A trip to Ace Hardware

Having finally started to grow up as I near the knoll of death, I have a new fondness for hardware stores. Was at our fave local Ace on Saturday, "buyin'"some nails. Here are some exciting things I saw:

Pig and hog rings! These go through pig/hog noses, so you can grab the pig by the ring, I guess?

The real question is: who needs these within city limits? Although, D_____ being D_____, there's probably some heavy "pig ring" scene out there among the kinkier singles. Maybe?

This also put me in mind of wondering who makes these...like, there's still some mild-ass dude who gets up in Indiana in the morning to go work at his machine turning out hog rings. His brother goes to work at some place where they make some proprietary mom-and-pop horseradish, probably.

Oh, man, how badly do I want one of these things, to mount on in the inside of the shed, next to the hygrometer and a moldering page from an Old Farmer's Almanac? It's a doohickey/template to check or test what size/type of screw you have. Imagine chatting companionably with a neighbor who says "Yeah, then I gotta go in the morning and check on some screw threading patterns..." and I can say "No, no, come on back here - I have just the thing..." then, later in high summer, same neighbor's methed-out 23-year old stepson breaks in to the shed and steals it because, in the moonlight, he thinks it looks like "real gold." Bliss!

You understand, right, that this Ramset (tm) Hammershot (tm) uses gunpowder cartridges to blast nails into cement/concrete, yes? Now read that again and imagine the childlike glee that crossed my old, dusty and wizened fizzog as my mother-in-law told me she had one IN THE BASEMENT. It is basically mine, in other words.

Then feel inordinate pity for the Bride and her mother and sisters that I am what passes for Man of the Family!