One of Those Mornings

It's one of those mornings.

It's Monday, but the Colonel has never hated Mondays.  His (semi) adult career was actually so much fun and most often so rewarding that the Colonel really looked forward to getting back together post-weekend with some of the greatest people, and finest story-tellers, on the planet.

No mistake, the Colonel loved him some weekends.  All Marines live for the weekend...; well..., Marines live to FIGHT -- anywhere, anytime, against anybody -- but, making it to the weekends (or any break in training for that fight) was always the unspoken goal of the week.

The Colonel liked Mondays because many of the Marines with whom he worked always had great weekend liberty stories to tell with great relish and little regret.

Since he retired, and then re-retired to the farm here at the shallow northern end of deep southern nowhere, the Colonel has come to view Mondays as pretty much the same as any other day of the week.

In fact, what DAY of the week it happens to be matters so little to the Colonel anymore that the only reason he even has a calendar  is to keep track of hunting and college football seasons.

More than anything else nowadays, the weather determines the Colonel's daily activities.  

This morning it's raining -- for the first time in what seems like a month of Mondays.  It has been so dry here aboard the Colonel's vast holdings that Lake Brenda has passed quickly through the pond and puddle stage and is bordering on the stage for which the appellation "mudflat" is most appropriate.  The Colonel's catfish are growing legs and heading north -- with or without documentation.

Rainy mornings didn't used to be any deterrence to the Colonel's mission of preparing young men to travel to exotic lands, meet new people, and... win hearts and minds.  The Colonel was raised by hard men whose mantra was "If it ain't rainin', we ain't really trainin'."

But the Colonel is no longer in the business of preparing young men for deployment abroad and employment in the manly art of breaking things and wreaking havoc in the homeland of the Republic's enemies.  If it's rainin', the Colonel's writin'.

And so, he has.