got it....

Got my Pfizer booster and the flu vaccine today. Makes me feel a little more confident that a: I won't get sick, and b: I won't make someone else sick. It's a fact that as you age, your body makes different amounts of antibodies, so having the booster approved is a relief.

When 1 in 500 Americans have died from Covid or Covid related issues, it only makes sense. Anyone with more than one brain cell and a modicum of education or intellegence should be able to figure it out. The odds of something weird happening are way way less than 1 in 500. If 1 in 1,000,000 makes you nervous (and that is really just a random ratio I made up, I know there are far fewer side affects per million doses), why aren't you concerned about 1 in 500? Anyone that has ever put a coin in a slot machine, or bought a lotto ticket was counting on hitting a win with way way less odds of happening than 1 in 500.

I've been reading in various places that more people have died from the vaccine than from covid. Anyone that is spouting that nonsense is a moron, and if you believe it, perhaps you should read real news instead of the wackadoo news sites, blogs, instagram bs, or where ever else you get your information.

And don't get me started on the religious aspect. Nowhere in the bible that I've read since I was old enough to read says "Thou shalt not take a vaccine to reduce your chances of dieing or killing someone else". Any religious leader that spouts that crap is actually doing the devil's work, in my opinion. I'm no longer a practicing Christian, but even I know that mentality is far from being Christian. Thou shalt not kill kind of becomes the operative phrase here. Get covid, infect someone else....you may have just killed them. Even the Pope has been vaccinated, and has stated there are no religious exemptions available from the Catholic church.

Frankly, if you are unvaccinated and have covid, end up in the ICU, and someone like a stroke or heart attack victim doesn't get a bed because of you....if they die, you should be charged with voluntary manslaughter. You make your choices, be prepared to deal with the consequences.

The politically motivated mouth breathers that refuse to get the shot because of politics should have their citizenship revoked and not be allowed to vote, since their thought processes are obviously flawed. Even The Donald got vaccinated. What more do you need? Can't tell you what to do? OK, but don't whine when you or your children get sick just because you let that kind of foul thinking cloud your mind.

Big transition

So it finally happened.
Today is the landmark retirement day. Worked a couple of extra hours to finish up some admin, but I am now no longer employed. Hard to wrap my head around, but there it is.....

getting old?

huh. been 65 for one week. don't feel any different.... maybe I'll survive this experience..

50 Caliber flintlock love

This is my Lyman 50 caliber flintlock Great Plains Rifle. It's beefy, but not so cumbersome that it can't spend the day at the range with you.


I like taking it out with a couple of others and just convert money to smoke and noise for a couple of hours. If I don't get out often enough, I'll spend a little time at the 25 yard line to get back into the groove before taking it down to the 50 or the 100 yard lines. If I don't shoot often, this is what the targets look like at 25 yards. Those days, I'll usually just park my butt at the 25 until things vastly improve...

Pretty close to a cartoon gun......

I like black powder guns, whether they are rifles, single shot muzzle loaded pistols or revolvers. I found a flintlock for crazy sale, and decided to spring for it. Hey, I could be a car guy, and spend $50K just to start the restoration of a clunker........This is not an extremely cheap passion, but it's not that expensive either. Figure I should get all my toys before I retire, since I probably won't have that kind of discretionary funds then.
So, here are the nearly cartoonlike features of my new bp pistol... 50 caliber patched ball flintlock with a standard trigger and a 16 1/2 inch barrel. This is a Pedersoli Bounty Hunter.

That's a manly sized bottle of Tabasco and a 20 oz mug for size comparison.
So I am eventually going to be shooting this exclusively on the 50 yard line, but want the flexibility to shoot at 25 when necessary. I figure at max powder charge for the 50 yard range, I can back it down to shoot the same point of aim at 25. First, I need to see where it is shooting, so I headed to the 25 yard range, loaded it to the max of 35 grains of 3f powder, and shot it off of bags. The first shot was so low that it almost hit the target frame. From there it was a matter of filing the front sight until the point of impact came up to where it was supposed to be

The last shot of the day was pretty close to where I want the gun to shoot, but more work will be necessary.
To get an idea of how much I had to file off the front sight, this picture shows that the 1/4 moon front blade is now really truncated.

After a couple more trips, I have this hitting where I want it to at the 25 yard line while shooting off hand. Next will be taking it to the 50 yard line and continue filing until it is dead on at 50. Then it will be back to the 25 to figure out what powder charge will give me the same point of impact. Damn, I love geeking out with this sort of thing......

New way for me to spend my kid's inheritance

So I just picked up my brand new CZ 527 American in 7.62x39. Why that caliber? Cheap, easy to obtain military surplus ammo, of which I have a bunch, and this rifle is actually made to shoot mil-surp ammo. Score...

Put a 3x9 variable scope with a 40mm objective on the CZ supplied scope rings...mainly because the American comes without sights.... and bore sighted it with the bolt removed. I put it on bags, looked through the barrel, lined it up on the target, then adjusted the scope to indicate at least close to the point of impact.

This is the first shot out of my new rifle with the bore sighted scope. Not bad, even if I say so myself....

Nice view from our hotel in San Diego. I get to watch all of the activity across the water at NAS North Island, as well as all of the activity on the water. Good thing our conference organizers didn't pick some hole in the wall to hold this meeting in.

OUCH

"

Been doing some cooking with fire lately....yay summer!

Had a couple of weekends worth of playing outside, firing up the bo-bq and the smoker. It's good to be a carnivore. "> Thin cut chops in the smoker. Oh yeah

Shrimp, veg and marinated chicken thighs prepped and ready to go on the kabob grill. Life is good

Who doesn't like tri-tip and onions?

so yeah, had some chicken on the kabob grill aka bo-bq. Did a bunch for a retirement party a couple of weeks ago. Lots of chicken. yeah, lots.

I don't think it means what I think it means

When I was growing up, when you had to enter a code on the phone, it was always followed by the Pound Sign. So, now when I see women posting things or news about #metoo, my mind immediately goes to "Why would she want someone to pound her? Isn't that what they are protesting?"

Spaghetti Squash for dinner!

I have a couple of squashes out in the garage, waiting patiently for me to get around to dreaming up a new way to cook them up. Among them are a couple of spaghetti squashes. Since I haven't played with them much, I went out to the internet for ideas.

When deciding on a recipe, I first have to go exploring in the fridge and pantry to see what's available. Today was a leftover rotisserie chicken, peppers, onions, crookneck squash and a few other dribs and drabs of goodies in the fridge. With that in mind, I went exploring and found one that sounded really interesting. BBQ Chicken and Spaghetti Squash looked just like what the doctor ordered. So.....I followed the recipe fairly closely, bumping up the onion to 1/2 of one, and cranked up the cheese with a jack and cheddar blend doing the duty. All in all, I'd say this is a keeper.Not as beautiful as the pictures on the website, but damn tasty none the less



as always, if you try this recipe, or it inspires you to try something different, please let me know how it turned out. i'm always looking for fresh and clever ideas to improve my own cooking skills and recipes.
for a complete list of my online recipes, follow the link here

I hope this isn't a sign of what's in store this winter

Here in Northern California, we've been suffering a dry dry autumn and winter so far. Nice days with the temperatures up in the 60s this week, but we sure could use some wet stuff from the sky!

I was walking down the walk along the side of our house when I spied a potential clue regarding the near future for weather..... Squirrels are of the natural world, and we've been told weather prognosticators have observed the natural world and the behaviors of the critters in it for clues regarding whether the winter will be wild, or the summer toasty. I'm not too sure how to read this sign. Is it going to be so cold the squirrels can't dig their walnuts out of the turf where many many have been buried, or will the water level be so high from the creek in the backyard that nuts have to be "squirreled" above the projected water level? The closest walnut tree is 100 feet away in the back yard along the creek...... Time will tell.

That brown lump is a fresh walnut, with the husk carefully removed by the fuzzy tailed rat that stuck it on the fence rail four feet off the ground.

Playing with hot lead....

So, I cast a lot of lead bullets for my black powder guns and for a number of center fire calibers as well. Takes a lot of lead to shoot as much as I do. I buy scrap lead at an industrial metal recycler, usually rolls of roofers lead. This is typically a roll that is 12 inches wide, 10 feet long, and weighs in at 42 pounds. Cheap, but dirty source material. How do you get it clean enough to cast? You smelt it.

Smelting is basically a process of heating to melt, and then skimming off the junk that floats to the top. I toss in a handful of sawdust to "flux" the lead. Fluxing is just a process where something is added to the melted lead that allows all of the junk to clump together to allow the smelter to skim it off. I think I did around 100 pounds, and took about 2 hours, start to finish.

Here's why all of that work is worthwhile:

Well, duh....

There are things you read that not only strike true, but shine a light on something that many of us already know. Imagine a major publication like Forbes, which I know is not a bastion of liberalism, shows with numbers what a lot of folks out there would like to keep in the dark. I have a number of fairly well paid friends that have jumped ship and moved out of California because of politics. They went to Texas and Nevada, and couldn't be happier. Read about the exodus from states that are run by democratic machines

let the Christmas cookie madness begin!

Getting a bit of a late start this year, but Christmas baking season is now upon us!
So today, I'm going to be baking a batch of pfeffernuse spiced cookies that scream holidays. Dough is resting in the fridge. I made it last night, and now time to start rolling out those little nuggets of happiness. These are little cookies made with honey, molasses, cinnamon, cardamom, allsice, nutmeg, cloves, ginger , black pepper, and anise oil.

then it's time to roll out the three batches of springerle dough I made last night as well. One with a ton of powdered sugar and cake flour Recipe number 2 which yields a light, crumbly tender cookie , and a couple batches of Recipe number 1 which makes a denser, higher textured cookie. One batch of those is the traditional anise, and the other is a vanilla sugar variation that the family of the lady who gave me her mother's springerle roller really likes. Once the tiles are cut, they have to sit and dry for a day before baking.

Our house is going to be smelling like the holidays in a big way in three, two, one.....

What to do with leftovers.....

So we had some smoked pulled pork left over. No really, we had leftovers!

One of my favorite things is carnitas tacos. Carnitas....pork. Smoked pulled pork.....pork. hmmmmm.

a big gob of pulled pork in the skillet will let you get a nice krispy bite to the pork. Next, street taco sized tortillas, some shredded cheese, a bit of pico, some avocado and there you have it... Redneck smoked pulled pork street tacos. Damn, they are good.

fun with craft projects

I probably posted this picture a couple of years ago, but can't remember.

Anyway, the reason I am posting this is to show you don't need a bunch of money to make some pretty handy stuff around the house.

It is no secret that one of my most favorite activities is cooking, and the subsequent eating, of many different types of foods. Right up there is cooking over fire. I saw a very primitive version of this on the television one day, where a trough had been made using a couple of piles of dirt, with coals spread down the middle between the two sides. This was used for cooking kabobs.

Well, a couple of pieces of scrap metal later, after calculating the dimensions based on a chimney starter full of coal.....viola! a Bo-beeque. Works like a champ too! Width based on the size of metal skewers in the drawer in the kitchen, and length based on holding a full chimney of burning charcoal.


It's good to know someone that knows how to weld!

Breaking from the social media hell and a bonus recipe!

So I've been absent from my blog for a quite a while. I've posted a lot of funny stuff, recipes, observations, etc etc etc on facebook, when I should have been here instead. I've gotten so tired of the unrelenting crap on my feed I just walked away a couple of weeks ago. But...being the gregarious geezer that I am, no outlet for my ramblings makes the old dude grumpy. Grumpy is not a good thing. So......here I am, and I will resume my blathering here, where I can moderate my posts and the comments to them. Hope I find a few interested folks that will keep a lively and rational dialog going So just to get my feet wet, I thought I'd post a picture of something I heard about while driving tractor on the farm this pumpkin season. One of my favorite things to do while out in the fields talking about the farm is to ask folks for new and novel ways of preparing the types of food Doug and Pops grow at J E Perry Farms. One of my favorite foods in the world is Delicata squash. There are so many ways to fix it that I've tried over the years (did I mention it's my favorite?) the thought of a new way to prepare it really surprised me. I mean, really surprised me, because it was so simple and so elegant that I was actually mad at myself for not thinking of it. First, cut off both ends of the squash so it stands up. Take a heavy knife and slice it in half. Do try and not cut off your fingers, eh? Gut the squash as you would normally, removing the seeds and membrane. Next, slice it cross-wise in about 1/2 inch slices, lightly brush a little olive or whatever oil you like and grill or I my case, griddle. No need to peel, just make sure you gave it a good bath before surgery. I made a little butter and brown sugar sauce to glaze them with as they came off the griddle. Zoiks. Somewhat reminiscent of sweet potato fries, but better.