At the end of last year I came across instructions in a DIY magazine for making soap out of bacon fat. So of course, we decided we had to do it.

Well, after months of ingredient-acquisition, selfless consumption of bacon, and generalized thoughtless delay we finally got the gear together last night and went through the painstaking process.

Bottom line: we wouldn't last very long on the frontier -- and we had industrial lye, not even needing to leach it from campfire ashes.

I think I had more than half a gallon of bacon fat altogether. It's good to get that much refrigerator space back. I heated it on the outdoor grill and filtered it through an old t-shirt. When the Brydens came over we got started: plied ourselves with wine (for courage) then donned the protective gear in the makeshift lab set up in the garage.

The process lasted more than three frickin' hours. And we're not sure what we created is actually going to be soap. But we did drink a fair amount of wine, and the boys (knowing better than to stick around for longer than two minutes of this craft activity) had fun running the sidewalks, drawing pictures, playing Wii... anything but stirring the proto-soap goop we had in that big bowl in the garage.

The stuff is in my basement today, poured out in its mold, happily marbled with red-dyed goop for that classic bacon effect. It's not quite liquid, not quite solid, not quite grease-smelling. I'll let it cure for a few days before declaring it a failure.

This is what it's all reduced to (I'd offer explanatory text but have none):

Stopped today at the local Walmarts and found the epxerience so entertaining I had to send text-massage updates to Marlin as my shopping progressed.

And speaking of trashy fun, Cookie can't wait to go back to the paintball field. Yeah, I could do that.

Not much political commentary from Frylock or Big Kahuna these days: we're living in grim times and there's not much left to say... Maybe the only thing left to do is take bets on what collapses first: Europe, Greece, California, U.S., N.Y., who knows.

Is counterfeiting still considered illegal?

A while back we scoped out the nearby paintball field and Cookie was saddened to see that you had to be ten years old to play. And so began the countdown. In fact, the weekend before his birthday we went to Dicks (heh, Dicks) to buy ourselves some paintball facemasks -- we were making ready.

Today, we hit the field and made a day of it. The upshot: he's one Tough Cookie. And I am one out of shape old man. (All those deep-knee bends and duckwalking to keep the cover of odd-shaped obstructions has my legs super-sore already -- and that's just going to get worse tomorrow.)

Anyway, Cookie had a great time and that's all that matters. It is a pretty intense game and I knew he was a little nervous at first. We stuck together for the first few rounds and he got the feel for it. After I took a direct hit to the neck (yeah, ouch) I sat out what I thought would be only one or two more games. Cookie kept going back in; in the last game they let him pick the teams. He was by far the youngest player on the field all day, and everyone seemed quite amused at his willingness to play and his ability to take a hit (those friggin' paintballs hurt).

He even got hit in the neck, almost in the same place I got it. Now we have matching welts.

Tomorrow I'm taking a vacation day. I was going to drive around and get a bunch of things done. But if my hamstrings are screaming the way they are now, I think I'll just lie around and vegetate. Because what's better than that?