Notes from the Cave: Family Room Edition

What??  Two NFTCs in one week?  What's gotten in to me?

In any case, I'm working in the family room this morning because Sophie gets upset if she can't be up my ass 24/7, and she's not allowed in the Cave, so the laptop is performing its named duty and I'm sitting here typing while Sophie barks at the chair.

I read an article today about a 9-year-old girl who accidentally shot a gun instructor with an Uzi at a firing range in Nevada.  The poor man's death is tragic, undoubtedly.  Even more tragic is the fact that our society thinks it's okay for a 9-year-old to even look at, much less handle, an Uzi.

It's no secret that I don't like guns.  And it's no secret that I would like to see stricter gun laws in our country.  But I don't think there is any gun-related issue that I feel more strongly about than the utterly insane notion that it's okay for kids to own, handle, and fire deadly weapons.  Yes, I've heard all the arguments from the other side...how teaching children to respect guns and use them safely is how you create responsible gun-owners, yadda, yadda, yadda.

It's all horseshit.

By the same argument, children should be permitted to drive once they are tall enough to reach the pedals - which for most kids means about 13.  The truth is, children under 16 should not be permitted to handle or fire any kind of gun anywhere, ever, for any reason.  Period.

Okay, I'm off my political soap box.  Forgive me.

I had a very productive day off yesterday.  I finished the ghost-writing project I am doing for a friend, I mowed the lawn, I slaughtered a shit-ton of weeds around the fence and the edges of the house with some Weed B Gone, and I got the oil changed in my car.  I did all that and managed to take a nap too.  All in all, it was a good day.  I'm back to work this afternoon, but we're going to the lake for the holiday weekend coming up.  Hopefully the weather will hold up for us.

I'm waiting right now for UPS to arrive with a new umbrella for the deck outside.  A strut broke on our current umbrella, so one side of it is sagging and we look like proud white trash.  Until this heat wave of the last week, it's been a really nice summer for sitting in the shade on the deck.  I'm hoping to have some more nice outdoor weather once we get into September and October.

Check out that pink cummerbund!  This is me and M before Junior Prom at Princeton High School, 1992.  We'd been dating for a year and a half by this point.  I remember thinking I would have liked it better if she'd just done her hair like normal, instead of getting it all professionally gussied up.

Speaking of hair...this photograph proves that I once had it.