look at me still talking when there's science to do

She mentioned taco bake. I love taco bake, and haven't had some in approximately as many years as there are dollars in the president's package (wait. that sounded not like i intended. anyhow.)

Some of you who i live with or am friends with in meatspace have heard this story or a variation on it, but that's only a small percentage, so you can manage, i think.

My father was technically my grandfather - my grandparents raised me, and i never knew my birthfather, so. He married my mother late in life (my birthmother and birthaunts were from my mother's first marriage) and so I was the only experience he'd had with being involved with the actual childraising parts.

My dad was born in 1926 and was raised in a military family before he married my mother; they got married in the sixties, and we were the type of family (for the first twelve years of my life) that ate at home pretty much all the time, or ate in diner-type-restaurants: chinese food was about as exciting as my father got. And because I was raised in the back of beyond (best beloved) it took a LONG time for "international food" to make it into my parents' lexicon. So I'd learned to make tacos (from one of those kits) and my father tried one, and it became Dad Approved™

He was a bench mechanic for deHavilland (which later got eaten by Boeing) - they made small aircraft, bush planes (Beaver, Twin Otter, Dash 7 and Dash 8 mostly). He made airplane parts, and when he was done making airplane parts for the day he made parts for his boss's motorcycle (his boss was into motorcycle racing in his spare time) and various household widgets out of wood (occasionally) and steel and aircraft grade aluminum.

One of those widgets was a bunch of 'taco holders' which consisted of a flat round piece of steel and a kind of v-shaped/u-shaped thing on top, about six inches all the way around. (fuirther gadgets included earring holders, keychain holders, one of those necklace racks (base, stem, round piece at the back for stabilization, giant 'comb' part about ten inches long parallel to the base and kind of cuved under like hooks, that sort of thing).

Eventually our town in the back of beyond got Taco Bell. Dad was a fan of the border fries. We went there for dinner on nights that my mother was working late(she did bartending in a few places, including a teamster bar, and worked in a couple bingo halls and stuff) and at the end of the night he'd slip me a twenty and tell me not to tell my mother.

i miss that man. every damn day.