Easily Amused

The last time I bought a laser bore sight for the pos Mosins, I burned up the itty bitty batteries playing with the cats.
Having misplaced said bore sight, I hit Amazon the other day to replace it seeing as the seismic recoil had rattled the scope mount loose.* Some Loctite is in order.

This time I bought a laser pointer. The Maine Coon mix,  Peavey, is still staked out in the bookshelf across the room watching for that little red dot that disappeared through the wiring hole and hid.
The laminate floor is not helping one bit. :)







*  Yes I know, I've sullied the purity of a historical WWII era rifle by putting a scout scope on it.
Snicker. Pbbttpptth! snort. sneeze. damn beer burns the nasal passages.  If these rifles cost more than $140, of course I wouldn't have done so. Cheap rifle, cheap ammo, big boom and a muzzle flash that sets the rough on fire and knocks everyone's target down from the shock wave.
Big fun.
Fore!

Not sure what the heck this means but.............

I decided to take this little test that everyone's been all keen on and this is what it came up with...   LOL...   too funny, me a progressive?   

You are a: Conservative Libertarian Total-Isolationist Nationalist Progressive

Collectivism score: -67%
Authoritarianism score: -67%
Internationalism score: -100%
Tribalism score: 17%
Liberalism score: 50%

Dragons in the kitchen....

I just thought this was too damned funny.....

The 'Lympics are on!

How I know is that Belle is watching pairs skating and critiquing at full volume.
There is no mute button on the remote for this.

Actually, I'm  kinda jazzed. I like watching the Winter Olympics quite a bit.
The dancey skatey stuff not so much.
I can relate to most of the rest of it.
I can ski...you there in the back stop snickering.
I took a full day class on snowboarding and after being felled like a tree for 8 hours, I have a real appreciation of how difficult a sport it is.*
I even like watching curling. I know, don't say it.  But, it has a lot of similarities and strategy to playing darts, cricket in particular.  Not that I could hit the double bull after five beers with a heavy emeffing curling stone, but there are similarities there I can relate to.




* I skateboarded as a kid. I surfed as a teenager - 7'-3" custom Jacobsen surf board purchased at "Jesus is Lord" surf shop in Surfside, TX from the proprietor "Bingo".  Topside prepped with "Sex Wax".
In retrospect, the name was a misnomer.  The traction and grab was excellent. I'm not sure that would be a positive thing while....uhm..I'll just leave it at that.
Where was I?  Oh yes.  Being at my favorite ski resort, Telluride, I traded in the board for a pair of skis at the end of the day.  I was spending several $K on the trip and I'd had enough of feeling like I'd been hung by my ankles like a meat pinata.

How to accumulate tools

Projects.

Home projects require at minimum two trips to the hardware store.
Automotive repairs / projects require at least two trips to the auto parts store.
Sometimes they require deep googling and impatient waiting on a UPS delivery of a part or hard to find special tool.

I'll be doing some polishing on the cam surfaces of my Mosin bolt this weekend. The file marks are so bad I can see them without my glasses on.

I ran my Dremel to destruction a while back cutting out a small bolt in a tight space on the Sonnage's Jeep.

It seems I'm now in need of a new Dremel tool. :-)

The bonus is that Scooter, my oldest granddaughter is coming to stay with us over the long weekend.
Scooter, her younger sister and my daughter stopped by to visit Belle the other day.  Scooter was very interested in the table set up at the back of the family room.
"What's all the stuff for?"
"Paw Paw is cleaning the rifles we just got"
"Oooh."

The Paw Paw / Scooter project for the weekend is going to be field stripping, and cleaning the other Mosin Nagant.

Every well bred, well educated young lady should know how to field strip a Mosin, IMHO.

The "Holiday for the Rest of Us"

If you've ever wondered where to get a "Festivus" pole, wonder no more.

I stumbled across this while looking for railing components.

I've specified Wagner railing components for a couple of decades now. This was the last thing I expected to find.  Gave me a chuckle.

Capitalism Rocks.

.

While I'm At It

Well, since I've been on a mic'd up football jag, here is Brian Cushing (out for the season with a torn ACL) who was mic'd up at a game last season against Cleveland.

He's a funny guy, not to mention a kick ass player.  We really are missing him, but I think that the boys will step it up.

 

After he head butts the Cleveland guy without his helmet, listen to his comments....   classic stuff!



 

There's Hope Yet

Considering how most professional atheletes behave now days, it's nice to see that there are still a few diamonds in the rough.  The beginning of this video is heart warming and shows a strength of character in this young man.

This is Arian Foster.  At the end JJ Watt is asking him if he thinks of poetry when he's running.. LOL


 

I hope the Texans keep winning!   Good job boys!

I've Eaten Burritos Bigger Than You!

LOL...

This past Sunday, JJ Watt from the Houston Texans was mic'd up.  That was his comment to Ray Rice.  Watt is hilarious!



 

I love it!

This is for CoolChange

Reminiscing about football stars from long ago over at his place. Days gone by before so many of the players were heavily tatted and moronic wife beaters.
Earl did everything he could to avoid hurting anyone, really. He'd juke and jive to get around you, but if you were persistent, God help you.  Point in case, right around 2:16 in the video.

OK. I'll Play

Places I've visited.
Wait, what? no extra credit for 200+ trips to the left coast? Whatev.

The U.S.

visited 23 states (46%)
Well, that was interesting.  There appears to be serious neglect on my part where the top half of the country is concerned.

The world:


visited 12 states (5.33%)

For all the miles I traversed in Europe, that looks remarkably unimpressive.

Photos from the 1860's and 1870's

At the Atlantic

Lot's of pics of the American Southwest.
Interesting photo essay, if you are into that sort of thing.

Found via American Elephants.

Last post of the evening

Another whatzit. I put the odds on the ladies getting this one right first. I disqualify myself because Belle told me what it is.  Jon popped my bubble inside of 38 minutes on the last one. If he gets this one I'm going to give up on this meme.
What is it?

New Toy - It's a Kindle Fire.

 It arrived at the office at 4:12pm yesterday. Unfortunately, I left at 3:56pm. It was a surprise belated B-day gift from the Lovely Belle. So I've been playing with it all day. I'd been ruminating about getting one for a few months, and mentioned it when Belle asked what I wanted for my Birthday. Usually, my answer is "nothing, cars are all still running, everyone's healthy and happy for the most part, I'm good."

 I got the  Amazon Prime free trial. And yeah, I know it's not an I-pad, but whatev...I love this thing.

I read like a machine starting in grade school up until a few years ago. Then, one day, I put the book I was reading down and haven't read much other than blogs, news sites and automotive manuals since. Burnout from decades of non-stop reading I guess.

I think I've recovered now. I downloaded "Throw Them All Out" by Peter Schweizer, "The Federalist Papers", and the "Anti-Federalist Papers" today.  

This thing could be dangerous in my hands. Buying a book is way too quick and easy. I suspect Amazon will turn a profit off me in spite of the loss leader price on the Kindle.

I haven't used the web interface too much yet, but I tested out the video / movie streaming this evening and realized that my big screen lcd tv was a horrific waste of money. (I jest, but just a little).

I held the Kindle up in front of me and realized at half arm's length, the screen is the same image size as the big screen tv on the other side of the room. 

The storage capacity in the Fire seems a bit anemic at 8Gb, but with the Amazon cloud storage available I think I'm not going to have much of a problem.

Download speeds on it are PDQ. It doesn't have a 3G or 4G connection, but I have access to wi-fi just about anywhere I go. 

The two primary uses I saw for it were as an E-reader and a video/movie streamer. I doubt I'll do much web surfing on it. I've got a linux laptop that will just run circles around it. I'll probably upload my MP3 collection to it.  When bidness picks up again, and I'm traveling all over creation again, it will be a lifeboat on the long plane flights.

I think it's going to suit my purposes just fine.

Vacation time

It's nice to wind down from the long week and to finally take a break from all the hard work that I've been doing on the job.

Last night after class, I went to pick up my beautiful daughter, Bootsie (the 18 year old) and brought her down to the creek.  Kx59 arrived ahead of us with groceries and the animals in tow.

We're down here for some much needed R&R and will be cooking Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday for other family members that will join us that day.

Today, we're just kind of laying around.  Kx and Bootsie are playing Modern Warfare 3 and I'm surfing the web in between snoozes.  I'm getting a little hungry so soon I may start an early dinner.  Looks like it's going to be pasta tonight.

Tomorrow, we'll go fishing.  Right now, I'm debating on whether or not I would like to pour myself a glass of wine I'm leaning towards 'yes'.

I'm not a fan......

I'm not a Justin Bieber fan, in fact I find him and the whole craze over him to be ridiculous.

I am; however, well enough rounded in my tastes that I can spot something funny when I see it.  This commercial is really funny and well worth the 30 seconds it takes to view it.

First and Last Place............

Well today was the golf tournament that hubby's company puts on every year.  It's my 14th time to play and hubby's 23rd time.  today, my team won first place.. plus I won a prize for the straightest drive.

Hubby's team came in last.

For first place, there's a nice brass cup in which a name plate will be installed and my name will be etched into that beautiful cup forever.

Hubby's trophy?  Well..........    it's called the 'We shot like shit' cup....   it has a nice base to it, with some astroturf on the top of it....    and a golf ball.....  sitting on top of a plastic dog turd.........

The best part is that since shit rolls down hill, hubby doesn't have to keep it on his desk.. he can pass it to his underlings and make them keep it on theirs.

Of course, while I do tend to play golf just a little better than he does....   he shoots better than me with my own pistol.

It was one heck of a day and I feel really good...........    especially since I've been drinking moderately since 8 this morning!

Ghosts and Goblins a visiting......

Last night, we didn't get a whole lot of tricker treaters. In fact, compared to when we first moved in to this neighborhood 13 years ago, the little ghouls and goblins were few and far between. We have candy left over which is good... or bad, depending on how you look at it.

I did manage to offload a bunch of candy to two very special little goblins who stopped by to say hello.

This is Scooter, she's dressed up like a witch.  She informed her mom (also pictured) that she didn't want to be an UGLY witch but she wanted to be a pretty witch.  Little does she know that even with ugly witch makeup, Scooter is still cute as a button!

Then there's Squirt, or Alley depending on whether it's Nana or PawPaw talking to her.  I call her Squirt, Kx calls her Alley.  She's dressed up like a Dalamation puppy.  I dressed her big sister up in that costume when she was little, too.  Unfortunately, I didn't pull out my Cruella DeVil costume last night.  I'll have to try to remember to post that photo someday soon.

So the good news is that finally, Squirt is calling me Nana.  For the longest time, the little turkey wouldn't even acknowledge that I existed.  I would call her name and she would deliberately ignore me.  Or I would say, "Say Nana" only to get either silence or a "Where's PawPaw" in response.  About a month ago, she finally started calling me Grandma which is a start.  I'm too young to be called Grandma so I prefer Nana.  Last night, she finally called me Nana!  It was the most wonderful thing that I've heard in a long time.

It was a nice evening and I was really happy to see the girls.  They went trick or treating on my street and then came back to the house and stayed a few more minutes before heading home and to bed.  It was a good night.



Happy Halloween

This is probably the best music video ever.

Michael Jackson had a ton of talent, but unfortunately he ended up being a total freak... what a waste and yet what a tragic story...


Enjoy the video, it's got warewolves and zombies!

Sunday Cool Stuff and Shooty Goodness

Yesterday was a nice day.  We went to a party/barbeque at a friend's house where there was beer and margaritas a plenty and good conversation and a very nice day outside.  We got in about 8:30 and my wonderful hubby was pretty well into his cups but he behaved himself and was just totally cute.  After a plate of leftover bbq and a piece of pie he slept soundly last night and is feeling pretty decent today.

While at the party, the hubby found a guitar and entertained us a little by playing some nice music.  At this party, there were quite a few folks that work with the hubster and he never ceases to surprise his employees when he pulls a 'new trick' out of his bag to wow the crowd.

Well today is the day that I get to go see the King Tut exhibit.  I'm really excited about that because I have been fascinated with all things ancient ever since I was a little girl.  When I was about 10,  my uncle gave me a book on King Tut and the artifacts that were found in his tomb.  I remember flipping the pages, looking at the pictures and reading about what the artifacts were and what they were used for in Tut's time.  Today, I will get to see some of the very things that were on those pages and I can't help but to be excited.

After we're done there, we're going to the gun range.  We're going to be shooting hubby's old 22 rifle and I just so happen to have 300 rounds of 22 rifle ammo.  The ammo is old, but upon inspection, it is not corroded and so it should be okay to shoot.  Of course, we're taking the Tokorev out as well, along with my pistol.

I will be testing some ammo today for a guy who sent it to  me for free.  I informed him that I will only be able to give an opinion from a rookie's point of view, but he was cool with that.  I will be comparing the ammo to what I normally shoot at the range and will be looking for accuracy, how the ammo 'feels' when I fire it and cleanliness of the ammo itself.  Needless to say, I have stripped and cleaning my gun very well, so I should be able to put up a decent comparison at least for what a novice's opinion is worth anyway.