Led Zeppelin- Stairway to Heaven - Violin, flute, acoustic guitar

I wrote a decent little piece on the Battle of Belleau Wood,  but my homespun Magic Elf Box is heat sensitive and crashed,  taking with it all my unsaved work.  So here's a cool music video instead.

I like Stairway to Heaven,  even if it's horrifically overplayed.  This is a worthy cover.

In lieu of content..

Warrior Dash 2011

This  Looks way too damned cool.  I'm so doing it.

Guns and air travel

I've read up on how this works,  seems pretty straight forward,  even on the TSA website.  The only ticklish thing I can find is transporting 2 pistols into a state that doesn't offer CCW reciprocity with Ohio (Texas).  Is there anything other that observing local firearm transport laws that I should know?  I pretty much go by the "forgiveness before permission"  rule when it comes to self defense, but I like to at least know what I'm [i]supposed[/i] to be doing legally.

Thoughts?

Saturday nifty link

Instead of thinking up content,  go look at these nifty pictures instead.

Sergey Larenkov  makes some really awesome art from merging WW2 pictures with modern ones of the same location.

If you haven't seen these yet, very cool,  and if you have,  worth looking at again for new content.

Road trip!

 Finally found The Mrs. . a new truck, and it's all the way the hell down in Texas!  Shipping it is an option,  but for the cost it would be infinitely more fun to fly down and drive it back. so.... Road trip!

We've not taken a break in the past 2 years,  so this is going to double for a vacation.  Neither of us has really traveled the Southeast,  so we're looking to drive from Houston over to Panama City Beach ( Or somewhere thereabouts), and then head back north. 

All that's left to do is find stuff to do along the way.   I'm thinking at least one beach day,  Stone Mountain on the way through GA,  and whatever else Google thinks will be interesting to see.

fun stuff.

Added thought-  if anyone has a  "Go see THIS"  or "Stay the fuck away from THERE!",  drop me an email or comment.

Northcoast Blogshoot., 2011.

It's closing in on that time of year again,  Time for a get together of shooty goodness, great food and even better company.  It's the 2nd annual North Coast Blogger shoot! 

Given that the Northeast Blogger Shoot   is going to be  on the first weekend of August,  We'd like to get this one in between then and Columbus day weekend  (Weekend of Oct 9th),  which is Yellow Footprint day for me.  I'm thinking Labor day weekend.  It's not in concrete yet,  but a 3 day weekend would be ideal for a 2 day shoot.. 

Thoughts?  Let Breda, know ( Keeping things simple,  and she's really good at organizing stuff),  we'd love to have ya.

*Added,  Anyone who wants may camp out here,  we'll have latrine and showers available,  and there's always the motel in town for those who don't want to rough it.

The police will protect us...

4 killed in drugstore robbery  .

Tell that to these folks.  I never want to come off as grave dancing (unless the surname is Kennedy,  then I'm not above it...)  But this is a prime example of why I preach carrying a concealed weapon. 

Who knows how this may have went if the victims had been able to defend themselves.

As Breda says,   "Carry your gun,  it's a lighter burden than regret"

Impeach the bastard

I found this gem on Fox earlier:

"Despite objections from Justice Department and Pentagon lawyers, president decides he does not need congressional approval for the U.S. military campaign in Libya because it does not constitute as 'hostilities.' "

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/18/obama-sided-against-2-top-administration-lawyers-in-libya-debate/

This is the equivalent of sticking his tongue out and like a 5 year old and saying "DOESN'T COUNT!!"

Does he really believe the nonsense he spouts?  How the fuck does one wage a military campaign without "hostilities"?

The man is either completely incompetent or lying through his teeth.  Both are unacceptable.   Impeach the smug bastard.

Movie night!

A good flick tonight,  that my wife picked.  Happy wife, happy life and all that...

We get to watch Liam Neeson Kills everyone!

Good stuff.

Weiner therapy

The current political scandal is just too damned funny,  what with the nature of the the issue and the name of the jackwagon in question.   Apparently, after a thorough grilling,  our good friend Rep Wiener (huh huh, huh huh)  is now headed to "therapy".  You know,  as opposed to doing the honorable thing and stepping down, as one so unworthy of the office and public trust should. 

I'd pay good money to know what sort of "treatment"  cures one of being a pathological lying piece of shit.  And then dump it in the municipal water supply of Washington D.C.

An introduction...

To the woman of my life.  The Yin to my Yang,  as Jay puts it.  A fine woman that I'm most honored to call my wife,  the one person that I've pledged to annoy til death do us part  ;)

I  AM  truly a lucky man.

without further adieu,

Chasing Freedom 

Dire Straits - Sultans Of Swing (Live)

Why I love Youtube

Because it allows me to randomly stumble on to things that are just made of pure awesome.  I've always enjoyed Dire Straits,  but never really took it past "Sultans of Swing",  and only the studio version at that.  Imagine my joy and stumbling upon this tonight:


(See above,  I can't figure out how to properly embed this,  and am too lazy to figure out how tonight.)

That video,  and a trip to Wikipedia,  and I'm learning all kinds of random trivia about Mark Knopfler.  Such as he wrote the score for "The Princess Bride", which I'm currently watching with the  Mrs.

Small friggin' world.

Atlantikwall

(apologies,  it's late and my google foo is weak on finding good pics from the Nazi perspective) 



69 years ago Hitler started construction of what would become the most impressive coastal defenses of all time.  This was in response to a successful British ampihib raid on St.. Nazaire . (A very cool read,  go clicky).  So,  YEARS to prepare,  millions of tons of concrete into pillboxes and walls prepared specifically to repel EXACTLY what the Allies were going to throw at them.  No one at the time would've thought an assault anything but suicide..

2 years later The greatest landing force of all time kicked the door in  and started a new front,  that combined with Soviets efforts in the east (which far outclassed ours,  in the amount of blood and slaughter),  ended in Berlin.  Without geeking out too much on the history,  it was the close of a chapter that started in 1914.

Truly the Greatest Generation.  Remember them,  read the history,  and appreciate what they did.

"Why'd it have to be snakes.?"

Ohio isn't really know for it's abundance of reptiles.  We have a few snakes,  mostly in the southern half of the state, and the majority of them harmless.  Up here, it's the occasional garter snake, when you see them at all.  There ARE a few venomous ones,  Copperheads, Cottonmouths, and couple species of Rattler, but unless you go looking for them in specific habitat, you don't see them.

So,  Monday night after I came home from PT, it was hotter than balls out.  We don't have central air, and I hadn't gotten around to putting the window unit in.  I got the frame put in the bedroom window, and went to the basement to get the AC unit.  Imagine my surprise when I went to catch up the power cord, and it suddenly moves and hisses at me!  What I had assumed was one of my wife's fancy curtain tieback ropes was now animated, coiled up and pissed off.

I texted my Sgt (who raises pythons,  as that was what I thought this was), and most calmly stated OMGTHERESAHUGEMOTHERFUCKINGSNAKEINMYFUCKINGBASEMENTHOLYSHITITTRIEDTO KILLME.  He couldn't identify it from the cell phone pic, but advised me to "Stop being a woman and grab the fucker".  Easy for him to say,  safely miles away.  At this point Dear Wife had come home, and held the flashlight while I corralled the slithering beasty  in an old fish tank.

Long story short,  Wikipedia provided an exact pic and description of our intruder,  an Eastern Milk Snake  
An otherwise harmless,  beneficial critter to have around.  I was actually kinda bummed.  Had he been venomous,  I'd have skinned him out and shipped his carcass to Dennis.  (Look no further for most excellent dead reptile trimmed holsters!)  It was really tempting to ship him out to Dennis and just skip the skinning part altogether,  but I figured Mr. Snake had had a rough enough night and turned him loose out in the woods. 

If I ever see another damned snake in my basement, I'm taking Jay's advise and getting a friggin Judge :P


Bugger was just shy of 4 feet long.