Unfortunate, no rain in the forecast today

Being out in the county, juusst outside the city limits, the skies light up on July 4 and New Years eve in a big way.
We've been blessed with a statistics defying number of rain days on those two dates in the time we've occupied the BAR Corp. HQ.
The day after I find dud mortars around the yard and occasionally on the roof of the house.
The closest call was when my own brother knocked over the tube while lighting one up.
The projectile impacted the tactical bullet proof 1/8" thick glass in one of the front windows.
Fortunately, the angle of impact imparted less vector force normal to the glass than parallel and the mortar bounced off into the neighbor's front yard.
I have never seen fat old people run that fast in my life.*

I happened to be inside the house and heard a thump on the front window and a massive BOOM at rather low horizon.
"WTF are you people doing out here!", said I as I exited the front door.

My brother's wife has never allowed him to come back up this way for farworks.
The danger close mortar strike was bad, but I suspect it was lighting up the mortar cake he spent $150 on that was the final straw.
See, there was no visible fuse. So, he started picking at the paper till he found one.
Remember kids, stop, drop and roll!
Bro lit the "fuse".
BOOM!  BOOM! BOOM! etc, etc, etc,
Bro hit the ground within his body length from the munitions like a seasoned WWII soldier and rolled away.
"Are you okay?!"
"What?"
"Are you okay?!"
"What?"
His hearing recovered, but he's not allowed to come out and play anymore.**

Oh yeah, almost forgot, HAPPY NEW YEAR YA'LL!
I'll be asleep most likely.

* I totally made that part up.
** most of his eyebrow grew back, in case you were wondering.

Staycation

Took off between Christmas and New Years. A long needed break from a very hectic year. I've been hanging around the house just decompressing.
Two weeks back the water cut off valve for the powder room toilet decided to start dripping. So the valve was closed and the powder room out of commission until I had time to get to it.
No big deal thinks me, I'll take care of this while on my staycation. I'll just go down to the big box hardware store and get a replacement valve.
What a pain in ass this turned out to be.
While attempting to fix the original leak, I managed to make things worse. To cut to the chase, as of the last thirty minutes or so, it appears we have a successful repair. 100% silicone sealant is your friend.

Then came the "twenty minute" light fixture replacement.  Okay. It was more like an hour, but this one came off without a hitch.
 Last time I replaced a fixture, it turned into two days. That'll happen when you drill through a water pipe.
It was that same damn powder room now that I think about it.  Cursed it is.
Anything else goes wrong in there, I'm just going to nail the door shut.











*The framers did an awesome job on this house. The "plumbers", not so much.

Oy what a Day!

Elated.
Exhausted.
That sums up my day in two words.

I hit the office at 7am this morning.  In the days leading up to today, my consultants assured me they were ahead of the curve and would have their documents to me, no problem, for today's deadline.

I left the office at 9pm.
Thumbs up!
Good job you buncha highly educated morons!
 Learn to use a calendar. Look at it every day. Every day, so you don't wait until the last week before the deadline to try to design all the shit that makes a building work in 120 hours.

In the midst of this chaos, the man child called.  The last 8 or so calls have been because his POS jeep wouldn't start.  I saw his caller ID.  Brain said, "no, please tell me the replacement used previously owned "certified by Habib the dude who moonlights as a parking valet" car hasn't broken down".

Fortunately, my son is a compassionate soul.  Immediately he said, "I called to give you some good news!"
"I got a job offer"  (for quite a livable wage I might add)
He has one semester to go. Come May he will graduate with a ME degree.

Elated.
Houston, we have a successful launch.

I am ashamed to say

I don't own an axe. Not even a splitting wedge.  In my late teens I used to burn off excess energy by splitting wood....man I miss those high T count days.

I have tools no average precious urban snowflake knows exist. Universal spring compressor for GM 700 R4 transmission for example.*

"Why do I not have an axe?", I found myself asking, er..myself over the weekend.

Needing an axe has not come up much until recently.

Winters have been so mild over the past two decades at the BAR Corp. HQ that a couple of bundles of firewood wrapped in cellophane from the corner store would handle the few odd days where the temperatures even flirted with the concept of cold.
So, now the climatic cycle appears to have circled back around to something akin to 1983 or 1989; years it actually snowed down here.
My FIL and MIL sent us home with as much firewood as we could stuff into the trunk of Belle's BARmobile a while back.  Quarter split logs from a very fat Oak.
And I mean, very fat.  I can fit a total of one at a time in the pathetic metal box that masquerades as a fireplace in the HQ.

Wanting 10% of the heat from a roaring fire and the cozy ambiance I applied copious amounts of natural gas to said one hand clapping log. It was good and the Lord did grin, until the gas bill comes next month.
I was at the hardware store yesterday. I could have rectified this problem. It didn't even occur to me.

I suppose I'm going to have to schedule said axe purchase on my smaht phone calendar.

Jeez. I need more time out from under the fluorescent lights.








*No, I did not buy it at a garbage garage sale. Yes, I did actually use it rebuilding a transmission.

Global Worming? Not so much.

Let's see:
Two snowstorms in the Northeast before Christmas.
Dallas got zapped by Gru's freeze ray.
It has snowed in Egypt for the first time in 100 years.
It has snowed in Israel.

And the Sun's solar cycle activity is at its weakest in a Century.

But, but! Correlation is not causation!*  There's no proof that the sun's inactivity is directly related to the lack of rise in the atmospheric average temperature the pause in Thermageddon!**

All you faithful Global Warmists are behind the curve.  The nutjobs writing about the coming ice age back in the seventies had it right after all.

Yes, Obama "sciency Czar" John Holdren, I'm mocking you directly.

"White House science czar John Holdren has predicted 1 billion people will die in “carbon-dioxide induced famines” in a coming new ice age by 2020."
Wait....What?
Ice Age?
I thought the entirety of the earth was going to turn into desert a'la Frank Herbert's "Dune".

Faith in Global Worming is a mental disorder foisted upon us by people that despise themselves.
Since they do not feel worthy to live on this magnificent blue marble floating in space, they think you shouldn't either.  Holdren in particular.  I do notice however, that he as not led by example and offed himself.
That would be because, IMHO, he's a Psychotic Fascist.


*Why yes. Isn't that so? Funny how the rise in atmospheric CO2 trails behind the rise in average temps when graphed with actual data as well, n'est-ce pas?
** I totally stole that term from Borepatch.

Well..doesn't everyone have one?

Blogbud Keads kickstarts a meme via inspiration from the ever epic Brigid.

Hey! thinks me. I have one of those! I'm in!

Bought it when I was 18.
Pic is darkish.  3" Mag, 12 gauge.*
Goose gun.  No sky too blue.

* Ever since the first BAR blogshoot, Borepatch declines to shoot sabat slugs out of it. I can't recall a cogent reason why...;)

Culinary News Alert

This just in from Belle's deeply embedded contacts in the People's Republic of Kalifornia
Word is that Huy Fong is being sued in California due to the vapors emitting from the facility where Rooster Sauce, aka Sriracha sauce, is produced.
Production has been halted and Huy Fong has been prohibited from shipping.

Fortunately Sriracha sauce is not a mainstay foodstuff of vunables, so the likelihood of riots and looting are small.  However, you might want to hit the grocery tomorrow and stock up.

The legal process in Kalifornia is designed to last one day longer than the defendant's money lasts.

How to drink from the faucet without getting water up your nose

This is what PV has been working on for a few days now.
I'm easily amused.

A house divided

Many of us down here in Texas have not been too terribly happy with our Senator John Cornyn (R) who has habitually gone squishy on us almost immediately post election.  Cornyn's idea of representation is to tell us what DC's opinion is of us rather than the other way around.
Cornyn is in full conservative chameleon mode right now seeing as he is coming up for re-election in 2014.
I heard on the news today, one of our truly conservative U.S. Congressmen, Steve Stockman, SURPRISE!  filed at the last minute to run against Cornyn in the primaries. The stupid party establishment lost continence.

This is going to be a dog fight. Both have plenty of name recognition in the state. Cornyn has a massive  political machine behind him and millions in his campaign coffers.  Stockman, at the moment, has something like thirty-seven thousand.
Stockman has a very steep uphill climb ahead of him. While I'd like to see him unseat Cornyn, I fear Texans may lose twice on this one. Cornyn gets re-elected and we lose a great congressman in the process.

But then, Cruz was a long shot running against a very long time establishment pol too, so we shall see.

The time has come for the establishment republicans to retire and "spend more time with the family".
Although, I bet they suck at that as well, being the self centered self serving jack asses that they are.

Done been busy

One of the things keeping me busy.
Got a long way to go yet.

Dx

Chezd. C e rcrrrrrrrrrrrrrdrrdr

Upon inspecting blogger I discover the current Cat, Peavey also know as "get the eff off my computer" queued up a draft post, twice no less, in Blogger, to which you have now been treated.

He needs to learn how to use the spell check.

Label: Random. Very.

Towel - throwing in

No not the blog.
Two vehicles headed to the crusher soon.   You know how it is. You make one last heroic effort to get it to run right, then you trade it in for a shiny new car loan.
The old Astro Van leaks at both ends now when it rains. Rust is eternal.
 The man child's Jeep crapped out again, downtown in the basement level of a parking garage after we'd changed out the fuel pump. The jeep leaks when it rains also. Egregiously.  And, it is truly a piece of shit car. Although, it runs like a bat outa hell...when you can get it started.

While I may be curmudgeonly, I am not enough of a money grubbing evil son of a bitch to trade either of these vehicles nor sell them to any poor soul.  I will have to answer for my sins eventually after all.

He and I shopped used car lots last Saturday until we couldn't remember which we'd already been to.
He's got a newer and more fuel efficient vehicle now...by a decade plus model year.

So the two oldest beaters in the BAR Corp. HQ fleet will be headed to the salvage yard soon.
I need to pull the stereos and other assorted stuff out of them first...they are worth more than the scrap iron.

The old van, inherited from my mother turned into a bit of a quest for me.  83K miles on it when I got it and it barely ran.  Via a bunch of driveway crawling and getting greasy, I got another 100K+ miles out of it.  I can turn a wrench.  The rust I was unable to overcome.