(The Hockey Stick Graphic)   I was determined to take all of Sunday and simply do nothing. I didn’t get far on that front. I thought about going skating over at the Kettler Ice Arena, the training complex for the Washington Capitals perched on top of the Ballston parking structure.   The team allows the […]

(Stuart’s HQ, then Custer’s, then Stuart’s, again.) I wound have to chalk this holiday up as marginal. Not bad, but it sort of sucked. I got caught up captive so one of those proposal drills yesterday, and working on Friday to conserve vacation time against the coming visit to reinforce the folks over Christmas.   […]

(S&W Model 28) I can’t get around the coincidence of the model of the Smith and Wesson hand-cannon and the day, so we will have to go with it and get over it. Orion the Hunter is hovering to the west, over the green tarp covering the pool at Big Pink, and the wind is […]

(Trading tables at the Gun Show)   Merlin is the man at Rabbit Ridge Enterprises. He is a vast presence in an orange t-shirt with eyes set deep in his plump cheeks and no neck at all between his head and broad beefy shoulders. He has a businesslike approach to the constitution. His enterprise happens […]

I was out on the balcony, watching the fog come in, a whiskey in one hand and the iPod firmly screwed into my ears when it occurred to me I ought to get out the ingredients for everything to fix a very minimalist Thanksgiving dinner.   Turkey breast, check, in the oven on low heat. […]

(USS Nevada (BB-36) looking forlorn the week after the Admiral saw her in February 1942 at Hospital Point, Pearl Harbor, HI)    It is gray here and raining, and a trip to the Pentagon looms as vast as the bulk of the pale brown sandstone building.   History is a funny thing. It is being […]

I was going to get to the cornbread stuffing recipe this morning, I swear it, and thought about it when I turned off the paved road at the abandoned Rapidan Mill and plunged across ten miles of bad gravel road in the farm country of north central Virginia.   The single lane was no challenge […]

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So, I was like stunned this morning when I read the paper. No wars, I thought, no health care debate I have about had it with all that, at least this week. But my eyes got all round and filled with wonder as I read the latest.   “WTF,” I murmured into my Russian coffee. […]

(Capitol Christmas Tree- Courtesy US Senate)   We have never seen an onslaught like this so early in the festive season. I can’t say I have heard a Christmas carol yet, but everything else is happening a month early.   A gigantic glass Christmas tree was hanging in the soaring atrium of the National Harbor […]