Life's 10 Simple Pleasures?

Pat "tagged" me. I feel like a bull elephant darted so as to photograph and measure before releasing into the wild, now.

1.) Lisa isn't simple but living with her makes me glad I'm still alive. Something I'd never have believed possible not that long ago.

2.) I'm Sicilian, so food. Then more food. Good food. And good vino, on special occasions. Can't stomach the bubbly cheap shit the gals like nowadays.

3.) Cigars. And good pipe tobacco in an old meerschaum.

4.) Reading. Science Fiction/Fantasy, Murder Mystery. The classics when I've the time and the need of a soul-purge. Nothing like The Iliad to humble me into submission.

5.) Cooking. Different from food because when I cook I usually don't eat. It's the pleasure of feeding others. The more the merrier, and then I usually DO drink myself into a stupor from the sheer joy of it all.

6.) Teaching. So many kids with so many bad educations, and I'm including one's working on Doctorates. Learning a curriculum is not necessarily learning much of anything. I could give a flying fuck what my 'peers' think about true Conservatism or the roots from which this marvelous experiment all began. I get their attention, and sometimes even if it's via osmosis, things set in.

7.) Growing things in the garden. Decorative plants, certainly, but living things I watch mature then will consume is such a simple passion I'm amazed that everyone alive doesn't do so.

8.) Watching Lisa knit. I know, I know; used her already but it's calming, and when my life experiences and genotype get together for an evening on the crown, I need all the help I can get.

9.) Camping. Not hunting, or fishing, but camping. Shooting is included but only at things that don't mind being shot at such as tin cans or watermelons. There are two types of camping; girls allowed, and no girls allowed. The no-girls type means days of unwashed traipsing and swinging an axe, and building huge fires in a true wilderness. No radio or TV or even books. Nothing to distract from the best thing God ever created. (next to Lisa)

10.) Guns. Handguns, rifles, machine guns, crew-served weapons, you name it. It's akin to golf in that the real game is you against you. Silver dollars at 50' from the draw. A grapefuit at 500 yards using iron sights. The absolute marvel of the perfect machine doing what it does, time after time. The gun, not me. I'm a putz.

Hope you're happy, Pat. This DOES make me half a fag you know.