Cool and sunny. [54F!!!]
Yesterday was another nice day. Cool and sunny with a nice breeze.
I got work done organizing and cleaning in the garage. I went through several duffel bags and bins of medical supplies, mostly wound care stuff, and organized it into bins. I then could stack the bins were I used to have some folding chairs stored. Much better to have the chairs outside and the supplies stored. I’m about an hour or two away from having that area organized.
I also did a minor repair on my garage door. It wasn’t closing properly, and I finally figured out and fixed the problem.
I got the last two existing ‘window boxes’ planted with cilantro and lettuce. We’ll see if it grows. Nothing else has germinated yet. I’m thinking I might share pics of my raised beds. Or maybe the food storage areas. Thinking about it anyway.
The week flew by. The month too. I’m getting used to the new normal, and the kids are too. My wife is still a bit wistful for getting out of the house. The funny thing is, she never goes out normally anyway.
Dinner was leftovers. Now is not the time to be wasting food. I’ve made a note to myself, cook about half as many potatoes as I think I should…
Keep the faith,
Stay in, stay safe.
nick
From yesterday:
There was a local grocery store that was a minute walk from my house. In the early to mid 80’s, I remember buying Bazooka gum with the leftover change after getting candy or a Mountain Dew (ice cold, in the big 16oz bottles.) It was always hard and kind of bland. I bought a lot of gum from that store, but the preferred choice was usually Super Bubble gum, with grape being the preferred choice.
In high school we chewed BubbleYum, or Bubbleicious grape flavor to cover the smell of alcohol when we were drinking…
I don’t know what it is with kids and the artificial grape. I can’t stand the smell anymore. Kids love it.
n
Bazooka BG was still going strong in the 90’s. During my penance tour at the Pentagon, I would have a block almost daily. They made a sugar free version I liked. My email chyron would be Bazooka Joe’s witticism of the day.
Jenny, that was a good link you posted yesterday with some details about purchasing half or a quarter of beef, and costs involved. A lot of folks may still think they will save money buying in bulk, but we don’t any more – the real draw is healthier meat which translates to healthier “us”. The actual cost ends up being more – considerably more – than we would pay if we shop carefully at loss leader sales, not considering the grade. But it is from HERE, grown here, processed here, by people we can meet and have coffee with or go to church with or who will patronize our businesses.
pcb_duffer and Harold Combs made good points too. You can buy “on the hoof” from locals, and can ask the processor what to expect, and can tell them what you prefer. A lot of people we know hunt, and have the entire deer turned into ground or breakfast sausage. Like so many things in our attempt to return to local resources, the more we talk to people and the more people we talk to, the more we learn and the better it gets.
We’d like to see it if you feel comfortable sharing. I get good ideas from other people’s layouts and methods. I took some video of the current state of my garden. Right now it looks pretty discouraging, but over time, it will be worthwhile and beautiful. I can link to it if it is ok. Planting a garden is a lot like any landscaping work. It looks pitiful and empty at the beginning, it’s only later, as things mature and come to their own, that it comes together and makes sense.
I’m SMH at the articles popping up on “the new normal” the elites are saying we need to accept. We all know here the piles of moola the elites sit on will be worthless in the future they envision. The peons they employ aren’t going to take worthless paper. Physical goods and skills will be the new currency in their future. I’m more aligned with the protesters in Michigan. “Tyrants get the rope!” I think Kalifornia protests will explode in the near future. Nobody wants “the new normal.” This isn’t a Zombie Barackalypse. Goobermint needs to come out from under bed and get to work instead of extending lockdown another two weeks, then another, or we’ll all die. We all don’t have two Sub Zeros stuffed with ice cream. Also, what a waste. Stretch should immediately stuff her fridges with real food.
@Pecancorner,
links are always ok, with a NSFW warning if appropriate, and some indication of the content in any case if the URL isn’t descriptive. You can have 4 or possibly 5 in the same comment without being sent to moderation. If you do a long comment, with lots of supporting links, and it gets sent to moderation, just make a simple comment to either RickH or me, and we’ll free it from comment jail.
Think carefully before sharing any personally identifiable information (OPSEC) is you have those concerns of course.
If I share mine it will be more of a cautionary tale than a brag, unless my thumbs suddenly green up…..
n
Got my $2400 deposit last week. Just in time to pay the 2nd installment of my property tax (not that I didn’t have that set aside). Just shy of enough to cover it. So from the gov to pay the gov.
Made a second attempt to contact Amz about the unathorized $100 donation to the UNfund. This time I received a response; kind of ass-half promise to return it. Got new debit card from bank but of course have to address any auto pay issues.
Mid 80s today. Maybe I should go to the beech – HA!
Living in NW Huntington Beach, I’ll drive to downtown along Pacific Coast Highway to check out the anti-Screwsom demonstration.
Here’s the quote I got from my local rancher.
I had ordered 1/2 a cow and my wife specified the cuts. Aside from roast and a few steaks everything else, including organs, will be ground up. I have an empty chest freezer in the garage and 1/4 empty freezer in the pantry. Any overflow will go in MILs chest freezer. Yummy.
Update: My wife tells me we can’t get any beef at the grocery for $3.50 a pound so we are saving money too. Yay us.
Remember to strip out the location info before posting. I’m sure you know that already.
Re the Brave discussion yesterday? Vivaldi v3 has anti-tracker and ad-blocker features along with some other nice tricks. Brave has the built-in Tor tab feature.
Ditto the silence on the origin of defective face masks and contaminated Chinese Flu test kits.
Barring contradictory information, I’ll assume every defective product comes from the PRC.
I’ve been helping my 10yo with her math homework and since discovering that she was TAUGHT to count on her fingers, and that she still isn’t solid on single digit addition and subtraction*, I’ve been working with her on just that. I got a deck of playing cards and I deal her 10. We then quickly pull out all the 10’s, all the sets of 2 that make 10, and if it’s a cr@p hand, we start looking for sets of 3 that make 10 or usually 20. Then we add the whole hand, using the groups of 10 for the bulk of it. She’s getting better and quicker, and I don’t have to constantly make up problems.
Since she’s also very shaky on the multiplication tables we’ve started doing similar with the cards, only I pulled out all the faces and only deal 2. If the 2 make a small number, I’ll deal a third, and try to multiply that.
They were taught early to group and rearrange numbers to make the math easier, but then they never did enough practice to make it second nature. I think of it as ‘cheating’ or use it for estimating or mental math, but it turns out human adults do it for lots of things, especially counting money and cards.
Anyway, today was social studies, the period before the civil war, and some of the political landscape prior to the war. Several articles scanned or xerox’d out of some other ‘school approved’ source which she was supposed to read and then do a crossword puzzle using some of the vocab. No thoughtful questions about the material though. And did you know? The south used ‘enslaved persons’ to ‘run’ their plantations? Huh. I thought they used ‘slaves’ to ‘work’ on their plantations. Other than that bit of newspeak, the coverage was surprisingly evenhanded, mentioning states’ rights, correctly identifying the political parties of the players, the difference between the ag south and industrial north, tariffs, and balance of power in Congress. It was however VERY brief, and the facts were simply stated. You could read it all, understand the words and still not UNDERSTAND why the nation erupted in violence.
BTW, the parallels between today’s political landscape and the pre-Civil war situation are astounding when laid out simply and plainly.
n
*she’s in the gifted and talented program, and has been getting good grades in math, so there is clearly something broken in the school.
Ditto the silence on the origin of defective face masks and contaminated Chinese Flu test kits. Barring contradictory information, I’ll assume every defective product comes from the PRC.
The local Austin task force going into nursing homes was profiled on the local news last night. They had a crazy elaborate test to check for defective N95 masks. If I find a copy of the clip, I’ll post the link.
Since she’s also very shaky on the multiplication tables we’ve started doing similar with the cards, only I pulled out all the faces and only deal 2. If the 2 make a small number, I’ll deal a third, and try to multiply that.
If you can find a TI Little Professor cheap on EBay, that’s how my generation learned the multiplication tables. Every kid got one that Christmas (1976).
The 70s era models with the mechanical buttons should fire right up with a 9V battery.
I’ll never regret sending the kids to a private Baptist school through sixth grade. Phonics and rote learning of maths tables standard. No fracking using sticks to add/subtract through grade school. So what if they had *Bible* study for an hour on Wed. It’s good to learn what the *other* side believes.
My goodness, I had forgotten about those. I had one.
Other than that bit of newspeak, the coverage was surprisingly evenhanded, mentioning states’ rights, correctly identifying the political parties of the players, the difference between the ag south and industrial north, tariffs, and balance of power in Congress.
Not surprising in Texas that the coverage was even handed. The Dems haven’t occupied the Governor’s Mansion since Ma Richards.
When my son covered the same kinds of things in WA State, the slavery aspect was played up while states rights were not covered.
FL has been a mixed bag from what I understand from friends. The Dems have been out of the Governor’s Mansion since 1998, but a couple of RINOs with left-leaning education advisors were in there for a dozen years from 2007-2019. It largely depends on whether you live north or south of Gainesville for which direction your school system leans.
Nick, thank you. This is video of my garden, this week. After my neighbor’s tutelage on tomato growing last year, I had a bumper crop. So this is my first year using his method without his constant advice. We shall see!
One thing I learned from him is that hybrids are usually much more productive than heirlooms, and that different varieties do better in different local conditions. I like heirlooms, so am growing some this year from seed, but I won’t expect them to make the quantity of fruit the Celebrity hybrids will.
https://youtu.be/9iTfR3hzC3E
That’s an awesome deal on your beef. I bet that rancher always sells all he raises. Great find, congrats!
@Pecancorner, wow, that’s a garden.
I’ve just got the raised beds I started as a ‘training’ project. My pecan tree shades most of the backyard, leaving only a few areas that actually get enough light to be gardens. Even then, they get less light than I’d like.
I would LOVE to have that much space and get a ‘real’ garden in.
n
” No fracking using sticks ”
–no kidding. We got those when I moved into Junior High School in 74? 75?
I still call them “Cuisinart” sticks. F’ing metric to push that as well as being a poor way to teach math.
n
I’ll never regret sending the kids to a private Baptist school through sixth grade. Phonics and rote learning of maths tables standard. No fracking using sticks to add/subtract through grade school. So what if they had *Bible* study for an hour on Wed. It’s good to learn what the *other* side believes.
Did they show your kids the dramatization films about The Rapture, complete with beheadings that would be at home in a Cornetto Trilogy (“Shaun of the Dead”, “Hot Fuzz”, “The Worlds End”) flick?
That’s what they did to us in my Baptist elementary school. Believe it or not, the building is now a Delphi (Scientology) Academy.
Clearwater, FL.
When I was in elementary school (public school – northeast TN), an older lady would come to each class (once a month, maybe every other month?) and give the class a bible lesson. She used a felt board that was on an easel, and used felt figures to help tell the story. I used to stealthily read comic books while this was happening, but was otherwise unperturbed. Can you imagine that happening today?
I’m surprised it took this long….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/no-place-such-weapons-canada-trudeau-announces-ban-assault-style-rifles
n
Had to restart firefox. Drive was hammering away at 100%, mostly pagefile and my mozilla profile, memory was at 89% (of 16G) with hard faults at max.
Kill ffox, watch the graphs settle. Took a long time (minutes) before all the ffox crap quit writing to the disc and all the memory faults dropped to zero.
Started back up, loaded tabs one by one, and everything is still very low or zero. You just can’t let it run for weeks with open tabs.
I restart FireFox every day at work and weekly at home. FF leaks memory like a sieve even though they converted it from C++ to Rust in version 40 or so. Rust is supposedly memory leak free which is a big lie. Windows itself has huge memory leaks nowadays in the system resources and cannot figure them out until you shutdown a process. Shoot, I have to reboot the office PC weekly due to the system memory leaks in the files opened by Windows Defender on the backup hard drives attached to my pc. Monday morning, I usually have 13 to 15 GB of my 16 GB of ram eaten and have to reboot.
Woof. Nothing like that at all. No violence.
We are so lucky we have the US Constitution. For now, anyway. SARS-CoV-2 apparently allows the dumbf*cks we elected to do whatever they want. Luckily there are millions of the so called “assault weapons” out in the US wild. “Tyrants get the rope…and a firing squad.”
Dilbert: Alice borrows stapler
https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-05-01
I borrowed a pen from my accountant today to sign checks and purchase reqs with. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted the pen. She wasn’t really sure that she wanted the pen back.
We don’t wear masks in the office. But we try to stay away from each other. It is not hard with seven people in a 5,300 ft2 office building. One person has the 1,000 ft2 upstairs to himself and prefers it that way.
We are so lucky we have the US Constitution. For now, anyway. SARS-CoV-2 apparently allows the dumbf*cks we elected to do whatever they want. Luckily there are millions of the so called “assault weapons” out in the US wild. “Tyrants get the rope…and a firing squad.”
The way things are headed, they could open the camps this summer and take most of the population without firing a shot.
Inside the wire: Free Baby Yoda streaming … and pork chops!
Outside the wire: Dial Internet and “50 Ways To Cook Pinto Beans”.
Arlo and Janis: Landlords and defaulting tenants
https://www.gocomics.com/arloandjanis/2020/05/01
Yup, and that cigar is bad for Gus.
I have two commercial rental properties and the wife has three residential rental properties. Mine are paying their rent (due today !). All three of the wife’s are in arrears now. Sigh.
I had a residential rental property from 1990 to 2002 with several tenants over the years. I found that it was best to just go there for the last tenant to get the rent. 300 miles each way (south of Houston to north of Dallas). He could always come up with the rent in 10s, 20s, and a few 100s when I showed up.
Hagar The Horrible: life sucks for Helga
https://www.comicskingdom.com/hagar-the-horrible/2020-05-01
I have to draw the line at the goat on the table.
I’m surprised it took this long….
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/no-place-such-weapons-canada-trudeau-announces-ban-assault-style-rifles
That is the sign of a Dictator. If he can unilaterally take away guns then one wonders what else he will do.
That’s what they did to us in my Baptist elementary school. Believe it or not, the building is now a Delphi (Scientology) Academy.
That is not an improvement. My wife has been watching the Scientology exposure videos by Leah Remini (actress from “The King of Queens”). We cannot believe what they have been getting away with here in the USA.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Remini:_Scientology_and_the_Aftermath
We are so lucky we have the US Constitution. For now, anyway. SARS-CoV-2 apparently allows the dumbf*cks we elected to do whatever they want. Luckily there are millions of the so called “assault weapons” out in the US wild. “Tyrants get the rope…and a firing squad.”
The way things are headed, they could open the camps this summer and take most of the population without firing a shot.
Inside the wire: Free Baby Yoda streaming … and pork chops!
Outside the wire: Dial Internet and “50 Ways To Cook Pinto Beans”.
I am fairly sure that the FEMA camps would degenerate into savagery and trading of humans fairly quickly.
The protests in Michigan and California are very close to going violent. I would not want to be a state trooper in those situations. I would get the blue flu XXXXX XXX corona virus rather quickly.
Since she’s also very shaky on the multiplication tables we’ve started doing similar with the cards, only I pulled out all the faces and only deal 2. If the 2 make a small number, I’ll deal a third, and try to multiply that.
I can still remember doing the class chants in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grades. “1 + 1 = 2”, “1 + 2 = 3”, “1 + 3 = 4”. “1 x 1 = 1”, “1 x 2 = 2”, “1 x 3 = 3”.
I had the multiplication tables through 25 x 25 memorized in college. It was the only way that I could make it through the engineering tests in the allotted time. Not enough time to use a calculator. And show your work !
I had a residential rental property from 1990 to 2002 with several tenants over the years. I found that it was best to just go there for the last tenant to get the rent. 300 miles each way (south of Houston to north of Dallas). He could always come up with the rent in 10s, 20s, and a few 100s when I showed up.
Our last landlord here in Austin insisted on payment via either wire transfer or direct deposit from an account at his credit union. We always paid on time and honored the terms of the lease even though we found a permanent house about four months after arriving.
Right before we reached the point where it was better financially for us to break the lease than finish out the year, the landlord found a replacement tenant — suprise! — and we ended up eating only a couple of months’ rent while the property sat empty.
I had the multiplication tables through 25 x 25 memorized in college. It was the only way that I could make it through the engineering tests in the allotted time. Not enough time to use a calculator. And show your work !
The HP 28C hit the market in the Spring of my freshman year of college, featuring full symbolic differentiation, good symbolic integration, equation solvers, and matrices. The schools stopped trying to keep the calculators out of the classes after that. By the end of the 90s, however, during the “Carly” era at HP, calculators got short shrift (HP 49 — oh, the horror!) and the decline began to the point that no one has anything beyond a TI89-level calculator in exams anymore.
The schools don’t care, but the students don’t bother. Maybe the pendulum has swung back too far. I breezed through my grad school Graphics midterm in about 15 minutes using my HP50, with the full blessing of the professor, while the other students struggled with working out the matrices on paper, requiring the full 90 minutes.
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – Hypocrats”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-hypocrats/
“Democrats and Mainstream Media were sure and very vocal about Judge Kavanaugh’s guilt. Now they defend Joe Biden. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2019.”
If you are not aware, Joe Biden is being accused of sexual assault by a Senate staffer back in 1993.
https://www.npr.org/2020/04/29/847840765/new-information-emerges-around-biden-sexual-assault-allegation
The HP 28C hit the market in the Spring of my freshman year of college, featuring full symbolic differentiation, good symbolic integration, equation solvers, and matrices. The schools stopped trying to keep the calculators out of the classes after that. By the end of the 90s, however, during the “Carly” era at HP, calculators got short shrift (HP 49 — oh, the horror!) and the decline began to the point that no one has anything beyond a TI89-level calculator in exams anymore.
I started off college in 1978 with an HP 25. I then moved to a Radio Shack TRS-80 portable computer in 1980. I used to assign formulas in the 26 programmable spaces (A – Z) in Basic. I still own it but most of the pixels in the display are permanently activated now.
http://oldcomputers.net/trs80pc1.html
If you are not aware, Joe Biden is being accused of sexual assault by a Senate staffer back in 1993.
Taking my Camry out for a drive last night, I heard one of the hosts talking up the irony of Chris Dodd being tapped as the coordinator of Biden’s VP search just as Biden is facing the sexual assault allegations.
Dodd of the “Waitress Sandwich” incident along with Ted Kennedy at La Brasserie in the … 90s (?).
Again, my generation of *Dem* operatives cut their teeth on discrediting this bunch 30 years ago. I’d say Gary Hart is going to emerge from the woodwork next, but IIRC Hart is 90.
I have noticed some revisionist history around Gary Hart as of late. Since no one is around to counter Hart’s claims, he’s quietly peddling a story that he was set up by the Republicans and Lee Atwater, who was a friend of the owner of The Monkey Business. I wouldn’t be surprised if “60 Minutes” snuck Hart on the air in July.
Of course, Anderson Cooper is never going to say, “No one forced you to put the bimbo in your lap, Gary.”
Update: Gary Hart is 83. My bad.
Something we haven’t seen: A public admission that they were wrong. And certainly no public apology was ever offered to Kavanaugh. (Well, Trump apologized on behalf of the nation, but that’s not what I’m talking about.)
Another thing we haven’t seen: Criminal charges filed against Bullshit-Fraud.
The only way you’re going to see that is if on a monster of an acid trip.
Well, if the stuff works on you. I tried Purple Micro Dots a couple of times and other than some weird colors in peripheral vision, it was like Mexican diet pills. Speedy… Heh, coke was the same but without the visual effects.
edit: Mexican diet pills … Captigons, perhaps misspelled. Ten cents each in 1977.
Thank you for the answers on how much freezer for a side of beef. I have capacity.
Bought a couple of 5# chubs of hamburger today. Sliced into patties and vac sealed 13 packages of two patties. I cook them like hamburger steaks, sort of. The ends and one odd patty are going to become meatloaf tomorrow. Maybe 15 meals for not quite $30.
I was using my HP 15C yesterday with my checkbook. It was company property in 1984 when we signed it out for employee use. Had I left the company within a dozen or so years, I would have had to turn it back in or had the cost deducted from my final paycheck.
When I did retire in 2007, the equipment loan out office and all the people were gone. I consider it a retirement gift.
Ordered a Roborock 6S robot vacuum for the new carpet. My impression of robot vacuums has been very positive. My current Roomba uses physical touch sensors and no intelligence. Lot of bumping with marks on the baseboards. The Roborock will map the house. You can set exclusion zones, like the bathrooms. The machine knows where it’s charging station is located thus no more hunting for the machine when the battery runs out. For such small machines they clean really well. Highly recommended. Roomba gave me 4 years of great service.
Sam’s club run to top off our dry pinto bean stash with another 25 lbs.
In the meat section, pork was non-existent. Beef was limited to really expensive ribeye steaks or tenderloins. Whole fresh chickens and trays of wings were available, but moving fast. All frozen chicken parts were gone unless you like the teriyaki marinade flavor.
Even the lamb was moving for a change.
Lots of big Member’s Choice hot dogs since the snack bar is closed. Not a lot of premium hot dogs save for Hebrew National which can be an acquired taste but not for the clientele of this partcular Sam’s unless they were really desperate.
The media got their “shortage”. Now, after brunch this weekend, they’ll have to start living it.
Austin “opens” this weekend coinciding with the first really nice weekend weather of the Spring, and I don’t want to be out and about since the sick won’t stay home. The city proper is turning into another one of those places where your personal living space sucks so the only way to stay sane is to never be there, even during a pandemic.
The Austin Metro has ambitions to be Portland/Seattle. God only knows why.
Having fun replacing two of the interconnected smoke detectors at the old used house for sale. One disappeared oVer the years and the other one started chirping for no reason. And of course I am having to replace the bases. I never knew that these were connected to a box.
And finding the right circuit breaker out of 40 was a total blast. Why is it always the last breaker you check ?
@lynn …. I replaced all of the smoke detectors in the house last year. Smoke detectors only last for about 10 years, and the house is almost 20 years old, so it was time. (Note that the push-button test on smoke detectors test that the alarm works, not that the actual smoke detecting part works.)
I replaced them all at once. They were all the same brand, and AC/DC powered. All came with a power adapter, and bases. Removed the old bases, added the AC power adapter, installed the new base, activated the 9V battery (included), installed, and my dad’s brother was happy.
I got a 6-packs from Home Depot, I think. Cost was about $35 each. Took about an hour to do all 6of them in the house.
Sometimes it is just easier to kill the main breaker. Or just flip all the 110V breakers leaving the 220V circuits active. A non-contact voltage tester is one of those tools that are indispensable when doing electrical work.
Today I was less frantically busy than usual so I checked around for buying half a cow. Nnnnope. A couple places are sold out (one’s website says that they made the butchered cows available for sale early April and sold out in two weeks what would normally last into Autumn) and the only one near here that I could find that still had any was selling for $12/pound — that’s $12 times two hundred pounds, which makes for mighty expensive ground beef and stew meat. They’re most of the way down the Hudson, so I’m guessing the main market for their free-range organic beef is restaurants catering to pretentious NYC slime. Anyway, nope.
re whole-house, wired-in smoke detectors, I despise them. The idea is good, but I haven’t seen any that weren’t terrible in practice. In our current house, the ten detectors chewed through their 9V batteries very quickly; I’d change all the batteries on the same day and would be doing very well if one didn’t have a low battery in less than four months, and of course the entire system would go off so I couldn’t tell which one without pulling each in turn and testing each battery. On top of that, Grandma was constantly setting off the ones in the kitchen and the room next to it and I’d have to go to every goddamned unit in the house and individually press the button, only to have them all go off again five minutes later. And if one unit was removed (ie, to take out the one in the kitchen and put in a stand-alone unit) the entire system went through an idiot spasm every six or eight hours, any time of day or night. I ended up removing all of the detectors and putting in a few stand-alones.
Our HEB had plenty of meat today, ground and steaks. Lots of fish, shrimp, and chicken also. So if there is a shortage then it has not gotten to Sugar Land yet.
And finding the right circuit breaker out of 40 was a total blast
Sometimes it is just easier to kill the main breaker. Or just flip all the 110V breakers leaving the 220V circuits active. A non-contact voltage tester is one of those tools that are indispensable when doing electrical work.
Yes. But I wanted to take the extra time and label the breaker which I did. After all, I may end up renting this house out for a few years. Two different parties have told my agent that they are going to write contracts but that was a week ago and nothing has arrived so I figure that it is not going to happen. I am getting ready to rent the place out when my listing contract expires on June 30.
The house across the street sold last week for $385K, listed for $399K. It is 3,000 ft2, 128 $/ft2. Mine is 3,385 ft2 and listed for $439K, 130 $/ft2.
Re: buying whole or half a beef
I looked at the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association web page which had links to a page listing all ranchers who were selling butchered beef retail. I recommend doing the same for your state. Here we have a surplus of cattle so I got beef at $3.50 a pound. Grass fed, Angus, local beef for $3.50 a pound butchered, wrapped, and delivered. Yes, I am bragging.
“A.F. Branco Cartoon – All the Above”
https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-all-the-above/
“Hypocritical Democrats have changed their tune on the #believeWomen stance they had taken with the Kavanaugh accusation. Political cartoon by A.F. Branco ©2020.”
Wow, I am tempted to update the definition of hypocritical in the urban dictionary with this.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hypocritical
well, made some more progress in the garage and driveway. It started cool but got pretty hot in the sun. I thought, I’ll take my shirt off for 10 minutes. Better start getting a tan going….less than 10 minutes and I can feel that I got sun. ‘Course my back and belly haven’t seen sun in 15 years. Good solid ‘farmer’s tan’ going on my arms though.
Set a couple of rat traps on some paths that I hope are old and abandoned. I guess I’ll find out if they are or not.
Found some stuff I’d forgotten about in the garage. I’m sure I’ll find more as I peel off layers.
Texas is starting to re-open today. I’ll be watching that closely.
Turns out my neighbor from childhood, who is an old family friend, is recovering from wuflu. His wife has tested negative so far. Other than my wife’s coworker, that’s the closest it’s come to me personally so far.
My freezers are full or I’d be looking for more meat.
Time to shower and get to bed. Lots to do this weekend, while we’ve got good weather.
n
“Elon Musk: “Give people back their g*****n freedom.”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/05/01/elon-musk-give-people-back-their-gn-freedom/
“The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Wednesday such restrictions have robbed Americans of their constitutional rights.”
Elon Musk is about half crazy but he is definitely quite smart.
Number one son and I talked for a while last night. Many things as we are wont to do, mostly about SARS-COV-2. We have noted several things.
1. Dont ‘t be old and fat. Son says it looks like it is not fat but diabetic.
2. It affects men more than women
3. It affects Asians the least
4. It affects Blacks the most
5. It affects Whites somewhere between those two
4. It affects Blacks the most
If that is true, I don’t think the reason has as much to do with genetics as social science — people living in the wrong place at the wrong time and supporting the wrong politicians for the last 50 years.
Pretty much the same reasons for a lot of things that seem to afflict that demographic more than others.
If there was a significant genetic component, with the world’s busiest pork barrel project/airport and 55% (roughly) of the population African American, Atlanta would be the capital of the pandemic rather than New York. Georgia is bad, but, from what I’ve read, the patient zero was an individual who returned from Seattle and attented two massive funerals in the Atlanta metro area the weekend before everything turned ugly across the country.
I won’t dimiss *some* component. Hydroxychloroquine is important for treating Lupus, and the disease is far more common in the demographic than in whites.
At our house, the theory on the drugs is that the FDA doesn’t wan’t to see them hoarded in medicine cabinets on the off chance that there might be some benefit for treating the Wuxu Flu when the drugs are definitely useful for treating Lupus. A shortage of the medications would create a big problem for those patients.
My freezers are full or I’d be looking for more meat.
My wife reported that HEB is well stocked near our house, but you can only buy two items from the refrigerated fresh meat case per store trip. Processed meats like hot dogs are no limit. Still no Johnsonville brats though. Drat.
Local news led tonight with Texas “reopening” including scenes shot inside the Texas Chili Parlor.
“36 Best Fantasy Books for Kids” by Dan Livingston
https://fantasybookworld.com/36-best-fantasy-books-for-kids/
Wow, what a list ! I have only read 7 of the 36 but I recognize many of the books, especially the ones made into movies. I read “The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe”, “The Maze Runner”, the excellent “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH”, “Watership Down”, the wonderful “A Wrinkle in Time”, the awesome “Where the Wild Things Are” that I read to my kids, and the most excellent “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”.
4. It affects Blacks the most
If that is true, I don’t think the reason has as much to do with genetics as social science — people living in the wrong place at the wrong time and supporting the wrong politicians for the last 50 years.
“Six people who attended SC funeral now dead of coronavirus, officials say”
https://www.thestate.com/news/coronavirus/article242028041.html
“Weeks after a crowd gathered for a funeral in southern Kershaw County, six people who were at the funeral have died from the coronavirus, including an elderly husband and wife, officials said.”
“All six of the dead were elderly — over the age of 60 — and all were African American, officials said. The elderly and African Americans have the highest fatality rate from coronavirus, according to national and South Carolina statistics.”
We’re still fighting that battle with pasta. Through last fall there were four of us. Now the sons are living on their own and it’s just the two of us. That doesn’t mean “half” the pasta. It apparently doesn’t mean “a third” either. More like “a quarter”. Apparently young people eat a lot, even though I am just as active as they are? Dunno, but we still get the food quantities wrong…
We have, in the past, bought a quarter or a half of a cow or a pig. But the balance of cuts is never really satisfactory. From the whisky business we have access to restaurant suppliers, so we tend to buy meat in bulk from them. Being restaurant suppliers, they have the whole range, from cheap stuff for the holes in the wall to very good quality stuff for higher-end places. They also do special orders for things that are otherwise unobtainable here (skirt steak, for example).
I’d actually like to believe that. Unfortunately, I don’t. Power is the currency of the elite, and they can share that power with their underlings to keep the peons in order. Whether that happens through government or mafia, that seems to be the one constant in human history. It’s only the last couple hundred years that a real working class and middle class, with real skills, has really existed.
It would be all too easy to fall back into the more ruthless patterns of the past. Education is key, but education in much of the West is controlled by progressives, who are really wannabe tinpot dictators in their own right.
For us as well. We have two different models (well, they’re in storage at the moment, along with everything else). They provide a base level of cleanliness that is pretty darned good. You just have to manually deal with corners, nooks and crannies every couple of weeks. One of ours (Ozmo) is also very good at dealing with animal hair.
You do have to remember to empty them. They don’t hold much, especially if you have animals. I just made that part of my morning routine: cup of coffee and empty the robots’ stomachs.
Smoke detectors are relatively uncommon here. Perfectly obtainable, but installed in – I’m guessing – less than 5% of houses.
My memories of smoke alarms in the US was that they went off when something got burnt in the kitchen, when the fireplace smoked, etc.. Understable enough, but irritating and ultimately not useful, because you soon assume that every alarm is a false alarm. Add in the pain of changing batteries, and I think we’ll just do without.
A dear local lady, beloved even of “newcomers” like me, died this past week. It was expected, she had cancer, but it was a heartbreak that her assisted living center was on lockdown during her final days so no visits. And no funeral. The family held a private graveside service but the community didn’t get to come. In better times, the town would have filled the church to overflow for her.
[snip] Hypocritical Democrats have changed their tune on the #believeWomen stance they had taken with the Kavanaugh accusation. [snip]
I still think it’s possible that the Ds are waiting to stir up trouble against a candidate they don’t really *like*. I don’t know (or care) when the convention is, but 6 – 8 weeks from now I can see Uncle Joe in a press conference “It is with heavy heart …” and endorsing St. Guido of the Hudson.
It will be counted as a Covid-19 death. In the last six weeks the deaths from natural causes have plummeted as Covid-19 seems to be the catchall for any deaths. Keeps the federal money rolling into the state at the expense of people’s jobs, livelihoods and the economy.
I’ve read the Narnia series a few times. I have a set on my bookshelf. And yet again, the “gets bogged down by heavy-handed Christian allegory” crap. Really? I didn’t notice much when I was a kid. Yeah, I did understand Aslan was God or similar but it was part of the story. Anyway, that comment irks me, it’s as if they are showing how smart they are by trashing a set of books.