OK, I have been keeping my eye open for an older Jeep (Just Empty Every Pocket) Cherokee, and today I found one.

It's a 5-speed, 4.0 litre in-line 6 cyl. It's got 174K miles on the clock, but I got it for $900. The interior isn't bad at all and it's even got a new JVC CD player.

It came with the bike rack, too!

Apart from getting the A/C back in working order before summer, where should I start? Any 4X4 folks here?

Things are just going crazy. First, I quit sobriety and now I'm voting. In my blog a while back, I wrote, in response to Steve's assertion that my attempts to eat "organic" would lead to dreadlocks and drum circles, that "I'm not going to be voting for Obama just yet."

Well, hell, I done pissed that one away, too.

And if you haven't heard, my 2nd favorite Republican, Colin Powell just today endorsed Sen. Obama for president.

That's good enough for me.

Fellow dunfoaminites: My experiment with sobriety is over.

After 99 days of almost total sobriety (I had a couple of glasses of red wine one night with a meal), I am satisfied that I'm not an alcoholic. I was just drinking too much and my week-long semi-bender was enough to scare me into re-examining my relationship with alcoholic beverages, which I have done and decided that Benjamin Franklin was right.

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to prosper."

I intend to celebrate with a glass of Chimay.

Probably two.
Maybe even three.

And I'm OK with that.

OK?

I am just now recovering from the most heinous case of the flu I've had in a long time. I started getting the sniffles Thursday the 11th and by Friday morning, I was fucked.

....and I fear that I'm becoming an alcoholic and I must quit drinking.

I cooked supper on Saturday night and realized with horror that I did not have "anything" (read: anything alcoholic) in the house to drink.

If it had been just a "damn, no beer" kind of thing it would not have been so bad, but I got such an actual craving and physically felt like I _needed_ to go buy beer or wine to make the meal complete that it scared the living shit out of me.

I did not go buy anything.

OK, I know I'm about 2 years late, but I just got the DVD via NetFlix.

I liked the movie, but I found two things wrong with it.

1- The opening intro did not have naked girls in silhouette swimming or jumping on trampolines like every other Bond movie.

2- We did not get to see Eva Green wearing anything even remotely revealing.

Other than that, though I thought the film was well done. I especially liked the parkour chase scene and the black-and-white "first kill" scene. Brutal!

"I would take up wickedness again...because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog."
- Mark Twain

OK, well, my experiment in eating "non-processed" stuff died a quick and painful death tonight.

After a wonderful meal of New Zealand Roughy baked in red onions and yellow peppers, served on a bed of iceberg lettuce with beer-and-butter sauteed mushrooms and steamed asparagas with a lemon-pepper Hollandasie sauce, I decided that this whole " eat only non-processed food" crap was stupid!

There exists no meal what is so good that it cannot be improved by the addition of cheese or pork.

Drinking Song

from Bloody Brother

DRINK to-day, and drown all sorrow,
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.

Wine works the heart up, wakes the wit;
There is no cure 'gainst age but it.
It helps the headache, cough, and tisic,
And is for all diseases physic.

Then let us swill, boys, for our health;
Who drinks well, loves the commmonwealth.
And he that will to bed go sober,
Falls with the leaf still in October.

I particularly liked them cooked over an open flame.

Tonight I broke down and thawed out some deer steaks a friend had given after last year's hunting season and I have to say, if I had known those critters were that tasty, I might should have bought that Remington 700 years ago......

I was going to use the technique Bill described in his "How To Cook a steak" post, but I felt, since the thing was shot deep in the wilds of Idaho and toted out on the back of a true outdoorsman, the only proper way to do it was on the grill.