Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day weekend is always a solemn time for me. An uplifting thing occurred on Friday, though -- Pepper found a spot on the house with enough wood ( instead of Dri-vit) to support a flag bracket!  So now Old Glory is proudly flying at Moogie's Manor, just as it did at the Mansion in NOLA.

Pepper and I joined friends on Friday night at Riverfest so we could turn back the hands of time at a "Chicago" concert! Man, those guys are genuine musicians! Then, last night, The Son and his group went back to Riverfest so that #1 could do a little volunteer work (yay, #1!!), but we had a family cookout anyway with Daughters' families, including 2/5 of the grandkids (##4 and 5).  Don't they look like they're cooking up something mischievous?

Heh.

Tonight we'll have Swedish food (smorgasbord of leftovers!), and think about what to grill tomorrow. Ah, tomorrow.  Memorial Day.

Never forget.

Thank God, indeed.

Do You Suppose They Were Preoccupied?

Weren't the Occupy dudes supposed to have some big, hands-across-America-ish, nationwide demonstrations today? 

Apparently, the New Orleans chapter either never received, or ignored, the memo.  (Okay, it wasn't a memo, it was an email from MoveOn.org -- yes I'm still undercover!)

I was at City Hall this morning to speak to the Council and Mayor on Military Day about ESGR. City Hall is right across the street from Duncan Plaza where the Occupy folks (and their homeless chums who were run out of Duncan Plaza a few years ago, but seem to have found their way back on the coattails of the Occupy Cognoscenti) have pitched their tents (and the city, being ever-prepared for parades and parties, has set out several PortaPotties).  There were a bunch of extra cops both in the entry area of City Hall and the Council Chamber, as if they expected a bunch of Occupiers to storm the seat of city government. 

When I arrived and saw all the cops I actually grew a little apprehensive about being able to get out and to my car after the session without encountering a mob of foolish, fragrant people -- our session with the Council began at 9:30 and was supposed to last until about 11:30; the Occupy Show of Force was supposed to crank up at 11:00 near a sign erected on the sidewalk across the street.  As I prepared to leave, I could see a sea of television news trucks through the front windows.  Hmmmm, I thought.

Then, I walked outside.  And saw this:

I think the news folk outnumbered the Occupy folk.  Here are the PortaPotties.

This whole Occupy thing is starting to get a little amusing to us irrelevant people who live in flyover country.  You know a thing has jumped the shark when The Daily Show starts gigging it:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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But, I think my very favorite jab at the Occupants so far is this:

Go ahead, Occupunks, make his day.

Passing a Good Time

Moogie has "passed" a nice weekend, as they say down here in southeast Louisiana.

I got to catch up on a lot of blogstalking.  I got to lounge around on the couch with Rosie, order middle eastern food delivery, and watch a couple of what I figured to be chick-flickish movies that Pepper wouldn't appreciate.  (It turns out that I think he'd like them both:  Eat, Pray, Love and Valentine's Day.)  I got to leave dishes in the sink without guilt!

Since Pepper took Bouie's crate with them, I also got to vacuum the powder room (usually referred to, with affection, as "Bouie's Room") that has been occupied by a sheddy Labrador retriever's crate since late 2006.  Talk about a filthy, hairy mess!  I put off that chore until today, knowing that it would make me sick.

And I got to sleep until I awoke on Saturday morning!-- no bratty dog begging to go on a walk or an adventure at the crack of dawn!   Then I spent the day at the Quarterly ESGR leadership meeting at recently rededicated Jackson Barracks, headquarters of the Louisiana National Guard, drowned by Katrina's storm surge and the federal levee failures.

How did all this free time come to be, you ask?  Yep, you guessed it: Pepper and Bouie went hunting!  They had a great 3-day hunt.  Bouie got to flush and retrieve quail, pheasant, and chukker.  (I'm still not quite sure about that chukker thing, but Pepper says they're pretty much like big quail, "but more of a meal," so they shouldn't taste foreign or anything.  I'm still not so sure.  This one looks pretty mean!  Are mean birds tasty?)

After we got the truck unloaded and Pepper was starting to put things away, Bouie sat right beside the equipment.  Even though he's pretty well exhausted ( and starving because he gets too excited to eat during a hunt), he was not about to let his dad put that gear back in the truck and go on another hunt without him!

It's good to have them home.  It was a little too calm around here to suit me.  Plus, I had to come home to an empty house guarded only by a quirky security system and a blind 16 year old shih tzu following my wonderful Girls Night at the Hive!

The hunt came up after we had already bought tickets.  Pepper said he'd come home early if I could't find anyone who wanted to go with me, but my wonderful neighbor came through!  When I called to ask her if she'd like to join me for Girls Night Out, her husband said tat depended on whether he had to entertain Pepper while we went to the game.  Heh.  Her husband has a rather droll sense of humor.

And, Woo hoo!  The Hornets stung the Spurs 96 - 72 as we cheered them on!

Right now, today, there's football!  Granted, it's not the Saints, so it's not nearly as much fun as last year, but I think I'll enjoy football while it lasts.  It's a long time -- and a heckuva lot of baseball to survive -- til August.

National Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Week

Sometimes the president's handlers in the White House staff get it right.

As proclaimed by the Commander in Chief, this is National Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve Week. 

Please thank those who employ those who serve (more and more often these days). 

Holiday Hurryings

More rain. House is still a disaster, but why clean it when there will be FIVE dogs to track in mud?

Still raining. Spoke to the Board of Volunteers of America and got a Statement of Support signed with Larry Jones, Louisiana's Veteran of the Year for 2009 (and I wrote part of his nomination!)!

It's raining. The kids are still 7 hours away, so I have a little more time to shovel out the top layer of junk before they get here, after the two functions tonight.

Rain. But I don't have to cook or clean up the kitchen tonight!

Ahhhh. I'm so easy.