ratio was very much in the black. Blew a Stouffer's all to hell, and I actually like Stouffer's frozen lasagna.

--I got a Sunday Smith that I need to put up. Maybe on Sunday.

--My 14 year old has been playing music for her band's upcoming concert, in which her section has a soli involving the main melody. So it is that I've been hearing the sweet recognizable strains of Phantom Of The Opera throughout the house. Honestly? It's pretty damned good. She's a first chair freshman, which means that my kid apparently can play.

--I need to write another grant tonight, for work.

--We're going back to the Northwest, this summer, but we're taking the girls with us, this time. I want to show the girls the Olympic National Park, with its 200 foot trees and Roosevelt elk and the Hoh Glacier. I want to show the kids the 720 degrees of green in the valley below Mount Hood, and the sight of our American Fuji, which is Mt. Ranier. I want them to pull tasty-yet-aggressive red crab out of pots off the piers in Port Angelas and Sequim. I have gotten to see this stuff, and want them to, as well. It's not my region, but it's one that I know something of, and want to show them. Heck, my kids don't remember ever flying.

--We just got a $430 AT&T bill. That needs looking into.

--I finally convinced my wife to try my Lazy Man laundry concept, which involves 4 laundry bins of exact same size in the bedroom. Now, as we shed clothes, we are sorting the load. When the bin gets enough for a load, we run it. So far, my little plan works great, with laundry getting done more often and less chance of finding evidence of someone having dug through the dirty laundry to put a load together. The downside, of course, is the extra footprint in the bedroom. I took the hit, and put them in front of my dresser. I'm that committed to this operation.

--My younger daughter tried to make chai tea this morning by pouring milk into the kettle, and heating it that way. We had a talk about that this afternoon, when I discovered the evidence.

--A 4 ounce whiskey glass ended up in the garbage disposal today. It was too wide to make it back up through the flanged rubber gussett thingy in the disposal mouth. It must have compressed the rubber ring to get down there. After over 20 minutes of trying, I finally gave up and busted the glass with a crowbar, and used the 5 HP shop vac to suck out the pieces. Basically a Dispose-All D.&E.

--Disposals aren't as scary to put your hand down, once you know how they work.

--The wide part of my hand won't fit into a disposal, but my fingers are long enough to reach the bottom.

--Santa gave my daughters each a box of .22 shorts in their stockings. Both boxes broke. I find .22 short ammo in the strangest places, in this house.

--My brother's car had a sensor and a vacuum leak in his 15 year old car, which kept it from passing inspection (yes, Texas has a state-mandated vehicle inspection law). I hooked him up with a local mechanic, and loaned him my car to drive while it got worked on. My brother hadn't driven a manual transmission in over 5 years. Think I wasn't worried about the health of my clutch plate? He brought the car back two days later, and a day after that sent me a picture of his new inspection sticker. That made me glad.

--I need to get my younger kid some glasses.