CHAMPIONSHIP TODAY

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY:Lead Dog and Earthdog Patrick at Doug Smiley's Gas Saver Trail Mix last Saturday.

TWO YEARS AGO TODAY: Junior and I went to Warsaw yesterday to Dunhams, where he purchased a 1938 Mosin Nagent 7.62 x 54 rifle complete with bayonet and sling for 75 bucks. Awright! Good deal! They only had one box of ammo, a little pricey at 22 bucks per box of 20...

It is 6:04 a.m. and Sadie, Rosie and Kittens are all snoozin. 24 degrees in Huntington, Ind. and 61 degrees here in Palm Harbor. Brrrr.

ONE YEAR AGO TODAY: (I THINK "BRIAN" IS PATRICK):It is 5:27 a.m. and dark out and very cold, at 15.8 degrees. No thaw today. Brian and Junior are asleep in his room.

DEACEMBER 5, 2005:

It's 6:03 a.m. Patrick's been out and has crawled into bed with Junior. It's 11 degrees out, cold enough that I had to warm Patrick's brass snap on his chain with my fingers to get it to open, an old mushser trick.

When Junior was growing up we lived in this Idyllic neighborshood called Indian Village. It was an older tree lined, cobblestone road paraaaadise of colonial style houses for the lower middle class. While we didn't have the best house in the subdivision by any measure, we had the highest elevation and the second biggest lot, which meant a relatively, for a city, large fenced in back yard. The addtion was isolated from urban blight because no other lesser deteriorating neighborhood bordered on it. It's perimeter was guarded by schools, cemetery, armory, housing project, river, etc. so that it was protected as if by a moat. Everybody took extreme care in making sure their property was kept up. There was a small park and an elementary school inside. If we'd just had a Wal*Mart, we would never had to leave. Anyway Junior had a dog and a Stay at home Mom, but his Dad was on the road a lot.

So every year, the neighborhood association would put on a Fourth of July bike parade for the kids. A firetruck wold lead the kids on this little parade to the Elementary school grounds where a big picnic was held.. All the kids would decorate their bikes with red white and blue crepe paper and what not. So one year we decorated Junior's Bike and I thought we did a pretty good job. His bike was better, in my opinion than many others there. But there were some spectacular decoration jobs that were obviously more creative than Junior's. So when the judging came, for best decorating in various categories, a curious thing happened. A lot of the winner's bikes, were not nearly as good as some of the losers. Of course, that's just my opinion. But when one particularly scantily and sloppily decorated bike won in a category, I knew something was not right. So I investigated as to just WHO the winners were. And you know what? Every winner, to a man(or I should say child) was the son or daughter of one of the neighborhood association officers. They didn't even allow a token non-officer kid to win anything, that's how blatent they were. Perhaps they thought that was their pay for their hard work in putting on the event. Keep the masses happy with bread and circuses, but we'll keep the spoils for ourselves. So democracy has it's petty tyrants even on the lowest most insignificant levels.... But you knew that if you've ever been involved in a club, fraternal organization of the federal governMent..

Rosie and I are off to Gators Cafe on Johns Pass to watch the game. This week's costume is orange hardhats--Home Depot is sponsoring the game...

more later

GO GATORIOS!!!