Mellowing in my old age

Yes, yes, I'm getting old, and I'm mellowing out. I'm often accused of hating everything, or at least hating a lot of stuff. I disagree...I don't hate more things, I'm just more vocal about what I do hate, so everyone notices it more. But alas, some of my old hatreds are cooling into dislike, or worse, liking.

Take for instance, snow. I've hated snow for a long time. You spend three plus years earning your living driving, sometimes putting 250 miles or more behind the wheel each day, and see how you feel when it snows. But now I have a 4 year old and a malamute at home. They both love the snow, and it can't help but be a little contagious.

Yesterday, it started snowing when I was at work. I was less than pleased. It wasn't sticking, so I wasn't too unhappy. Then I left to go pick up the boy, and when I got out by Fall City, the snow was coming down harder...and it was staying. I called Jen when I got to Duvall.
"It's mighty white out here," I said. I wasn't just referring to the ethnic make-up of our 'hood (which, by the way, is indeed mighty white).
"Ok," she says, "I was going to leave in about a half hour anyway".

Got the boy, went home. He immediately said he wanted to "play snowball fight!" Oh great. I went in and got the dog. She got outside and went nuts. Dancing around, jumping, running in circles. She did not want to be on the leash. At one point, she was running around me and the leash wrapped around the boy. He spun about a quarter circle around me before the leash pulled his legs out from under him, flipping him up so he was horizontal in the air...then he dropped, flat, face-first, into the snow. He got up and cried for a minute, but it was more just shock then anything; he wasn't hurt. He threw a snowball at the dog, and then everything was fine and the snowball fight was under way.

I decided it was time to let Chase off the leash, whether she would run off or not. She'd be back, and nobody would get hurt by Crazy Dog On Leash. Sure enough, she took off. Then the boy and I started hurling snowballs. Few things make you feel simultaneously good and bad about yourself than having a snowball fight with a four year old. After a few minutes, I called Jen. "On your way home, can you buy me some gloves? Your son is insisting on having a snowball fight and my hands are freezing."
"Is there enough snow to have a snowball fight?" she asked.
"Uh...yeah...we've been throwing them for 15 minutes now."
"Right. In that case, I'm leaving work now."
She hadn't understood that it was snowing way more at our place than in Issaquah. She also told me where I could find gloves in the house. Snowball fight continued until we heard the girl next door come outside with her mom, and went over to see what they were doing. The kids played, parents talked, until the dog finally decided to come back and we wanted to the take the kids inside. Brought the boy home and felt good about having fun in the snow.
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Another thing I've long hated is the military. Not so much the guys on the ground, but the institution and the generals who run it. But given the way some military leaders are standing up to the Bush administration and saying they're wrong, I have to feel a bit more like they're on our side and not puppets of the government quite as much as I'd always thought. General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, disagreed with Donald Rumsfeld during a recent joint press conference. Basically, Rumsfeld was saying that it wasn't our job to stop the Iraqi military and police that we are training from torturing people (or killing them with death squads, but that wasn't quite brought out). Good ol' Pace, a Marine since his infantry days in the 'Nam, smacked him down and straight out said our military had a responsibility to stop it if they witnessed it. I like this guy.
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And, for just amusement...

A face transplant has been successfully done. Can a Travolta/Cage switcheroo be long behind?

And supposedly in my own state, yet another person claims to have captured a picture of Sasquatch.

- Mattbear out