A man has to know his limitations

I gave blood today. This is the first time the Phlebotomist had to "stick" me twice in the 40 years I have been giving blood.

The first one worked fine as long as the blood was flowing even though it seemed to take much longer than I am used to.

But the "hub" clotted up after I filled the bag and they had to do a second poke on my other arm to fill the vials for blood typing and all of the other mysterious things they need to do.

Waste

One of the advantages of a simple diet is that there is less waste than a diet that demands a great deal of variety.

When I clean my refrigerator I see that I never throw out milk or mustard, apples, shredded cheese or eggs. I do toss celery, green onions, weird sauces, chip-dip and other exotic items.

The point is that the high-runners in my diet have enough demand and turnover that very little gets wasted. The "Hey, I need to buy some of this for this one recipe I want to try" invariable results in 3/4 of it being tossed a few weeks later.

I have to keep reminding myself of that as I drool over the seed catalogs. The Baker Creek catalog came today and every page is a work of art.

If I was forced to engage in triage, my list of vegetables might look something like this. If I could only grow ONE vegetable, it would be tomatoes. If I could only grow TWO, it would be tomatoes and potatoes, and so-on...

1. tomatoes  
2. potatoes
3. zucchini 
4. Turnip/Kale/Daikon (cover-crop/late fall greens/roots) 
5. green beans
6. sweet pepper
7. cabbage
8. Butternut squash
9. cucumber 
10. field corn
11. Romaine lettuce
12. beets
13. broccoli

On the other hand, if I only had a few square-feet of garden the list would look different:

1. Hot peppers
2. Garlic
3. Cherry tomatoes
4. Rosemary
5. Mint 

Some vegetables are notable for their absence. No onions, carrots or sweet corn on my list because they are grown commercially by local farmers. I can buy a 50 pound bag of carrots for $7...and I am not very good at growing carrots.

Adding more crops usually adds more complexity. There are exceptions. Turnip/kale/daikon seeds can be broadcast into the canopy of your squash/pumpkins/melons in early July (in Michigan) and will give you a second crop with no fuss or bother three or four months later. But those are the exceptions.

I admire the people like Leigh and Lucky who seem to be able to effortlessly grow a boundless cornucopia of delicious, garden edibles. Alas, I am living proof of Dirty Harry's opinion that "A man has to know his limitations".

All opinions will be much appreciated. Since choices of what you grow are very sensitive to climate, please consider listing what state or region (i.e. Intermountain West) you are in.

Added later:

For those of you who worry that my lack of success (so far) this hunting season will render us to a meat-free diet, rest assured that my friends who HAVE been successful cheerfully donated the hearts, livers, kidneys and tongues of their kills.

I have been pressure canning them. Zeus really likes a little bit of real meat added to his dried kibbles, and if push-comes-to-shove, it is plenty good enough for me to eat.

Is it OK if I characterize my deer hunting season as "Offal good so far"? 

"That happens"

 Mrs ERJ and I were commenting on one of Quicksilver's stock phrases; "That happens".

When confronted by shortfalls, calamity or misfortune, as often as not Quicksilver responds "That happens". Not a helpless shrugging of shoulders and "Whatever" but a matter-of-fact statement and "Ok, now we deal with the consequences".

No drama. You can do everything right and still get an unwanted outcome. There doesn't have to be a bad-guy or a victim. Sometimes we decide to take shortcuts and they don't work out. 

We thought Handsome Hombre and Southern Belle were doing a fine job of teaching her those lessons. Sometimes things get bumped and fall off of the table. Sometimes the dog eats your cookie. Sometimes Grandpa uses the last wet-wipe and doesn't get another package out of the pantry. Not every accident is Freudian.

"That happens".

 And then we started hearing ourselves use that phrase, same inflections and everything.

It is a little bit eerie to hear something that you wholeheartedly believe in come out of your granddaughters mouth...and then realize that it is something you had unconsciously instilled in your child, the one who is your granddaughter's mother. No wonder it resonated with us!

We were hearing echos of our parenting. Thank God it was something positive.

Just for fun

 and

 

Gloomy days and Aladdin Lamps

I heard that one of my coffee-drinking buddies wasn't doing very well, so I decided to visit him.

"Skyd" Jorgensen (not his real name) is now 80 and is down to 130 pounds. In his prime, he could run a jack-hammer all day long and then work his second job for another eight hours...day-after-day-after-day.

One of his favorite stories is how he walked into a liquor store one Friday and the young men behind the counter had a barbell they were "curling".

"Iffen I can do that 25 times, will you give me a fifth of vodka?" Skyd challenged. 

The older of the two men looked at the weights and then at Skyd. "If you can do it one-handed...then I will give you a bottle of vodka. If you can't, then you pay double."

Skyd started to reach for the weights when the man added "...left handed."

Skyd cranked out the 25 curls with the 90 pounds using his left arm.

Then the man challenged Skyd. "I will give you two bottles if you can to another 25...but you give back that one if you cannot."

Again, Skyd started to reach for the weights when the man added "...with your left hand"

Skyd knocked out another 25 curls using the same arm he had done the first 25 with and left with two, free fifths of vodka. Vodka has very little taste, but the vodka in those two bottles tasted like victory.

Anyway, Skyd is in decline. He was short of breath just sitting and talking.

He insisted that I take one of his precious Aladdin Lamps. He and his now-deceased wife collected them. That is not a great sign in terms of how much longer he expects to live. I didn't ask for it. He told me to bring it over to the table from where it was displayed.

We had talked about Aladdin lamps in the past. It was one of the wonders that my dad remembered from his childhood. He grew up poor during the Great Depression. His dad had TB and died in 1936 "poor". Raised by his widowed mother in a shack by the river round the bend from the hobo-camp poor. 

We talked about his will and how he wants his estate to be divided up. He only has one heir, and that heir has been stealing from Skyd. Perhaps he thinks that since he is going to inherit it all anyway, he will just speed up the transfer.

In other news, Skyd told me that he had a plumber quote the cost of replacing his water-heater. The quote was for $3000.

I realize that there are extenuating conditions: Poor access, old pipes and such. But I have to wonder if maybe the plumber looked at Skyd and thought "This guy is tottering on the brink of dementia. He is a pigeon waiting to be plucked."

Unfortunately, there are people in EVERY profession (and most families) who see people who are in their last five years of life as nothing more than resources to be strip-mined. 

So it has been a gloomy day.

The weather is changing and the sky is gray. Plants are being squirreled away in piles of mulch and compost to over-winter. I ran out of time getting them into the ground.

Cherish the people who treat you well. 

Fine Art Tuesday

Guillermo Gómez Gil was born in Malaga, Spain in 1862 and died in 1942.

Renowned for his seascapes and luminous light. In general, his paintings are very easy and restful to look at.

A tip of the old fedora to the tireless Lucas Machias for suggesting this artist.

A story in pictures

 

I used the wire from a surveyor's flag . 1/8" diameter holes. Peanut butter for bait. Long ke-bob skewers also work but you need 3/16" diameter holes.

About an 1-1/2" of RV antifreeze in the bottom of the pail

Books, keys, scopes and budgets

It came to my attention that my hunting and fishing buddy "Shotgun" never read a book by Robert Heinlein. I plan to fix that deficiency.

Shotgun informed me that he thinks Louis L'Amour's book "Last of the Breed" might be the finest book ever written. Do any of you have any opinions as to WHICH of Heinlein's many books is the best "first" book? If that is too broad of a question, then which of his books is the most like Louis L'Amour's book "Last of the Breed"?

Keys

One of my brothers bought a Kawasaki murder-cycle. It only has one key. The dealer told him to have a second one cut at a lock-smith's. The best lock-smith in town told him to get it from the dealer.

Photos of the business end of the key

My brother found a firm in the U.K. that will cut a new key if he has the key-code or if he sends them a picture !! 8-) !!!.

Do any of my readers know of sources in the US who can provide this service?

Thermal scopes

Scopes that help shooters make ethical shots in low-light conditions are HUGE force multipliers. Short video here that compares several models from one supplier.

There are countless varmints that only come out at night. Raccoons, 'possum, hogs, coyotes and so on. Having some kind of thermal scope also helps identify items that might be lurking in the background.

There are two key-words used to describe scopes that are sold for low-light conditions. 

The older technology is "night vision" which relies on an infrared "flood-light" and video technology that can sense IR light. Actually, nearly all digital camera technology can see short-wave IR; commercial cameras require an IR filter to remove short-wave end the IR spectrum to ensure that IR sources like hot pavement and heating elements on stoves don't show up as light sources. 

The down-sides of the old "night vision" technology is that it gobbles batteries and is a huge beacon for anybody looking for IR.

The newer technology is "thermal" which is passive and senses the difference in temperature between your target and the background. For example, a 'coon in a tree is warm while the tree is cool and the sky in the background is near absolute zero. That is an easy "find". A 'possum moseying along in front of a stone fence that has been baking in the afternoon and evening sun is a much more difficult "discrimination" problem.

Low-end "thermal" scopes with coarse image resolution are available in the $700 range. Very functional (in my uneducated opinion) with 300x400 pixel resolution can be had in the $1400-$1700 range.

I don't see value in putting thermal on every rifle and air-gun in the safe but I can see that having one on a general purpose firearm. If shooting varmints that took refuge in a tree is on your menu, then you need to be hyper-vigilant about where your bullet will land...and you should strongly consider mounting the scope on a stout, nitro-spring pellet-gun or a low-recoiling shotgun (like a 20-gauge, semi-automatic). 

Noo Yawk take notice

Most cities in Germany are on the brink of bankruptcy

Their cash-burn is accelerating by the month. Budgets that were made last year are hundreds of millions of Euros in the red this year. Most of the black-hole is related to immigrants "pulling" benefits they are not paying into.

 

Wardrobe malfunctions

***Disclosure: This post is not appropriate for people with refined sensibilities nor should it be read by women who are subject to fainting spells or are cursed with vivid imaginations.

For those of you who still harbor the tiniest bit of respect for my skills as an outdoors-man, you might want to skip this post, too.***

---PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK--- 

Having learned my lesson the last time I sat in the Orchard stand, I was prepared this time. The wind-chill was 38F which was almost identical to the last, cold sit I had in the stand.

I upgraded to a quilted shirt, quilted bibs and an honest-to-goodness parka.

But let me back up a bit in this story....

As a frugal family who did not want our kids to feel left-out or "poor", it was our habit to "pad" the number of presents beneath the Christmas tree by wrapping packages of underwear and socks.

I am tough to shop for. My needs are very simple. If I have Mrs ERJ, a warm place to sleep and adequate food then I am a happy guy. Throw in a truck that starts when I turn the key and I am filled with ecstacy!

So, my supply of undies and socks is also replenished on Christmas. Often, they are the only gifts I get. It is all good.

I do my laundry every week. That means I need a minimum of 8 pairs of undershorts in the fleet to make it to the next laundry-day. A few more is better in case my laundry-day is delayed.

If you do the math, there are 49 weeks between the end of regular, firearms Deer Season in Michigan and the previous Christmas. For the senior-undershorts there have been 101 weeks have elapsed from the Christmas before that and the last week of Deer Season.

Back to the story

I had been piddling around the orchard for a couple of hours before adding the warmer clothes. My plan was to sit from 4:00 p.m. until the end of legal light.

I waddled from my truck to the Orchard stand and started to climb the ladder to reach the stand.

As I started climbing the ladder, my undershorts shinnied down the rump-roast of my butt and continued heading for my knees. I went up. My shorts went down.

Curses!

I climbed back down the two steps I had taken to get back on to solid ground. There was no way I was going to let go of the sides of the ladder to fish-around and try and yank my shorts back into position.

I unzipped my parka and reached through the slits in the sides of the bibs. I had to worm my hands through the folds of the quilted shirt and snake them over the waistband of my jeans and down the legs before I was able to find the flaccid waistband of my undershorts. Then, through an aerobic sequence of dance gyrations and manly "come-hither" evolutions with my hands I convinced them to return to their appointed position north of my privates. 

I started back up the ladder, assuming I had handled the problem. I was wrong. The bibs, insulated shirt and my carpenter jeans interacted with my shorts and down-they-went.

(Lather. Rinse. Repeat the previous three paragraphs) X 3

Resigned to the inevitable, I waddled up the ladder with my knees splayed as far outboard as I could manage. Miraculously, the undershorts only slid MOST of the way down. That worked great until I got to the door of the blind which is about 20" wide. I had to squeeze my knees together to get inside and yes, the undershorts slide beneath the waves like the submarine in the movie Das Boot avoiding an airplane.

By now, that pair of shorts had acquired sentience and they hated me. 

More dance gyrations were performed in the confined space of the deer blind. It may have been my imagination, but I thought I heard deer down in the pucker-brush chortling.

 Of course, it could have just been the Fruit-of-the-Looms jeering.

The only deer I saw last night were as I drove home. The deer were grazing in the alfalfa field south of my stand. They stopped eating and started pointing at me as I drove by. Word gets around quickly.