Ahhhh, Christmas.

Yes, you could say “Well, geez, Lemur, Christmas isn’t about gifts”, and you’d be right.

But doggone it, this year I’m going to have to ask you to go sit in the garage and spout off there because I’m not interested in hearing the whine of someone moralizing in my face this year.

For the first Christmas in four years I was not wishing I could be somewhere quiet and lying down.  No, I wasn’t pain free, but pain wasn’t overshadowing the entire evening except for a few twinges here and there.  I took pictures, I laughed, I watched, enjoyed the kids’ grins and giggles, and had fun.

I got my Christmas present – a fixed neck.  The other stuff was good but this was better even than the butter on the corn, the icing on the cake, the gravy on the mashed potatoes.  Nothing is better than physically/mentally/emotionally being invited to the dinner in the first place.

Ok, enough metaphor.

Note:  Stay with this post long enough to read where my wife gives me a weapon for Christmas.  We are an atypical couple – she gave me a tanto for our anniversary one year, so don’t be surprised at what you read further down.

Here’s Jilly-boo, my imprinted/bonded cat, to give you a wonderful Christmas Kitty Stare.  Which reminds me, we have now had Jack and Jill – sibling felines – for exactly one year as of Christmas Eve, and boy am I glad the family railroaded me into taking both of them.

What else could a guy want?

Glad you asked.

Ladies, if you want your husband to be truly happy, and you want him to be able to defend house and home against intruders of all types (even zombies), then get him a tactical tomahawk.

Or get him a Jericho/Baby Desert Eagle -OR- a Springfield XD .40  -OR- a Glock 29 10mm.

Several months ago I had seen a SOG Tactical Tomohawk online and said “Oooh, look at that.  I’ve wanted one of those for a while.”

A week later I was flipping through a magazine and said “Hey, you know, if you were wondering what to get me, how about a tactical tomahawk?”

She looked at me and laughed.  Laughed right in my face.  She said “Oh yeah, right ‘Here you go honey’… do you really think that’s the thing to give daddy for a Christmas present?  What are the kids going to think?”

Nothing like a good heel-stomp to the soul and a rapier-sharp remark to the heart to sober one right up, and so, resigned to being a real life “Married with Children” Al Bundy, I stared at Peg… I mean Cruel Wife (sorry)… and I gave up on the idea.  I shuffled away with that idea lying on the ground and shriveling up, just like my testicles.

I figured I’d save up my money on my own and get it some day.

I opened one present from her, and it was Pixar’s DVD of their short stories.

The second gift was a pair of RC fighting helicopters.  Not the true swash-plate kind because on a smaller RC copter they can be fairly fragile, but instead uses coaxial props that perform yaw motion by adjusting prop velocity of one relative to the other.

This is really quite good since I’ll probably be training the kids and Cruel Wife how to fly them and a robust training helicopter is a working training helicopter.  Two helicopters, beefed up a bit, and sporting IR “guns” that can shoot the enemy helicopter.  Whoever is the first to get hit three times has their chopper slowly shut down and return to ground.  There is absolutely no way that gift could fail to please me.  None.  When it comes to helicopters I am all over that.  Here’s what they look like…

Someday I will get one with true swash-plate/cyclic hardware because this will allow true rotor tilt (sideways motion).  You can do things with them that you can’t do with the fixed co-axial rotors – pirouette and strafing are the simplest examples but there is also this half-pipe maneuver that works well, too.

I also got two trebuchets, working models, that you can set up in the house and launch stones across the room at the enemy’s castle.  So now the kids and I can have battles.  See them online here:  http://www.facebook.com/siegetoys

Lastly there was a large box with a smaller container on the top.  I opened up the top one and it was some sort of strap/wrap stuff.  Totally stymied, I opened up the larger box and saw …

But first, Ladies, let me say this… Nothing, and I mean NOTHING says “I wuv oo” quite like a wife giving her husband a tactical tomahawk.  NOTHING.  I guarantee your man will ooze testosterone at the same time his knees turn watery and he has this orgasmic out-of-body-experience (OOOBE).

I was shocked.  I stared at the Lagana TT and blinked several times.  I was speechless and caught in the biggest OOOBE of my life.  Bigger pic if you click it.

My tomohawk, Sioux Me.

She told me that she had ordered the tomahawk just days before I had mentioned it for the second time in my whinging sniveling little Eric Cartman voice.

Cruel Wife is sneaky, but I don’t care because I’m so happy.

Why do I like the tomahawk?  Let’s save that for a future posting.  It’s Christmas, you know.  But you can bet that zombies come into play… and bad guys.

That is what Forgiveness sounds like… screaming, and then silence.  –  Carl the Llama

Cruel Wife says she is going to have to work extra hard for ideas on what to get me next Christmas because she is all out of ideas.  Apparently I am hard to shop for.  I keep telling her, I’m quite simple really, and don’t have all that many needs or wants… that she can afford, anyway.  (Next year – glass-carving setup)   But really, once a guy has a tactical fountain pen and a tactical tomahawk what more does he really need?

Yes, I own one. Yes, I use it. A lot. Every single day.

What did I get her?

Years ago while on a month-long data collection in Huntsville (Redstone Arsenal), I got her an Alabama Dirt Shirt.  That is to say, a shirt, from Alabama that uses red Alabama dirt (aka “mud”) to stain the shirt.  Amazingly that shirt has held it’s color for twelve years.  So I got her two more.  And she wanted new silverware and new dishes.  And I got her a ridiculously difficult-to-find Lego Pet Shop model to put together.

I went out and took some pics after the kids went down.  Near here is a road where they put out luminaries every Christmas Eve. Pic gets bigger if you click on it.

Merry Christmas to you all.  May God give you the happiness, time with family, and peaceful Christmas I had.  The presents were secondary, truly.