Cherry got home tonight and I had dinner waiting. Oven baked cod fillets, sweet corn, rice with broccoli and corn bread. I also made a spicy remoulade sauce to go with the fish. Very tasty.

Cooking was way better than listening to more of the Rick Perry dropped out talk by EVERYONE.
That just makes it better for Ron Paul. Mitt Romney only keeps a "little" money in an offshore account. I guess a few million is a little to a guy like him. Anyway that's better for Paul again. Newts ex-wife is making claims of him wanting an open marriage and telling the name of his on the side lover when doing the asking. Better for Paul. I do like that Perry is now supporting Newt. There is a video clip of Perry in the past saying that anyone that would lie to their spouse would lie to their business partner. Figger that one out. OK, enough of the politics.

Good Night!

Just Stuff

After yesterdays blackout of websites and blogs it seems as if Congress is backing off of this issue. Keep the pressure on them and make sure this abomination never sees the light of day again. But they and the Senate don't have the horse power to get the Keystone XL pipe line approved. The Keystone pipe line already goes from Canada to Oklahoma. No problem there. But it can't be extend because they don't know what the environmental impact will be? Come on now, A pipe line was just run across Missouri, through crop and grazing land and the only way you can tell it's there is by the occasion creek crossing and some new fences. Another example of how the "greenies" are running things. As a result all that oil will now get sold to our old buddy China. And we get no jobs out of it.

My son has left his family for duty in Fallon Nevada. He'll be there for 52 day. I know it's not long but he has a wife and new baby that really love and miss him. The last time he went there a snow storm hit the area and he ended up spending his first several days there in a hotel room as the base was shut down.

Cherry and I are still working on this house as money comes available. With my knees and back issues I can't do a lot of the things I used to do a very short time ago. So, she took a lesson in tiling a floor from her brother-in-law and did great. Only tiling a floor has little bearing on tiling a wall in the cramped confines of a shower. Much cussing as discussing later we had a few tiles on the wall and it looked like, well, as her late step father was fond of saying, like a can of mashed asshole. Really, it was not good. We took it all down, cleaned the tiles and scraped the mortar off the wall. I dug out one of my handy dandy books and found a chapter on tiling a shower. We are now backing up and reassessing the situation and will get this damned shower done. One way or another.

With all the trim work going on, house keeping, house improvement and other daily to do's I haven't made much progress on the Winchester I'm refinishing for Dad. It'll get done. I know it'll get done.

ON STRIKE

On Strike in protest of upcoming SOPA/PIPA legislation. This blog will resume regular posting on January 19, 2012. Contact your congress critters and TELL them to stop the censorship.

Tried And Failed

I have been a frequent viewer of the site AR15.com for a while. I recently joined up and started reading the AK forums. I decided to post a picture of my MAK90. First off they don't allow or support downloading pictures from your hard drive. You have to load them to photo bucket and then put them on AR15. It's possible I know, as there are a ton of pictures there. I tried several times today to do this and all tries failed. I am some what computer savvy but I still don't know why these efforts failed. I'll try again tomorrow and see what that gets me. It should be as easy as this...

Fun Show Report

I spent a few hours wandering the Fun Show this morning. Only I found no fun there today. I carried my custom SKS 'til my arms went numb, I walked and talked and walked some more. I saw nothing really of interest except 1 Draco pistol and they wouldn't trade and quite a few of the Mares Shank style shorty lever guns. The show was down on vendors and down on gun related vendors particularly. In the three hours I was there I saw no sales of toy helicopters, beef jerky, jewelery, toys, clothes and other non-gun items. And I saw only a couple of gun sales. I also saw no individuals that had anything I wanted to trade for. So I brought the SKS home and I'll post it on the local board that went regional, Midwest Gun Trader. For now though, No Sale.

More Home Renovations and the Fun Show

As I have junk knees, Cherry is over at her sisters place getting a lesson in tiling. Later on we'll drag out the table saw and rip some oak plywood into strips to line the window frames with. Pick up some meds, go to the grocery store for stuff that we don't get from Shelf Reliance, then we pretty much have a free day. Tomorrow is the Fun Show. I think I'll take the dolled up SKS for sellin' or tradin'. I haven't had much luck moving this and it's a great looking gun and shoots good too. Since guns seem to be selling good again, maybe I'll have better luck.

RESTORED!

There must be a whole bunch of people having the same comment problem I was having. Notice I wrote "was" having. On the help forum this morning there was a thread with the fix. It seems good ol' Google made a change to the comment tool and it's not working well. I just had to change the settings on my comment and wada ya know, it works. YEEEEEEHAAAA! I really was dreading a move to Word Press. This is not the first issue I have had with Blogger, so when this matter came I was ready to make the move.

Dear Blogger

Dear Blogger,
After trying use your "help" site and not getting my questions posted for some reason, Wordpress is looking rather good at this time. Is this problem a result of Google hitting my site so often. Site Meter shows several visits in the last 24 hours. Thanks for nothing.

A New Frustration

Well, Blogger really has it goin' on now. I cannot access any comments to my posts now. Thanks Blogger for all your support.

Blogger Issue?

To all you Bloggers, does it seem like the screen to post on is smaller now? If I put a picture in the post then I either have a hard time putting script below it OR I can't put anything below it just like this mornings post. Is it just me or is anyone else have this issue?

Snow, Finally.

The weather guessers had been calling for a rapid drop in the temperature and a wave of light snow to pass through the region last night. The wind picked up to15-20 mph and had gusts up to 40. We awoke this morning to this. A small amount of icy snow. Not enough to shovel but you can sweep it off the walk way. Just enough to screw up traffic for Cherry's 50 mile drive to work.

What I did...

I 'm sorry for last nights angry post but I just got to the point where I had to vent. I have given up many things I like to do and it really gets to me. I have a great wife and a supportive family to rely on. Thanks to all my Blogger friends and readers for their support of me and my blog.

And So It Goes...........

I like many folks in my family have high blood pressure. At this stage in my life mine is uncontrollable by medication. I am currently on 3 very powerful hypertension drugs and just had a new one added just to bring the pressure down (215/100 at the dr.office). This morning I went to a clinic the doctor recommended for non insured folks. He set me up for an ultra sound of my kidneys (they control your blood pressure). After about 2 hours the technician says their specialist will interpret the data, but in her opinion, there was nothing wrong that she could see. So, if this proves to be true, I don't know what my option are at this point. I have heard of a MRA that looks at your veins and arteries and a life scan that does pretty much the same thing. I may have to look into either of those as my only alternative at this time is to sit around and wait for a stroke or heart attack. Here comes the rant. I have worked hard all my life. Due to none of my own fault, I have not had a job in 3+ years. As a result I don't have insurance. I have also been told by 8 companies that I am uninsurable. I understand that has changed since the @#%$#@^& Obamacare is kicking in. As if we could afford any insurance on our "extravagant income". All social services have told me/us is that we make too much money to qualify for any kind of services. Just because we have worked all our lives. Do you get the drift here? If you work all your life, pay your taxes, try to take care of your family , you cannot take advantage of those taxes you have involuntarily paid all those years. If I do have a stroke or live through a heart attack, there is no way my wife's income will pay for any of the bills to follow. So I have uncontrollable blood pressure, a totally worn out knee that has resulted in a crappy other knee, a jacked up back and a tilted pelvis. I have been turned down for disability, I have been turned down by Social Security, medicair, medicaid, insurance and hundreds of would be employers So unless we hit a jackpot I am well and truly screwed.

We went to my Mothers house last night and had dinner. It was good. We had fried taco's. They resembled burritos but had different filling. They are filled with re fried beans, seasoned, cooked ground beef, onions and cheese. Then they are fried on all sides in about a half inch of oil. We had a good time discussing their recent trip to Kalifornia and other aspects of our combined lives.

While there we got a couple of small gifts from my Brother and Sister-in-Law. Cherry got a nice porcelain spoon rest and I got this...

It is very good. I tried it out on my fried tacos last night. Smoky and tasty then the habaneros kick in. Not excruciatingly hot but a good heat. I'll be using this on a whole bunch of stuff. I think there is a place to get more of it in KC.

On a side note, Cherry gave me her final list of to do's this morning and I had it just about right in a previous post.

The Perils of Flight

OK, so it's pretty obvious that I just took a journey by aircraft at the end of the year. Here are my observations from that trip.
Even if you can't carry a knife or gun on a plane, you CAN carry a large stick in the form of a cane. Unfortunately I do need a cane at times so along it went. A nice hickory stick for "support".
I read several pages of what you can and can't take and what I got from that was you can take a non"threatening" flashlight. So, in my bag went a very bright led flashlight that didn't look like a weapon. It has an aluminum body and could put a real dent in someones cranium if needed. The next thing I packed were two BIC pens. You know, the old school ones with the clear body and the pointy plastic cap. Then I took a magazine that could if needed, be rolled up very tightly. I also wore a heavy belt with a big, heavy buckle on the end of it. That covered self defense in a place that expects you to be defenseless.
Next is comfort. Or should I say lack there of. Yeah, I'm a big ol' boy. Not obese but tall, broad and and overweight. The seats in the commoners section are not meant for folks like me. All the way out there I was seated next to a fellow that while not as big as me, was of a pretty good size. We spent a few hours contorting ourselves into uncomfortable shapes that would allow us to not intrude on each others limited space. If I fly again we will spring for the first class seats and this is not debatable. On the way back home I actually sat with my tiny little wife. We could raise the center arm rest and have plenty of room.
If you are bigger than 5' 10" and over 175 pounds consider the extra expense of first class seats. Then take something to pass the time with. A book, magazine or electronic diversion makes the time more tolerable. Then do some research about what you can and can't take on your flight.

Welcome!

I just took a trip over to my latest blogger friends place. Watchful, thanks for your interest in my site and it is good to hear from another MO blogger. Welcome friend. To all my other friends, take a gander at his site. You'll enjoy it.

It's 2012 So.........

With new year comes some new ideas and activities. Cherry has her list and I have mine. Since she is the current bread winner in this household we'll see which get the most attention.
Cherry's list...
complete the master bath
complete the master bedroom
finish the office
trim out the rest of the doors and ceilings
ride more
be more social

Dean's list...
ride more
shoot more
get the basement cleared up
start on the vault
put more cash aside
do some gun trading
work on Cherry's list

As stated above, we are a one income couple at this time so we are living on a very tight budget. We have several ideas that we want to try out to make some extra income. One idea is to start an ebay store to move some of our stuff and new stuff too. We want to expand our Shelf Reliance business and get started on selling some amazing health items. Keep watching for some things to appear on this site.

I've got her favorite cake in the oven so she'll have a nice treat tonight. We go to dinner at my mothers house one night this weekend so that's one night I don't have to cook and it'll be good to catch up with my mom and step father after their Kalifornia trip. Next week I'll give you a review of their train ride out there and compare it with their trip back.

Time Marches On Or Just Getting Old

When we got the new shelving installed I decide to sweep and mop that area. Not my best decision. While mopping, my back went haywire. It got worse as the day went on. A couple of hours later I nearly went to my knees in the kitchen. That night, sitting in my recliner, I pushed back against the chair and something went POP! And I started to feel better. By the next morning I was feeling pretty good. That day went pretty good. Tuesday I got up early to take my nephew to county court. While getting around I started getting shooting pains down the back of my left leg. This went on all freaking day. I had to pick up my mom and step dad from the airport at eleven last night and take them home to KC. I got home about 1:30 AM. Still with shooting pains. I have a doctors appointment set up for tomorrow. Man I hate getting old.

The Knife

When we traveled to Virginia I was very put out by leaving my knives at home. I told Cherry as soon as possible we were going to by a knife in Virgina and Son could either keep it or ship it back to me. Upon landing and being picked up by Son I asked him to take me to a knife dealer in the morning. The next morning I asked when we were going to leave and he told me to hold my horses as it was my birthday and then handed me a box. A blue box. A blue box with the letters S O G on it. Inside was an SOG Trident with spring assist opening and built in belt cutter. I felt much better then. It's nice and sharp and I did get it back to Missouri. My father-in-law traveled with us and then he drove a car back for our niece. Our larger carry on luggage, gifts and such went with him and we traveled back with just our under seat bags. I still had no knife on the flight though.

We started the new year off by finding some shelving on sale at Lowes. We purchased 2 sets of the 56 inch high models. Upon assembling them and loading all the Thrive foods on them, we decided to go back the next day and get some more. The closest Lowes had only one set of this model left. they called another store to verify stock and off we went. We brought four more units home. These units have 4 shelves and are 55 inches high which allows us to use the top shelf in our slightly over six foot high basement. The additional shelves allowed us to move many containers to them instead of sitting around in various places. Each shelf has a 150 pound load rating giving a limit of 600 pounds per unit. Each shelf has slots and hooks that allow the units to connect to each other. It looks like this might be a short term item for Lowes as they didn't have many on hand. Here is a picture and model number of the shelf unit.

Here is a view of our growing storage area. Not shown is the ammo, camping and hunting stuff. The other side of the basement is slated to get a walk-in gun vault.