Saturday evening... Dinner and a new toy.

Denise decided to try some cordon bleu pork fillets and home fried taters last night.



She pounded the pork fillets, filled them with ham and Swiss cheese, and then rolled them and pinned them with tooth picks. After dippin' them in batter and bread crumbs, Denise grilled the pork fillets for a while, while the taters and onions cooked in another pan. While all that went on...



I made the drinks. Denise went for her usual, a 7&7, and I had a rum (Cruzan, there on the top shelf of the cupboard) and Coke.



The dinner turned out wonderfully, and gave me all kinds of ideas about what one could do with this basic concept. Maybe cut the meat thinner, so you can wrap it like a burrito. Fill it with ham, bacon, shrimp, hot mustard and cheese? Mmmmm, good.



After dinner put a big log on the fire and checked the front porch to see if I'd gotten any mail. Sure enough there was a box from the Sportsman's Guide.



I opened the box and there was my newest toy. A Crosman C 41 BB pistol. I saw it in the last catalog they sent and had to have one.



It's a close replica of a German Walther P-38 from the Second World War.



It takes Co2 cartridges and regular metal BBs. I went to Wal Mart and got a box of 24 cartridges. The first one fit in perfectly, tightening with a few turns of the nob at the bottom of the handle.



The clip slides out, not unlike the real thing, and easily loads with about 18 BBs. I took it out in the back yard, set up a Coke can near the fence, took aim and put a hole right through it. Works like a charm. 495 feet per second? Hmmmm. Now maybe I can get some easy, cheap practice in the back yard and try to get better with my .45.

It's been a good, relaxed, cold weekend. Hope yours has been good too. Cheers.

Busy again, and dealin' with the same old shit.

I started a few new classes, a new semester, on Ft. Hood last night. They have a brand new building for us to teach in. Very nice, but it'll be nicer when the bugs all get worked out. The descriptions we got from the Vice Dean at the faculty meeting made it sound like they were gonna do it up right. Lots of high tech and stuff. It's gonna be a WiFi hot spot. Let's hope they live up to all that.

I had 42 students show up out of a class of 48 for the 4:45 class. Thing is, the room only has 40 desks, so a few guys had to drag chairs in from the foyer and sit in them. There was lots of that going on in this first week. The second class had room to spare. 29 in that one. I knew there would be chaos, but it was good to see my old colleagues and get back to work on base again.

One glitch... I decided to let the secretary there on base send my syllabi over to the main campus to be printed. I usually print my own down in Florence, but this time I decided to let them do it. They're anal as hell about this stuff in the office. The want to save all the money they can. Apparently the printers on the main campus use less ink. Who knows?

Thing is, the woman didn't have enough printed! It's not a big deal. A half dozen folks in the 4:45 class will have to wait till Thursday night for a syllabus. But shit, if you're gonna have us give you our printing to be done, at least do the fucking job right. Or let us do it ourselves!

Then, when I told the vice Dean, a spindly little pain-in-the-ass from Georgia, that I was in a room that was too small for my class, he passed the buck to his secretary (yep, the same one that's a friggin' WIZARD with the printing). He's an expert at explainin' why shit ain't his fault, and then turnin' things around and tryin' to be a hard ass. We've all seen too much of it.

"Tell Nita and she'll take care of it" he says. And then... "If you guys take chairs out of some room to give your students something to sit on, you better be sure you replace them when you're done."

Shit, PUT ME IN A ROOM THAT'S FUCKIN' BIG ENOUGH! How hard can it be? Let's see, they're there on base from the crack of dawn to 4:30. They have the enrolment numbers right there in front of them. They should have a list of rooms in their brand new shiny building, and how many chairs are in each room? Do the fuckin' math!

I called the lady today, while I was waiting for my grilled chicken on rye with chips. I told her about the issue and she passed the buck back to me. "Go ahead and move your class if you can find another room that's big enough and it's unoccupied." Shit. What the hell are you friggin' people good for? Remind me again?

Administrators! Pfffft!

Anyway, both are Government classes. Times like these make the job fun. Ain't it cool, what one election can do to derail the Presidents agenda?

I'll be driving back to Killeen tonight when the Prez gives his State Of My Party's Reelection Chances speech. I'll have the radio tuned to something better... Louder. The sunroof'll be open, with cigar smoke wafting out into the cool night air as I search the high beams for the odd deer, grazing along the road.

I'll head over to the old part of town and join my pool team for the nights festivities. Old Dave will be full of old stories and funny jokes about the Prez, and comments about the very tasteful smut I've passed on to him through the magic of email. It'll be a great night. We all won last week. Here's hopin' we can keep it up.

Anyway, I'm off. Cheers.

Love it.

Yep, that's James Taylor. Probably just there to give the chicks something purdy to look at. The other guy is Dennis Wilson. The sure as hell can't act. The may be two of the first Emo kids. But then I guess that's how they were supposed to be in the film.





The whole movie is on Youtube. It's a huge cult classic. But the best reason to watch it is for the cool cars. Enjoy.

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever."

"My man John Keats said that. John Keats."

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

Etc., etc., etc.

It's 2010. I'm back workin' here in San Saba...

And also down in Florence. This year's begun just like the last one did, with about six classes and a few more to come. The mild depression that hit me as my vacation ended earlier this week, and I stepped back onto this rats wheel, have already gone and I'm looking forward to the future. I'm already planning the future semesters out in my book, and thinking about taking a few trips in between them. The end of one year has given way to a new set of beginnings. More good times lay ahead, or so I hope.

Our trip to Minneapolis was fun, for the most part. I won't bore you with dirty details. Suffice to say that the year ended with a big bang. The reverberations from that bang lasted about 72 hours, but they eventually subsided and everything is cool again. Same shit, different day. Pick yourself up and move on, or get the hell out of the way!

The winter weather up in Minnesota was awesome. 15 below zero at night and right around 5 or 10 in the day time. I LOVED it! We stayed in a great hotel, ate wonderful food, went to a cool wedding, and even enjoyed visits at the Mall of America (a friggin' zoo) and an indoor water park at the Radisson. yep, it was like zero outside and I was swimmin' and sloshin' in an indoor pool. The hot tub was particularly nice, but aren't they all?

The wedding on the 31st gave way to a Christening on the 1st. Denise's little grand daughter farted through the whole ceremony, which was our humerus reward for the drama the same infant had foisted on us at the wedding the night before. I thought at the time, the kid's got class. She knew just how to respond to the tired, medieval bullshit the Minister was professing.

We flew home Saturday, going from 15 below to a warm and sunny 45. I found out on getting back to Texas that an old family friend had passed on the 30th. So, after getting home by 1PM, I showered and dressed and represented my family at his funeral at 2PM. It was a busy, emotionally draining few days. Enough said about all that.

Anyway, the library here in San Saba is closing, so I'm outta here. Yep, I'm back in that familiar grind. But as grinds go, this one's pretty tame. I've got pool tonight. The new session began last week. Everything is beginning, new again. Wish me luck, and have a wonderful 2010! Cheers.

Yep, they should'a done it this way.