Wish me luck

Belle is trying to quit smoking again.  Good on her, but I'm concerned about my survival.
Nicotine withdrawal tends to make people a wee bit testy.
She's not going cold turkey though. She's got an electronic hooker, no, wait...electronic hookah for nicotine delivery that's she's using to ease down off the addiction.

Wish her well. Say a prayer for me.

Vacation!

Well, not really. Just took the whole weekend off. First time in quite a while.
I feel...human again.

Friday, Belle and I went to the Alamo Drafthouse for dinner and a movie.  We saw Denzel's new flik, "The Equalizer".  If you like improbable movies where one good guy takes out many bad guys, you'll like this one just fine.  The pain of paying for movie tickets was mitigated by a few hoppy beverages and a bacon burger.

Saturday, the man child came over to borrow the driveway for an oil change and hung around pretty much all day.  That was rejuvenating in and of itself.  It's nice to have the brood off the BAR payroll, out on their own and independent, but I miss them terribly.

Sunday, the Musical Daughter and her S.O. spent the day with us. We went out to lunch and then paid a visit to our favorite indoor pistol range.  Daughter is very comfortable with handguns now.  Her Beau had not shot anything in a decade, so I gave him some remedial tutelage.  He did just fine.  No gun safety gaffs, loaded his own mags and 99% of his bullet holes were in the paper.


Did I say "Musical Daughter"?  All those years beating drums in school, I'd no idea she could sing.
That's her, the percussionist singing backup...harmony no less.

Fun with math

A recent poll showed that 75% of people believe they are above average intelligence.

Which kind of explains why this country is in the mess that it is.

Proper Sequences

For a Wodka Tonic

My adult beverage had run dry and I was in the kitchen looking into my empty glass.
Belle, being always on point and aware, started handing me parts to assemble a reload, but they were coming out of sequence.

I politely explained the lime gets squeezed first.
Then the Wodka to ensure I don't get too much get a sufficient amount and to mix the lime sufficiently with the Wodka.
Then the tonic.
Then the ice...being the least important component.
If the tonic is chilled, the ice can be omitted under dire circumstances. I recommend a gas generator and under-counter fridge for the prepper minded.
If you have the KW on your generator, sparking up the freezer to deep chill the Wodka is a bonus but not completely necessary.

Oh, and as my last public service announcement today, wash your hands so you don't get et up with the Ebola.

.380.....Crikey!

Work associate was talking to me at the end of the day today about his .45 and how spendy it was to shoot.
That and how the slide burned a hole in his left thumb due to his propensity to point it upwards when gripping his pistol.
"Check some of the online ammo retailers."
"Adjust your grip, lay your left thumb out level below the slide."
Problem solved.

Out of curiosity, I went to a couple of online ammo retailers to look at .45 ACP prices.**
Yikes!
The best I saw was about 41 cents a round.

Since Belle is jonesing for her perty little .380 now, I thought I'd check ammo prices for that.
Thirty-nine?!?  Thirty-nine cents a round?  For a gun that's makes the pew-pew! noise?
srsly?

So much for the economy of scale.  We've been a 9mm household for quite some time now. Well, 9mm and 7.62x54R.  Simple and easy to remember. And, less expensive to boot.

Not for much longer.




** Memories of Borepatch's .45 that whispered sweet nothings in my ear some time ago surfaced in the recent past.  I found myself wistfully perusing gun sites for 1911s not long thereafter.
I sat down, gritted my teeth and gave myself a good talking to.  That time, I escaped unscathed.

Range date and my next love...

Last week, KX and I went to the gun range and this sweet little lady caught my eye....

A Sig Sauer P238 with pink pearl grips....    sighs..

Normally I detest pink on a firearm, but this little baby is just fine looking.

I have grown very lax about carrying, in the summer.  My Springfield is just too bulky for summer clothing so I've been debating on alternatives.

That little beauty will do just fine.

Today we went to the range and I was able to fire one that they had for rental (didn't get charged the rental fee).  I have to say that I was very accurate with it.

The trigger is very nice on it and the action was very smooth and well...  all around I just loved it.

The size is perfect for summer concealment and I don't even mind the pink pearl grips!

Only sad thing is that I will have to wait until at least November to get it.. but it's all good.. that's not too far away.

Until then.. she can just pine away for me and I for her.....    sighs....................

Never published weird crap I've written, found in my drafts

As a disclaimer, I might have been drinking Tito's and tonic when I wrote this, god knows when.
Also, I've never claimed to be nOrMaL

"I have ruined a brand new shirt.
I am not upset about this.
Straight out of the packaging this morning fold marks ironed out. (I iron my own) This shirt will never look this good again.
I went to put my cell phone in the shirt pocket to discover there was no shirt pocket. wtf?
Like the other shirts I bought recently, the cut on the sleeves appears to be for a cadaver; arms at sides never to be raised above the shoulders, laid out in, " he looks so life like" splendor. No pleat on the back. wtf?

What this post is really about is chopsticks and Asian food in general.
I have grease spotted my new shirt while consuming Vietnamese food from a local restaurant.
When I eat Asian, I find it a great challenge to eat with chopsticks. Now I have a reason to never wear this shirt again."

Blowing my car again

Wait.  That doesn't sound quite right.   I like it ok, but not that much.
Noticed a really musty smell this morning in the Scion roller skate. I thought it was remnant O de kx59 seeing as I'd traipsed all over an un-air conditioned office tower yesterday and sweated my ass off.  Monkey brain offered an opinion and said, "you need better deodorant"
I picked up a stack of paper this morning that I'd thrown on the passenger side floor board to find it soaking wet.
Great.
AC condensate drain is plugged again.
So I left work early (that's 5 pm for you normal people) so I'd have enough daylight left to put it up on the ramps and crawl up underneath.
Yikes that exhaust collector is hot.
Why the condensate drain tube does not extend down below the sub frame on this car I cannot imagine. **
That little winky is tucked way up in there.  There's all kinds of scalding hot naughty bits, around which you must navigate to reach it, unless the car has been sitting for a while.
So a bit of scrap rubber hose held to the end of the drain, a quick blow and a half gallon of water drains out. Good for another 25,000 miles.

** Probably to keep driveway crawlers like me from fixing my own minor maintenance issue. I'm sure this is a real money maker for Toyota. Almost as good as pulling the rumpled driver's side floor mat out from under the gas pedal.

Should I tell her?

Belle is away visiting friends.  I got home this evening and broke off my front door key in the lock.
SRSLY?
Insult to injury after two of the shittiest weeks I've had in quite some time.*
Fortunately, there was just enough of a nub of the broken key that I was able to pull on the door knob and turn the lock out.

The broken key in the lock was not wanting to come out, so I was thinking I might have to run to the hardware store and get a couple of replacement dead bolts for the front and back doors.

My lizard brain thought,"If I do, maybe I won't tell Belle and she'll get home and her key won't work and she'll totally freak  HA HA HA HA"

My monkey brain having a higher IQ by at least 10 points simply responded, "Not Funny Dumbass".

So, with  slumped shoulders of self inflicted shame, I went back and worked on the key a bit more, and of course now it came out of the lock.

Now, time to go spelunking in the junk drawer for spares.





*Why I have not posted in a while.

A life less virtual

This I needed. No cable or Satellite TV. Damn near no cell signal.

The Motley Crew

Family. 

My Brother In Law lands a 37" Bull Red. Duly measured, photographed and set free.

Red Fish are good eatin, but they don't breed until they get big.** 

My Bro works another Bull Red.

Oh. Wait.

Never mind.

This Trophy Red Fish morphed into a (trophy?) Stingray 

by the time he got it up off the bottom and along side the boat.

Also known as sea scallops :) if you've ever ordered them in a restaurant.

Nasty buggers.

Known to kill cable TV wildlife show hosts.

**  For the libtards, this is known as conservation. It is not necessary to set the human race back to the stone age to take care of the environment.

It's not fair. I did not get to catch a 37" Bull Red Fish. I demand that the federal government pass a law and do something about this because I am one person and therefore the smallest minority group ever (2.857 e-9 of the population) in the history of the Socialist Republic of America.  Therefore I deserve special consideration, privileges, and State forced acceptance of my red fish deficiency.