We all know one. Or more. Enjoy.

My son, the Dauphin, is in 9th grade honors literature, and was assigned to read The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. Having not read the book nor seen the movie, I borrowed his copy over a couple of days, and read it myself.

He finished the book and completed the assignments his teacher had given, which were a nice mix of questions about the symbolism that McCarthy uses, along with questions about what he would have done in certain situations.

Since he finished the book, I slipped the movie into our Netflix queue, and we watched it last evening.

As you know, The Road is a story about a father and son making their way through a post-apocalyptic countryside. While the exact nature of the disaster that devastated their world is never revealed, either in the book or the movie, it’s clear that it must have been some kind of EMP followed by wildfires, and societal collapse.

It wasn’t an easy movie to watch, especially for a man with an only son. (My daughter is off at college, and told us recently that she has no desire to see the movie.) My wife felt the same way.

I’m sure others have discussed this book and movie from a preparation viewpoint, so I won’t go there.

But I will share one observation from my son. We were talking after the movie about the gun they carried, and how they only had 2 bullets.

My son said, “Dad, now I know why you own four handguns. It’s one for each of us.”

Indeed.

Christmas was on its way. Lovely, glorious, beautiful Christmas, upon which the entire kid year revolved.

Ralphie, A Christmas Story

The Christmas tree and all the decorations are already up at the FYH ranch. Thanks to a late Thanksgiving night Seal Team like Black Friday Raid, we have about 80 percent of the shopping done.

I like this kind of season, because it lets me relax, and enjoy Christmas. Ahead we still have tickets to the Atlanta Ballet’s Nutcracker, and a trip to see the lights at Callaway Gardens. But we can just enjoy.

My wife and I started an interesting tradition about 4 years ago. When you’ve been married as long as we have, it’s sometimes hard to think of inventive presents for each other. That year, we weren’t really sure if we could afford to spend much. We don’t go into debt for Christmas.

But I got a couple of commissions paid early, and on the morning of Christmas Eve, my wife surprised me. We were out driving ostensibly to pick up a Honey Baked Ham, and she pulled into the parking lot before the ham place.

The only interesting store in that place was a big box sporting goods store. I looked at her with a grin.

“Yes. Go buy yourself that 10/22.”

I felt like Ralphie. I had wanted a 10/22 for a couple of years, but I’d put it off for some reason or another.

When I got it home I put it in the box and put it behind the tree, and on Christmas morning I said, “Oh, wait, what’s that?”

Next, we drove to her favorite shop, and she got to pick out some comparable gifts.

Every year since then, we’ve gone out on Christmas Eve, and enjoyed ourselves as the other picks some gift that’s meaningful, and oftentimes longed for. It’s every bit as enjoyable for me to experience my wife’s interest and expectation, as it is to open those presents on Christmas.

This year? I’ve got my eye on a Dillon 550 loading press. That cold steel beauty . . .

On Christmas Eve, we’ll see.

Just like remembering to change the batteries in your smoke detectors, the change of time from Standard to Daylight Savings Time and back again affords us a built in reminder to do those things we need to do every 6 months, or yearly.

For instance, I change batteries in every clock in my house on New Year’s Day. It’s a reminder of the fleeting nature of time, and I usually have a bunch of batteries I got on sale for Christmas.

So, Sunday I took the opportunity to do some of those things I always do once a year.

I detail stripped my Glocks and checked all the things I usually don’t check, like recoil springs, firing pin springs, and firing pin cups. (Everything was fine.)

I baked the desiccant bags from my gun safes, to restore them. (I know, I should do this monthly. It’s now on my calendar.)

I unpacked my Get Home Bag, and checked all the items against my checklist. (You never know when I’ve taken something out and forgotten to replace it.) I also ran the blanket and sleeping bag through a fluffy cycle in my dryer. I replaced all the water bottles with fresh ones, and replaced the box of granola bars. (Guess what my snacks are this week . . . )

I did an ammunition inventory. I will then put that against my calendar of upcoming matches and shooting outings to decide when I need to buy more.

I took all my long guns out of the safe, and cleaned out the bottom of the safe (so that’s where that went) and re-positioned the spacers that hold up the guns. I then wiped down my guns with a good oily rag, and put everything back in neatly. Man, that looked nice.

One embarrassing confession – I took photos of a lot of this, but I also blew off my whole yard with the leaf blower, put together a new roll-around tool box, and put together a new fire pit. So, I didn’t get a chance to download the pictures. It’s just as well, some of these tasks will make good stand alone posts later this week.

Oh, I also set my clocks back an hour.