The Countertop Chronicles

So, my son re-started kindergarten today.
Already, I’m pretty sure its going to go better than last year.

btw (speaking of hot), how cool is it that Sarah Palin named her youngest son after Van Halen!?!?!?!

pic after the jump

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Well, there is something fundamentally wrong with the road system in Virginia. Somewhere, someone, screwed up in a tremendous way, and frankly I doubt this state will ever be able to fix what is wrong. And no, simply throwing money at Northern Virginia isn’t the solution - in fact, the idiots at VDOT have shown time and again that more money only leads to more ill considered worthless projects.

No, things need to be peeled back - and the entire morass needs to be examined and perhaps, if possible, ripped up and started all over.

Case in point:

I was supposed to do three things on Saturday. I was going to head down to meet my trainer and work with the dog. Then, I was going to head over to Richmond to the Virginia Sportsman’s Show - I had free tickets compliments of the Roanoke Times. Then, we were gonna race back up to NoVA and shoot some skeet.

We had it timed out right, but then we hit the Virginia road system.

Dog Training
Told the trainer, I’d be there at 10:30 with my buddy. We were gonna work the dog a couple of hours in the field . . . shooting some birds over him and working on different retrieving scenarios. I left, for the hour and 45 minute drive, at 8:30. No traffic at all, till I got to I-95 - and then just sat. And crawled. Finally making it to Fredericksburg at 10:30 and not getting down to his place till noon. Where I got to spend all of 15 minutes with him because I was so damn late.

Sportsman Show
We then left, drove on I64 over to Richmond. No problems here, and the sportsman show was neat. Great, impressive, buck collection. Someone clearly has better property to hunt than I do. Saw lots of neat hunting gadgets, almost bought a couple of duck calls, and got to speak with some hunting guides. All in all, it would have been worthwhile, except I was so ticked off about not getting to train with the dog it just ruined the whole experience for me.

Skeet Shooting
We raced on out of the Sportsman Show by 2:00pm, with what should have been a 90 minute drive on a lazy Saturday afternoon to get to shoot skeet. Heh. By 3:30 we had traveled 30 miles and reached Fredericksburg, where I tried to hop on VA17 to save time - and went 3 miles in 1 hour - before bailing and hopping back on 95. In another hour we moved another 25 miles and I was able to hop on VA 234 to cut across over to Mannassas. By then, it was nearly 6 and having sat in a car for 8 hours already it was too late to do much skeet shooting - so we hopped on I66 - and sat for another hour, not getting home till 7:30.

Thanks Virginia, For Ruining My Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday
I made up for it Sunday.

Started the day looking at canoes. I think I found a great one - I’ll be testing it out tonight to see if I want to buy it. Its an Old Town Duck Hunter - about an 18 year old canoe - thats perfect for hunting as well as for trips down the river with the family.

From there, I threw my kayak in the Potomac at Pennyfield lock. It was a gorgeous ride.

I paddled up into the islands and explored them a bit, taking coordinates on my GPS and checking out how they had eroded since last duck season. Your not allowed to built permanent blinds on them, but we constructed a series of makeshift blinds with deadfalls, etc. last season that survived most of the winter. Unfortunatly, it doesn’t look like any survived the spring floods. Whats more, there was a fair bit of erosion going on, and some new channels opened up.

I ran into this guy right in front of one of our old blinds.

I also got out and did a bit of scouting in one of the areas I go deer hunting. The corn didn’t look so good, but they had a real healthy crop of beans. It should be a good season!

Well, I’d have to say as a one of the many carry permit holders who hasn’t committed a crime as a carry permit holder, and generally doesn’t try to hard to raise my google fu through weird google bombs utilizing terms like carry permit holders, I’m offended that their carry permit holders ranking isn’t even lower.

Hope you enjoyed them, I made some of my own.

Long story short, I was cleaning gutters on the roof of my soooper secret North Georgia Mountain hideaway when the ladder gave way from under me.

Next thing I know, I’m lying on the ground 12 feet down, after trying to break my back on the fence railing (thank god the ladder saved me).

Stuck me in an Ambulence in trauma (neck and back brace) and ran me a good 30 minutes into Chattanooga. Spent the evening and most of the morning with the good folks at Memorial Hospital.

Just released, with some wicked bruising and pulled back (still having trouble breathing) and a weeks supply of narcotics and muscle relaxers.

More later . . . .

We’re watching all six Star Wars movies again in the Countertop Household. Wife is a bit upset about this (its actually the fourth run in the last few weeks - after finishing up Indiana Jones) but I’ve got to say I’m proud of Boy Number 1. He’s showing fine taste in movies.

In honor of that, I present you Leia Fest

Keep these two quotes (both, incidentally, from Oregon), and their circumstances, in mind as you finish preparing comments to the Department of Interior on their proposal to restore the right of self defense in our national parks.

Now my eyes were locked on a crouching cougar on the opposite hill as I reloaded my 20 gauge with the biggest shot size I had with me–copper-coated number sixes. These weren’t quite the slugs I was to have carried. Right then I felt under-gunned and pretty dumb for not following through on my intuition.

Here’s a picture of that cougar. . .and you can read all about the writers encounter with him and his companion over at Gun Dogs Magazine

“And I’m really glad I had that gun.”

That’s Joshua McKim and the 400 pound cinnamon colored black bear that attacked him as he was mushroom picking with his family.

When the bear just up the hill roared, Joshua McKim’s first thought was that he had never heard a bear make a sound like that.

His second thought, almost instantaneous with the first, was that he was awfully glad he had brought his pistol on this mushroom-picking trip.

When he first glimpsed the bear through the thick brush, McKim had cocked the hammer on the .45 caliber semi-automatic Taurus, a copy of the famous 1911-model Colt.

The bear didn’t move.

Luckily, he was the one the bear attacked, as he was the only member of his group that carried a gun afield that day.

Seriously.

Annie and Douglas Brown, embarked on a similar, if abbreviated journey: 101 straight days of post-nuptial sex.

No wonder he’s smiling!

Sure, gas is just hitting $4 a gallon here in Northern Virginia (actually, I filled up for $3.79 yesterday) but I’m not that worried. Even with an SUV. I suspect things will be tight this summer, as speculators run rampant (blame the press) but as with everything market related the laws of supply and demand will hold true again and you can bet that price will begin to creep down as American’s conserve less and can justify, economically, more efficient vehicles.

Me, I’m gonna keep driving my 1996 Grand Cherokee. One, its paid for. Two, it only has 110,000 miles on it. And three, I boosted its fuel efficiency 20% this week, going from a paltry 18.5 mpg to 24.5 mpg - or about $15 per fill up. Now thats real money (and will help buy me some eggs and milk)

How? Well, Glen linked to this story on Fuel Efficiency tips and I simply took the first it to heart. I set the on board display to show current mileage and knowing I got about 18.5 mpg with it generally tried to drive at a pace that stayed above that.

Here’s the top 4 tips I followed:

1. Track Your Mileage in Real Time
2. Only Brake When You Have to
3. Always Stay Alert on the Road
4. Drive Like You’re on a Bike

It wasn’t too hard. A couple of things - I never went over 60 miles per hour (that seemed to be the magic threshold where mileage really dropped off. Thats ok, 60 is plenty fast where I was driving. I suspect on the highway, if I got up to cruising speeds, it would handle it too). I also slowed down slowly, trying to conserve momentum, and when I was at a traffic light, I accelerated slowly. Thats it. I didn’t even resort to the old standby of putting the car in neutral to coast down big hills.

I’ll try that next week.

Watched Star Wars (the original one) with my 6 year old last night.

Great memories. Boy they grow fast.

HL, my oldest: Did Hillary win?

Me: Yes

HL: But I don’t want Hillary to win.

Me: Who do you want to win??

HL: The man in Virginia! From across the river. George Washington. Why can’t George Washington be President? He doesn’t lie. He doesn’t cheat. He’s a nice man.

The oldest turned 6 today. I can’t believe how fast they grow. He’s officially not a little boy anymore. Makes me want to cry.

Cool gifts include a Beta fighting fish, which he immediatly named “King of all Fish”. And that’s the only way we are allowed to refer to him.

Also got a zip wire. (Yeah!!!!) And a Nintendo DS and the Complete Lego Star Wars saga game. Too cool!!

In other news, I learned he shared a birthday with Adolf Hitler. Didn’t know that till today. Put that together with the fact that our youngest shares a name with the author of the Turner Diaries and the conspiracy artists are gonna have a field day.

Going out celebrating tonight.

We pulled the oldest from private school a couple of weeks ago and enrolled him in our local elementary school. The difference in attitude is amazing and I’m shocked in how much he picked up in 1/2 a week at his new school compared to almost a full year at the private school.

But thats not what we are celebrating - rather, he was accepted into Fairfax County’s amazing language immersion program. He’ll be spending half his day speaking French.

And in that honor, here’s a sampling of the the great conquests he has before him (Kim Style)
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We finished our meeting in the city of blues around 4:30 yesterday and settled in at Hooters downtown for some conference tournament excitment.

When we arrived, ran into colleuges who skipped out early. At noon.

They had set a goal, they were going to drink every last BLUE aluminum bottle of Bud Light there.

At 5, when we showed up, they had a pile of 80 empties stacked up. By 7, the mission was completed - the entire supply of commemorative bottles was consumed by our guys. 6 cases.. And the night was young. I’ve got no idea what the final tab was, but they were there till closing - at 1 am. They spent a total of 13 hours drinking. Had to be some kind of record

Me?? I headed off across the street to Mike Shanahan’s, a sports themed steakhouse to watch UNC - Duke.

Duke lost. Yeah!!!

We had fat steaks, and copious amounts of booze. Total tab, for 10, was $965. Which wasn’t too bad, I didn’t think, considering all we drank there.

Steaks, which were thick and well marbled ran $35-45. Service was generally adequate, with on glaring exception,, though I thought my steak was overcooked. I ordered it blue rare, and it was light pink.

Sides at $7 left something to be desired. Wild rice dish was small but well seasoned. Asparagus were a little soft for me, and served only with butter. I would have expected some cream sauce option at least.

Creme Brule was fantastic, but desert was marred by the fact that our coffee came about 10 minutes after we finished desert. Considering the profit center that the desert course is to a restaurant, and the lasting flavor it leaves, this was simply unacceptable. And while the restaurant was jam packed busy when we arrived, by the time we got to desert we were one of the few tables left.

Got back to the hotel, and ended up whyling the night away drinking Rye whiskey with depressed Creighton fans.

iN S. lOUIS.

wITH cREIGHTON FRANS.

DRINKING al ot.

at a duelling piano bar.

Total midwest experience. who njnew they ahad so many hottie slutts?
Wow.

Go Creighton.

in other news, we acutioned off a shotgun - it went for a lot. Guy from Tennessee bought it. Just as i fuugoired.

also, im in the wall street hournal today

good deal.

Self, you need to meet the guy who moved in a couple of houses down a across the street with the white Honda mini van and VCDL bumper stickers on his car.