For something sorta bad, it worked out about as well as I could hope.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Thursday afternoon my brother, Skippy, calls me up:
“Hey Rue!” he says. “Ya wanna go to this one thing I heard about at work? It’s in Friendship, Indiana and they got muzzle loaders and tomahawk throwing and bows and arrows and there’s all this stuff to see and it sounds real neat!”

He was excited about it, so I thought “Eh, why not?”. So I told him:
“Eh, why not?”

We figured we’d go on Saturday and my sister and her husband and two people from Skippy’s work went too. So all told there were six of us. Only the two people from Skippy’s work smoked, so they went in their own car and for some reason I got picked to drive the rest of us. But that was OK, since Friendship, Indiana isn’t all that far away.

Once we got there, it was pretty neat. I’m not sure what you’d call it, but it was put on by the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association and on one side of the road, there was this “Primitive Area” where the people were dressed up like 17th and 18th century (I’m guessing out my… hat here. I really don’t know the timeframe they were dressing in. But I’m sticking with my guess.) frontiers people. There were tents (real canvas tents!) (and some teepees!) all over the field (lined up in tidy rows they way you’re supposed to set up your tents) selling stuff. After roaming around for, like, three hours, the total haul between the six of us were these two sets of magnetized hematite rocks that buzz when you throw them up in the air, and a strip of beef jerky. But it was fun strolling around looking at the stuff. There was a great big muzzle loading rifle range and the guns went KA-BOOM! when they shot, so that was neat, just because it was real loud.

Then we went across the street to see what was over there. More muzzle loader shooters. Only these people weren’t dressed up as anything special. Just regular people shooting their muzzle loaders. We poked around for a little while, and then we got to shoot a muzzle loader for free and that was that. (They were trying to entice us to join the National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association by showing us how much fun it is to shoot muzzle loading rifles. We all took a pass on their kind offer.)

Then it was time to go home.

We all piled into my car (actually it’s the Little Woman’s car she drives to work everyday, but I was driving that day, so it counted as “my car”) and… nothing. Not that I was just sitting there. I was turning the key. But nothing was happening. That was odd. We got down to Friendship, Indiana no problem, and the Little Woman hadn’t mentioned she’d been having car trouble lately, but the car wasn’t going “vrooooom” after I turned the key. I was concerned.

OK, maybe the battery was dead. It could happen. I don’t remember the last time we got a new battery for this car, so the battery could be four or five years old. So I kick started it. (We could have jump started it, but we were parked in a field and to get the other car around would have been inconvenient, so I just kicked it.) Sometimes it’s good to have a standard shift automobile. With the kick, it started right up. So that was good.

The alternator will charge up the battery while we drive and then I could go to Sam’s Club and get a new car battery and replace the worn out one and all would be better. That was my plan anyway. The car had other ideas.

Down the road a ways, the car decided it had driven far enough and stopped.

I used some strong language and then Skippy and my brother-in-law helped push the car over to the shoulder.

This is where it was a good thing we took two cars to the thing. (I’m still not sure what it was called. The National Muzzle Loading Rifle Association Big Shoot in Friendship, Indiana with Other People Who dressed Up Funny?) The guy from Skippy’s work was nice enough to drive me into Aurora, Indiana looking for a new battery. (By this time I knew it wasn’t really the battery, but most likely the alternator. I was in denial this was the problem, but I knew a new battery would make my car run to get it home and a new battery was cheaper than a tow truck.)

We stopped at this one car parts place. The name was “No Actual Parts Available”, which was odd since they just used the acronym and that’s the same name as a chain of other auto parts stores and I figured they were just asking for a lawsuit. But I don’t care if they do get sued and go out of business. They didn’t have a battery to fit my car. Why not? Well, apparently the terminals on my car’s battery are reversed. The positive terminal is where the negative terminal usually goes and the other way and the battery cables aren’t long enough to cross over and you can’t just put the battery in the car the other way. (Not hook the positive lead to the negative terminal, because even I know this would be a Bad Idea. Just turn the battery around so it was facing backwards which would put the appropriate terminals on the proper sides to hook up.)

Since NAPA… I mean “No Actual Parts Available”, which is a completely different store, couldn’t help me, we tried somewhere else. Wal-Mart. (The Wal-Mart in Aurora, Indiana is just as nice as you think it is.) Wal-Mart had the right battery, so I bought it. And a small adjustable wrench. (I was thinking ahead there.) We went back to the car (about 5 miles back), I changed out the batteries, the car started, we went back to the Aurora, Indiana Wal-Mart to turn in the old battery so I could get my $5 “core fee” back, and then went home.

How was this giant pain in the butt “about as well as I could hope”? Well, it didn’t happen to the Little Woman while she was trying to get home from work one day, so she wasn’t stuck on a busy highway all by herself. We also had two cars in convoy so there was already one there to help me with my dead battery problem. And… uh… that’s about it. But it could have been worse. That’s what I’m saying: It could have been worse.

And that thing we went to and had a good time at wasn’t the only good thing that happened that Saturday. On my way over to Skippy’s house, I passed a garage sale and they had a bunch of concretia. (At a garage sale? Yes. I didn’t question it.) That’s right. I got myself a Garden Gnome.

Now my garden is all gnomed up.
-Rue.

2

Sounds like a great weekend, with all the shooting and stuff. I bet Soupo and Katcha would have loved it if you’d brought home a big gun.

Congrats on the gnew gnome. Don’t forget to leave out a saucer of milk for it every night. Or maybe that’s for cats, I’m not sure. What do garden gnomes eat, anyway? I don’t have a a gnome, so I’m not up-to-date on the care and feeding of garden gnomes. I don’t have a gnome, just a flying pig, and it’s very low-maintenance.

3

I think the garden gnome should have been the lead story.

Now we need a picture of the puppy with the gnome.

4

The puppy didn’t like the gnome.

In the backyard, in the dog run, there’s a ring of concrete edging and in that ring, I have marigolds growing. In the middle of the arigolds I put the gnome. Only I didn’t tell Brody. When he went to “go out” he saw the gnome and went “grrrrrrr!”. Then he kept his eye on that gnome. He didn’t trust it.

Brody’s just a silly.

Also, his collar saps his strength.

Now that he’s all of 11 weeks old, he should learn to wear his collar. Only he doesn’t like it. We snap the collar on him and he rolls on the ground clutching his throat. “It burns! It burns us, Precious!” he whines. And then he just lays there, inert.

I knew we shouldn’t have gotten the Kryptonite collar.

5

I was listening to John Madden on the radio this morning talking about how he and Bob Costas met recently to discuss doing some sports together. They met in the arboretum of some NBC building and when Madden saw Costas there in front of the plants, at first he thought he was a garden gnome.

In a Rue thread, going to Friendship to see all the weapons seems perfectly normal.

6

Smart dog. I always knew those gnomes were up to something.

7

I HATE when that happens! Why is it that cars almost always conspire to expire when you are someplace else besides home? I’ve had that happen enough times that I’m a “charter” member of that other organization The “Aide Ain’t Arriving” Club what is supposed to speedily come to your rescue. Mostly they get there more like “eventually.”

I have heel blisters. I bought new shoes for the treadmill on Saturday and while they were all comfy like in the store, they were a tad stiff when I put them on this morning. I didn’t even do my whole three miles and still I’ve got blisters. :frowning:

Tupug With Owies (No Gnomes)

8

I’m glad you had a good time. I’m sorry about the car dyin’ thing. I’m glad you finally got your garden gnome. There, that takes care of all that stuff.

I’m at work. Big deal. I wish I were home. I don’t feel too good. It’s not a sick don’t feel good, it’s a tired don’t feel good. See, Friday night I worked a fund raiser for work. It was The Drifters in concert with a fish fry and beer and wine and mixers in case somebody brought their own hard stuff or just wanted a soft drink. All for the measly price of thirty bucks a ticket. I played bar tender. That meant I got to pour wine and mixers. That also meant I got to open a bajillion bottles of wine. Well, that is if you want to call what I was opening for the most part wine. We had a very nice Merlot, a good Chardonnay and a gag cough gag White Zifandel. gag cough gag I opened lots and lots and lots of bottles of the gag cough gag White Zifandel. gag cough gag I even made gag cough gag spritzers gag cough gag using the gag cough gag White Zifandel gag cough gag and Sprite [sup]TM[/sup]. All those silly wimmens that were drinking the gag cough gag spritzers gag cough gag just loved em. They were tossin’ em down like they were something that actually tasted good. Fortunately, we had a fair number of persons of good taste who drank the Merlot and the Chardonnay. Still the number of bottles of the gag cough gag White Zifandel gag cough gag I opened out numbered the Merlot and the Chardonnay a good 5 to 1. Oh, and I served one complete and total barbaric Philistine and infidel. She wanted some ice to put in her Merlot because she wanted it to be cold. :eek: I did not want to serve this barbarian from Philistia Merlot but, she forked over the thirty bucks to be there so I had to. I could, however, and did, think to myself: “You are a barbaric Philistine!” Why, she even asked if I would chill a bottle of Merlot. :eek: :mad: One does not chill Merlot! I didn’t do that. It’s wrong. I did, however keep putting ice in her Merlot each time she came back, all the while thinking: “Barbarian! Return thee to Philistia!” Other than that it was a hoot. The Drifters can still do some moves and sound real good. Lots of dancing and carrying on.

Saturday, my neighbors renewed their wedding vows in a big ceremony in their backyard. I videoed it for em. Thought I was gonna die standing around in my suit holding that lil’ video camera. But it was nice. Afterwards I hightailed it back to my house and changed into some shorts and one of my Hawaiian shirts for the shindig. We had a bbq/fish fry blowout! Folks even came over to swim in my pool, which was good. It was mostly kids that got in the pool which I was ok with cause there were a bunch of adults to watch out for em. I don’t allow lil’ humans at the pool without grownup supervision. Safety first and all that. Plus I don’t wanna be sued. Sunday morning we had a brunch at the pool for all the neighbors out of town relations who came for the vow renewing/shindig. That was good. Then they all went back to wherever they came from which wasn’t Philistia cause they were all nice and such. Last night I hosted the Scavenger Hunt on Skip’s Board. That was fun too.

I saw very little of ACBG this weekend cause he had to work all weekend. Things don’t look any more promising this week. Pool critter. He needs some rest. I need me some ACBG. He needs him some swampy. We’re just pitiful. Pitiful!

-swampbear (pitiful and still had to deal with a barbaric Philistine)

9

I went to a friend’s retirement party Saturday night. Not so much friend as a guy I drink with a couple of times a week. He just got out of the Army, and had said there were going to be about 30 people from work and about 30 regulars from our watering hole at the party. All in all, the 30 drunks from the bar were there, but only about 6 Army people (actually, three Army guys and their dates.) I felt bad for him. It reminded me of the turnout at my retirement party at the same place. Only my party was on the weekend before the ship wee leaving for a 6 month deployment, so I can understand why most of the Navy folks I invited didn’t show up.

So I stayed later than I had planned, and drank some of the beer that his no-show Army friends were supposed to drink.

10

Oh, I don’t know just how silly Brody is. You know all those terrible movies you see about serial killers with sharp axes and blunt objects? The adult humans in the movie always think the serial killer is a swell guy with a nice house. But not the little kids and the dogs. Oh, no. The dogs and little kids always sense that there’s something terribly wrong about this swell guy with the nice house.

[threatening music in a minor key]Is Brody really such a silly?[tmiamk]

11

Silly, Brody! :smiley: That reminded me of a time when the Klingon and I were traveling with the two dogs, dearly-departed Boris and Natasha. We stopped next to a Mexican restaurant that was all done up to look like an adobe cantina complete with a little garden area which contained a concrete sombrero-wearin’ donkey. Natasha was sniffing around the garden, looked up, spied el burro and started to bark her head off. Was it the fashion faux pas? I’ll never know.

12

Rue, that’s the National Muzzle-loading Rifle Championships you’re searching for the words for there. :slight_smile: My parents used to shoot MLRifles and we went to Friendship a couple of years.

Yeah, they were pretty good at it. :smiley:

13

Oh, and unless things have changed in the last decade or so, you missed the huge, giant, real big flea market a couple hundred yards down the road from there, too. It was (to us kids) almost as much fun as the shoot.

14

Brody sounds alot like the cat I had that must have been born on Gary Larsen’s Boneless Chicken Farm.
I put a collar on, he flops over, all bones turn to sand. Take the collar off, and the bones resolidify. Its amazing.

15

Well, there are some of the little folk for whom you’re supposed to leave out a saucer of milk, but I don’t remember which.

I don’t think it’s gnomes, though.

16

You leave whiskey out for the pictsies.

Good morning, everyone!

17

LMAO!
I know what you mean about the car problems. I have an ancient car that I believe is held together by sheer will power. I do not drive it anywhere over 30 minutes away because I know that will be the death of it.

So what did I do this weekend? Saturday I worked a little. Then I went to visit my mom. Sunday I decided I would Accomplish Something[sup]TM[/sup]. In my Master bath (which is actually rather small but since it’s attached to the Master Bedroom is is the Master bath by default but I don’t think it could actually take the other bathroom in a fight), I tried to change out the inner workings of the toilet a while ago which did not go well and rendered the toilet broken (unflushable) so I decided I would finally finish fixing it. Well, it was frustrating but I finally got one of the parts installed with only a slight nervous breakdown. Then I remembered why I stopped working on it before, the thingy that holds the flapper had broken. Since my toilet is one of those models that no one makes anymore because it’s totally stupid, the flapper attaches differently. I could not remove the broken piece to replace it because the screws were all rusted and unmoveable. Also I didn’t have the right piece to install the flapper if I did get the broken piece removed due to the fact that the stupid toilet tank requires some strange ancient flapper attachment method that did not come with the tank repair kit I bought.

So I went to Lowe’s (it’s like Home Depot only with employees who are friendlier about pointedly ignoring you and Gene Hackman does their commercials) to look for the piece I needed, and maybe a miracle tool that would help me remove the broken piece. I did not find either of these things, in fact they were woefully lacking in Miracle Tools That Fix All Your Problems When You Don’t Really Know What You’re Doing[sup]TM[/sup]. So I wandered around aimlessly for a bit looking at stuff I can’t afford and don’t know how to install and decided that I would just replace the whole damn toilet because it’s an ugly yellow and it’s stupid and we hates it. I will have to see if I can bribe my brother to help me replace it, he will be cheaper than a plumber, I hope, and he doesn’t wear his pants as low.

So then I went over to the tools and bought a Dremel. It won’t help me fix my toilet but I wanted one. So then I came home and had to clean up to go to work so I Accomplished Nothing[sup]TM[/sup].

18

ooohhh, I smell a new infomercial in the works! :wink:

19

Rue, I’m thinking that Brody and CurrentDog a/k/a Kai would get along real well. See, Kai has this nasty tendency to like to lunge at things when we start him out on his Evening Constitutional. It’s not that he’s trying to be a Bad Dog, you understand, it’s just that he hasn’t been walked for an entire day, so he’s excited and all that excitement just goes right to his three CocoPuffs that he uses for a brain and just overwhelms them, so he completely forgets how to behave on the walk until we’ve gone for a block or so.
Anyway, to try to prevent the lunging, we thought about getting a Halti. Nifty thing, goes over the nose, and works on the theory that as the nose goes, so goes the body. Teaches the dog in a hurry that lunging just spins you around in a circle. Which probably wouldn’t help us much, since CurrentDog loves spinning around in a circle, but it might. We tried him out on a Halti at TheVet. He tried to eat it. And then offered to eat the Vet Tech, my hand, and DogDad’s hands. And his leash. (Kai’s leash, not DogDad’s leash - DogDad doesn’t need a leash.)
He probably would’ve been howling about how it burns us, Precious except that he hadn’t seen that movie yet.
swampy, eeeeew! A nice Merlot I could get into, but spritzers? That’s just disgusting.

We cleaned the pool this weekend. We’d opened it up at the beginning of May when it got up to about 400 million degrees out. And of course as soon as we got it opened up and cleaned and ready to go, the temperature got down to FREEZING and it SNOWED. Dangit. So the Maple trees decided to produce a second, BUMPER CROP of Keys (Seeds, helicopters, etc.)
Which of course all decided that our pool was just The Perfect Home For Them. Did you know that stepping on a maple seed on the bottom of your pool feels exactly like stepping on a small rock? I swear, I thought our pool liner was going to have about a basquillion holes in it from all the rocks in the pool. So we cleaned it.
But, since we have a new filter (the old one developed cracks in it and we couldn’t replace just the lid or anything since the old filter is so old they don’t make replacement parts for it anymore) that just kicks butt we got the cleaning done in about half the time we were expecting it to take. So that was good. And I got to hang out my laundry so I don’t have to pay the electric company to have my clothes dried, and besides they smell nicer.
That’s all I got.

20

Is that the deal? The shooting stuff was the point and the… encampment thingy across the street was just tacked on? OK.

Don’t people dress up like beaver trappers (people who catch the animal and keep the fur you pervos) and pretend it’s a long time ago? Just that and not the shooting so much. (But I figure there’d be shooting now I think on it.) Like the Renaissance Fests, or the Scottish Fests, only different. I think that would be fun to see. Like this last weekend, only more. (I think it’s called “Rendezvous” or some such.)

And not only is there one flea market now jayjay, there’s one on either side of the shooting. The one we drove by had a tent for tattoos and body piercings. Needles applied to your tender flesh at a flea market in a tent. I didn’t think that was the Best Idea Ever.