With a tug on the PUG, the slug dug snug in the smug thug
Say that ten times as fast as you can, or add to it if you like.
That’s all I have. Whadaya want for nothin’ on a Friday night?
The PUG is one of NAA’s mini revolvers.
Joe has no category for “poetry”, which is probably a good thing, so I put it under “home life”.
When we were kids, one of the many interesting places we’d go to play, in addition to the abandoned Brick Yard, the Old School Building, the Big Pond, the Little Pond, the Clay Pitts, Billy Beeton’s, the Haunted Woods and Big Daddy Mountain, was The Dump.
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Via an email from Barron we have this news item:
A 13-year-old boy was sentenced to four months in juvenile detention after he pleaded guilty in King County Juvenile Court on Wednesday to the attempted robbery of a concierge and an attack on two skateboarders in two separate incidents last summer in Westlake Park.
Technically this is one block away from Mugme Street. But it’s close enough and it is a place I walk through nearly every day I go to work.
Then this arrest happened on Mugme street last night:
A 16-year-old girl, suspected in several robberies that have occurred in the past couple of months, was arrested last night by officers downtown.
…
A warrant for her arrest was obtained, and a bulletin was distributed to officers. Last night, just before 10:00 pm, officers located the suspect near Third and Pike and took her into custody.
It’s not safe here. I want to move back to Idaho and play with my guns and explosives.
You definitely have the most interesting hobby of anyone I have ever talked to.
Leslie
Dental hygienist
February 5, 2014
[She was referring to Boomershoot.
It started out with her asking if I was going to the Seahawks parade in downtown Seattle yesterday. “Involuntarily. I work in the building next to the parade route”, I responded, “I’m not participating. They are a football team, right? Do they use the round balls or the funny oblong ones?”
She then ask what my hobbies were since I don’t have an interest in football. “Guns and explosives.”, I replied. I expected her to speech center to freeze up and then get to work on cleaning my teeth but instead she wanted to know my favorite handgun. Okay. We are going to talk instead of getting my teeth cleaned. At least it is something I like to talk about. So I told her, “STI Eagle. I use it in competition.”
She is looking to buy a gun for carry. And another hygienist in the office is a firearms instructor. She thought Boomershoot sounded really cool and suggested she and her husband should come over to watch. I encouraged it and gave her links to Kathy Jackson’s blog, my blog, and Boomershoot.
And I did get my teeth cleaned.—Joe]
Barb has been in Ecuador for the last ten days visiting her daughter. I picked Barb up at the airport today.
Joe: Were you ever concerned about your safety?
Barb: Things were fine except when the serial killer was there.
Things weren’t exactly “fine”. There were lots of times when she had her pepper spray and Spyderco knife at the ready. But she never had to actually deploy them. I’m glad she made it back with the worst wounds being the multitude of bug bites.
And the “serial killer” was a guy that gave her and her daughter “the creeps”. Things just didn’t add up right about him but to the best of their knowledge he didn’t actually do anyone harm.
More free Matthew Bracken stuff. Continue reading
From the Seattle Police blog:
Officers arrested three women for robbery, among other things. On 1/1/14, throughout the evening there were several reports of multiple females walking through the crowds stealing cell phones and jumping people and stealing their cell phones.
One robbery occurred in the 500 block of Broad St just shortly after midnight and another was reported just shortly before 2:00 a.m., at 2nd Ave and Pike St.
A victim from the 2nd and Pike robbery flagged down an officer and advised him that the suspects who had stolen their cell phones were at a nearby bus stop. Officers contacted and detained the suspects. Two adult female suspects were later identified as having robbed the victim of her cell phone.
Technically, this is a block away from “Mugme Street” as Barb likes to call it. But still it is turf where I frequent. I can’t help thinking that discharging few canisters of pepper spray and maybe an occasional drawn handgun at the appropriate times would make a big improvement in the environment.
Though he wasn’t born here, he obviously was an American;
“Some people regard private enterprise as a predatory tiger to be shot. Others look on it as a cow they can milk. Not enough people see it as a healthy horse, pulling a sturdy wagon.”
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“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
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“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”
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“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
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“I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly”
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“A joke is a very serious thing.”
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From brainyquote.com
The British Parliament of course hated him, or so it is said.
…then use your bare hands (from a man from different lands).
And he didn’t even cut himself. I could’ve benefitted from this knowledge a few times in the past. Much less messy than shooting it with a 10 mm pistol. I’ll have to try it of course, as soon as I get home tonight.
ETA; soup, vegetable and fruit cans, etc., are not made of tin. They’re made of high quality steel. The others, like regular beverage cans, are aluminum, but you knew that. I’m not sure where the term “tin can” came from originally. Maybe they were tin at some point, but the steel cans are soldered, i.e. “tinned”, and maybe it comes from that. If get interested enough I can always google it.
Tin is very weak compared to steel, and it isn’t magnetic. We do use a fair amount of tin in bullet casting of course, so I always keep some handy.
Barb arrived in Idaho late (as in nearly Midnight) on Christmas Day. The next day she helped me finish up the installation of the solar panels at Boomershoot Mecca. I had left one of the brackets at the hardware store in Orofino when I went into town to get the right type and size screws for mounting them to the side of the shipping container.
We did some more Wi-Fi experiments involving more cross-field snow hiking with a battery, fence post, and a Nanostation.
At the end of the day there was a nice sunset. Barb very impressed with it so we took a bunch of pictures from different locations as we drove back to my brother’s place for the night.
Part of Christmas vacation 2013 was spent with my grandson Bryce.
On the way to Idaho with son James, DIL Kelsey, and grandson Bryce we stopped in Ellensburg for lunch. While James and Kelsey were busy with some other things Bryce and I had some time to ourselves. I decided he looked good in a hat:
James really wanted to take him on his first ride on the snow. So on Christmas Eve we borrowed a plastic toboggan from my brother Doug and went off over the hillside to slide down the hill. Kelsey and Zoe participated as well.
Casualty:
It wasn’t really a casualty. Zoe just liked rolling around in the snow.
Video/slide-show here.
This was his first Christmas (Eve).
The little red rocking chair he is sitting in was made by my grandmother King’s father for my grandmother. Hence it was made by Bryce’s Great, Great, Great Grandfather.
Via the New York Times, the way I pronounce words and the vocabulary I use puts me in these areas of the country:
That’s a pretty good fit.
On New Years Day Barb and I went to see Saving Mr. Banks. It is a Disney movie which IMDB.com describes as:
Author P. L. Travers reflects on her difficult childhood while meeting with filmmaker Walt Disney during production for the adaptation of her novel, Mary Poppins.
That doesn’t begin to do the movie justice.
I never really cared for Mary Poppins. For one thing I almost never like musicals. And Mary Poppins just seemed to be a bunch of pointless skits strung together. But Barb and I saw a trailer for Saving Mr. Banks a few weeks ago and it looked like it might have some promise.
The major plot line of the movie was that Travers needs the money but is exceedingly reluctant to allow Disney to change her vision of the characters and story. She holds back on signing the rights while simultaneously “working” with the screenwriter and music composers. It’s a contentious relationship with Travers pitted against everyone she meets at Disney who do their best to understand her and accommodate her outrageous demands. The demands include changing the grammar of lines in the script which describe a scene and banning of the use of the color red in the entire movie.
Scenes from Travers childhood in Australia are intertwined with scenes from Disney Studios in 1961. As the exceedingly personal and troubling origins of the Mary Poppins characters are revealed Travers becomes more a sympathetic person rather than just a grumpy old lady. I sometimes thought the world would have been a better place if the adult version of Travers had been dropped off in the middle of the Outback and forgotten.
Even though you know how the essence of how the movie has to end it has a tremendous amount of stress as it reaches its climax and then resolves the conflicts.
Barb wasn’t affected nearly as much as I was, so it probably is something about my abnormal empathy for females, but I found it emotionally overwhelming and draining.
That said, it was a very good movie. I liked it much better than Mary Poppins.
So rather than try to talk about it; here’s a pickled egg.
The color comes from beet juice in the pickling solution. The eggs are boiled and peeled, and after a few weeks in the fridge in the solution, the color permeates the white, and you can see that it’s already started into the yoke.
Here’s the beet prep from last October;
We use the greens in salad and whatnot all summer. In the fall they get kinda tough, but I keep them, either blanched and frozen, or pickled, as a green for use all winter.
Here’s a 19th century cider mill I rebuilt in the 1970s and again just a few years ago;
We make between around 90 and 150 gallons per year all told, using apples I pick at a local orchard. McIntosh and Liberty apples make my favorite sweet (as opposed to hard) cider. The real serious producers will blend juices from different varieties, including crab apples, to get the flavor they want, but straight Mac is usually just right as it is. You can’t find cider like this in stores, but rarely, and then it costs eight or nine dollars a gallon. I don’t get it. But it doesn’t matter if you make your own.
Here’s some square dowel joinery I was doing for another antique cider mill I have in process;
I won’t discuss how it’s done because I don’t know how. I just had to improvise using the limited tools on hand at the time.
And last, here’s a tomato from my garden;
They call it the “Taxi” for the obvious reason. They’re delicious too, and I suppose any ripe tomato right off the vine is vastly superior to any tomato that’s been picked for shipping. The deer got most of my tomatoes this year, but I got revenge this hunting season. Now I have vegetables and venison in the freezer. Life is good
This morning Barb and I did some errands together. One of these was for me to get a dress shirt for a party we are attending tonight. While out I got a call from a friend with a well deserved nickname of “Brazen E.” which went something like the following. It was a real “first” for me.
Joe: Hello E.
E: Hi! What are you doing? Are you with your family in Idaho?
J: No. I got back last night. I’m in a dressing room at J.C. Penney’s. What about you?
E: We had a nice Christmas. I’m in a room with my daughter and can’t say a whole lot but I’m feeling pretty hormonal. I got permission from my husband and you are the first person I thought of.
J: Ahhh… Oh! So you are looking for some “benefits” from a friend?
E: Exactly! So, are you available?
J: Uhhh… [How do you say, “No” to someone who has the courage to ask for, and gets, permission from their husband to come play with you for a few hours?]
I’ll talk to Barb about it but we are pretty busy today and we are going to a party tonight. Maybe you could find someone at the party tonight. Would you like to go with us?
E: No. I don’t think so. Let me know if you change your mind.
J: I’m pretty sure it’s not going to work out. If you have another opportunity you should take it rather than waiting for me to call back.
E: Yeah. I already tried one, but he said he would rather sleep.
J: That was your husband?
E: Yes.
J: I see. Okay. Well good luck finding someone!
As I expected Barb did not think it was a good use of my time this afternoon.
Barb spent soon time in Idaho with me this week. Dad wanted her to see how much better the room in basement was since she was there the last time. After Dad showed off the improvements I saw something in the gun cabinet I wanted to show her.
It was the old Winchester 32-20 that had hung on the wall of my bedroom for many years as I grew up. It had belonged to my grandfather and my Great Uncle Walt (Grandpa Huffman’s brother) had shot his first coyote with it when he was 10 years old.
Under some of the more repressive laws in this country it is banned as being an assault rifle because it has a capacity of greater 10 rounds. But as it was originally used it was a great gun for kids because of it’s light weight, relatively low cost to shoot, and light recoil.
I got a Garmin GPS for Christmas, a hand-held one ideal for backpacking. Pretty neat. But then I looked closer, and had a “what the hell?” moment. It has no topo maps. Not even regional low-res 100k maps. Nothing. A few political outlines, major roads, major water obstacles like Lake Washington. You have to buy topo maps as extras. I thought the whole point of a GPS was not to point at a spot in a blank area and say “you are here.” Heck, I can get that with pencil and paper, and know general direction with a compass.
So I went to the Garmin site. They want a hundred bucks for a Northwest 24k topo map. Another hundred for a CA/Nevada topo. Another hundred for “mountain west.” Another hundred for Alaska. Another hundred for 100k US. And so-on. Holy COW! If you get around much, you could easily spend far more on maps than on the GPS unit itself. The unit I received had been bought on sale; any two of those are more than the unit cost.
I dug around a little bit online, and there are some references to using open source (USGS, TIGER, or whatever) topo maps, but nothing very specific or detailed that seemed like the right path. Anyone know any good sourses for free open source 24k topo maps and directions for putting them onto Garmin handheld GPS units? If I can get pointed to some that look like they will work, I’ll try it and let readers know how it goes.
I’ve been hanging out with my great-nephew Jared (nicknamed Jar Head) who has recently mastered the word, “No!”.
I am tempted to believe that if the word meaning “no” were three symbols long the parenting of children would be dramatically different.
On Saturday night Barb and watched the movie Enders Game. We had both read the book and enjoyed it but had a minor conflict about watching the movie.
I kind of wanted to watch it. I had skimmed through a lot of the physical description of the zero-G games and was never really able to visualize the setting very well. If nothing else I wanted to see what that was like.
Barb was concerned the movie would spoil the book.
I agreed that movies are seldom as good as the book but they can be good even if they aren’t as good as the book. We agreed to see it anyway.
I enjoyed it. Barb was disappointed because a lot of the team building was left out but she thought they did a great job on the special effects.
Update: After reading this post last night Barb mildly protested that we didn’t really have a conflict about going to the movie. It was a very short polite discussion about whether we wanted to see this movie or something else. And we came to the same conclusion without any flaring of emotions. I agree with this but I didn’t, and don’t, have a single word or short phrase to describe that conversation. “Minor conflict” is prone to misinterpretation of the reality of discussion but with a strong emphasis on “minor” it does describe it.
As I have mentioned before Barb refers to a street close to where I work as “Mugme Street”. It’s a pretty rough place at times:
A man sustained minor injuries after a group of women assaulted him and stole his wallet while he waited for a bus downtown.
…
Seattle Police officers responded to the scene, assumed control of the incident and investigated further. The victim told officers that he was waiting near the bus stop at 3rd Avenue and Pine Street to catch a bus home. A female suspect approached and asked him for a cigarette. The victim declined to give one to her. The female suspect got angry and began striking the victim with her fists. Some of the suspect’s female friends joined in on the attack and then stole the victim’s wallet from his backpack before fleeing the area on foot.
One block away is Westlake Park with more criminals as Seattle Police report:
Two men are now in custody after detectives identified and located the suspects wanted in connection with Friday night’s robbery of a First Hill gas station.
…one of the suspects, an 18-year-old man, was observed by officers as he was walking through Westlake Park. He was taken into custody and interviewed by robbery detectives.
Tell me again that it’s safe here and people don’t need to carry tools to defend themselves.