Merry Christmas ACLU

The other day when driving through my neighborhood, I noticed the sign to the left in the front yard of one of my neighbors. After I saw this I had to get a photo of it as I really like the message and got a good laugh.

For those of you who don’t know, the ACLU stands for the American Civil Liberties Union. According to their website, the ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty. We work daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States. Our job is to conserve America's original civic values: the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

On the surface it sounds like a good idea, but unfortunately that organization has morphed into something out of control. The ACLU is better known as an organization that has an anti-Christian agenda and has helped bring lawsuits that have done the following:

• The removing nativity scenes from public property
• Banning songs such as Silent Night from schools
• Refusing to allow students to write about the Christian aspect of Christmas in school projects
• Forcing schools to rename Christmas break Winter break
• Refusing to allow a city sponsored Christmas parade to be called a Christmas parade
• Not allowing a Christmas tree in a public school
• Forcing the renaming of a Christmas tree displayed on public property a Holiday tree

In addition to their war on Christmas, the ACLU has also tried to:

• Censor student led prayer at graduation
• Remove "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance
• Remove "In God We Trust" on our currency

I do not think that this is what our founding fathers had in mind when they talked about separation of church and state. This is one of the reasons we don’t send our children to public schools. God has been removed from our public school systems.

Last week a co-worker sent me an email that contained the above comic that I thought was very funny. However, it really isn’t funny in the sense that it is sad to think that this is what our society has come to.

So to you ACLU I send you very big Merry CHRISTmas message!!

Buck #2

As I previously noted, last year I was not successful in getting a deer during hunting season. Well this year I got my 2nd buck in 3 years of hunting. Again, I was hunting on Aunt Marilyn’s property with my friend Jeff.

When I saw the deer, I couldn’t tell if it was a doe or a small buck, but that didn’t matter. I took 1 shot and it took off running. I took a 2nd shot while it was on the run, and I could see that it fell down.

When I walked up to the deer, I was surprised at how small it was. I jokingly thought that I had shot a large German Shepherd. It was much smaller than the one I got 2 years ago. It didn’t have any visible antlers, just two small button nubs on its head. It was a very small antlerless buck. I didn’t even bother to take photo of it as I didn’t think it would be very manly to take a photo with a puny buck like this.

Yesterday I got my processed deer back from the butcher shop. There were only 3 grocery bags of meat. My previous deer filled up about 7 or 8 bags. Since I didn’t get a photo of the actual un-butchered buck, I decided to spread the packaged venison meat on the garage floor and take a photo of my bounty. The photo above left, shows the amount of meat generated by a 1st year buck.

Today for lunch, I grilled some venison steaks for myself, Gannon, Grant and Gibson. Christie isn't quite ready to eat deer meat yet, but she will come around. Although the thermometer said it was 19 degrees, I cooked the venison on the grill outside. (see photo above) Who says it has to be summer to grill outside? All of us agreed that the venison steaks were awesome. Hungry?

I’m 14,245 days old!

Today I hit one of those milestone points in life. I turned 39 years old. 39 years old seems to be a pretty popular age as I know that many older and middle-aged men and women like to lightheartedly say “39” when asked how old they are. I don’t feel 39 years old and I really don’t think I look 39….do I?

I’ve never been one to make a big deal out of birthdays. I mean once you turn 21, there really isn’t a reason to make a big deal out of it except for the fact that you’ve made it another year. I know some people make a big deal about birthdays and get upset if someone doesn’t send them a card or doesn’t call them. I’m not one of them.

Not that I don’t enjoy getting a card or phone call, it’s just that I don’t get upset if people don’t acknowledge it. I’m sure I’ll get a telephone call from my mother and sister Viki to sing Happy Birthday to me. I do look forward to those calls.

After work Christie and the boys took me to Applebee’s for my birthday dinner. I had the teriyaki steak and coconut shrimp combo….yum. After that we went shopping for a few minutes at the mall. I’m not much of a cake fan, so instead of a birthday cake, on the way home from the mall we stopped at Fazoli’s to get a few slices of cheesecake instead of a birthday cake.

According to the http://calendarhome.com website, 341,880 hours, 20,512,800 minutes and 1,230,768,000 seconds have passed between today, December 1, 2005 and the day I was born on December 1, 1966.

According to Scientific American, the average life expectancy of male living in the United States is 74.7 years. I’m more than half way there. So assuming that I’m normal (I’m not!), I have about 13,200 days left to live. I plan to make the most of them.