WEDNESDAY HODGEPODGE

     Here's another opportunity to give us a look behind the curtain that is you. Our friend Joyce has come up with more penetrating questions. Won't you join in on the fun?

1. April 15th is the deadline for Americans to file their state and federal income tax returns.  What's a job you do on a regular basis that could be described as 'taxing'?
     Yard work! SWMBO loves to "play" in the yard. To my mind, yard work is mind numbing drudgery. Mowing the grass, raking the leaves, trimming back trees and vegetation are extremely taxing to me.

2. I'm participating in the April A-Z blog challenge, and the Hodgepodge happens to fall on Day O this week. In keeping with that theme...olives, onions, oysters, okra...of the foods mentioned, what's your favorite O food?
     Onions, of course. My maternal grandmother told me that the first thing you do when you're going to cook pretty much anything is to begin with cutting up an onion. It's part of my French Canadian heritage. I can still remember the smell of cooked onions wafting through my boyhood home. I love onion rings, french onion soup, pretty much anything with onions...Yumm!

3.  What is something memorable you experienced as a child that your own children (or future children/nieces/nephews) will not get to experience?
      One thing I used to do with my siblings and neighborhood kids was play games such as kick ball, wiffle ball, football, etc in the middle of the street until the street lights came on, at which time it was time to go inside our respective homes. Of course, we would vacate the street if any cars had the audacity to drive by. I don't see that happening in today's world.

4. Term limits for our elected officials...your thoughts?
      No term limits, I think that they should serve as much time in prison as anyone else! 
     Seriously though, I would eliminate ALL pensions for Congressmen, Senators, Cabinet Officers and the President. The intent of our founding fathers was that citizens would serve one or two terms and then would return to private life to live under the laws that they had enacted. That was seen as a restraint on elected officials passing stupid laws and a natural limit on the number of terms for the majority of the elected offices.

5. On April 18th, 1775, Paul Revere made his famous 'midnight ride'...when did you last make a midnight ride?  Perhaps the fate of a nation wasn't hanging in the balance, but tell us where you were headed anyway.
     The last midnight ride I made was a few years ago when SWMBO and I made a whirlwind tour of Niagara Falls, upstate New York, and Vermont. We, I mean I, got lost driving through upstate New York and did not make it to the Lake Champlain ferry crossing until after midnight. 
     Before I retired, however, I often made midnight rides in my assigned patrol car.

6.  What would freak you out more...a mouse running across your floor or a big fat hairy spider?
     A spider riding like a cowboy on the back of a mouse that was scurrying across the floor would amaze me. I wouldn't freak out mind you, I would simply be amazed. I really do not fear mice or spiders. I generally kill them for my beloved SWMBO at her behest!

7. I love it when people ask me________________________?
     I generally enjoy meeting and talking with most people. I enjoy the give and take of conversation. There is no specific question that I particularly love being asked. I enjoy telling people about the Gospel. I enjoy expounding upon the joys of marriage and what a blessing marriage can be. I like telling humorous SWMBO stories. I love a good joke and having a good laugh, even if it's at my expense!
  
8.  Insert your own random thought here.

      Monday, being tax day and me being a procrastinator extraordinaire, I didn't get our taxes done on time. I had to file for an extension for the first time in my life. I hate doing my tax return. It really annoys me when I see how much I pay in taxes, particularly when I read about how our elected officials waste a significant portion thereof. 
     Also, I call bull crap on the President's assertion that the middle class would not see their taxes go up "...one dime!" He said the rich had to pay their fair share. Who knew I was rich and not middle class? BULL CRAP!!!