The good ole' days.

This evening, we sat down for a little quality family time.  The goal was kicking back and watching a Christmas movie of some sort on Netflix. 

Rather than starting a whole movie, we decided to watch a collection of old cartoons, labeled Christmas Classics, Volume 1, from 1952.  The headliner, if you will, was the original Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.  That one wasn't half bad, even though I missed Herbie who wanted to be a dentist.  However...

The 2nd cartoon was called Santa's Surprise, and it was about how a bunch of kids from around the world snuck home on Santa's sleigh, and helped clean his house while he was sleeping.  That's all well and good, except, the cartoon was made back in 1947, and well...it might go without saying, but the cultural sensitivities were different then than they are now.  There was a scene in the video, starting at 12:19, that made me gasp out loud. 

I think what they were going for was United Colors of Benetton....but that's not how it comes across 65 years later.  What was even funnier was that my daughters didn't see anything wrong with it.  They didn't find it funny, but they didn't know any of it was supposed to be offensive either. 

Me?  I don't know...I've never thought of myself as overly PC, but I was blown away...and it didn't get any better.  During the singing, dancing, cleaning montage, they had the little African American kid SHINING SHOES, and the Chinese kid doing the laundry.  And that was OKAY!!!?!?!?!??! 

Yes, I know...it's a cartoon, and not a documentary....but, my gosh...it drives home the enormity of the whole Civil Rights battle, which was fought barely 20 years after this cartoon was made. 

I think next Christmas movie night, I'll have the kids watch Die Hard instead. 

Well, THAT's a terrifying coincidence.

This time of year, my amazing children spend a fair amount of time in the evening playing around on Norad Santa.   There they can play Christmas games, and count down to Chirstmas while checking Santa's progress. 

The other day, my daughter found herself playing around the Santa FAQ's section, taking joy in reading me the answers.  One in particular caught my attention. 

'Daddy, based on flight profile data gathered from over 50 years of NORAD's radar and satellite tracking, NORAD concludes that Santa probably stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs approximately 260 pounds (before cookies).' 

'Do you really think that is what Santa looks like?'

Well...I'm really closer to 5'6" than 5'7", and because I have lost some weight, I'm not 260 anymore, but the stats for Santa were close enough that I didn't even have to lie to my daughter.

'Yes honey, that sounds remarkably close to what Santa Claus looks like'. 

Wow, that's some dark stuff.

I'm normally a fan of country music, but for the past few weeks I've been tending to avoid the country stations.  Just too much of the same sound, and too much of that same sound sounding like Taylor Swift.  No doubt she is a pretty girl and she can sing a catchy tune...I just haven't felt like buying what she is selling.

This weekend, my hand was forced by geography, so I spent most of Saturday listening to country music, and heard a few songs released over the last month or two that had previously escaped my attention, and one of those lodged deep.

I failed to catch who sang the song the two times I heard it, but man, it was different, and it was dark.  Yesterday I finally got a chance to play on youtube, and by feeding in the few lines I was able to remember and much trial and error, I finally found the song.

Much to my surprise, it was by The Band Perry, and called 'Better Dig Two'.  I have extolled the virtues of The Band Perry before, but even so, I was not prepared to hear this new song from them. While they had some serious songs on their first CD, even the serious stuff was 'sweet'.  This is the opposite of 'sweet'.




If their first CD was a handfull of M&M's, then this new song is one of those individually foil wrapped salted dark chocolate squares.

I hope that's some good ass backstrap.

Todays story comes to us courtesy of yahoo, and WMUR out of New Hampshire, and is fresh from the 'Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug' files.

Cornish hunter describes ordeal after getting stabbed by deer's antlers(you'll need to click on the link...attempts to embed failed miserably.


Because he's relatively okay, it's funny to joke about. 

I had a similar thing happen to me with the first elk I shot.  I hit it through the neck, and after standing there, unable to run uphill, it layed down.  You could see the blood coming out of it's neck.  When I approached it, it stood back up, and luckily, ran away from me instead of towards me.  If a 144 pound white tail can hurt you, I'm pretty sure a 400 pound elk with 14 inch spikes could kill you. 

'Tis the Season

There's no getting around it...we are now in December, and Christmas is fast approaching.  Yesterday, I listened to my first full Christmas song on the radio, the Kelly Pickler(Hubba Hubba, by the way) version of Santa Baby, and when I got home from hunting, my wife had set up the Christmas tree. 



Following the morning football games, my wife chased me outside to wrap some lights around a few trees in the yard, and then I baked some Applesauce Oatmeal Cranberry Chocolate Chip cookies.  After dinner(venison steaks, butternut squash and spinach couscous) we decorated the tree, and then ate some cookies. 

 

 

Not THAT tree....this tree!

 





Darn you to heck, Trace Adkins.

One of the things you gain an appreciation for on a long day of road hunting is a good radio station.  Luckily, the country station out of the Pullman/Moscow area came in pretty strong through most of the Palouse, and it was a decent station, 99.5 KZZL.  They played a good mix of older stuff, and some really new stuff, as opposed to the stations in the Tri-Cities which I would call Top 40 Country.

It didn't help that I was in kind of a funky mood to start with.  As I explained yesterday, I was kind of out hunting more because I should than because I wanted to.  While I was packing things up Friday night my wife even observed 'I don't think I've ever seen you so depressed to go hunting before.'  Blame it on Thanksgiving.  After spending 4 of my 5 days off last weekend out and about, I really didn't feel like spending most of this weekend in my truck.

Trace Adkins was there to make me pay, with these two songs in particular. 







Heavy sigh.

The original plan had called for me possibly spending the night in Colfax and hunting Sunday AM before coming home, but with the early sundown(pitch black at 5!), I decided I could still make it home in time to give the girls their story and say prayers.  The deer will still be there next Friday, the last day of the season, and maybe then I will be in a different mood.

Species Envy

With late muzzle loader drawing to a close, and me still having a 2nd deer tag left unfilled, I figured I had at least make a half-hearted attempt to fill the tag. 

Half-hearted it was.  The late season actually opened last Wednesday, but I had to go spend Thanksgiving with my family instead of deer hunting.  Since I missed that week, I also missed the opportunity to hunt an area I was semi-familiar with.  Instead, I headed out early this morning to the Colfax area, the hArt of the Palouse. 

From above, there isn't a lot of difference between Pomeroy and Colfax...it's wheat fields and rolling hills, for the most part, although the Colfax area has neat areas of mesas and tableaus courtesy of Glacial Lake Missoula. 

On the ground, the big difference is the wheat fields around Colfax have a lot more fences, limiting the opportunity for guys like me to find a place to shoot deer.  With no real research opportunity, I spent most of the day driving...hooray road hunting!

I only saw 6 deer for my efforts, which is about 3 gallons of gas per deer.  The four I saw in the morning were about 250 yards away, with the distance increasing rapidly.  The two I saw at sun down were much closer, in fact they were highly shootable, if they had been the right species. 

Stupid mule deer.

We are lucky enough here in Washington to have several different species of deer.  For the most part, the white tails live in Northeastern Washington, the mulies in central and south east washington, and the black tails live out on the coast.  In some areas of Central Washington, these species mingle, which leads to micromanaged hunting rules.  For instance, today I could shoot a white tail doe, but not a mulie doe.  If I had been 10 miles further north in the Cheney GMU, I would have been able to shoot a mule deer doe OR a white tail doe.

Don't think I wasn't temped though.  Not too tempted though, since I was less than half a mile from a house with a State Patrol cruiser parked in the driveway. 

The day wasn't a total loss...there was some nice country, and I marked a few really nice chunks of land to call for permission for next year. 

Plus, I got to have chicken fried steak for a late breakfast at the Top Notch Cafe in Colfax.