This and that.

--I got a minor promotion the other day. No big deal.


--I am suffering greatly from trees and grasses and ragweed having sex. The quantity and distribution of phlegm is suboptimal. (Not quite enough to kill me. Too much to be at all comfortable with.)

--I went with my dad last night to Cabella's to pick up a new set of electronic earmuffs. I had a first generation set of Peltors from 16 years ago, which gave up the ghost. It's stupid not to have a set or three, given the importance of being aware of your surroundings when shooting. My preference is for using the thinner electronic muffs, turned to high volume, over foam earplugs. I note that this pair came with a standard 3.5mm headphone jack, so that I can jump my phone or iPod or whatnot to it. More importantly, though, I can jump my 2-way radio mic to it while responding to an active shooter on duty. I'm going to keep in with my go-bag at work. I probably need to get a second set.

--I haven't been to the gym in two weeks. Not good.

--Our okra plants are tall and beautifully-leafed, and very green... and are bearing almost NO okra. Anyone have a suggestion for what nutrient we're missing?

--The temperature finally broke this week, and we finally have highs under 90 degrees. It's glorious.

--October is my favorite month. It has my birthday, and the birthdays of some very nice friends of mine. It is the month when the weather is the best in North Texas. It is associated with Oktoberfest, which includes two of my favorite things-- malty beer and German sausages. Halloween's okay, but it shouldn't account for the whole of the month.  October is when I join up with my friends on the range in Colorado, and we shoot a bit by day, and gather around the campfire by night.

--I look forward to seeing my friends, next week.

--I caught the pilot of Blue Bloods on Netflix the other night, and have since binge-watched the entire first two seasons on Netflix. The show is ridiculous. It is over-the-top pulp fiction in its plots and procedures. We basically never see more than about 6 cops in a 36,000-man police department, and evidently one Manhattan ADA handles every major case in the city of New York. They mention paperwork after an officer-involved shooting, but seem to be back on the street faster than Crockett and Tubbs were.  Only one guy in the family (Donnie Wahlberg's character) speaks with a New York accent. The detectives cross the ethics line on a daily basis, with illegal searches yielding somehow useable evidence, warrantless arrests, physical intimidation and assault during interrogations, etc, etc, etc. Donnie Wahlberg's grip on his pistol is amazingly low, with an inch of space above the web of his hand. His partner, in true Hollywood style, wears her holster between 1:00 and 2:00 o'clock.
But the show is cast very well, with Tom Selleck playing the respectable patriarch of the cop family, who happens to be the second generation of police commissioner for the PD. The interaction between the family is very attractive, and tugs at the heart a bit. It is shot very well. It is silly [melo]drama which I'm going to end up watching every minute of.

--I got  to work and found a voicemail from a senior district attorney, the other day. He said that he was working intake, and had just reviewed a felony DWI case that I had submitted, and that he wanted to compliment me on the good work that he found there. That was it. He didn't have any questions, and didn't need me to provide him with any information; he just wanted to let me know how much he appreciated the quality of the report and the investigation. I've only gotten a few of these calls over my years, and I will tell you that they mean a lot to me. He certainly didn't need to do that, and DAs are busy people. But nothing motivates me more than praise. (Note to self: remember that with the guys you lead.)

--We're about to outfit me with a new patrol car. I've never driven a brand-new one, but my car is getting tired. We're looking at getting a Ford Police Interceptor Utility, which runs about $10k less than the Tahoes we've been getting lately. The Ford P.I. Utility is based on the Explorer, so of course I'll call it Dora. Interestingly enough, the Explorer now shares the same unibody base as the Taurus. When it started, the Explorer was based on the Ford Ranger pickup. I'd noticed that the Explorer has gotten a lot more car-like over the last few years, but I hadn't realized that they had gone that far.

--Seriously. It's gorgeous outside. My wife and I are about to go for a walk.

--My elder daughter is competing today for UIL choir. She lucked out that this was a bye week for the football team, so she didn't have to lead the band last night before leaving at 06:15 this morning (Saturday) to head out to the vocal competition. As of now, it's 17:49, and they're not back, yet. Hope they fed her.

--My younger daughter is enjoying school more than she ever has. I was worried when she dropped band (it had really been good for the elder daughter), but she took up art and choir. She was a point under the cut-off to get into Pre-AP Algebra, so she wrote an appeal, and got in. She's in honors English, and just signed up to do the Creative Writing competition. I had my misgivings about her schedule this summer, but 7 weeks into the school year, it's clear to me that, with good grades and a happy 13 year-old, it was the best decision. I'll give up quite a bit for a happy kid who doesn't dread school.

--Our kitchen cabinet project eeks along at a snail's pace.

--I bumped Skills Week for my EMT class to November. I need to study.

--I need to build a fence this month.

--We now have a boutique shop in our small town which sells a variety of coffee beans by the pound. The price is high, but I appreciate the local service, so I give them my patronage.

This and that: February 9, 2015.

--I worked an off-duty job last week, and am expecting a little bit of mad money from it. I'm going to buy me a Canon Rebel body, and then go lens shopping. It's embarrassing that I don't have any kind of DSLR, with my family.

--I took the helm for a week as the OIC of my P.D, while the chief was out of town. Nothing happened.

--I went to a Traffic Incident Management school for a couple of days, put on by the North Texas Council Of Governments. The instructors were great, and passionate about what they were teaching. They were fervent in teaching that, if you want to contribute to the safety of first responders and the public at large, you MUST clear the roadway quickly. Statistically, for every minute that a traffic incident continues, there is a 1 to 1.5% chance of a secondary event occurring. That's astounding. They had plenty of evidence to back it up, and were proponents of taking a quick picture of the crash, and using push-bumpers and-or chains to clear disabled vehicles out of lanes so that traffic could get moving again. The instructor said, "My dream is to see push bumpers put onto fire engines. I may retire the day that I see that happen."

Firefighters like to block off extra lanes for the safety of the first responders. The doctrine that these guys were trying to push was to get the firefighters on board with clearing the lanes, in the name of preserving the safety of the motorists upstream of them. I get that.

-- I've been working out again, trying to bring back the physical gains that I had made before the holidays. That left rotator cuff is telling me that I'm stuck at the amount of weight that I'll be benching for awhile, but I'm making nice gains on the eliptical machine, and on the abdominal curl machine. I'm trying to get my wind up, and strengthen my core. Everything else is gravy. Well, losing some more weight would be nice.

--Spending time on the eliptical machine got a LOT better, once I realized that I could use the little Galaxy tablet that my mother gave me for Christmas to watch Archer episodes on, with my Bluetooth headphones on. I, uh, had to turn it off in a hurry the other day when my Bluetooth wireless connection failed and the speaker began blaring the unfortunately blue dialogue at Missus Grundy, trudging away on the machine next to me.

-I taught my 12 year-old daughter the painless-until-resistance-is-encountered come-along hold we call "the Gooseneck." It's mostly used for escorting drunks away from a location. I should make sure that my 16 year-old is good with it, too. Lots and lots of times, just getting a belligerent drunk out of a confrontation will deescalate a tense situation into nothing.

-The Open Carry Movement guys in Texas have a very, VERY vocal minority who are frankly assholes. These asses will ruin it not only for the open carry proponents, but also for regular 2nd Amendment people. The most common method of the OCM activists is to carry (legally) long guns in public places in a prominent manner. It's one thing to carry a gun, and it's another thing to carry a gun at someone, as lots of these guys are doing. The nice thing about the Concealed Handgun License in Texas has been that the guy who wasn't being an idjit, and was following the law in keeping their gun concealed, was going to prevent a lot of foolishness in other ways. More on this, later; it deserves its own post.

--I called my best friend (a small business owner) and asked his advice on starting a small business. Two hours' later, we were kind of at an impasse.

--I refinanced the house, with cash back.  Just because you have cash sitting in the bank doesn't mean that you're wealthy. Not. At. All.

--When we refinanced, they made me sign my "signature" about 75 times throughout the hundreds of papers worth of documents. I say "signature" because the rep from the title company insisted that I had to write in script my first, middle, and last name each time. Who does that?!? I then had to sign a sworn affidavit that this was my "normal and true signature," and give and exemplar above the signing. I wrote for the exemplar my NORMAL signature. The lady with the title company pursed her lips and said that might not work, "because they're all supposed to be the same." I made clear that if I were swearing to the validity of the statement, I would see that it was true, and the only way to do that was to actually sign my actual normal signature on the exemplar line. I pointed out that her own signature below her notary stamp only included her first initial and last name. She countered that it was okay, because she had a letter from her attorney saying that this WAS her normal and true signature. I laughed and said that her attorney held no power to grant such status. But I signed the rest of the documents the way she wanted me to, to keep the title company (and my now-irritated wife, also present) happy.

--They had fresh Otis Spunkmeyer cookies on a plate in the middle of the table in the signing room of the title company. I thought that was odd. The lady from the title company urged us to take them, but we declined, as my wife and I are both on a low-carb diet. We finally took them home to our children.

--I've got to make a site plan for the new fence and deck that I'm putting up. Not one in five homeowners in my city gets a permit to do such work, but I'm getting one, because our municipal ordinance calls for one.

--I want a new backup holster for a J-frame, to put on my body armor. This is easier done when I wear the body armor under my uniform shirt than when I wear it in the external carrier. But I'd like to do it either way. Suggestions? I'm reevaluating.

--I'm also getting the itch for a new subcompact auto. I've been considering a Kahr PM9, or a Glock 42. I will say, though, for being a quality little carry gun, that PM9's magazine protruding from the butt by an 8th of an inch irritates me. Not flush, yet not obviously intentionally protruding. Ugh.

--Brian Williams' claims should not blow over. He has one job: tell the news. When he was on the trip in which he claimed to have his chopper hit by an RPG, he was covering a story. When he tells of what happened on that trip incorrectly, he is changing the story. This is a journalistic ethics issue.

--I contacted Tamara for help yesterday, to see if she had another outlook at a problem that I have: I've got a stolen gun report in which the victim DID write down the serial numbers and caliber and make of the guns, but not the model. Sadly, several common gun manufacturers (not Ruger, thank goodness) re-use serial numbers. So when I get "S&W .38, S/N XXXXXX," I can't put it into TCIC/NCIC, absent the model. I had several like this, which I can't put into the system. If the guy had a Model 36 stolen, which shares a serial number with a Model 10 and a Model 42, I cannot in good conscience enter the serial numbers as stolen, and risk the innocent possessors of the other uninvolved firearms being held as a suspect for Theft Of A Firearm (a felony, no less.). Tam tried to help me, but we just couldn't do anything. It's a shame-- the owner didn't remember much about the guns, and a thief may well get away.

--My favorite practice for logging guns is this: Take your driver license out, put it next to the gun, and photograph it in strong light next to the overall gun. Then put it next to the serial number, and take a closeup picture. Email the photos back to yourself along with a description of the gun, the caliber, the value, and SN and model, along with where you got it. Save the email in the cloud, to be found later.

--My Dad is en route to my house right now, so that I can take him to lunch. Then he'll proctor me to make me do a couple more modules of my EMT training.

--I reward myself after a module by watching an episode of Archer. I reward myself while working out by watching the show, too.

September, this and that. Curmudgeon.

--I'm training a rookie. He's a nice guy, but I'm not used to having another guy in my patrol car. We're joined at the hip all shift.

--My daughter just turned 16, and I won't let her take her driving test until I'm completely satisfied with her ability with the manual transmission Honda that I'm giving her. She's really coming along, though. Something finally just clicked with regard to her feathering the clutch while revving an underpowered engine (there's just not that much compression left after all these years). I want her to really GET the joy of using your gears to maintain a perfect speed and keep you at the top of your power curve while downshifting through a downhill double-S curve, and then accelerating out of it, never touching the brake. I also love that she will know how to drive whatever she chooses to drive.

--I'm getting old or something. I've been really noticing lately how people let their kids interrupt adult conversations to have their say. I'm talking about 4 and 5 year-olds, lately. I'll be dealing with the parent in an important issue, and the parent will stop down to hear what the kid has to add. Which, of  course, means that I have to stop down to hear it, too. There is this egalitarian philosophy that seems to have pervaded the world, about how Everyone Has A Right To Give Their Opinion. Except that: that 4 year-old's opinion was not sought. It did not add to our understanding of the situation. Grownups were talking, and you have now rewarded undesired behavior.
I weep for our future.

--I get some evil looks when I casually mention that someone's kid is "kinda high maintenance, isn't he?" Oops.

--I bought some stuff from an older gent that my mother knows. He has Parkinson's and was clearing out some of his gun stuff. I got some dies and a bunch of bullets and a whole bunch of fired cases, along with some .44 Mag ammo  and some other reloading tools, for $100. I expressed interest in the old reloading manuals that he had, and he asked for $15 more. I only had a $20, and he didn't make change. Ah, well, I came away with a pretty good haul. That said, I don't have a 7mm magnum, for which a lot of the cases, bullets, and some dies were for. Also I got a bunch of cases and bullets for .22-250, which I don't have. (I would LOVE to have a Savage 99, but I'd rather it be .250-3000 or .300 Savage.)  There was a case of 12 gauge shotgun shells which touted the "New Plastic Hulls." There were 20 round boxes of .44 Magnum for under $5.00. I bought a couple of large shallow TupperTote boxes to put it all in, and put the lids on them, to keep the dust out.

--It never occurred to me to go visit the guy without taking my dad along. Those kind of treasure hunts are right up his alley.

--Now I'm the parent haranguing his 7th grade daughter into using her agenda planner every day to be organized about studying for tests and getting assignments in on time. I have to stay on her, or she won't use it. She protests that she's not organized. I answer that that is EXACTLY why she needs to use it. All the time.

--I'm wanting a new car for me. I'm thinking about a nice reliable used Tacoma 4dr pickup.

--This crappy low/no-carb diet of mine has caused me to lose a belt notch or two this past summer, and about 20 something pounds. I will grudgingly admit that the diet works. Eh.

--Some dudes are up on my house right now to put on a new roof. We're negotiating it into gutters as well. Getting excited about putting gutters on your house pretty much makes you an Old Man.

--Get your prostate checked. And donate to Kilted To Kick Cancer, which my buddy Ambulance Driver and others are raising money for.

Weekend projects

Ventilating the shed.
When we bought this house, one of the attractive features was that there was a garden shed built in the back. It had been custom-made by the previous tenant's ex-husband, who was something of a craftsman. He had made the hinges himself (he was a welder by trade), and had put the shed together very snugly.
Actually, he did TOO good a job at making it snug. He didn't even use trim; the joints are all so close that he just ran a bead of caulk to seal them. The door is good-sized, and I literally had to lean on the door to get it to compress the air inside, so that I could latch it.

While this is good for keeping your lawn tools dry, it also means that it has been death to enter that shed in the summertime. We genuinely have feared for the lives of our cats, should one get caught in there for more than a couple of minutes while exploring a the opened shed and then get locked in when we close it. So, ventilation.

We went to a construction salvage store yesterday, and bought a new back door for the house. While there, I saw some nice used gable vents. I have made gable vents, while I was a carpenter's helper. It was a pain to do, right. These looked pretty good. We bought them, and I put them into the shed.

Modifying the gable by cutting a 12"X18" hole.

First vent installed.



Second vent, installed.

 The difference was immediate. The door swings shut effortlessly, too. Fear not; both vents are screened in the back. Strangely, they were already painted a shade that worked pretty well with the extant shed gables. Yay, me.

Cat Door.
This one, we haven't solved, correctly, yet. We wanted to make it so that only our cats could come and go. We bought a cat door for the garage that would only let in the cat with the magnetic bobbin on his collar. In short order, he lost the collar, and butted his way through, breaking the door.
I've noticed that the neighbor cat has been coming in.
We have a second door through the kitchen door to the garage. Its locking device was broken by our boulder-headed cat, as well, but the flap remains. My wife installed stops (many screws, with their heads sticking up) into the cat passage, to prevent the flap from opening inward. Thus, the cats can exit to crap, but cannot creep back in. They must been ushered in. We'll see if this works.

Looking online, there are auto doors that use the RFID chip in your animal to let them in, which you can program for only one of your animals. Smart. Neither of our cats is chipped. Also, they're made of plastic parts, as well. I'm not spending $150 (before $70 to chip the stupid cats) for another plastic door. That plastic hinge with a flexible poly door is a fatal flaw. Make the whole thing out of sheet steel/aluminum, and I'm there. I might even go higher. I don't dote on those vomiting, shedding, annoying pieces of crap. But they matter to my wife and my daughters, and I'm lazy, so I'd actually go $200 to not have to deal with this anymore.

That neighbor cat has a collar and tags. It would give me only momentary satisfaction to deal with it the way I first was tempted to. Unless there is danger, I'm against killing someone's pet, as a rule, even if it's trespassing. It's not HIS fault that we make the food in our house accessible to him. We need to put a stop to this, though. I don't want opossums or raccoons in here.

Monday midday.

--I missed getting to go the Fort Worth Main Street Arts Festival this weekend, darn it. Sometimes my wife and I will get a room right on Main Street, overlooking the fest, and enjoy it at our leisure. Being in April, it is sometimes bad weather. Sometimes it rains, sometimes it is 98 degrees. On Friday, the first morning of the fest, it frosted heavily, here. They had some wind, but it was beautiful, as witnessed by the camera phone picture that my elder daughter sent me from Main Street, while I was at work:

Main Street, Fort Worth, Texas, April 20, 2013.  That's the 90 year-Blackstone Hotel on the right, where we usually stay. Some glass and steel wonder to the left. (Click to embiggen.)

Not a bad day to be outside.

--It amuses me that Blogger Spellcheck does not recognize the word "embiggen," as Blogger and Wordpress are most certainly the vehicles which transported that word to its current position as a term of common [Internet] parlance.

--While I was at work, my wife painted the inside of the back door black. (No, it had theretofore been red.) When I got home last night, I kept thinking that the back door was standing open.

--I'm going to miss being with my friends in Houston. I talked with my sergeant. There's no way I can get out of working that weekend.

--I have lost 12 pounds since my hunting trip, minding my carbs. I would step over my own mother for a plate of biscuits and gravy. (Sorry, Mom!)

--I look at a picture that Tamara took of an old F11-F1 in Blue Angels livery on display at the Grissom Air Museum, and I remember watching these F11s perform over me at an air show in 1985, and thinking "this is stupid. Those aren't even current fighter jets anymore. Like anyone would use a thirty year old design for fighters, in this day and age!" The next year they went to the new (10 year old design) Hornet. Which they are still using, and which are still current.

--While flying with my friend Rich a few weeks ago, he had some amazing aps on his iPad, which was suction-cupped to the windscreen of the cockpit, which would take into account current weather conditions and advise his best aircraft settings for optimum efficiency, saving hundreds of dollars per trip. Rich is a great pilot, but he's also a techie, and knows that it's better to measure-and-know than to guess-and-suppose. Seven years ago, I was impressed at the glass cockpit avionics that he had installed in his Baron 58. In this Pilatus 12, there were such ameneties factory installed.  My friend Scott (a computer tech business owner) tells me that, once you get to a certain minimum level of hardware, it's ALL about the software. Apparently, this is very much true in aviation, too, these days.

--Meanwhile, I would dearly, DEARLY love to have a Cessna 180. A 56 year old 182 brings $42,500 asking price, but I'll bet I could wheedle him down to $42,000.

--I should probably get a pilot's license, first. And pay off my student loans. And pay the mortgage.

--Comes now the Internet groups of people who are giving backlash over the Boston bomber apprehension. While I completely agree that the populace should have been armed and were unreasonably prevented from being so, I am frustrated at what I'm seeing. Folks, in an instance where there is an armed bomber in a known small area, who is exchanging gunfire and throwing bombs at cops, the police would be fools not to wear every stitch of armor that they've got while searching HARD for the guy. When people say the police on such a mission then look like military with such weapons and soft armor and helmets on, they sound like the hoplophobes that are scared of weapons that look menacing.

I am a traditionalist cop. I like police patrol uniforms to look like police patrol uniforms. I do not like BDUs on patrol officers. I hate black gloves except when it's cold out. (I like rubber gloves for pat-downs.) I am repeating myself here; I have written before about my views on the militarization of law enforcement. But during a specific special duty like that manhunt, I'm fine with cops dressed like this.

Yes, it was a private citizen who found the bad guy in his boat. But the bomber was hiding in that boat because of the full-court press looking for him. I am a Libertarian. I want limited intrusion in my life by governmental authority. But when there is an emergency, I want the cops to do their jobs. It looks like they did that in Boston. I'm not going to call them heroes, because they were just earning their pay, last week.

We need to think about where we actually stand. This reactionary after-the-fact anarchist point of view frankly looks a bit childish.

--I have seen no violation of the Posse Comitatus Act with regard to the Boston incident of last week. If someone has a verified instant, I would appreciate it if they would put it in my comments here. Pictures of cops in APCs are not valid responses.

Thursday Pictures

The following two pencil sketches were done by my 10 year old daughter, to entertain her friend at school by putting moustaches on animals. The beret with the pencil moustache particularly cracked me up:

 I got a sample of a medication from the doc. It came in a 4" cube, which I opened to find the following:

On the wall at the doctor's office. I've never seen a "High Frequency Dessicator," before. I don't know what it does, even though I understand what dessication is.

This is 1.5 cubic yards of enriched soil, which I bought yesterday from the gettin' place, and put into my wife's raised beds. She's added a couple of beds this year, and also the ones from last year had settled a bit.

 

On Saturday, my wife suggested that we two spend 45 minutes clearing out some junk that had accumulated in the garage. 8 hours of sorting and cleaning later, we found that we had 5 well-stuffed, heavy Hefty Steel Sacks.





During the cleaning, I found this little dumplin', which I had gotten for my Honda Civic, years back. The Civic's A/C system will no longer take a compressor for less than the cost of the car, so I had promised this to my old patrol partner for his beater Honda, only to find that I couldn't find it for him. I was so excited to find this (I'd paid $130, 7 years ago for it), that I sent him a text.

I had my 10 year-old get up from whatever it was she was doing with the neighbor girl on the front porch, to do the dishes. They both sighed, as she laid down her pad to go do her chore. I looked at the pad, and saw that she'd just started a pretty decent life study on the neighbor kid. Seriously, based upon this if she had finished the facial features, I wouldn't have been able to post it here without the neighbor girl's parents' permission. I haven't seen the finished product.

Sadly, my camera phone doesn't have the light-gathering capability to take good night pictures, or you could appreciate the awesomeness of my 14 year old daughter's first-ever attempt at parallel parking. I credit good genes, and a decent driving instructor. (Yours truly.)

M19 Standing semi-supported (leaning back against my car) at 20 yards with .38 Specials (158g LRN), Single action. Shot from about 7:30 o'clock.

M19 fired off-hand double action at 25 yards. 158g factory Hydrashock .357 Magnums. (There are a couple of .22 holes in there, too.) Meh.

Coffee can with custom target made by daughter to shoot at with her new .22 WMRF rifle. (Depiction of "Kim KardASSian.")

Daughter's new custom .22 WMRF rifle.

Daughter during initial sight-in at ~20 (or just a bit less) yards.

50 yard sight-in.





Beautiful Spring Weekend.

--Friday, I took my elder daughter driving on a large parking lot with my manual transmission Honda Civic. She actually did pretty well.

--I went with friends for pizza and beer Friday night, but skipped the beer and had Reed's Ginger Ale. It's good. But that beer looked good. I've been without for awhile. Sometimes fasting from a favorite thing is good.

--My 10 year-old daughter had her best friend over for the weekend again. I don't think that her mom believes us when we say that she's welcome at our house anytime she wants to come. She's a great kid. She has two mommies.

--My wife this morning suggested taking 45 minutes to clear out some stuff from kitchen entry to the garage. It had gotten a little crowded. 8 hours and 4 Hefty SteelSacks full of garbage later, we had completely reorganized the garage.

--My elder daughter drove the "new" 3rd-hand riding lawnmower for the first time yesterday. I was so impressed at how she was missing any sticks and rocks, and realized that she had disengaged the blades. She went back over it, and it worked great. Best $150 I ever spent.

--I just got an invite to hunt wild hog with a good friend, and with my Dad. I can't wait. I REALLY want to see Dad bust a hog with that .45-70. Also? I've got a .35 Whelen Springfield that needs to draw blood.

--I owe you a Sunday Smith.

Random pictures from my phone.

Periodically, I remember that I have a Bluetooth interface on my desktop, and I download a bunch of pictures. Then I look at them on screen larger than an Airmail postage stamp (I've got the single cheapest phone that AT&T offers with a QWERTY keyboard), and wonder what in the world the context was. Sometimes it comes to me. Sometimes, I just have to let the mystery be.

These are easy. Yesterday, I helped a family member put up some gutters on his house. Given that we had no training, no instructions (None. Seriously-- the packaging came with not a whit of instructions on it.), and no experience between us, I think that we did pretty well. This will keep the rain off when walking out the back porch, anyway. I'm going to do this for my back porch, now.

---------

This one's easy, too. For our anniversary, my wife and I went into Dallas, and dined at Mi Piaci, (where we toured the wine cellar. I had no idea that they had a wine cellar. If you've been there before, please know that the service has gotten a LOT less snooty, yet is still superb.) and stayed at a nice hotel, before wondering around Dallas the next day (Friday, 1 Mar 2013). We played at the bizarre Klyde Warren Park (which is situated over 9 lanes of Woodall Rogers Freeway), and walked into the Dallas Museum Of Art.

I saw the sheet metal fixture shown above (Sorry for the blurry picture. Low light, and crappy camera phone.) on the wall, which is clearly made up of air ducting. I went past, then stopped, and asked one of the dozens (scores?) of museum personnel in a blue blazer if that was a piece, or simply infrastructure. He assured me that it was a piece. I almost laughed, but stopped down for a second. In a moment of meta-artistic consideration, I thought about the few times that I have tried to cut and form sheet metal, and then get it to connect its seams tightly. It's actually more difficult than you might think. Yet it's true that every week, thousands and thousands of tradesmen (and women) do such work, leaving custom ducts and plenums (plena?) in attics and utility closets to perform their functions in the dark, gathering dust often without the appraisal of even the person who paid for them. I submit that such everyday achievements of craftsmanship might well attain the status of art, if we took time to appreciate what it took to achieve them. I took a closer look at the piece. The joints were handcut with snips, and screwed together with sheetmetal screws. I thought about that a day later, when I was customizing sheetmetal gutters with tinsnips and self-tapping sheetmetal screws.

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 I.... I have no idea. I don't remember where I was exactly when I took this. I do recall that I thought that it wasn't really what you would expect a such a location.
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At a local tire shop. Service (and education) are dead.
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It's sad how much I enjoy the cheapest foods. Basmati, red beans, and some Thai chili paste. Mmmm-mmm!
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 This is years' worth of bottle caps, saved for some unknown reason at first. Now my sculpture wife has an idea to put them onto a wooden fish, as scales. Might be kinda fun, in a kitsch sort of way.
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 Another piece from Asian collection at the DMA.
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 From a party for a good friend who joined the Texas DPS state troopers. His father in-law put up a trap and skeet shoot, in which we shot a game called "Wolf Pack." It was $5 a gun to shoot each round, with the winner getting half the pot, and the other half going to a charity. We raised over $200 for the charity, and had a lot of fun doing it.
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 ALWAYS turn the light before using the restroom at night, in the volunteer fire department dormitory.
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Panic-buying at Cabella's, January, 2013. Those are mostly some esoteric rounds left on the ammo shelf. No .38. No 9mm. No .45acp. No .22 LR.
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Tuesday Random Thoughts.

--This morning, just before my alarm went off, my daughters got me up, and the coffee was ready. They were watching a movie on World War II. They made witty, funny conversation as I drove them to school. These, friends, are the good times. I never thought that rearing a 14 year old and a 10 year old would be this easy.

--My 14 year old got her class ranking yesterday. She's in the top 5%. All but one of her close friends are in the top 10%, including the girl ranked #1, who commented last night that, after maths, they should study for the upcoming Spanish quiz. My daughter laughed and asked why she would want to study for a class that she has a 99 average in, when we had plans to go visit with friends at Fuzzy Taco's Shop? That's my girl.

--I FINALLY got my dad and his wife's Christmas present installed yesterday. A pecan tree, with a bonus nectarine tree planted. I've never seen nectarines around here, but peaches and plums and apricots do fine here. At the very least, it will bloom pretty for them. I put it across from their entry/exit door. I'm very embarassed that I was this late. I had wanted to plant a pecan from Womack Nursery, but they were completely out of their amazing Podsednik variety, which yields nuts that go 20/lb, and are the size of Grade A Medium hen's eggs. I put the pecan tree to the southwest side of their house, to provide shade for the house. Such things really make a yard more comfortable.

--I sent in my new order for another custom holster to Michael's Custom Holsters. I'd been sitting on the fence about whether to get a K-frame holster, or another J-frame holster. I've been wearing one of Mike's J-frame holsters for over two years, and I decided to get a second one, in black this time, for admin days and training days. This one will have no exposed stitching, which is very different for me.

--I've been meaning to put up a review of that holster. Maybe this next post...

--I also sent pics of a beautiful old S.D. Myres (El Paso) floral carved holster that Rabbit gave me (to Dad, really). I finally got that to Dad last night. Check it out:

 

That's a good half-century old. Looks good on a K-frame 4", like a M64:

 

While I'm not a fan of cut-aways on holsters for trigger guards, this is a classic style that is distinctive of about a quarter century of holster design.

--It's so damned humid, I finally turned on the air conditioner yesterday. It was about 80 degrees, with a brisk wind blowing the Gulf air into us. Other Texans are not pleased with this turn of the weather. Right now it's quite windy, with gusts making moaning sounds outside occasionally, humid as hell, with the barometer dropping:

This is restive weather.

--Oh, good. Marko got my payment.

--By the way, those homicides by gun type charts (which show rifles OF ALL TYPES only are used in 4% of all homicides)? They include lawful shootings by police and citizens.

--When an interplanetary bounty hunter points a blaster at you, you shoot him the first chance you get, without waiting for him to shoot first. End of discussion. I can't believe that there's any confusion about whether Greedo shot at Han. If in fact he did, then Solo took a huge unnecessary risk. I

--The weather finally turned. Ah. Finally rain.



Monday this and Monday that.

--Car adverts are certainly different than they used to be. Try reading the ad copy for the Pierce Arrow Motor Cars, from 1919. It just zings off the page, doesn't it?

--I bought a riding lawn mower yesterday for $160. It runs really well. This is my first riding lawn mower, since using the tired old Montgomery Ward model that my parents bought when I was about 9. This one is a Murray.

--It won't fit into the shed. I'm going to have to build a little shed for it, with a wide enough door. 

--I finally cleared my desk of the huge number of cases that I had on it. Maybe now I can get some good patrol done.

--My elder daughter is hassling me about going shooting. I think that I'll make that happen.

--My younger daughter got a ridiculous device for Christmas that allows her to make miniature pies on lolly pop sticks. She makes and rolls out the dough, and then cuts out little discs of it, and puts in pie filling (she sometimes makes it herself out of berries), and then cooks them, 6 at a time, with a waffle-iron-like apparatus. They're called "Pie Pops." They're silly. They're tasty.

--My father got a new truck, in which we brought home the riding mower. That's one of the nicest vehicles that I've ever been in.

--We detailed my old Saturn on Saturday. It looks pretty good. I need to get a new tire for it, so that it will pass inspection, so that I can more easily sell it. I couldn't believe how expensive even the cheapest tires are. $50 for the cheapest that I found, plus $28 in balancing, mounting, tax, tire disposal. $78 for a tire that's going on a car that I won't keep a week. I walked out. Maybe I'll actually buy a used tire. I haven't done than since I was a teenager, and even then, I knew that it was not a good idea. This old car has a salvage title, and I reckon it'll bring about $1000. It served us pretty well, actually. We bought it in 2003 for $5200 out the door. It was two years old then.

--I wish that all my guns had finishes as shiny and well-preserved as those in Django: Unchained.

--Remember that we still have troops in Afghanistan, for no reason that I can ascertain. This is over four years after our current President took office, and nearly four years after he won a Nobel Prize for peace. Why is he getting a pass on this?

--My elder daughter read the above over my shoulder, and said, "There's never a reason to go to war!" That stopped me down. I limited my response to 15 minutes. I hope she thinks about what I told her. She's a very smart kid, but I had no idea how sheltered she was.

--The news is full of stuff about a Notre Dame football player named Manti Te'o, who was this past fall a sensation because he played splendidly, despite his girlfriend passing away. Now we find out that she was not a real person, and he claims to have been pranked. There is rampant speculation as to how much he really knew.   Yet none of the newsies are openly addressing the issue of what motivation a single guy in an uber-masculine male-dominated sport would have had, to invent a mysterious long-distance relationship with a fake girlfriend.  It seems to me that the most likely answer is also a tragic story, too.

Summertime, and the gas fumes are reeking.

I was beset with Honey-Do's for this Saturday before going to the fire station for a shift. My wife was to run some errands while I did the plumbing work, and she was taking the kids with her to avoid them hearing the inevitable cussing that accompanies plumbing work in this house. She left and a few minutes later walked back inside. Her car had managed to get 20 yards down the street before dying.

I checked it. The gas gauge, which had shown 3/4 full when I pulled in last night from seeing the (most excellent Marvel's The Avengers movie), now showed bone dry, with the light on. Aha! Someone had siphoned our gas out in the dark of night! Cheeky buggers. Easy fix, though. I got the gas can from the shed and put in a gallon. Crank-crank-crank. Nothing. Crank-crank-crank. Nothing. "Maybe I flooded it," I said, before face-palming loudly. My wife asked me to repeat what I had just said, but I demurred to say. Her impression of me is already compromised enough. 

So I figured that a gallon wasn't enough. I sent my wife to get another 6 gallons of premium at the store. She brought it back, and I put some more in the tank before -- hello? what's this? It was now overflowing, with only 1 gallon more added. I checked. Yep. Full. Brim-full. 

Uh oh. This is going to get into a bit of money and trouble. I really wish that it had been some jerk siphoning the gas from my tank, now. 

I texted my shade-tree mechanic. He texted back that he was working. Why on Memorial Day weekend, I asked. 2.5 times pay is good money, he responded. I couldn't argue. He's a single-income family with a house, two cars, and a pair of kids. I asked if he wanted to make some more. As I have mentioned previously, this guy's got the SAE certs, and his prices can't be beaten. I really like giving him the money, as opposed to some big shop. He told me he would have his wife move the mini-van so that I could have the tow truck put it into the driveway. He told me that the problem was probably a sending unit for the pump and the gauge, and may or may not require the pulling of the tank. 

The tank that is full of gas. 

Now, it's just 13 gallons of gasoline, but at $3.67/gallon, that's nearly $48 worth of petrol. 

I decided to siphon out half the tank. I pulled out a small hose used to test diesel on patrol to see if the driver is using untaxed agricultural diesel. It's like a capillary tube. While I did get a flow going, it was a trickle, and the stiff poly hose flicked gas onto my shirt, my wife's shirt, and my face. Yay. Soon the bend that I put into the hose began to leak air, and I lost my suction. So I used a 4-foot length of clear poly fish tank hose. The problem here is that the interior diameter is half an inch or better, and that is a about 18.8 cubic inches of airspace to pull, or 0.309 liters. While it's true that the average capacity of a human male's lungs is about 6 liters (18 times the volume needed to pull here), it is also true that it's a FOOL who pulls gasoline with the lungs when suck-starting a siphon. See here what kind of reaction you end up with. Pulling from the diaphragm ensures that you will (not maybe) get vaporized petrol into your lungs, which is a handy way of causing serious chemical burns and even death, which I try to avoid as a general principle. 

I just didn't have the volume in my cheeks and mouth to pull the gas up over the hump at the lip of the tank. 

So it was that, covered in sweat from the hot sun and covered in a fog of gasoline fumes, I resigned myself to defeat, figuring that I would just give the gas to my mechanic as a tip. I went to the hose and made the appropriate noises while cleaning the gas off my face and lips and rinsed my mouth. That pistol sprayer can be a bit much on that hose, y'know? 

My wife went into town to pick up some items, including a bulb siphon pump hose. I thought of suggesting that she get some fried chicken to go with it. 

I put my clothes into the washer and ran it on Heavy Soil with a squirt of lemon-scented Dawn in it. "Having the smell of gasoline about me is one of my biggest pet peeves," I grumbled, coming out of the laundry room. 

"One of many," my bride of 14 years said. 

I opened my mouth to protest. "I don't have that many.... Say, this conversation isn't really going to work out for me, is it?"

"Smart man," she replied, grumpy as I was. Dismissed, I called the wrecker driver. 

Now to shower. I never will get that damned toilet done today before pulling my shift at the FD. 

Thursday bits.

--My soon-to-be 10 year-old got excited about her upcoming birthday being celebrated. She recalled having heard my wife and me discuss the feasibility of taking her into the land of Big City to the Great Wolf Lodge for a weekend. Apparently, this is a really cool place for young kids. Indoor year-round waterpark. Log cabin rooms. Rustic  bunk beds and furniture made from hewn logs. Activities. Kid food. Sounds kind of fun. Uh, not at almost $500 for a single weekend night. The Wife and I had this hypothetical conversation about 10 months ago. Kids never forget. We need to speak in Spanish, more.

--Guess who got appointed to make the call, and to explain it to the disappointed kid? Why am I always the bad guy? 

--I explained that I had bought a running V8 van with cold a/c and a nifty luggage rack for that price, last year. (Which we've been using the heck out of.) I told her that she needed to be able to have something at the end of the weekend, to keep. So of course I'm getting her a cell phone. The gift that keeps on billing me.

--That sucker is going to be bulletproofed, lemme  tell you.

--I haven't gotten out to the range this spring, yet. Given the beaut weather that we have, this is criminal.

--My partner is doing a lot better, and is recuperating at home, where he could actually get some real rest. Seems that some of the perceived slowness in his recovery was from the protocol-dictated course of anti-seizure meds that they gave him.  Well, hell, of course a neurotransmitter inhibitor is going to make a person slow. They changed recipes, and he got a lot better. Soon he won't take any of that. Talking to him, he looks and sounds great. He gets tired, though. He's running on at least 5 cylinders. But he's got 8, at least. Maybe 12.

--Sure wish he'd been out with me on a tough call last night.

--With the temperate weather and rains and sun, I should be mowing twice a week. I'm averaging once every 10+ days. Lawn looks shaggy. I run the risk of being the roughest in the neighborhood. I don't want to be That Guy. I  also don't want to have the nicest lawn in the neighborhood, either.

--Tomorrow, I stay at the fire house. This will be my first time staying there overnight. William Dafoe springs to mind.

--I've been carrying my new 637, newly back from my gunsmith, in my custom 3R holster a lot lately. It's  a good fit. I need to review both.

--My prof in Homeland Security said that none of the crime originally reported in the SuperDome in NOLA during Katrina was ever substantiated. Anyone have any good sources on the issue?

--Yet again I find proof that 80% of the calls for service in a given small town are made by 5% or less of the people in it.

--You think that your spouse is giving you a hard time about something, and you come across a couple that is dog-cussing each other, and each other's kids. Then you realize that your spouse is actually pretty cool.

--I got accused recently at a civil disturbance of being against the 2nd amendment, because I told a man who had completely lost his composure to stand away from the weapons on the scene. I didn't get mad, but I set him straight: "I'm all about supporting your Constitutional rights, bud. But you called me here to diffuse a situation that you blew up. Can we try it my way for a few minutes?"--I  am  reminded of the kid who climbs a tree to retrieve his kite, can't get down, calls the fire department  to get him down, and won't let go of his kite to get on the ladder.

Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts.

--The house lights were flickering all last week. The lights would dim, then suddenly brighten. I had the power company send out a guy to check the supply, and he showed me that the power coming to the meter was solid. I called out an electrician, and the guy fixed the loose screws to the common/neutral line in my breaker box in about 5 minutes flat.

--Two days later, we realized that my fancy double convection oven doesn't light up, power up, or anything, anymore. I've thrown every breaker, but that's not the issue. Need to check power to the oven, but my multimeter is dead. We're hoping that there's a fuse in the oven that I don't (yet) know about.

--Remember how I needed to get that furnace vented so that I could run it? Well, I finally got an HVAC guy to come help me. Turns out that the double-walled stovepipe stuff that I had wouldn't mate to the extant stuff, so I don't feel too badly about not being able to do it. The guy who did it for me used some skills that I was unfamiliar with heretofore. He offered to help me for free. I gave him $100. It's the holidays, and he's out of work.  Now I've got heat. That furnace is amazing.

--We had been heating the house on colder nights with the application of space heaters. This kills me, because they're 1000 to 1200 watt money-burning machines, as opposed to natural gas in the furnace. But here was another thing that I wasn't really aware of until the heat was connected: I felt like a bit of a failure. Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs puts "Shelter," and "Warmth" as pretty basic needs, and I felt like I had failed my family in that respect, until the heat was turned on. Here in Texas, the winters are pretty mild, and with the insulated attic, it was pretty comfortable in the house, until, at last, it wasn't. It's funny how you don't realize that something is really bothering you, until it's fixed, sometimes. Like an irritating noise that's just insinuated itself into the background, so that you're shouting over it.

--The tile is 2/3 done. My wife is irritated that I'm such a perfectionist. But she's not doing it on the night that I work. We should have it grouted and sealed by Christmas.

--Last night I dropped by the house for lunch, and found that my wife an the girls had put up a Christmas tree. We hadn't bothered, with the living room floor in such disarray. My wife said that the lack of a tree was her own source of angst about being a bad parent. Funny what chews at you. It hadn't bothered me, much.

--Both of the girls have strung Christmas lights in their bedrooms. It's charming, but I couldn't sleep with those on. At least they don't twinkle.

--We had amazing fog last night, as the warm rains left water on the ground and cold front rolled in. I had a lady ask me about how to get to Amarillo, and I told her to just stop and spend the night in Wichita Falls. Visibility is miserable, and the weather only gets worse as you get to the Panhandle. She said that she and her beau were pressing on. I wished them the best of luck.

--Someone dropped off a bunch of .30-'06 cases at the PD for whoever wants them. Most of them have been reloaded before, and some probably several times. I shall have to check the casewall thickness before using them. I think I got about 90 of them, mixed headstamps. I'm going to throw charges and load a bunch of .35 Whelen. I've got an itch to get back to shooting that, again.

This is what I did today.

Those tiles are bigger than they look like, at first glance. They're 18" by 18" tiles, very thick. We'll be putting in similar colored grout when they've cured. This is roughly 1/3 of the room, but the fireplace is about done (just pulled up the near corner piece to redo it.) . The kids are actually kind of helpful.

The mortar is the worst part. Takes a while to mix, and it takes a while to clean the buckets with the hose. The rest is simple repetition, and a powerful desire to see things square.

The continuing saga.

The copper lines are now silver-soldered on.

Note: on a Sunday evening, it's dammit hard to find real silver solder. And the guys that they've got answering the phone at Lowe's and Home Depot will tell you that they have it, 4 oz for $13. Given that silver is currently sitting at $34.84/Troy ounce, that didn't make sense. "I mean elemental silver! Ag!" I growled into the phone. "Comes in sticks, not rolls of wire!" They insisted that it was silver (in color, I'll grant), and that I should make the 20 mile drive to get it.

Bullsh.

I texted an AC man that I know, and offered him double price for 5 sticks of silver solder. 20 minutes later, I was handing him $40 for five little sticks.

We barely got it done before the rain hit. This is good, because silver solder doesn't like water, when you're asking it to stick to copper.

I got the plennum adaptor built out of that aluminized foam board stuff. It seems too cheap and flimsy to do any good, but it's easy to cut in the shape that you need (in this case, a weird prism with a turn in it, to go from the AC cabinet to an off-centered (in two axises) plenum sticking out of the ceiling), and it stiffens right up with the application of enough aluminum tape. And really, it only has to withstand the stress of air moving through it, and some temperature gradients. The board actually has some R value to it.

I'm not very good at this, but I will say one thing-- every bit of air that flows through this system is going through that filterbox first. I caulked every joint (filterbox to new false floor, false floor to walls, filterbox to furnace, furnace to AC coil box) before using rolls of alluminum tape.

I'm about $2600 in, but I think that all the costs are sunk.

Today we pump out the lines with a vacuum pump for an hour and a half, and if they hold a vacuum, we'll charge them with the 13.5 lbs of super-duper new freon that the outside Puron unit is precharged with . Then we'll hook up the power and thermostat wires, and see if this thing will run.

Air conditioning project.

Supposedly, the hardest part of the project is behind us. I ran the ridiculously-expensive 7/8" copper freon lines ($259 plus tax) and a3/8" partner (~$60), which I coated in the best insulation that I could buy (~$120 worth), through the attic last night. They barely reach the utility closet without an inch to spare, which is good, because they only sell the copper A/C lines in 50 foot lengths at my local A/C supply house. This was particularly arduous because the attic was very warm, and I had about 24" of blown-in insulation covering the joists that I was trying to walk on so as not to fall through the ceiling, while directing a very delicate pipe through the attic around ducts and trusses and such. Whot phun.

Today, I need to build out the ducting from the coils to the plenum, reconnect the stovepipe to the heater (need more stove pipe. Why do the sections keep coming apart? It's not supposed to be this hard.), connect the copper to the outside compressor and the inside evaporator, and connect the electrical, and see if it turns on. We shall see.

Total price tag thus far for a new 5 tonne gas furnace and 5 tonne a/c unit is about $1900, but I reckon with the cost of incidentals like fuel to and from the store, some tools, and such, I'll be well over $2k.

By the way, the Shark Bite water connection devices, which simply push onto the pipe to connect copper to copper, or even copper to PVC, are pretty nifty. They made the re-installation of the hot water heater take less time than it took to even cut one of the copper pipes that originally connected it to the house water system.

My partner's dad needs a special thank-you when this is done. The guy is working like a dog for me, for free, because he apparently just wants to. I can't express my gratitude to the guy enough.

Demolition man.

Two leaks ruined my hardwood living room floor. That's been pulled up, and is in the back of the van to go to the dump.

The old AC unit that leaked all over my living room floor is pulled out. It's on my lawn. The furnace is still good, and I'll probably Craig's list that old thing.

My living room floor has a 6 foot trench that I jackhammered into it, to replace the rusted drain pipe from the washing machine to the main house sewer line. That was the second leak: a slab leak. Of course I managed to hit the supply lines whilst hammering out the concrete and digging out the drain pipe. The plumber only charged me $251, which I actually was grateful for.

I'm currently in the processes of removing the floor from the utility closet that the updraft AC/Furnace was in; it's been waterlogged. I've pulled the gas hot water heater, and the furnace and AC and jerry-rigged plenum adaptor, this evening. This would have been a LOT easier if the SawzAll hadn't died on me today. I didn't know that they did that. I've never seen one do that. Poor old SawzAll. It served me well. This is the first time it's given me reason to cuss it.

I'm painting the new floor (made of doubled 3/4" CDX) with exterior "oops paint" that I bought at Home Depot for $5. It's brick red. Whatever.

The new A/C, new furnace, new exterior unit, and new copper lines are all at the house, ready to install today. My partner's dad is generously helping me for free.

Gotta get back to it.

Mid-morning walk.

I awoke to find my house empty. I was a bit ashamed that I hadn't helped take the girls to school, but my sleep schedule is difficult to regulate, sometimes.

I answered a message left by my boss, who needed something at work. I started the coffee, got dressed, and walked to work.

On the way in, I noticed that last week's break from the summer heat was over; when it's 88 degrees and 70% humidity at 10:15 AM, it's going to get hot, before the day is over. Still, a 10 m.p.h. breeze from the south made the walk pleasant. I arrived and tended to some business at work, discussed time off for a possible hunt this October, and walked back home.

Approaching a distant neighbor's dog, I could hear him barking furiously at me from a long ways off. How dare I intrude within the scope of his master's realm?!? He has some pit in him, and some other breed that I can't identify. I walked up and petted him through the fence, and he wagged his tail. It's all a big game.

Getting home, I wistfully looked at my next door neighbor's majestic pecan trees, and then gazed derisively at my own trash trees.

There's a reason that I'm planting pecan trees of two varieties about my yard, along with fruit trees and even an almond tree. I will soon cut down some hackberry trees in my yard, despite the dense shade that one of them provides.

I stepped inside my house, frustrated that a short walk could bring sweat to my oversized brow, shaded or not. I was greeted by the cool quiet air conditioning of a distinctively empty house, and the smell of fresh coffee.

There are things to do before autumn comes.

I'm back.

You may have noticed a slow-down in posts. My home computer has been down with a virus, and a major re-install was effected. Drivers were lost in the re-install, and had to be hunted down. Boring stuff that interests me as little as it interests you, but there it is.

In the mean time, I've been working on the house. Finally, my portion of the garage has been marginally organized. As my wife's studio takes up 2/3 of the original garage, the remainder with the tools and detritus of life has been rather packed and full of miscellaneous boxes. We killed those boxes yesterday, and sorted most of the miscellany into boxes marked with their contents. ("Electrical parts," "Plumbing," "Screws and nails", etc.) These were put onto three good-sized rolling shelving units, to be pulled out of the way to get to my work bench, in the far corner. It doesn't look like much, but trust me: this is a huge improvement.

Ah, yes, the work bench. Soon it will sport a mounted bench grinder, very large vise, and a small drill press. Above it will be mounted heavy duty shelving, and soon will be added a single-stage reloading press. It's time to get this show on the road, and get some home reloading done without having to head to Dad's every single time I need to load some rounds. I'm looking at putting the standard table-height work bench up on cinder blocks, to give me a more comfortable height to work from. Peg board still needs to be mounted. A fluorescent work light needs to be mounted over the bench.

I'm considering running connections for the air compressor between the studio and the garage/shop. Can anyone give me a good reason to go to the trouble of plumbing black pipe, as opposed to just running HP hose lines with splitters and valves? The hoses would be out of the weather, and obviously carry nothing more deadly than compressed air.

I've got to admit that this is first time that I've actually properly set up a garage workspace.

We've just installed a portable cooling unit in the studio, and it shares air space with the garage/shop. I may look into the cost of insulating the garage door.

A fire extinguisher in every lawn shed...

It's springtime, and my lawn has erupted with every kind of grass, weed, flower, bush, and vine. There are neat little rectangles of dark green where the rolling chicken coop has been and where I have spread rye/bluegrass/fescue blend seed behind. There's a fair bit of Bermuda, and more dallisgrass (a.k.a. crab grass) than I care to admit. Also, there are the nettles and dandelions.

When I was a little kid, I loved dandelions. Their flower was a happy yellow, and their puffballs were fun to blow. Now, as the guy who mows the lawn, their puffballs irritate me. They send up their puffballs the day after I mow, making my otherwise decently-trimmed lawn look raggedy. It's really quite amazing how fast they go up. And my mulching lawnmower does nothing to kill the seeds; it just plants them right there in a dense pattern.

I'm not much one for weed killing chemicals in my lawn. But I like fire.

Enter the Dragon. No, you Bruce Lee fans, not that silly movie-- I'm basically talking flame-thrower, here. The dragon is a nifty device that attaches to a standard 20 lb propane tank, and shoots out a 3 foot blue flame on demand. It's loud, and scares the neighbors. Fired at weeds, it fries them down to the roots, leaving nice ash to nourish the new grass seed that you then throw down. Organic as hell. Fun. Fire. What's not to like?

The kids, playing in the yard, each wanted a turn. And who am I to deny them this fun? They shot some undesireable plants, and went back to the trampoline. I kept at the weeds. While I went about the yard spraying blue flame at pesky weeds, I found a poison ivy vine growing up near the fence. I'm highly allergic, and my wife is allergic to everything, so I saw this as a nice time to really fry a dreaded enemy. I let it have it. I gave it an extra squirt of burning propane, just to make sure the roots didn't come back. I moved on to other parts of the yard.

About 20 minutes later, I found the garden hose stretched across the yard. I pulled it to the hydrant to be coiled, and found that it was just running. Well, that was odd. Why was it just running in the yard? I grumbled about wasted water and the kids, and moved on. Then I found what the hose had been watering: The fence. Seems that I had gotten a bit carried away, burning that poison ivy bush. The fence was wet and charred around a new hole at the base, next to the dead poison ivy bush.

I worried. Had my neighbor seen his fence burning, and run over to run the hose to put it out before passive-aggressively leaving it running as he stalked away? Oof. Not good for neighbor relations.

I went inside and polled the house. My wife assured me that she hadn't used the hose. My 11 year old daughter said that she had not used the hose. I found my younger daughter watching SpongeBob Squarepants, and asked her about the hose.

She gave me half her attention. "What? Used the hose? No." She went back to watching cartoons for a second before turning back to me. "Oh yeah. I forgot. I noticed that the fence was on fire, so I put it out. Did I forget to turn off the hose, Daddy?"

"Uh, yeah. Hey, kid-- good job on the fire-fighting, but you might tell your daddy when you've done so, you know?"

"Okay, Daddy," she said, and went back to watching SpongeBob and Patrick Starfish torture Squidward.

I'm proud of my just-turned-8-year-old little girl, but kind of amused at her nonchalance at her actions. This could have become a Big Deal. As it was, I just replaced two fence stakes the next day. Took me 10 minutes, tops.