09:10 – It was 66.3F (19C) when I took Colin out at 0730 this morning, sunny and breezy. We had a thunderstorm overnight, but only about 0.3″ (0.75 cm) of rain.
I finally got a call back from the State Farm claims person late yesterday afternoon. She said to go ahead and have our contractor rip out the carpet and ceiling wallboard but not to make any permanent repairs until they could get an adjuster out to look at the damage. She also suggested we get a quote for repairs and if possible have a contractor rep present when the adjuster comes out. The adjuster is supposed to call within 48 hours to set up an appointment. She said the adjuster would write us a check on the spot to cover the costs, less our deductible, of removing and replacing the damaged stuff. Presumably they’ll adjust that upward if necessary after the work is finished. They did that the last time we had a claim, which was a long time ago.
Our contractor was closed by that time, so I called them first thing this morning. They’re sending someone out today to look things over, give us a quote/estimate, and arrange to have the carpet and pad ripped out and hauled off, along with the wet insulation, ceiling wallboard, and so on. This is going to be an extended process. We’ll just have to live with it.
Barbara said yesterday she wanted to replace the ceiling with a suspended ceiling and the carpet with ceramic tile, regardless of what the insurance would pay for. She also made a good suggestion this morning. Herschel had to rip out some wallboard in the master bedroom closet to get to a joint behind the sinks in the master bath. Barbara suggested that instead of replacing the wallboard that we have them install an access hatch/door there so that that joint remains accessible.
FedEx showed up yesterday with part of my latest Walmart order, which included 16 more cans of Keystone meat. One of those was their canned turkey, which we hadn’t tried. So last night Barbara made a skillet dinner with the turkey, a jar of Bertolli mushroom Alfredo sauce, a couple tablespoons of onion flakes, and a pound of macaroni. It was simple but quite good. I told her the turkey tasted kind of like a combination of chicken and pork, so I was going to call it chork. Or perhaps picken.
From the LA Times:
” An Indonesian court sentenced the minority Christian governor of Jakarta to two years in prison on Tuesday for blaspheming the Koran, a jarring ruling that undermines the reputation of the world’s most-populous Muslim nation for practicing a moderate form of Islam.”
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-indonesia-blasphemy-20170509-story.html
YUUUP! Please liberturdian judges, continue preventing tRump from not allowing more muslims in to the USofA.
We don’t have enough muslims here! No wall to keep them out!
Used my new (old) lodge cast iron griddle to make my tortillas from scratch yesterday. Very straightforward and easy, and tasted good.
A big chunk of the Americas has tortilla as a staple food. They are versatile, easy to make, simple and quick, and don’t require a lot of fuel to cook. Perfect for post Apocalypse eating.
n
I’ve never eaten a tortilla outside a restaurant. Do I need to buy a tortilla press?
Something like this, maybe?
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00HWEIKZO
I suppose you could, and if I was making them every day I might. I just rolled them out with a regular rolling pin. Some of the mexican ladies I’ve seen making them in restaurants just use their hands, some have machines, and some have presses of various types.
A thick wooden dowel works too.
The lodge griddle in the ‘freq bought together’ listing is the one I got for a couple bucks at a yard sale in like new condition. I still re-seasoned it…
n
NB I find it funny that the ingredients for the tortilla mix I used don’t list beef FAT, or LARD, but instead ‘beef tallow.’ I guess ‘tallow’ doesn’t have a negative connotation yet.
50 here this AM and bright overcast/pahtly sunny. We may see it rocket to 60 with more sun tomorrow and Friday, so I’ll be outside doing whatever I can the next several days. Make hay while the sun shines.
“I told her the turkey tasted kind of like a combination of chicken and pork…”
I’ve always preferred turkey to chicken, and when I lived down in MA, we weren’t fah from a good turkey farm, which sold it in a dozen different forms, including pies, sausage, chop suey, etc. You’d think there’d be something comparable up here but the only operations I’ve seen mostly just sell a much smaller selection to the local co-ops.
I’ve also always liked corn and flour tortillas, having stacked some time in east Texas many moons ago. Which is where I also picked up a liking for grits, and wifey has got me a grits cookbook along with several other southern cuisine books over the years.
WRT the libturd hysteria over the Comey firing, Concerned American over at the WRS site and others point out that Larry Klinton did the same thing to William Sessions back in 1993.
But like others have pointed out, why should we care that much about that the Entitled Club members are doing to each other down in Mordor. It’d be more interesting if this stuff was done like it was in Tudor England or imperial Rome.
“NB I find it funny that the ingredients for the tortilla mix I used don’t list beef FAT, or LARD, but instead ‘beef tallow.’ I guess ‘tallow’ doesn’t have a negative connotation yet.”
Nothing to do with connotation. “Lard” is specifically pig fat, rendered or unrendered. Tallow is either beef or sheep fat, rendered.
“I suppose you could, and if I was making them every day I might. I just rolled them out with a regular rolling pin.”
For $25, I think I’ll go ahead and get one. Normally, Barbara and I cook only for the two of us, plus whatever Colin can beg. In a serious emergency, we’d be cooking for at least four people, and possibly (hopefully) a lot more than that. That’s why I have a lot of large cookware stowed away: large pots (6 or 8 gallon), big mixing bowls, extra large griddles, plenty of flatware, plates, etc. etc.
Barbara’s sister loves to cook and has in the past run commercial kitchens for nursing homes, etc., so she’s used to cooking for 200 people. She even has a recipe book whose recipes commonly call for ingredient like “three #10 cans” of such and such.
Huh, learn something new every day. I’ve always used lard to mean beef or pig fat. We had a bucket for it on the counter when I was growing up and any fat went in.
Confusing the issue further is that flour tortillas are traditionally made with lard. Many a fan has extolled the virtue of restaurant tortillas vs store bought because they had the missing fat in them. The mix I’m using is def beef tallow though. Tasted good. That’s what matters to me.
n
Of course now that lard and suet are becoming trendy you just have to buy the best, organic, grass-fed, all natural, gluten-free and at ten times the price.
Mmmmm, suet pudding……
n
Hanford and INEL in Idaho have huge masses of radioactive material of various hazard levels. There is a “pit” at one of them that has, in addition to a bunch of liquid waste, a complete ambulance in it. They had an accident that contaminated a worker. The ambulance was contaminated and they just pushed the ambulance into the pit and sealed it in. Then other waste was added. Every once in a while they have to burp the pits and release some low level radioactive gas.
Cleanup of all that was estimated at billions of dollars back in the 90s, and could be tens of billions. It may well take decades once they start doing in.
Something like this, maybe?
That looks like overkill. I’ve seen Aluminum ones for much less that might be easier to clean. https://www.amazon.com/Norpro-6-Inch-Tortilla-Press-Aluminum/dp/B00004UE8E/ref=sr_1_2?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1494439777&sr=1-2&keywords=tortilla+press
You do want a good griddle or pan to cook them on.
Thanks, but that one is only 6″ rather than 8″ (56.25% the surface area) and has only 3.6 stars on Amazon versus 4.4. It’s also made in China versus Columbia. I’m not sure how much, if any, better Columbia is than China, but I suspect it is better.
We eat a lot of tortillas. We do have a press, but you can buy then so inexpensively that we only make them a couple of times a year, for fun.
Speaking of (corn) tortillas, we had enchiladas tonight. Yum. I ate too much, so it must be time to pour myself a nice dram and find a quiet spot to digest…
Yep, made them this time to try the mix, the new griddle, and for fun. Usually have a big costco bag in the fridge. They last for a LONG time in the fridge in a bag. DO NOT like the corn ones. Yuck.
Kids have decided they want “Taco Tuesday” every week, so I’m using more seasoning mix, tortilla, canned salsa, and ground meat than I had normally budgeted in storage. I’m rebuilding stocks in those things 🙂
n
I like to make my own tuna and other fish tacos. Nice change from ground beef, ground pork, ground poultry.
Still pahtly sunny; got my ID and proof of FUSA citizenship to the town hall so they can pay me $20 a pop for the Planning Commission meetings; I think I mentioned last night that I’m picking up a chit-load of intel on various items of interest in the town.
Found out last night that we’ve had an average of 1.25% growth annually for the past forty years and that there is a shortage of lower income housing for lower middle class and working class. We are looking at setting an agenda for public-invited discussions of that soon. The town administrator seems very friendly to me and is a literal treasure trove of detailed information for many years here. I also collect intel from the neighbors and their kids, and peeps I run into at the post office just around the corner. I’ll expand on this with regular monthly gun club, Legion post, and parish mass attendance and meetings.
Maybe I can’t hump an M60 and ammo very far anymore but I can sure collect intel and map stuff out and make friends and influence people. Which is preferable to isolating in the house and being the Very Lone Ranger.
And all this talk about taco presses and tacos; I’ll make up a batch of ground beef chili today and use it in tacos, omelet fillings, and enchiladas which will probably last me the rest of the week.
Wifey is due back late Saturday night from TN and will stay at her mom’s then and I’ll pick her up the next day, Mothers Day Sunday. Another infamous Hallmark holiday.
“Although Jarvis was successful in founding Mother’s Day, she became resentful of the commercialization of the holiday. By the early 1920s, Hallmark Cards and other companies had started selling Mother’s Day cards. Jarvis believed that the companies had misinterpreted and exploited the idea of Mother’s Day, and that the emphasis of the holiday was on sentiment, not profit. As a result, she organized boycotts of Mother’s Day, and threatened to issue lawsuits against the companies involved.[11] Jarvis argued that people should appreciate and honor their mothers through handwritten letters expressing their love and gratitude, instead of buying gifts and pre-made cards.[10] Jarvis protested at a candy makers’ convention in Philadelphia in 1923, and at a meeting of American War Mothers in 1925. By this time, carnations had become associated with Mother’s Day, and the selling of carnations by the American War Mothers to raise money angered Jarvis, who was arrested for disturbing the peace.[10][11]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother%27s_Day
I’ve never eaten a tortilla outside a restaurant. Do I need to buy a tortilla press?
We used a press once, but the device was such a pain that we just flatten tortillas by hand.
The Chevy’s cookbook and Rick Bayless “Mexican Everyday” were where my wife started when she began experimenting with cooking Mexican at home.
The irony of Chevy’s cookbook is that the chain has undergone so much cost cutting that they can’t afford to produce food like that anymore.
WRT Mother’s Day, is it OK for GrandpaSlim to take his daughter and SIL out to lunch with their two children?
All this talk of tortillas makes me want to make some. So I shall. Recipes for corn & wheat varieties are plentiful, so I’ve got plenty to work with. Kind of like biscuits – I’ll work with different recipes and experiment until I find the combo of ingredients and processing that works right for me.
wrt aluminum vs. cast iron, I’ll go for cast iron every time. Aluminum is okay for the bottom of stainless steel pans (enclosed, for heat transfer), but I avoid cooking with it at all costs. A girl I used to date told me of a correlation between Aluminum in the brain and Alzheimer’s. What little followup I did did not refute the correlation, so I avoid dietary aluminum as much as possible. Why take the chance when the alternatives are plentiful and cheap?
“…is it OK for GrandpaSlim to take his daughter and SIL out to lunch with their two children?”
Grandpa OFD thinks it would be a swell idea.
If we have any money, I’ll take Grandma OFD out to lunch that day—oh wait—nope. Means crowds of derps doing the same thing. I’ll grill some stuff up here instead.
Avoid crowds. Avoid cities. Avoid “events.”
So I skipped the city’s Maple Festival stuff this past weekend accordingly.
Which reminds me: the Spillover Effect. Watch yer six. We had a lovely young woman get into a nasty domestic with her live-in bf over in the city this past Saturday. They were evidently arguing over his cell phone and she nailed him with a lamp and then a breast pump. As he was exiting the premises, she stabbed him in the chest, back and shoulder with a knife and he passed out and collapsed outside the door. When he came to, bleeding, she’d locked the door and left him there. So he phoned his brother and together they stumbled into the nearby Food City market where wife and I go all the time. They drove to the PD after cashiers apparently stopped the bleeding, and the PD took it from there and arrested the lovely young woman with several serious charges.
I relate this little anecdote just to point out that an incident like this can take place somewhere else out of sight and out of mind, initially, and then spill over into a public space. The wacky gf could have continued the assaults and come on down to the store with the knife or a gun or whatever. Others might have gotten involved, etc. And you just went there to pick up the French toast ingredients.
And the nearby Roman Catholic church parking lot saw a shooting several months ago; I drove by just after it and the police had the whole area blocked off with tape and cruisers.
Exciting times in the big “city.” With a pop of about 6k. Town is also about 6k. And our little village here is maybe a couple of hundred, tops.
Wal-Mart has “Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli In Tomato & Meat Sauce 15 Oz” for 98¢ or a pack of 4 cans for about $3.50. They just dropped the price to $3 for a 4 pack. The shelf at the local store was polished clean. I bought 6 packages on-line. Extra bonus is they also had Keystone chicken and turkey in stock. Finally! Ok, 3 cans each.
Free shipping with delivery on Saturday or Pick-up at the store (20 miles each way) on Monday. Assuming they would not lose half of my order at the store, again, FedEx on Saturday wins.
I tried a can of Boyardee’s Spag and Meatballs the other night and recalled why I haven’t eaten the stuff in almost 30 years. Mushy pasta (to be expected) and strange tasting and textured meatballs. I did like the sauce. Burped it all night and the flavor did not improve.
I picked up a couple of cans of the Chicken Alfredo. Someone here said it was pretty good. I’d never heard of it, so…
I like the Suzy B Chicken a la King cans for a nice change of pace. Traditionally served over a slice of white bread..
I’m glad I’ve got you all thinking about flat breads! Next is pita. Naan takes too long from the recipes I’ve looked at. Poor people in adverse conditions the world over eat flat breads cooked quickly on a griddle (or hot stone.) Given that those are the conditions I expect after a large disaster or post SHTF, I figure there must be something to it….
n
HEB has a house brand of flour tortilla called “Tortillas Aguilar” that are good. Thin, unlike the others they sell that taste to me like white bread squished flat.
I have to gut up and buy a Sue B whole canned chicken. Just for the whole 9th grade High School Biology class with pickled frogs icky thing.
We dissected fetal pigs in the 7th grade or 8th grade.
Not my favorite class….
n
Frogs were earlier, and cow eyes were in there somewhere too.
I’m not sorry we didn’t get to dissect much. I probably missed something, but I can’t for the life of me think of what it is. I never really liked biology. Never stopped me from playing butcher.
Kids have decided they want “Taco Tuesday” every week, so I’m using more seasoning mix, tortilla, canned salsa, and ground meat than I had normally budgeted in storage
If you use the recipe that’s on the big containers of taco seasoning from Costco, here’s a tip. I usually do 2 or 3 lbs of ground beef at once and double the recipe with one change. I replace some of the water with a can of tomato sauce. Makes the taco meat much more savory.
wrt aluminum vs. cast iron, I’ll go for cast iron every time.
In the case of the tortilla press, you aren’t cooking on it. As for Al and Alzheimer’s, from the Alzheimer’s assn.
I had to check on youtube to see what a tortilla press does. It seems that many use a plastic wrap so the content won’t stick to it; so iron or aluminum may not matter after all.
I found this interesting homemade tortilla press, made from wood:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DmCEhZez1k
Well we’re still alive out here in the Tri-Cities. What you folks may be reading/hearing in the “news” is very watered down and politically correct. Thank goodness tRump fired Comey so the news hounds and politicians had something more important to do. Once again our problems out here will fall into obscurity.
There was a small radiation release (read dirt and dust plume) but they took care of that by dumping on more dirt and then filling the hole with dirt. Now to figure out how to keep the rest of the “short” tunnel from collapsing and what to do about the other much longer tunnel. The solution at Hanford from the beginning has been “out of sight out of mind”, therefore tunnels and pits and lots of dirt and very poor documentation. Munyana is always the word of the day.
Got some phone calls for some of my old co-workers reminding how we had warned of the problems with the “tunnels” back in the early 80s and also how poorly things were documented, or more properly, “lost”.
Oh well, back to the usual circle jerk.
Lastest news:
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article149695314.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter
and
http://www.hanford.gov/c.cfm/eoc/?page=290
and
https://www.facebook.com/HanfordSite/
Rats.
Fridge is a freezer on the bottom.
I bought the fridge 9/01 so I suppose it’s due to break. It’s been growing a patch of frost on the back wall of the freezer for the last few weeks. But the weather is nice, the house is open, and hey, humidity.
Today, the fridge is er, not cold. About 60F. Freezer is making ice. Ok, so it’s not the blower. I have air blowing in the freezer and just a whisper in the fridge. I’ve cranked the defrost timer around to defrost. I can hear it ticking. I’ll give it another hour and if the compressor starts again I’m gonna call the timer good and shop for a defrost heater.
It’s a Sears 596.71852100. Google is not very useful today.
Fridge is a freezer on the bottom.
Air passages are blocked with ice. Probably the defrost coils that provide heat to remove the ice during the defrost cycle. May also be the defrost timer. You can get to the coils from the inside and the timer should be in there somewhere. But, I would just replace the entire thing. New fridges are more energy efficient (smaller compressor that runs almost constantly), LED lighting, and better insulation.
There’s a reasonable health reason for buying tallow from grass-fed cows: it’s much higher in Omega-3s than the tallow from corn-fed cows, which is almost entirely Omega-6. Whether that realistically matters for human adults was not settled, last I knew, and whether you care is up to you. Also, the price for the organic, grass-fed stuff is nowhere near 10x the cheap stuff, not if you buy it in 5-gallon pails.
The reason for eating lard rather than tallow is that pigs store vitamins A and C in their fat, and apparently the vitamins survive the rendering process. Whether the vitamins survive cooking with the lard and whether they’re in a form usable by humans had not been studied, last I looked into it. (Or at least, searching scholar.google.com didn’t find me anything.)
Ah y’all know I was being a smartass. While all you say about grass fed being better is true and the price as well, there is the overboard shit that the in-crowd must have…
https://thrivemarket.com/fatworks-foods-pure-lard?utm_source=google&utm_medium=pla&utm_campaign=Fatworks%20Foods&utm_content=856166004051&ccode=FSPLA&ccode_force=1&gclid=CN_cmKTE5tMCFc-XfgodzpUFRw
I’m just fine with bacon fat and corn oil.(well olive too)
“Got some phone calls for some of my old co-workers reminding how we had warned of the problems with the “tunnels” back in the early 80s and also how poorly things were documented, or more properly, “lost”.”
Y’all could be lucky that y’all didn’t get buried with the dirt in one of those tunnels. No one likes smartypants bearers of bad nooz, compadre. You and I both know that full well by now. I’m old enough to have a long memory and I recall over thirty years ago hearing and reading about Hanford’s potential problems, but since then, the media and rulers have gotten a lot slicker about how they disseminate information to us plebs and derps out here.
WRT to lard and animal fat and suchlike, I just finished a book/memoir of a German general who ran their operations in east Africa during the Great War. They had a very tough row to hoe, and were very glad to get hold of hippo and elephant fat from time to time.
Other than that, OFD likes his bacon nice and crisp.
“Air passages are blocked with ice.”
Yes.
My googling says the problem is the defrost heater. The defrost timer is behind the grill… and I can turn the knob and make the fridge cycle. I can hear the timer ticking…
Oh, and the frost on the back wall of the freezer seems to be a solid clue.
Ok, so, $38.47 for the part from eBay. Supposed to be here Saturday or Monday.
If this isn’t the fix, maybe the defrost thermostat. And maybe the timer.
At $40 bucks a part, well, beats the hell outta replacing an $844.34 refrigerator.
I totally get the point about replacing it. Tho LED lights are just fluff. My old beerator was bought in ’84. I’ve replace the bulb once. Er, had to replace the defrost timer too. Which is why I have the current fridge in the house.
Hey! Listen to me make that buffalo nickle scream. 🙂
Oh, and the frost on the back wall of the freezer seems to be a solid clue.
Yep, same symptoms I had in one of my old refrigerators. Mine had two defrost elements, an upper and a lower. The lower element had failed. It was a pain to get to it as you had to remove the entire back plate of the freezer. Not that it was difficult, you now had to work in a fairly narrow space (side by side unit). Fix lasted a couple of years until another problem surfaced in that one of the door hinges was failing along with magnetic door seals that were started to crack.
Seemed like a good time to replace. That unit is now 15 years old and is starting to show problems with door seals. Wife and I are looking at new units but she has not found anything she likes.
It was explained to me that the new units are more efficient but take longer to cool down. Apparently the compressor motor has been shrunk in size and power to consume less power. Compressor runs almost all the time and that is supposed to be more efficient. I fail to see much difference as you have to move the same amount of heat whether you do the removal in two hours or two days.
New boxes also have complicated door mechanisms that concern me. Lots of electronics that control everything from the ice dispenser to the amount of water to dispense. Touch panel. Wonder what that puppy costs to replace.
Son picked a $3K box for about $1.8K as it had a scratch on the side. The side that is covered by the cabinet so it was a very good deal. I like the LED lights as the illumination is much more even around the box. Shelves seem to have benefited from more clever designs.
I’m a big fan of repairing, esp if you can do it yourself. Youtube and the internet have revolutionized appliance repair. There are dozens of online stores selling parts, and thousands of folks putting up repair videos.
n
“Other than that, OFD likes his bacon nice and crisp.”
Some people around here sure have some weird ideas.
I’d like to dump our fridge and get a new one at some point but it’s not a priority right now, and in the cold months, we often just have stuff out on the back porch anyway. But I’m also leery of appliances and other tools that rely more and more on tons of electronic circuitry.
Agree w/Mr. Nick, though; I took our dryer apart recently and found the drum belt had snapped, which was why it was not spinning. I could replace it and put it back together, but we have another problem, Houston, in that the connecting hoses and all that stuff in back of it going into the wall has dried out and disintegrated and has been a hitherto unknown fire hazard. So we’ll replace both units, get the old ones hauled away, and everything hooked up properly. Meanwhile we take our wet laundry to the one laundromat over in the “city” and get to interact (minimally) with the denizens to be found thereabouts, where there have been assaults, stabbings and one shooting, plus dope deals.
Just had the third or fourth straight two-hour phone call with Mrs. OFD and long story short, she’s being punished by pushing back on organizational fuckups and asking basic, straight questions about logistics. So we are figuring that from now on she has to work exclusively by the book (work to rule, except there are no rules, other than what they make up as they go along), do what she’s told and STFU. And we are also told we have to wait the full 30 days before she can start inquiring where her fucking pay check is. We can also figure they’ll try to fire her at the first chance they get, with no notice, and any reason or no reason at all.
She’s been with them for eight years and help to build the program from the beginning and has brought in millions for the top matriarchy in Mordor and also trained hundreds and hundreds of instructors who have then gone out and trained thousands more, across the country. They just told her she’s nothing more than a “hired gun,” in their “pool” of instructors and fuck you very much.
She’s pretty upset, angry and fearful, but appreciated being able to vent with me and talk about it; she’s done absolutely nothing wrong and everything right and gone above and beyond working for those assholes for eight years.
I told her we can manage here if the job goes away, and quite frankly, I can’t wait until she’s done with those people; she’s getting burnt out and wants to be home. We’d take a huge cut, of course, but we’ll get ‘er done one way or another. She was hoping to put in another four years or so, just like I was with IT, but we’re getting cut loose a lot sooner than we were ready to be cut loose nowadays.
The wife just found out that one of her cousins who is a 55 year nuclear engineer got herself rushed over to Hanford to help out with the mess. She works at a nuclear power plant in upper state New York.
Just had the third or fourth straight two-hour phone call with Mrs. OFD and long story short, she’s being punished by pushing back on organizational fuckups and asking basic, straight questions about logistics.
Sorry to hear that, Mr. OFD. When MrsAtoz started her biz, she never looked back. I wish Mrs. OFD the best.
Thanks, MrAtoz. Wife has been able to fairly quickly find other consulting and contracting gigs in her field before, but we’re not sure how that might work nowadays, and her being 62.
I feel we can get by OK w/o that job and there is certainly enough here to keep us busy and she can ramp up her jewelry and art interests while I do the same with firearms and other stuff. It will suck but it beats being below the grass, amirite?
We flew from Houston to Salt Lake City yesterday on a Bomardier 900. Nice plane. I had leg room in the cheap seats with my 34 inch inseam legs.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series
We flew from SLC to Helena, MT on a Bomardier 200. Please, never again. My son and I sat next to each other in a pair of seats. The seats were medium, we are both x large guys. Tight shoulder space to say the least.
“The seats were medium, we are both x large guys. Tight shoulder space to say the least.”
Haha, bummah, dude! They’d have to put our son and me in the cargo hold!
Hah, I got to fly from the VI to San Juan on the smallest plane I’ve ever flown on. One of the passengers sat in the right hand seat. The rest of us sat there looking at the back of the pilot’s head. Cessna 200? Low wing, eight seats. Never got above 150mph and 2000ft.
n
“What’s the difference between a radical muslim and a moderate muslim? The radical muslim wants to kill you; the moderate muslim wants the radical muslim to kill you.”
From
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/160447583616/wheres-my-immigration-prediction-model
The radical musloids want to either enslave us or kill us. That has been their motivation and their main objective since their beginning in some desolate bat cave in the Saudi desert 1,300 years ago. The “moderate” musloids either silently cheer on this program or are indifferent to it, but either way, they are mostly silent.
Adams still retails that ten percent figure for LGBTXYZ in this country and the LGBTXYZ academic “community” itself has long since done the study and stated it’s closer to 1.5-3%.
What’s the tipping point? Less than one percent is the musloid immigration tipping point, Scott. How you like them apples? Does that make me a stupid and repugnant racist? So be it, and tough shit. We’ve seen enough by now to know that we don’t let venomous reptiles into our sleeping bags.
Sorry to hear about your wife’s problems OFD. I look forward to the day she tells them (nicely) to FROAD and either works her jewelry business or gets another consulting job. I wouldn’t expect her to easily get a full time “permanent” position with benefits but shrly other companies are in that line of work and would employ her casually.
Thanks much, Mr. Greg. Appreciated.
Pax vobiscum
Mother’s day – my mother made me completely allergic to it. I lived a long way from home, so I would send her flowers. Apparently this wasn’t “heartfelt” enough, so she told me that if I couldn’t do something more imaginative than send flowers, I should just stop. Dunno what else I was supposed to do from 1000s of miles away…
So I stopped, just like she said. Big, BIG mistake. That wasn’t what she meant.
Why do women think that you can magically read their mind? We men are simple creatures, so please just say what you mean! My mother was basically a nice person, but she did do this far too much: Saying “Oh, don’t bother…” while really meaning “Read my mind and do what I really want”.
Anyhow, since then I just studiously ignore the holiday. My wife isn’t my mother; if the kids want to do anything, that’s on them…
– – – – –
@OFD: Sorry to hear about Ms. OFD’s problems with her employer. It’s frustrating when you realize that the people you work with are either incompetent, or perhaps out to screw you. There’s not a lot you can do. If you can bear it, you just keep you head down; otherwise, you tell them to take a flying leap.
Sounds like Ms. OFD is doing the former. Hopefully, her employers will figure just to make use of her services for another 3 years, and let her turning 65 be the natural parting point…
Mother’s day – my mother made me completely allergic to it.
People who think up these holidays should be exiled to Rangoon.
I saw an interesting way to pressing out tortilla’s on America’s Test Kitchen last night. Coincidence?
They cut a large ziploc bag down the sides, put the ball between the two pieces of plastic, and pressed out with a glass pie plate. I already have the pie plate. Didn’t have time to try it this morning, but will. I’m getting tired of biscuits & cornbread.
The danger of incrementalism…
If you were a venesualan, at what point during this catastrophe did you say “That’s it, I’m cashing out and buying gold (or food, or tampons, or soap)?
http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2017/05/10/20170510_poop2.jpg
At the end of the first year, when the value dropped to 1/4th? Or at the end of the next year when it halved again? or 6 months later when it halved again? It’s been too late for a year now.
I’ll bet that almost everyone (even those that had the means) just rode it down.
All your life savings gone. It didn’t even take a bank run or collapse, just inflation. Your business (life’s work) destroyed. Your home and property (legacy for kids) worthless (no buyers.)
But, “You can’t eat gold” they say…..
It could never happen here they say, because we don’t have expanding socialist programs to buy support from voting blocks. We don’t borrow money to pay for the bribes to the populous… we don’t heavily regulate businesses… We haven’t let government take over 30% of the economy…
OH, we have?? Shit.
n
Guys simply MUST learn to read wimminz minds…
A friend’s marriage was in trouble and he didn’t know it. When the wife pulled the pin she said “I’ve been giving you hints for ages.” My friend could see the hints, in retrospect, but was blissfully unaware as they were being dropped.
Sorry to hear about Mrs. OFD. I think you’re taking the right attitude and approach.
I decided 20 years ago that being an employee of anyone was a sucker bet. I wanted an income stream that depended on no one but me and that was not subject to the vagaries of the local economy. Thus what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years, initially consulting, then writing books, now doing science kits.
It sounds to me as if both of you have the necessary skills, motivation, and ideas to become independent of any employer’s whims.
Off to the VA today to be evaluated to have my disability increased. Odd part is the evaluation is not at the VA clinic but at some other building. Don’t know if they are VA docs or private practice under contract with the VA.
My goal is to get to 50% as at that point my prescriptions would have no deductible which is currently at $25 per prescription for a 3 month supply.
Thanks to all for the kind thoughts regarding the ongoing saga with Mrs. OFD and her nasty “employers” in Mordor. We both earnestly believe that the atmosphere down there is somehow toxic and evil and renders people in organizations like that not only useless, but vindictive and treacherous. What is truly unfortunate is that she was with them from their very small beginning and worked with them to get it up and running and to the point where it is today, and they’ve now told her that she’s basically just another cog in their machine that can easily be replaced and probably will be soon.
We’ll both get through this and for me it will be a healthy break from those bastards and we can develop something else at home. I’m certainly willing to work the logistics, financial and tax aspect like MrAtoz does while she hammers out something else WRT consulting and contracting with her particular expertise and skillz. Otherwise, we’ll just do whatever we have to right here in this little lakeside village.
“Off to the VA today to be evaluated to have my disability increased.”
Good luck, Mr. Ray. Tell them you have PTSD from any previous dealings with the VA. Weep a little. Otherwise, yeah; best wishes and let us know how you make out and how they dealt with you. It may well be somebody technically outside the VA system via a private contract, but I’ve found for this stuff that they typically use VA medical personnel. My chit was different in that it was focused on my mental condition, of course. (tenuous, scary, “chronic and severe,” etc., lol.) The other parts involved TBI and tinnitus, for which they generously gave me 10% and told me that was the max I could get for that unless I was gibbering in a wheelchair in a vegetative state.
I imagine most of us here are well acquainted with the old adage that “no good deed goes unpunished” and that the guy that contributed the least usually gets the most credit.
@OFD and Mrs. OFD get the Gold Medal. You guys are experienced with looking at that pile of shit and saying “there must be a pony in there somewhere”.
I’m not going to bore y’all with my service related problems. Since my medical records were “lost in a fire” as well as my service records, my certified copies of my DD214 get me very little.
And we just found out that because my Wife’s former employer is now going into bankruptcy we have about zero chance of recovering over $20,000.00 of deferred comp. 401K, and 401K match and contributions from her last 3-months of work (Oct, Nov, Dec, 2016) that were never sent to Fidelity and then further obfuscated when they moved all the accounts to Prudential. No matter that what they did is highly illegal, three expert law firms we have interviewed with are not encouraging.
Were your records lost in that St. Louis fire? I’d get with your state’s vets service office and see if there’s some way that any relevant records can be recovered. We’ve found up here that a chit-load of DD-214’s are incorrect or missing information but they CAN be corrected; it just takes dealing with the monster bureaucracy. And if you were someplace “unofficial” in terms of DOD recognition, you can forget getting anything for that, as my old paratrooper comrade and I have found out; he was in Laos back in the late 1950s and I was in both Laos and Cambodia. Except we weren’t, according to the Army and the Air Force. See how that works?
Sorry to hear that, Mr. DadCooks; that sucks, and is probably a criminal enterprise. I told my wife last night that what her employers have been doing now borders on a criminal enterprise, but that seems to be a going concern, a true specialty, of the folks in Mordor. Rest assured the perps in both cases are very likely to escape scot-free and as almost always, only the little people get hurt.
Remember Who said the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Nice if we could get that to work here and now in the earth/physical plane, amirite?
Sorry to hear that DC, was it our wife who worked at a hospital who employed a MBA to make it more efficient?