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| These two boxes were side-by-side on our kitchen countertop and they illustrate the difference in volume of a ready-to-eat food and a basic ingredient |
Cooking from scratch vs. convenience foods
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| This "milk-crate" is used to transport firewood in from the kindling pile. |
Aovoc eased onto the bench and held up a hand, ordering a mug of the coarse, local red wine. Every day is a marathon when you are a stone mason working outside during the summer.
Three young women with perfect skin, flashing eyes and glossy hair were gathered around the only other table in the establishment. Their eyes kept darting his way and looking him over. Like most stone-masons, Aovoc was extremely lean and muscular. As the artisan leading the crew responsible for the exterior ornamentation of the temple, he was deeply tanned and he exuded an aura of calm leadership.
Aovoc tried to ignore their chattering. This brief moment he stole to drop into the wine-house on his way home was the single moment of peace he would get today. Otpoon, his wife, had given birth to their first child a month ago.
It was not to be.
Aovoc was raising the mug to his lips when the most daring of the three exclaimed "We are getting ready for a party and we need a strong man to help us!"
Aovoc took a slurp before putting the mug down on the stone table-top. Aovoc recognized the three girls. Not that long ago they had been eleven and climbing over the large white boulders that tumbled into the sea like so many goats. Now, just a few short years later, they were nubile, young women. Everything matures more quickly on islands, especially islands with few resources.
The daring lass bubbled, "You can help me carry things from the hollow while these two" she said, gesturing at her wing-men "can decorate the tables."
Aovoc pondered for a second and then responded. "Otpoon will be jealous because she doesn't feel beautiful right now. I will do it on one condition...that the girl I work with be the ugliest of the three of you."
And then he turned his attention to his mug of wine while they sorted out who of the three was the least attractive.
They were still angrily bickering when Aovoc dropped the token on the table to pay for his mug of wine. They didn't notice as he walked out of the shade and back into the sun.
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| Plan "D". "D" for Duct Tape |
For those times when Plan C (your Corrosive personality) isn't enough
One of the reasons that was given for the water reservoirs above the Los Angeles basin not being full was that the water was diverted so a potentially-manufactured minnow species can have well-lubricated sex.
The minnow in question is called Hypomesus transpacificus and is one of five species of Hypomesus that are distributed around the Pacific rim. Three of those species are on the west coast of North America and have zero overlap in their range. Their natural ranges touch but do not overlap. Very puzzling.
As a side-note, it was recently revealed that the Tellico Darter which stopped construction of the Tellico Dam in Tennessee was found to be a fraud. In an "aw-shucks moment" scientists determined in 2025 that the "Tellico Darter" was not actually a separate species but was rather a slightly different looking variant of common Stargazing Darter.
Got all that?
Your toilet doesn't flush, your dishwasher and your washing machine won't clean...
Your toilet doesn't flush and your dishwasher and your washing machine won't clean because California mandated that appliances use arbitrarily small amounts of water in order to conserve water. US manufacturers don't have the resources to develop and tool two separate lines of appliances, one for California and another for the other forty-nine and Canada.
So the reason your toilet doesn't flush, your dishes are gritty and your clothes stink isn't because California is burning. That is irrelevant to California legislators and regulators. Nope. It is because flush-toilets (that work), clean dishes and clean clothing are luxuries and must bow to the rights of minnows to have well-lubricated sex.
Some of my readers are going to cough up a hair-ball over this, but FEMA's recommendation to have at least three-weeks worth of non-perishable foods, water and other necessities on-hand is a good start.
Three weeks will get the roads plowed, the fallen trees removed from the road, power-lines up, most first-contacts in remote areas, martial-law and curfews installed, trucks bringing food and ice to most areas and so on and so-forth.
There will be outlying areas but most of the people living there live there for a reason. They KNOW they won't get much attention. Likely, they will have at least three months supplies just-because.
The most painless way to get that three weeks of food is to double-up on your non-perishable food purchases until you hit that number. If you normally buy and eat a pound of Jasmine Rice a week, buy two pounds. If you buy and eat two cans of Minestrone soup, buy four. Don't buy foods you aren't eating now. The last thing you need is your guts twisting because you had a huge change in your diet.
"...other necessities..." Tylenol, Benedryl, Imodium, antacids (generics are fine), birth control, feminine hygiene products, blood pressure meds and anticoagulants, bar soap, sunscreen, insect repellent, bandages, batteries... Window screens to repair broken windows (a big deal if the power is out and you can't run AC) and clear poly-film. A 20lb tank of LP and a camp-stove. Trash bags.
Enough clothing and bedding to keep you warm if your power is out. Sleeping bags, when unzipped, make outstanding comforters.
For the record, these are not really my thoughts. This is my assessment of the center-of-gravity of what the preparedness community believes. We all started once upon a time and most of us didn't start with a lot.
Weight lifting notes: DL 135 x 6 raw, (205 x 6) x 4 straps
Not much to write about today.
Yesterday was a busy day but the "busy" involved other people's stories and I don't have permission to share them.
A house divided
But he, knowing their thoughts, said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and a divided household falls. Luke 11:17 ESV
This is pretty much the cross-roads where we sit.
A very large number of people enjoy "benefits" from the public trough. That includes public sector employees as well as private businesses, students and people with lower income.
The public sector employees are saying that they will resist efforts to become more efficient and will openly defy direction from the incoming President.
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| A variation of the water-bucket-balanced-on-the-door prank |
The out-going administration appears to have set as many booby-traps for the incoming administration as possible. It is predictable that the Left-leaning media will blame the incoming administration for the economic turmoil that will result even though they cheerfully accepted Obama blaming every hiccup on George W a full seven years after GW left office.
I am less concerned about cities burning down than the impact this will have on my family. It is a VERY rare family that does not have some members whose rice-bowl will get impacted over the next four weeks/months/years.
The pain will be intense for the people who get pinched while the benefits for the rest of us will be diffused and long-term.
Prospect Theory
Prospect Theory holds that people feel losses three times more intensely than they feel gains. The Feeling-(gain/loss) curve is non-linear and not continuous.
Close to zero, there is no pain-or-joy associated with a loss-or-gain. We don't bend over to pick up a dropped penny because the value is so small that it might as well be zero.
Then, through the mid-range the slope on the loss side of the curve is three times steeper than on the gain side of the curve.
As the numbers get larger they exceed what our brains can comprehend. Winning a billion dollars in a lottery might double our joy over what we would feel if we won a million dollars. If the curves were linear, we would feel 1000 times more joy...but that isn't what happens.
Modern society rakes pennies, nickels, dimes and dollars from us every day. We barely feel it. It takes money from our checks before our employer can print them. They have many mechanisms for putting the losses in the zone perceived as close-to-zero.
On the other hand, the people who benefit from those transfers are constantly reminded of where the money came from. The Matrix amps up fear of what will happen if the gravy-train is derailed. The people who will be inconvenienced when the music stops will not accept it well.
It will be quite a trick if we can boot-strap our way out of the economic pitcher-plant that we are in without causing irreparable pain within our families.
Michael commented on a previous post:
Plan A stay home. Always have a realistic Plan B and maybe a Plan C.
In
general, never be a refugee. You're an unwelcome person looking for
human kindness and generosity to survive a bad situation.
My plan
B is shared by many of my trusted friends as they also have the same
plan B. We pre-positioned supplies in each other's homes, so we'd be
welcomed visitors there.
I've a "Storage Shed" both here and at a
friend that is well insulated, windows and in general easy to make a
sturdy shelter if needed.
Trusted friends and trusted family along with a strong faith in God is better than "money in the Bank" and even gold in hand.
There is very little I can add to this.
How much space?
Mrs ERJ recently shared that there was a homeless family of at least two adults and one baby sleeping in the back of a full-sized pickup with a "topper". No cooking or toileting was done in the truck. That is basically three people per sheet-of-plywood. In Michigan. In November.
The city of Vienna, Austria* requires 9 square-meters (three sheets of plywood floor-area) per adult and 6 square-meters (two sheets of plywood) per child under the age of 7. I believe that includes the space used for toileting and food-prep.
In the winter, shrinking the foot-print per person to extremes (like the truck cap) results in issues with condensation and loss of insulation capability of clothing.
If you round the Vienna number up to 100 square-feet then the standard, US, two-vehicle garage can hold 5.7 adults or 2 adults and 6 kids.
Extreme sanitation must be exercised at toileting and food-prep areas. Bringing new people in can be a train-wreck of ectoparasites like lice, bedbugs, fleas and so on. A supply of "bug-bombs" can be useful in such situations.
* Hat-tip to reader Simon
The default answer is "Stay".
Backpack Fever, a classic.
I had the opportunity to talk with a local firefighter who had been trained in toxic chemical spills. Ordinarily, one would think of intense, localized risks as a reason to flee. And yet he said that 90% of the time the department will advise "Dump the power breakers and seek highest floor in your dwelling and shelter-in-place".
He said that wind directions change. Traffic creates risks for drivers and people tasked with directing traffic. Tires can get wetted with chemical and it can aerosol some distance from the spill.
Why would you volunteer to become a refugee? Refugees are destitute. In your home:
Yes, there are times to leave. Hurricane storm surges, wild-fires, genocide, hyper inflation are all good reasons to hit the road. But most of the time the advantages of being able to stay in your house outweigh the disadvantages.
The Vikings, Nazi Blitzkrieg and Tamerlane's sweep through Asia all shared one characteristic, they were executed so swiftly that the victims were caught unaware and unprepared in their fields and hamlets.
Self-defense circles have a saying "Get off the X". Moving away from the threat has two benefits. The first benefit is that a moving target is harder to hit. The second benefit is that doubling in distance from a threat who is shooting cuts your odds of being hit by at least 75%. Doubling that distance again reduces the risk by almost 95%.
Putting distance between yourself and the primary threat buys you time to consider other options.
Different threats have different distance scales. A gang-banger doing a mag dump might cease to be a threat if you can put 50 yards between him and you. An accomplished shot with a rifle can put a kill-shot on you from 200 yards.
A flash-flood might require that you move 50 feet to get out of the channel. A tsunami or a hurricane quite a lot more distance.
Three miles might be enough to get your out of Flint but you might need more than ten miles to get to a safe neighborhood from Downtown Detroit
A medical analogy
You can bleed-out in less than a minute if you cut a major artery like your femoral artery. If you don't IMMEDIATELY address arterial bleeding you will not live long enough to worry about water purification or food or vitamin deficiencies or fending off the ravening savages or dealing with the legal system.
Identify the major hazard and get off the X speedy-quick using the most expeditious means.
Once you have Distance and/or Time, you have the luxury of choosing options.
Hat-tip to B for beating me to the punch in the comments of the previous post.
The last few months has seen renewed interest in "prepping". Some of it comes with the realization that Mother Nature can be a fickle bitch. Some of the interest comes from the Left as they realize that the Government cannot solve every problem.
People who are new to this path are vulnerable to certain misconceptions. I want to share my perceptions about the high-runners.
Misconception #1: "Preparedness is a hobby I can turn on-and-off'
The rapid change in speed or direction of events cannot be anticipated. Chaos can be unleashed in the blink-of-an-eye. Sometimes God gives us hints. Sometimes He does not.
The seasoned prepper realizes that catastrophe is a come-as-you are dance. Consequently, most of us ALWAYS wear practical walking shoes/boots when we are outside of our house and we load our pockets with items we might find useful. Futhermore, if we are outside, we are wearing clothing that will protect us from the climate. My target is to be able to walk a minimum of three miles or to spend an hour outside regardless of the weather. Your goals will depend on your location*.
Misconception #2: "I have a backpack..."
This is what the shooters call The Magic Talisman fallacy. "I have a gun and that makes me invincible".
OK, you have a backpack. Have you used every item in it several times? Have you used those items in inclement weather? Can you start a fire in the snow with that little stick-thingy? Are your emergency foods something you can actually stomach? Will your water purification system actually handle water from a mud-puddle?
Referring back to Misconception #1, what are the odds that you will be able to get to your backpack when the balloon goes up? Is it in the trunk of your vehicle or in a closet at home?
Have you considered that wearing a backpack will make you a prime target in many places?
Misconception #3: "I will rise to the occasion..."
Col Jeff Cooper once wrote "In times of crisis we do not rise to the occasion. Rather, we regress to the highest level of skill that we have mastered."
Hunting guides "out west" hate clients who show up with shiny new guns without a single scratch on them. They cringe when that gun is an enormous Boomen-Cannon magnum that was recently written up in the latest gun magazine. Those clients flinch and miss and wound and make excuses and write bad reviews.
Hunting guides "out west" are delighted when the client opens up his gun case and pulls out a rifle that has clearly seen much, loving use at the range and in the field. It is far more likely that that tool will be a natural extension of the hunter's body and can be rapidly and accurately deployed than the shiny Boomen-Cannon.
Summary
Be prepared for the SHTF at all times. Have the physical capability and the "gear" to walk three miles (or some reasonable distance) every time you walk out the door even if all you plan to do is to clip the dog to his run.
Footwear are your first point of failure. Maybe you can walk three miles in flip-flops or Crocs. I can't, at least not in my environment. Ergo, I don't wear either of them outside.
Wear clothing with lots of pockets. Carry a pocket knife, a BIC lighter, a wallet with a few bandages and $40 in mixed bills. Other possible must-carry items: Your smartphone, a light and a means-of-defense.
If you start collecting gear, USE IT! Ideally, you need to use it shortly after you acquire it so you don't end up in the "stack it high" fortress filled with stuff you cannot use.
Using your gear will also disabuse you of certain fantasies. For example, you might think that you will be able to survive in the woods for three weeks and cut a 30 mile path to Maryland through the brush with a machete. An overnight in your back-yard and clearing a 10' long row of thorny-scrub with a machete might make you adjust your plans.
---To be continued---
*Southern Belle spent a semester in Europe. It was the summer angry Greeks were rioting and burning down banks. To humor me, she charted out several walking routes that bypassed the center of the city and started carrying a few items in her student backpack should she need to leave the bus and hoof-it.
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| I chose the Plano 3540-10 plastic Stowaway box to secure the bolt when carrying my tools in a hard-case. It has three-buckles and is very secure. I had to carve out a bit of the length-wise dividers for the bolt handle. |
The Southern California wild-fires are one of the few cases where bugging-out is clearly the best choice. The high-risk area is geographically well defined and there is sufficient infrastructure within three hour's drive to absorb the refugees.
My question for my readers is this: Do you know of any churches (or other organizations) in Southern California that have opened their facilities to those refugees, offering a safe place to unroll their sleeping-bags, coffee in the morning and (perhaps) a simple breakfast and vouchers identifying local restaurants and other resources?
Checks that come in the mail don't filly your belly or keep you warm at night nor do they keep your family together RIGHT NOW!
Stories about people who have the situational awareness to see the immediate needs and have the intestinal fortitude to rise to the occasion are rarely carried by the Mainstream Media, maybe because regular folks are not on the MSM's radar.
It will be nice to recognize any churches or others who step-up. It might also be useful to those people who are still straggling in.
Eliminating synthetic fertilizers is an important goal of Zero Carbon
It is expected to create many "craft" and artisanal jobs
It is an ill wind that does not blow somebody some good.
Ramblin-Randy (not his real name) was one of the neighbor's dogs and he is no longer with us. I have no details other than that the dog is no longer in the neighborhood.
The end result is that I can now walk around my property with Zeus, our aging German Shepherd.
Ramblin' had a firm disregard for property lines and his owners didn't bother to control him or couldn't control him. They had the odd belief that it was sufficient to clip a leash to his collar but they didn't hold the other end (you can't make this stuff up).
Ramblin' was also notorious for not coming when called by the owner. He went walk-about when he was called. Basically turning away from his owner and high-tailing it.
My nightmare scenario was Ramblin'-Randy coming onto our property and tearing into Zeus and then Zeus chased him back to his owner. Zeus would look like the aggressor and ill feelings would be generated. Zeus would likely be hurt. Damages would be charged if it appeared that Zeus hurt the neighbor's dog on the neighbor's property.
This almost happened. I had a leash with me when I saw Ramblin' heading our way. I got Zeus on the leash before they started fighting. I was able to separate them. I tied Zeus' leash to a tree. Then I grabbed Ramblin's leash and walked him the quarter-mile back to his owner who seemed oblivious that Ramblin' had left their property.
I avoided future conflict by keeping Zeus in his kennel. It sucked for Zeus. He struggles to get into the truck so the only walks he got were in the road which is no life for a dog who likes to sniff around.
Free at last
But Ramlin-Randy rambles no more, at least not in our neighborhood.
Zeus has gone out-back with me while I trim trees these last few days. The battery on the pole saw lasts about 20 minutes in the 20 degree cold.
Zeus sniffs around. He sniffs down animal holes and around trees. He pees copiously on everything in his domain. He saunters about in a leisurely jog. 20 minutes in the woods is plenty to make Zeus happy.
Dogs don't hold grudges, for which I am thankful.
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| True Love Never Dies |
Valdemar Irminger born in Denmark in 1850 and died in 1938. Maybe not the greatest technical painter but unparalleled for capturing a story in a single frame.
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| Young Woman thrown to the Lions |
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| In the Garden (of Gesthemane where Jesus left the Apostles while he prayed immediately before his short imprisonment, torture and execution) |
There are two defining characteristics of a cult:
One is that they ruthlessly punish people who formally renounce their membership. In religion, that act is called "Apostasy" which derives from the Greek word for "revolt" and "traitor".
A second defining characteristic is that cults "have all the answers" because they do not allow any questions. If you ask any questions, then you are guilty of Apostasy and will be punished.
Kurt Schlichter wrote this in a recent essay published on Town Hall:
The thing you must understand about the rich Californians who vote for Democrats – and not only vote for them but actively campaign for them and donate to them – is that this kind of leftism isn’t just a belief system. It’s their religion. Well, more accurately, it’s a substitute for religion.
They’re not stupid in the sense that they don’t understand that the people they’re voting for are blithering idiots. It’s that human nature prevents them from accepting the fact that they’ve been wrong so that they can change. They are emotionally invested in the liberal project that they grew up in, and to vote against it now would require introspection and an admission that everything they believed in was baloney. Most of them can’t do that. Most of them won’t do that. And nothing’s going to change.
Sadly, there are many younger people who have been sucked-in by this cult. Like a pigeon flying in front of a jet-engine, they had almost no chance. They were in the wrong place (University) at the wrong time (an impressionable age). They see the five or six years of their adult life as "a long time" and are just as loath to let go of the lies as the pony-tailed, 72 year-old, Liberal living in California.
The wind was out of the south at about 10mph and the temp was 31F. My "shooting lane" was to the south and I was sitting in a chair under a tree.
No deer were sighted but I did see a Fox Squirrel using a nesting cavity made from a five-gallon, plastic bucket and hung 12' up in a tree. He gave me the rough edge of his tongue as I passed under it.
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| Black-capped Chickadee, year-round resident in my part of Michigan |
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| Black-capped Chickadee range map |
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| Dark-eyed Junco. I would have named it "Bibbed Junco" but what do I know? |
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| Dark-Eyed Junco range map |
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| The Song Sparrow is one of the more recognizable LBBs (Little Brown Birds) as it has a spot of darker feathers on its chest. |
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| Song Sparrow range map |
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| Tufted Titmouse |
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| Tufted Titmouse range map |
Even though the birds compete with each other for food, more eyes offer better protection from predators.
I am not sure what they were finding, but a few of them were working the seed-heads of Queen Anne's Lace (aka, Wild Carrots).
Today's project was to put up a bird feeder outside of one of our living room windows at the height of Quicksilver's eyes. I like to keep things simple. I fill them with black sunflower seeds which makes a lot of different bird species happy. In addition to the ones shown above, Blue Jays, Cardinals and assorted nuthatches and woodpeckers eat from the feeder while Starlings and Mourning Doves and chipmunks eat what gets spilled.
Today is the last day for Michigan's 2024/25 deer season.
I got out last night and sat for 90 minutes. I saw three but did not have a shot.
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| Official deer harvest numbers as-of Friday. The antlerless numbers should go up as the numbers for the late "doe" season come tricking in. Eaton County and the counties next to us. |
Deer numbers are a squirrelly thing to estimate.
If you go with the estimate of 20 deer per square-mile in Eaton County, then we have roughly 11,000 deer on the hoof at the start of hunting season. If half of them are female, then we are looking at 5500 does. At two-fawns per doe, we only need 2700 does to survive the winter to get us back to that 11,000 deer.
If 20 per square-mile is too many (and it is), then leaving 1500 does would mean that roughly 60% of the harvest would have to be antlerless and would take us to a more manageable 12 deer per square-mile.
Two years in-a-row of 60% doe harvest leads to some funny dynamics. The number of 1-1/2 year and older does is overwhelmed by the current year's fawns (none of which have antlers). It is a hard-push to get the 60% harvest because it is not economical to pay to have the carcass processed into meat due to the low yield. Hunters do not want to drop-the-hammer on a deer the weight of a slightly obese Airedale.
Things are even more complicated in the field than they are in concept. In reality, many of the antlerless deer are button-bucks. 60% antlerless deer harvested is not identical to 60% doe harvested.
Undocumented harvesters of deer are another factor. Ironically, many of the "hunters" who are undocumented are bucks-only hunters.
All deer that get processed by commercial processors get reported and the regulations say that deer hunters are supposed to report the location of every deer they harvest. In spite of that, there are some deer that don't get reported and the estimates for the unreported numbers are all over the map...say from 2% to 30%.
Also, farmers cull deer outside of hunting season and those numbers are not readily available because it is a PR disaster. Killing does with young fawns leaves the young deer to early, brutal death. Failure to harvest enough does during the hunting season (after the fawns are weaned) means that farmers will have to do it in June and July before the corn gets too tall...when the fawns' age can be measured in weeks.
Finally, nobody really knows how many deer are in-the-field so it is a fool's-exercise to pull an arbitrary number out of the air for a target doe harvest.
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| Traffic accident rates are an economically germane and well documented proxy for deer population density |
If you are managing a property in Southern Michigan, requiring your "guests" to harvest two antlerless deer for every buck that they harvest is not a bad rule-of-thumb until Eaton County's deer population density hits five-per-square mile or drops below 200 deer-vehicle accidents per year.
From the comments I believe that I have at least one reader in Alberta where this kind of problem is more common.
Any advice on how to handle these kinds of unwanted predators will be much appreciated.
M. Scott Peck, author of the book The Road Less Traveled, introduced me to the concept of "Ego Boundaries".
Peck talks about the euphoria or rush of falling-in-love in terms of ego boundaries. He also briefly observes that some people are in love with the euphoria and not the person. They fall-in-love with the act of falling-in-love and discard their beloved and launch themselves at another as soon as the rush starts to fade.
Peck's book starts slowly. The first eighty pages talks about child development. The infant's concept of self includes "Mommy" and "Daddy". Crying results in one of those two rushing to comfort the child. From an operating level, Mommy and Daddy are identical to the child's right and left arm.
When the child turns two, he starts to hear the word "No" applied to his wants. His "left arm" refuses to move the way it has been commanded. Then he hears "No" from his "right arm". Anger ensues just like an adult would be angry if his right arm were amputated without his permission. With the anger are feelings of powerlessness and fear. The child went from being 400 pounds to weighing 25 pounds. He went from being able to reach into a freezer, pull out a tub of ice cream and scoop it out to not even being able to reach the door of the freezer.
The "terrible twos" occur as the child's ego boundaries shrink to the limits of what is contained within his skin. It is horrifying to the child.
When the child first falls-in-love, he finds his missing piece. The other completes him. He is no longer one bit of protoplasm being whirled-and-whelmed by the cosmos...he is now TWO. He regresses to the (unwarranted) feelings of infinite power that he had on his second birthday. The anger and bitterness and spite and desire to hurt-and-punish that occurs at the end of the relationship are replays of the terrible-twos.
WOKE melt-downs
One comment from an employee at Meta responding to the tapering of DEI policies sums up the problem:
Do you notice anything unusual about this comment?
It does not identify WHO finds this change unacceptable. It does not say "I cannot accept this change for a multitude of reasons". That would be the most precise, adult-like statement. We can only speak for what goes on inside of our own heads. It is called "owning your statements".
The speaker does not say "Lesbians cannot accept this change." or "LGBT+ people cannot accept this change".
The speaker presumes to be voicing some universal standard (which of course, does not exist). It is like the big-mouthed shrimp at the bar who gets his entire squad involved in a brawl at the bar. The shrimp feels unbeatable because he is standing behind Wilder who is 6'-8" tall, weighs 280 pounds and was the Iowa State MMA champ.
THAT is why the Left is melting down. They regressed to the level of two-year-old toddlers and are disputing the resizing of their ego boundaries to be limited to what is within their skin.
Perhaps that should be a warning. Never mollycoddle a malcontent lest you have to deal with the emotional tantrums of a two-year-old in somebody who can cause adult-level destruction.
My next-youngest brother retired today. We are meeting up for sammiches in Lansing and I am tasked with getting him a card. This is what I am going to print off and tape inside of it:
A few tips to survive retirement:
Don’t take up any new hobbies immediately. Especially bicycle riding. I know two former coworkers who had accidents that left them paralyzed just a few weeks after retiring. One was crossing railroad tracks and a crack grabbed his front wheel. The other also lost his front wheel for unknown reasons.
Find out where the old guys drink coffee. The cast of characters and the “vibe” will change from table-to-table and from hour-to-hour. You might have to move around a little bit to find your tribe.
It will take you a while to learn to slow down. Those guys mentioned above will help you with that.
Do something every day. Men are like Great White Sharks. We die if we stop moving.
Don’t neglect balance, reaction speed and flexibility. Falls are rough on us oldsters and many falls can be avoided if we practice our balance, reaction speed and flexibility. If you take yoga, I want photos of you in yoga pants (hint: dark colors hide sweat)
Take care of your wife. She is your greatest asset and listen to her if she says it is time to see a doctor. A lotta guys wake up dead because they tell their dearest “I will do it in the morning!”
Get a beeper for your keys. They grow legs after you retire. I don’t know why. Press the remote for the beeper before running laundry.
Don’t look like you are having too much fun or your wife will retire.
Dad was wrong. It isn't about midnight. Nothing good happens after sunset.
Get Two-Year calendars. Time speeds up as we get older. The new “week” is thirty days and it will seem like you are buying a new calendar every month.
Pace yourself. Retirement is relentless. We don’t get weekends off.
Don’t make too many commitments. People will figure that you have all of the time in the world and might assume that you will love to do them “just a tiny little favor”
Shotgun goes fishing every Wednesday at the lake. He often needs moral support and he has already heard all of my stories.
Take care of your feet. Face it, our knees and eyes are shot. Save what you can.
Bonus video
Two minute run-time.
I love how her skirt flutters. Much more alluring than yoga pants.
Please feel free to offer him advice in the comments.
I was surprised to learn that American Plum is not a total train-wreck as a rootstock for peach.
On the Minus side
Only some varieties have been documented as being compatible with it. Specifically, Red Haven, Contender and Saturn. Those peaches ripen August 5, August 28 and August 1 in my area. You could do much worse than planting Red Haven and Contender.
American Plum suckers from the roots profusely. Canadian Plum (Prunus nigra) is a close relative that suckers far less but reviews of CP as a peach rootstock are not encouraging. If you wanted to, you could certainly graft an interstem of American Plum on top of Prunus nigra.
Seedling propagated from commercially available seed can be variable. There are no "select" strains of American Plum chosen for good rootstock characteristics.
Seedling American Plums are thorny-to-very thorny. That might not be a negative where deer pressure is high.
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| Percent survival of Red Haven peaches grafted on top of Prunus americana. Lovell included as a baseline. |
Survival of grafted Red Haven on American Plum have dismal in some locations.
On the Plus side
American Plum is more resistant to cold or winter damage than any peach (Prunus persica) clone.
American Plum is highly resistant to Peach Borer.
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| Cumulative Yield Efficiency, the rightmost column, is a measurement of a root-stock's productivity after adjusting for tree size (Source) |
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| Lovell has a tree height of 11' while American Plum has a tree height of 9'. While the difference might not seem like much, the entire tree on AP can be picked from the ground if you bend the tallest branches toward you. |
Smaller tree size makes the trees easier to spray and thin and pick.
It might not be worth buying American Plum for rootstock but it is certainly worth buying a lottery ticket if you have some already growing on your property, especially if you live at the northern fringe of where peaches can be grown.
The smart move would be to graft or bud relatively high on the stem to get the peach out of the zone where peach borers are most active and to have American Plum at least as high up as the snow is likely to drift. Another smart move would be to stake the tree to reduce bending stresses on the graft union.
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| Oriental Honeysuckle. Each specimen had a canopy that was 10' to 15' in diameter. It took about 3 hours to clear 2000 square-feet. The hardest thing was that the crowns were so entangled that I had to make multiple cuts and yank them apart. |
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| Maybe 6" through the base |
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| I count thirteen rings. |
I was cutting brush today and house-sitting. So you will get half-formed thoughts.
California fires
New reports indicate that some property insurers dropped fire coverage on the polices because the California board that sets rates were forcing them to insure houses in high-risk areas and not cherry-pick the lower risk regions of the state. Additionally, the board did not allow them to pass on the cost of purchasing secondary insurance on the open market. The secondary insurance is one of the ways that insurance companies dilute the risk.
Many policy holders probably did not even open the letters that informed them of the changes to their policies.
Expect this story to get uglier before it gets better.
Also germane to this story is that the cost of property insurance is relatively low in California. $200k of coverage costs an average of $1000 a year in California compared to $3800 in Nebraska and $4400 in Oklahoma. In effect, policy holders in the mid-West are subsidizing the property insurance in California.
A few weeks ago, just before the most recent fires, the California board capitulated and ruled that insurers WILL be allowed to pass on the cost of buying loss-insurance. The articles from a week ago were bemoaning the fact that in some cases the insurance rates might double or triple (!!!!) and however would California home-owners be able to afford it?
Maybe they could go to Nebraska or Oklahoma and ask how they do it.
Sprite's grandson
Sprite lets her grandson hunt on her property.
Michigan's late antlerless season ends January 12, 2025. I suspect "T", her grandson, is done hunting for the season. I heard him burning through a couple of boxes of ammo yesterday.
I never understood the need to mindlessly shoot all of the current season's ammo. "T" shoots a 450 Bushmaster and MSRP on the ammo runs about $45 a box. So he just flushed $90 down the toilet. More to the point, sometimes ammo is hard to find in stores.
There are baseless rumors of a bachelor hunter in a northern region buying three boxes of ammo in 1980. He sighted in his rifle and then fired a single shot at the start of the season to verify the zero. The rumor is that the bachelor hunter is still holding out for a trophy buck and is now half-way through the third box of ammo which cost him $8.97 at KMart, back in the day.
Canada gets a slice of the great State of Washington from the Idaho line west to where it hits salt-water at 47.48 North.
Canada gets a streak of Oregon from Portland to Eugene west to the Pacific Ocean.
Canada gets several large California metropolitan areas: Sacramento, San Francisco, Oakland, Marin, Ventura, Los Angeles and Orange Counties.
The US will also throw in Cook County, Illinois, Hennipen County, Minnesota, Dane County, Wisconsin and Washtenaw and Wayne County Michigan.
In trade for the US getting
Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario north of 45.00, Northwest Territories and Yukon.
Canada also agrees to take on the population pro-rata of the publicly issued debt of California, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan and Illinois.
Lifting notes
I was wondering why my initial lift in a set of dead-lifts seemed so much harder than lifts 2-through-6.
I sorted through the possibilities, starting with form.
In the end, it turned out that I was lifting too fast. Not only was I fighting gravity but I was adding in F=mass * acceleration. I wasn't yanking the weight up but it was as if I was afraid I wouldn't be able to lift it and kind of panicked.
The answer was to slow down. If it doesn't come up...well, that is not a really big deal.
I am happier now.
Trail-running shoes
Commenters on the previous post mentioned that more traditional boots last longer than trail-running shoes.
Trail-running is different than hiking. For most of us, a one-hour run is a long run while we can walk for eight or ten hours. The foam materials used in running shoes flattens out over time and does not have time to recover. I think the engineering types call that visco-elastic or visco-plastic behavior depending on whether it recovers (visco-elastic) or is permanent (visco-plastic).
Another factor is that trail-running shoes tend to have much softer and grippier compounds in the tread while boots tend to have harder, more wear-resistant. The original Vibram Commando Lug sole was ground-breaking when it was first introduced but is now considered very slippery on wet rocks compared to more modern but less durable soles and it has poor "self clearing" and picks up clay.
Empty pews
I used to jog with a local, Lutheran pastor. I asked him about the demographics of who attended, specifically men/women ratios.
He said that most Sundays it ran about 70:30 or 80:20 adult women to adult men. That seems to be very common in most Christian churches.
I asked him if he had any thoughts for the disparity.
He said that he thought it was because men are socialized to not ask for help. If that is true (and it very likely is), then one might consider the Psalms. It is generally accepted that King David wrote most or all of them.
King David had cajones that clanged when he walked. As a wee-youth he protected the family's sheep from both two and four legged predators. He took on Goliath with nothing more than a sling.
And David ceaselessly asks God for help through the Psalms.
Scopes
I feel like a ninny. I failed to put a cover on the scope.
I took the bolt out of one of my tools so I could close the case. In this particular instance, it is the kind of tool that must be "inaccessible" when transporting in a motor-vehicle. The bolt migrated in the case and came to a rest against the objective lens of the scope.
OUCH!
How do the smart people prevent this from happening? I already know that I screwed up with regard to not putting the covers on, but is there a belt-and-suspenders solution out there, maybe a rubber condom that can be slipped over the end of the bolt?
The damaged coating is about 8mm in diameter and I can still see the the center of the crosshairs if I look from slightly above the angled region. Based on a single test, the point of impact is about two-inches below the cross-hairs at 70 yards but that could be me wobbling. Still plenty good enough to blow the end off of a deer's heart for a center-of-chest hold.
Not that I would EVAH shoot a poor, innocent deer with Cocker Spaniel eyes when there are plenty of lentils and dried beans in the pantry.
Mrs ERJ told me...
It was time to buy one of those devices that goes on your key-ring and chirps when you hit the remote.
I did find my keys. They were in the washing machine. I am not sure something that is electronic and that chirps would have helped me.
Bonus video
The thinking about the weight of your pack when backpacking changed since I was a wee-sprout. The old paradigm was to carry no more than 25% of your body-weight. The new paradigm seems to be to plan the weight of your "base-kit" and then to manage "leg-specific" load-out.
For example, if you are hiking the Appalachian trail you will always need layers of clothing to account for the changes of elevation and the variable weather you might expect for a typical 2-to-4 week window of time, you always need shelter and a heat-source and pans to cook your food and you need sleeping gear. And there is also the weight of your pack. The current rule-of-thumb is to keep the weight of your base-kit below 10% of your weight.
The leg-specific load-out is what it takes to get you from resupply-point to resupply-point. Food, water, up or down loading on clothing. Ten days of food will add another 20 pounds. Water is not hard to come-by on the AT but at a burn-rate of 1.5 pounds an hour, an eight hour hike adds another 12 pounds if you don't want to stop to purify along the way.
So, for a plump mid-Western fellow like me, the 20 pound base-kit balloons to 52 pounds at the start of a ten-day leg on the AT...which is almost exactly that 25% mentioned earlier.
For pilgrimages in more settled areas, like the Camino de Santiago, you can ditch the shelter, cooking kit and some of the sleeping gear. You can also skinny WAY down on the food since alburques (hotels for pilgrims) offer breakfast and dinners. Furthermore, on the more traveled routes and even the less traveled routes during peak pilgrimage season, there is an open "bar" every two hours of walking.
Cutting to the chase, the pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago can lose about 1/3 of the weight of the AT base-kit, 19 pounds of the food and, depending on the route, 10 pounds to none of the water weight. Spain can be hot and dry and some regions are desolate.
Details
The typical through-hiker on the AT replaced their shoes about every 300 miles. At 13 miles a day, that is a new pair of $150 trail-runners every three weeks or so. A long, all-Spain Camino de Santiago runs about 700 miles so it is reasonable to plan to replace your footwear mid-trip.
The typical AT through-hiker dropped $2.5k to $3k for the experience. Almost a quarter of that is spent on replacement shoes!
49% of the through-hikers used packs in the 55-to-64 liter capacity range (source), 18% used packs in the 35-44 liter range (women?) and 16% used packs in the 45-54 liter range. Given the order-of-magnitude greater infrastructure on the CdS, those volumes can be easily downsized with 24 liters being a practical minimum for moderately petite, North American women.
The typical through-hiker dropped 4 pounds (20%) off of the weight of their base-kit between the start of the AT hike and the end.
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| Living in the moment! |
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| Note the newspapers on the wall for insulation |
