Swag! Booty!! Avast, ye scurvy scalywags, go get yer own!!

Yarrrr!! Twas a proper chest o' dubloons I staggered home under the burden of!! Well, dubloons well-spent at any rate, on the likes of some fine booty indeed. A list o' sweet swag follows:

• A World of Warcraft Raid calendar
• A 'Best of' Stray Cats CD
• A Tenth Edition booster of magic, the gold from which was Mirri, green 2/3 forestwalking legendary vigilant first striker, and one of the uncommons of which was a Femeref Archer. Oh yeah bitches.
• A pair of Holy Hand Grenades of Antioch, cleverly strung on a creeper to form a bolo of Biblical proportions. One... Two... Five! (Three milord!) Three!!
• Several stylin' Tees: Two Transformers, one old-school solid red and one new tarnished-style Autobots logo, a larger Green Lantern, a kickin' Spidey holo, and the piece de resistance, a custom jobber with the Ultimate WoW slayer-player from the South Park episode, with the oh-so gnarly legend, "How can you kill... that which has no life?"
• A bottle of Maker's Mark. Oh yeah bitches... Oh yeah.
• Several excellent additions to my sci-fi library, including a Harry Turtledove, a David Brin, and some others
• Superwife's mom gave me, out of the blue (and thank you ma'am!) a tin of Planter's Honey-Roasted Peanuts, and some silk boxers, both in the same gift-bag. Insert your own joke here. (We did, and it was funny as hell, too.)
• More epic Foghorn swag: another painting from Jojo, and another collector's glass from her sister Susie Q, and a Kleenex cover featuring that storied fowl of Dixie
• Lots and lots o candy, some sugar-free, some not. This included a Tobler's Orange, which, you know, just frickin rocks out loud.
• A toothbrush. See above.
• Swedish Fucking Nuts. If you know what they are, you've nodded sagely and thought to yourself, 'Damn right Swedish Fucking Nuts. They're that fucking good!' The rest of you, well, you know how sometimes you just get sad for no discernable reason? Well, it's because you don't know what Swedish Nuts are, and that makes you sad from time to time. Someday you'll know, and then that won't happen anymore. You'll know exactly why you're sad, because you ate them all, and now you have none left.
• Oh, oh yeah, and an unrated, extended version, WIDESCREEN* edition of the funniest movie of 2007 easily, and quite likely what will end up being the funniest movie of the 21st century, (the first decade of such almost for sure) SUPERBAD.

* For the love of Satan, people, if you're going to spend your hard-earned cash on a movie for me, always always ALWAYS get the widescreen version. I hate missing 40% of a movie because some moron decided to cut the edges off to fit on an NTSC screen. That's just a footer for public interest. I suggest you do that for anyone you buy a movie for, so that eventually, someone somewhere will get the hint and just stop releasing movies in any other format but widescreen, to save me the trouble of requesting it.

In addition to mere swag to bear home and bury, I alos got to spend oodles of quality time with Bunnyman, Superwife, and the Super-Kids, all of whom I can safely say enjoyed the rather lame present I bought them. Seeing the Super-Kids light up when they tore through the wrapping was probably the best part of the morning.

Slaying Treebeard's Cousin

It was a long and bloody battle, but in the end, Man and Saw defeated Ent (Tree, Root, Leaf, and Branch).

Bunnyman and I were tasked on Saturday with finding, securing, transporting, and setting up the Castle Anthrax Annual Christmas Tree. The first three of those tasks we performed flawlessly and almost entirely without comment with the aid of Local Boy Scout Troop #42. Or should I say, we stood around with hands in pockets while said boy scouts and their scoutmaster did all the hard work, and I finished all that by driving it slowly back to Castle Anthrax, much to the consternation of River City's automobile-equipped.

It was only once we arrived at Castle Anthrax that the trouble began, but oh what trouble it was! Our adversary was a Blue Spruce, measuring well over six feet tall, weighing in at four sextillion tons, and completely armored above and below with razor-sharp thorn-like spikes amusingly misnomered as 'needles'. I wisely donned my $250 Leather Armor and Gauntlets of Yard Work before approaching our foe, which was wise indeed, as it's D&D stats include 15' of reach, 100 attacks for 1d4+2 damage each, a Base Attack Bonus of +14, and the Large and In Charge feat. In WoE stats, that comes out to Att 30 (with the ability to attack up to 100 times with no penalties to attack, defense, or fumble), Defense 54, Initiative 30, Damage 1d4+2, and a Damage Resistance of 240. (Hereafter, stats are given in D&D / WoE format.)

Bunnyman and I, being level 3 Commoners, were clearly in over our heads, as we were armed only with my Tool Bag of Electrical Controls Work / Class II Tinker's Kit, and a Tinfoil Tree Stand -2 of Enfeeblement / Cursed Tinfoil Tree Stand of The Gods Will Laugh at You.

Our foe proceeded to sped the next two hours beating us to a standstill, until finally, beaten and bloody, we retreated to the phone, to call in Superwife as reinforcements. Superwife was on her way back to Castle Anthrax with Super-Dependable Teen anyway, so she arrived, cast her spell of Martha's Transformation / Transform into Martha, and led us back into the fray, now being an impressive level 15 Aristocrat / Master Decorator (level 10 of Magistracy, Intuition, Willpower, and General Competence at Everything). Thus emboldened, Bunnyman and I charged in, renewed in spirit, and confident of victory.

And our foe performed his deadliest trick, Quickened Tree Stand Destruction / essence-powered Tree Stand Destruction. Our Tinfoil Tree Stand -2 of Enfeeblement / Cursed Tinfoil Tree Stand of The Gods Will Laugh at You promptly crumpled under this onslaught, setting even Superwife back on her heels momentarily. And then she bade us go forth on a holy quest for a Saw of Mighty Cutting and a Tree Stand of Puissance.

Daunted and fearful, we rode forth from Castle Anthrax to the Place of Many Shops, and bravely entered the outdoor store there. After reading the signs in the dirt (and maybe one or two hanging from bars near aisle fronts, we were sorta stumped, until Bunnyman espied and accosted a native guide, who pointed us to the objects of our quest, or at least, to the resting places of such things.

Saws were easy to obtain, there being many, and it was fortunate we went there first, for it could have been necessary to lay about us with it to obtain our second quest item, the Tree Stand of Puissance. There was but a single one of these storied relics remaining, and we pounced upon it like a starving man on a sausage inna biscuit.

Triumphantly, we bore our prizes back to Castle Anthrax, and, guided in the ancient rites by Martha/Superwife, we finally slew our foe, and mounted it.

So, you know, there's another tree standing indoors in another house this year. And man was it pissed.

And that is fricking it. I ain't lifting another finger to decorate for the rest of the season, possibly for the remainder of my days.

Oh, the weather outside's delightful...

In Kentucky, November is a fine month for working outdoors. Not a whole lot going on any differently (other than the early parts of my weekdays starting earlier...) eh, here's a proper breakdown...

0600 The alarm goes off. Whistling cheerfully, I shut it off, hop spryly and eagerly out of bed, and perform my morning ablutions.

0645 Check to make sure my keys are in pocket or hand, and depart Casa Mio for work. That involves turning left out of my driveway, turning left at the end of the block, and going straight for about a mile, hitting an on-ramp, the going straight for 6 miles, hitting an off-ramp, going straight for a mile, and turning left into the parking lot. About 10-20 minutes, depending on traffic.

0715 With coffee in hand, I pile my gear (ok, put my little black toolbag and my lunchbag in the back of my partner's truck cab) into the truck, and we begin an hour-long drive to northern mid-Kentucky. Along the way, we chat (both of us are fundamentalist Christians, so there's a lot of choir-preaching, and thus far we've managed to avoid coming to blows over the minute details of our differences in beliefs), drink coffee, and listen to bluegrass on satellite 62, or maybe 65, I fergit which.

0800-0830 (depending on jobsite and traffic) We arrive at work, already having planned where to go first to do what.

5 minutes later: We discover that the contractors have bottlenecked us again, either by failing to perform something important we absolutely needed done, or by half-assing it so it doesn't help us at all. I repeat the old soldier's adage: "No plan of battle ever survives first contact with the enemy." We shrug and get to work.

Several hours later: In spite of Murphy's best efforts, we've gotten some significant amount of work done, and more of our commitment to this job has been fulfilled to contract specifications. We pile into the truck, and return to HQ, where I transfer to my auto.

40 minutes later: Home again, or maybe I braved I64 only long enough to face the dread nightmare that is the Watterson Expressway on-ramp to get to Castle Anthrax.

~10:30: Bedtime for bozo.