Debbie at the Secretary of State office

I went to the Secretary of State office in Mason, Michigan to use the automated kiosk to get 2017-2018 tabs for my license plates.  There was a problem with one of the vehicle registrations so I had to go inside and wait in line.

I took a number.  They ripped through the twenty customers in front of me in about twenty-five minutes.

The stickers are delaminating from the metal backing.  This was a random plate I saw in a parking lot that exhibited the condition.

While paying for the problem vehicle I mentioned that the license on one of the vehicles was disintegrating.  She asked me if the license started with a "B" or a "C".  It does.

Debbie said, "Well, why don't we take care of that while you are standing here.  Four minutes later I was walking out of the Secretary of State office with a new plate.  The new plate was provided free of charge because it is a known quality issue.

So Debbie and the Secretary of State get an official ERJ atta-boy.

Reloading the 7.35mm Carcano

GREAT BIG GIANT DISCLAIMER:  

I am not responsible if you use any of this information!  This post is for entertainment purposes only.  I cannot know your experience level or the condition of your firearm.

REMIALCSID TNAIG GIB TAERG of dnE

Via email, a reader pointed out that Lee Precision makes custom resizing dies.  The kit lists for $38.  Delivery time varies.

PPV makes 7.35mm Carcano brass or you can fire-form 6.5mm Carcano brass.

Hornady made a special run of 7.35mm bullets which are still available at Graf and Sons

If you were not able to buy bullets, you could make bullets that would function in the 7.35mm Carcano by taking 0.308 bullets in the 120gr-to-130gr range, lubing them with Motor Honey and running them through a custom resizing die to reduce their diameter to 0.300 inches.  Softer bullets, typically described as "varmint bullets" like the Speer TNT or Hornaday hollow point or SST would form more easily than thicker jacketed bullets.

Load data

ADI Load Data, Page 97.  These are MAX loads!!!! Conventional wisdom is to reduce by 10% and work your way up to verify that these loads work in your gun with your reloading technique.

ADI powders are sold in the United States by Hodgdon Powder under a different set of names.

AR2207 is marketed as Hodgdon 4198.  AR2206 might be Hodgdon 4895.  AR2208 is marketed as Hodgdon Varget.  SOURCE

7.35mm Carcano

One of my coffee drinking buddies had been talking about his Dad's rifle for months.

He remembers, with great fondness, walking through the Upper Peninsula's cedar swamps hunting deer with this rifle.  He claims it is capable of rolling deer at a 1/4 mile and that it only weighed a freckle over six pounds.  He said it was one of his Dad's WWII "bring backs".

Unfortunately, the action locked up.  He asked me to look at it.

It is a 7.35mm Carcano.  In the 1930s the Italian Army determined that they needed a more powerful weapon than the 6.5mm Carcano.  They took the 6.5mm, slightly increased the case capacity and increased the diameter of the bullet from 6.5mm to 7.35mm which is 0.299 inches.

The onset of WWII hostilities found the Italians with one foot on the dock and the other in the canoe.  Most of their army was still outfitted with the 6.5mm rifles so they ceased production of the 7.35mm rifle and retooled for 6.5mm to meet the increased wartime needs.  The three years of 7.35mm rifles produced were squirreled away and issued to "secondary" defense personnel.

Other bullets of similar size were the 30-06 (.308"), the British .303, Russian 7.62X54Rmm and the Japanese 7.7mm ( all 0.311 inches).

The front action screw had been replaced with the wrong screw.  The previous owner must have lost the original and tried it replace it with an "English" SAE bolt.

It is a pretty gun.  The blueing is in good shape and the beechwood (or chestnut) stock was refinished.

The accuracy of Carcano's is often considered a joke.  In general, there are two major factors (and in the case of this particular specimen, three factors). 

There was a huge amount of variation in ammunition velocity and all of the ammo was pooled.  A sample of six cartridges might have 700fps difference between the slowest and the fastest.

The stock does not have a metal cross piece aft of the recoil lug.  Repeated firing has the potential to batter the stock and loosen up the connection between the action in the stock.

In the case of this rifle, the front screw is bottomed out in the hole and is loose.  I once had the honor of firing a muzzle loader with this condition and was not able to hit a paint can at twenty paces.

The locked up action

One consequence of firing over-pressure ammo is that the brass of the case flows.   The wall material moves aft and pinches shut (or narrows) the extractor groove of the case.  Lifting the bolt handle causes the extractor, a small steel claw, to slide radially in the cartridge's extractor groove.  Unless, of course, the groove is narrowed.  And then the bolt handle will not lift.

I don't know if the over-pressure ammo was WWII surplus that degraded over time?  Given the variation in new ammo it is possible that the ammo was over-pressure the day it was made.

Another possibility is that some Billy-Bob tried to reload the old ammo with .308 bullets.  Firing an oversized bullet down a smaller bore is guaranteed to spike pressures.

The maximum chamber pressure listed for the 7.35X51mm Carcano is 51,000 psi vs 62,000 psi for the .308 Winchester.  The 7.35mm Carcano also has about 10% less case capacity (volume) than the .303.

Given the fact that this is a pretty gun, the action is locked up, the front action screw goobered up the threads in the action, the rarity of the ammo, the complete lack of reliable reloading data and the dearth of 0.299" bullets...I am going to tell my buddy to hang it on the wall and to cherish his memories.

Russell Kirk's 10 Principles of Conservatives

1. Conservatives believe that there exists an enduring moral order.
2. Conservatives adhere to custom, convention, and continuity.
3. Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription. The individual is foolish, but the species is wise and it is perilous (and conceited) to weigh every passing issue on the basis of private judgment and private rationality. 
4. Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence.
5. Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.  They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems. 
6. Conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability. 
7. Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked. 
8. Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. 
9. Conservatives perceive the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions. 
10. Conservatives understand that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society. 

 
 Source:  The Russell Kirk Center

The corn is up

I bought a wood chipper today

I bought a wood chipper today.

The seller will be retiring in three weeks.  He was asking $110.  He is a very honest man.  He said there were major issues with the chute that loads the larger limbs.

The motor started on the first pull.  It had clearly been stored inside.

This is the chute in question

Some kinds of plastics get brittle when it is cold.  I suspect somebody bumped into the chute on a cold day and broke-out two of the three attachment holes.  That would be the sides that are on top and in the foreground.

The gentleman selling also said that it did not chip branches that were larger than 3/4" diameter.  It was no wonder it had been sitting on Craigslist for over a month.  It was a case of the seller being too honest.

He about cried when I handed him $11, "...just like the ad listed."  Then I winked and gave him a hundred more.  Most of the other units on Craigslist were $300.

Onondaga and I carted it home.  We disassembled it to see what I had gotten myself into.  The blades were as good as new.  The oil was as clear as new honey.  It started on the first pull.

I talked Onondaga into being my model.  I promised I would only take pictures of his best side.  Yup, sure enough it did a great job on the little stuff.  We used a 1.5" diameter shoot from a Box Elder as our test subject.

Sticks above 3/4" in diameter had to be pushed into the rotating knives.  They did not self feed.  But the unit chipped them just fine as long as you did not bog it down too much.

We did the test run without the loading chute.  The primary purpose of the loading chute is to keep fingers and hands away from the knives.  It is designed to be 15% longer than a 95th male's extended arm.  Running it without the chute is not safe.  A future post will show how I intend to reattach the chute.

This unit should save me a lot of steps when pruning orchard trees.  I will chip everything less than an inch in diameter in the orchard.

The seller is an attorney.  It is a pity he is retiring. 

Credit Scores

Older people, on average, have better credit scores than younger people.  Source

There are clear regional differences in FICO scores.  Image generated at this SITE  using data from the aforementioned link.

Median age by state.  The pattern of Alabama and Florida outperforming their neighbors may be partially explained by demographics.

Mountain Lions, somewhere north of Eaton Rapids

Last night Kubota was coming home from an evening of mud-bogging.  He was north of our house when he and Big D both saw what they claim was a Mountain Lion (Puma concolor) loping across the road.

Kubota likes to pull our leg but I think he may have actually seen one.  He was very rattled and this would be the first time he had somebody corroborate one of his "Big Windies".

So when Mrs ERJ and I took our walk (about noon today) I carried a can of 10% Red Sabre pepper gel.

A half mile north of our house we saw a Whitetale doe break cover, dart half way across the road and then jog, hard, away from us.  She was scooting.

I was taking this picture when the dogs across the street went berserk.

A couple of hundred yards later I was snapping a picture of some columbine when the dogs across the street started squealing.  The lady who lives there loves dogs and she has an ever-changing cast of canine company.  At this time, I think she has a couple of smallish (65 pound) pitbull bitches and a generic ankle-biter.  All three dogs were squealing like pigs.

Two of them came tearing around to our side of the house yawling like nobody's business.  They could clearly see us through the chain link fence.  They were not barking at us.  They did not find what they were looking for and did 180s and tore-ass back the way they had come.

If....
If, and that is a big "If", there is a Mountain Lion in the neighborhood then I suspect it is a pet "drop-off".  We are, quite literally, where the pavement ends.

A young male would not be hanging around 14 hours later.

A young, wild male would be proficient at hunting and we would not have seen that doe squirt out of cover.  It would have been dead.

A young, wild male would be doing what every other respectable teenager is doing at noon.  He would be sleeping.

If anything, a pet drop-off would be more dangerous than a wild animal.  The wild animal would take great pains to avoid human contact.  IF there is a large carnivore hanging out in the neighborhood it does not seem stressed by humans.

I will cheerfully attest that the remaining 2.5 miles of our walk had a unique zest.  I don't know about Mrs ERJ, but I kept checking my back trail and scanning limbs that hung over the road.

The next time we go for a walk Mrs ERJ will be carrying the pepper gel and I will open-carry the 9mm.  Concealed carry has its place but you cannot beat open-carry for quick access.  There may only be a 5%-to-50% chance that Kubota saw a Mountain Lion but it costs nothing to be ready.

Sanctity of Private Property and Food Security

How does a tropical paradise with a population of 35 people per square mile and a land rich in resources manage to starve?

Easy, they abolish "private property".

Why not plant a garden?

Red Beans are a staple of Latin American diets and, like all beans, are easy to grow.

Planting a garden seems like a no-brainer, right?

The problem is two-fold.  Authorities can confiscate the garden any time they want.

This institutional weakness has generated a great deal of legal uncertainty, and nationalization is out of control. Food companies, for example, can be declared “strategic” and of public interest at any time, and therefore confiscated without meeting the applicable legal requirements. These companies and large supermarket chains cannot produce or distribute their products according to their own operative plans, but according to the orders dictated unilaterally by the central government.   -Source

Do you suppose they will confiscate it before Little Red Hen plows it?  Nope.

Do you suppose they will confiscate it before LRH plants it?  Nope.

Do you suppose they will confiscate it before LRH weeds it?  Nope.

They will seize it just before it is time to harvest.  After which time LRH becomes an unpaid employee of the State.

The other problem is the lack of civil order.  Crime is rampant.  Going out to hoe your garden is an invitation to get knocked in the head.  If the government does not take your garden the populace  will bypass the middleman and steal everything you sweated all season to bring to harvest.  Years of socialist conditioning has given them an entitlement mentality: "I am not responsible.  Somebody owes me."

Everybody in Venezuela knows this.  That is why almost nobody in Venezuela plants a garden.

Riot: Yes.
Ransack: Yes.
Pillage: Yes.
Emigrate: Yes.
Garden: No.

This situation is not much different that what is happening in Iraq and Syria.  They are coming to Europe and America with much of the same cultural baggage.

Playing soon at a theater near you: Public Pension Trainwreck

You might think that this issue will not impact you.  You might think, "I am not enrolled in a public pension.  Therefore it will not touch my life."  And you would be wrong.

EATON COUNTY - County officials are considering ... the elimination of four "command" positions and 18 deputies, along with two clerks and two dispatchers. Unless the county renegotiates its contract with Delta Township, 25 deputies who patrol there under a contract between the county and the township would remain in place.

The area shaded in green contains 7% of Eaton county's area, 30% of Eaton County's population and 70% of its economic activity.  The areas shaded in red will have no county Sheriff patrol coverage under the proposal.  Eaton County demographics mimic the State's demographics, except the State's population/economic activity is in the southeast corner.

About 75,000 of the county's 107,000 residents live outside Delta Township (in Sunfield, Roxand, Oneida, Vermontville, Chester, Benton, Windsor, Kalamo, Carmel, Eaton, Eaton Rapids, Belleview, Walton, Brookfield and Hamlin Townships). Currently, 17 deputies are assigned outside Delta, and all those positions would be eliminated.

The projected shortfall stems largely from an anticipated increase of $2.2 million in required pension contributions to the Municipal Employees' Retirement System, the pension administrator for current and retired county employees, for the 2017-2018 county budget, Fuentes said. MERS, which manages about 84% of Michigan's public pension plans, changed contribution requirements last year. The county had been paying $3 million a year toward pension obligations for current and retired employees. It anticipates paying $5.2 million in the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

"(The sheriff's office) is the largest cost center in the county budget," Fuentes (Eaton County's Financial Controller) said.    -Source

I want to make a couple of observations:
Every jurisdiction is going through the same gymnastics to reduce their exposure to the Municipal Employees' Retirement System levy.  Every jurisdiction is reducing the number of employees on their rolls.  At the end of the fiscal year the accountants at the MERS will find receipts grossly below projections because every municipality jettisoned every employee that was not nailed down.

Because it is not possible to levy funding requirements against employees who are no longer with the municipalities, the MERS will have to increase the toll AGAIN.  And again.  And again as the municipalities, which are legally required to stay solvent, shed employees.

Citizens will find their taxes and fees going up to pay for services that were delivered decades ago, perhaps before they moved to that jurisdiction.  They will be paying more-and-more for less-and-less.

The citizens who are mobile will move to municipalities that less encumbered by legacy costs.  Municipalities that are more encumbered by legacy costs will find themselves in a death spiral and will seek "political" solutions rather than bankruptcy court solutions.

Otherwise solvent and well-run municipalities find themselves shackled to the railing of the Titanic as less prudent municipalities seek, and get, extensions and exceptions to paying their toll.  For example, the Detroit  Public School system owes MERS $99 million due to earlier failure to make payments.  Detroit skips a payment and Eaton County loses police protection.

The other point
The other point I want to make is that the only way to make the Eaton County situation work is to vastly increase the allocative efficiency.  That is, get better at juggling the resources.

If you accept this as a given, then the last place you would cut resources would be in 9-1-1 and dispatching.

You are on your own
Even with outstanding 9-1-1 service, there will be times when you are on your own.  This is a good time to assess your doors and locks.  Look at your windows and consider safety film and/or vibration sensing alarms on the ones that are most likely to be challenged.  Look at your Safe Room and consider door upgrades. 

Thought-starter essays
Part I
Part II
Part III 

Consider getting several, small, barky dogs.  One big dog is easy for bad guys to deal with.

If firearms are part of your plan, do some dry runs.  Do the first few when the kids are not at home.  Can you find your weapon, ammo-or-magazines and get them operational in the dark?  Can you do it in less than forty seconds?  Adrenalin causes your brain to revert to baboon mode...you need strong muscle memory if your weapon is going to be an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

@#$%^& Woodchucks and Rabbits

They are everywhere this year.  Last year they wiped out my beans.  This year I am trying something different.

I bought some party cups and cut the bottoms out of them to make miniature "tree tubes"  The most effective way to cut the bottoms out of the cups proved to be cutting the opposite side of the bottom with a utility knife while "cradling" the bottom with my thumb and the first knuckle of my index finger.  Then spinning the cup with my left hand while holding the knife and right hand steady.

Fifty of these cups cost $2.  That works out to four cents each.

I beat the rain.  I don't need the rain to get the seeds to germinate.  There is plenty of moisture in the ground.  I need to beat the rain because I cannot till the ground for three days after a rain lest I turn it into adobe bricks. 

Before tilling.  The snow fence and livestock panels on the left side of the frame will be used to support the pole beans after they emerge.

After tilling

Twenty inches between knots.  Four seeds every twenty inches.  The seeds at the knots get a "tree tube".

After planting and "tree-tubes"

Discussion
I am pretty sure these will stop the rabbits from mowing them down to the ground.  I doubt that they will slow down a determined woodchuck. That is why we test things.  I would love to be wrong about the woodchucks.

Why randomizing is always critical
Good problem solvers ALWAYS randomize.  They don't just randomize when it is convenient because it is rarely convenient.

By protecting every 4th seedling I did not randomize.  Random means "without discernible pattern." Cover-one-skip-three-repeat-till-the-end is a pattern. The casual observer might think, "Hey, that is an even better cross-section than randomizing.  How could that possibly cause a misleading result?"

I noticed as I was placing the seeds I would put four or five in my hand and then start just after the knot and finish at the knot.  I wanted to evenly space the seeds so I treated each segment separately and I only started with four or five in my hand because I did not want to spill any because that attracts birds.

When I plant large seeds by hand, my thumb glides over the seeds and tends to pop out the largest one first.  Then the next plumpest.  The most shriveled and runtiest seed is the last one to be planted.

I was coupling the potential vigor of the seed with its position relative to the knot by unconsciously selecting the worst seed for that position I intended to cover with the tree-tube.  The issue would not be solved by planting the first seed next to the knot.  That would simply skew the results in favor of the tree-tubes.

I will leave the experiment the way it is.  The depredation of the @#$%^& woodchucks and rabbits will likely overwhelm the coupling effect of my seeding.  Time will tell.

790 Growing Degree Days (B42)

The Orchard Grass (Dactylis glomerata) is starting to shed pollen.  

This stuff is my kryptonite.  I am so allergic to this stuff that I get contact dermatitis when I brush against the seed heads.  It is like Poison Ivy except it shows up in about 10 minutes.

Because this is a tall grass, up to five feet tall, walking through it puts clouds of pollen right at face level.  

The next ten days will have me mostly inside.  If I go outside I will carry antihistamine eye-drops and will probably dose myself with diphenhydramine before walking around outside.

Plowing new land

I heard a funny noise in the neighborhood.  It was coming from the eighty acres a "city" person bought fifteen years ago and tried to fill with $300,000 houses and five acre lawns.  The lots did not sell.  It recently changed hands.

I talked with the gentleman who was plowing.  His name is Marvin.  His tractor is a 1957 John Deere 620, one of the last of the two cylinder, horizontal John Deeres.  The engine is 5.0 liters (each cylinder has more swept volume than a 2l pop bottle) and is rated for 50 horse power.  The max, rated RPM is a whopping 1125 RPM.

He was pulling a three bottom plow.  Most of the brush was grubbed out but there will still roots in the ground.  That old girl, the tractor, was working hard.

Six hours later.

Personally, I am tickled to see land go back into agricultural production.

How Engineers peel hard-boiled eggs

Potato salad is one of the staples of long, holiday weekends.  Many recipes require hard-boiled eggs.  Hard-boiled eggs are tedious to peel, especially when the eggs are fresh.  There is an easier way.

"Peel" them before you boil them.

Now it is Mrs ERJ's turn.  She will finish the job.  Teamwork is a great thing.

The Reed Index

• Did you ever eat at a truck stop on an Interstate?  Yes.
• Have you ever been in Boone, North Carolina or Barstow, California or any of thousands of such towns across the country.  I live in one.
• Were you ever in the military.  No.
• Have you ever talked to a cop or an ambulance crewman or a fireman.  Rob, Linc, Tom....
• Do you have a Mexican friend?  Papa Hernandez, Hermes Gonzales (Honduran, does that count?)
• When did you last eat in a restaurant where a majority of the customers were black.  Majority by avoirdupois, our kitchen table...last week.
• Do you know an enlisted man, or anyone in the armed services. Andy, Dylan...
• Did you ever hitchhike someplace overnight?  No
• Have you ever baited a hook, hunted, or fired a rifle.  3-for-3.
• Have you worked washing dishes?  Ponderosa Steakhouse.  1977, 1978, Knights of Columbus Fish Fry 2017.
• Have you ever worked harvesting crops?  Yes.
• Have you ever worked driving a delivery truck. No.
• Do you have a blue-collar friend.  Yes.
• Do you know what the Texas Two-Step is?  No.  I DON'T dance.
• Have you ever been in a biker bar.  Does the Onondaga Tavern count?
• Did you attend a fancy schools like Oberlin, Swarthmore, Amherst, the Ivies, Bard (counts as a negative).  No.
• Do you even know someone who graduated from a land-grant school or a regional state university or a community college?  Yes, yes, yes.
• Do you know an engineer or a plumber or an electrician?  Yes, yes, yes.

15-3=12

Source of the Index

Bud

Cool video.

Thanks, Pawpaw.

"Gram-maw? I am in trouble!"

Ring, ring, ring.

"Hello?"

"Gram-maw?  I'm in trouble!", kid's voice.

"Billy, is that you?"  'Gram-maw'. "Billy, I don't have my hearing aids in.  Can you text me?"  Gram-maw asked.

"Yeah, Gram-maw.  This is Billy.  I am in the jail in Chicago.  I swear I did not do it.  They are going to throw me in a cell with a bunch of drug addicts if I can't make bail?" 'Billy' texted.

"Oh Billy.  You scamp.  Seems like you spend a lot of time at the jailhouse.  Where did you say you are?  Mason? Charlotte?" 'Gram-maw' texted back.

"No Gram-maw.  I am in Chicago.  You have to wire me money or I am going to have to spend a week with the nastiest people you ever saw.  I am afraid all of them are gonna (in a whisper) rape me." 'Billy' texted.

"Oh my!  How did you get in this terrible mess?  Why didn't you call your dad?" 'Granm-maw' asked.

"I was driving and didn't know the guys in back were drinking beer.  The cop pulled us over when one of the guys flipped her the bird.  I swear, grandmaw, I wasn't doing nuthin."  'Billy' texted.

Grandmaw replied, "You know I can't see too good...but I am still mad at you for not sending me a picture when you graduated.  I don't suppose you could send me one of those suffies or what ever they call them?"

"Sure, Gram-maw.  Give me a second." 

Gram-maw texted, "Well ain't that something.  Look at how big you are.  How come I can't see the tattoo you said you were getting?"

Billy, "'Cause its on my chest."

Gram-maw, "Well, after giving you $1500 to pay for it I think you ought to send me a picture of that too?'

"Sure thing, Gram-maw.  It is on the way."

A couple minutes later.  "Yup, Billy, that sure is a beauty.  You know I don't keep that kind of money around the house but I can have it tomorrow.  Is there any way you can call me again?"

Billy, "I'm not sure.  What time are you going to have it?"

Gram-maw, "I reckon about 10:30.  I don't get up and around like I used to."

"OK." Billy.

****************************************************

Ring, ring, ring.

"Hello.  FBI."

"Hello Sharon.  This is Mrs D.V.  Can I talk to Billy?"

"You bet, Mrs D.V.  Agent Billy coming right up."

"Hi Grandmother, what can I do for you?" Agent Billy.

"I got another one of those calls.  He claimed to be my grandson named "Billy".  I did an inverse image look-up and he might be Omar al Sayood of Battle Creek, Michigan.  At least the owner of a Facebook account with that name looks exactly like him.  I also have a picture of his chest tattoo that he texted me. "

"He is going to call at 10:30 tomorrow morning.  Can you send an agent around for my cellphone...chain of evidence and all that?"

Agent Billy, "Sure thing, Grandmother.  Do you want us to try and whack him for fraud or embezzlement?"

Grandmother, "No.  My guess is that he is a recent immigrant.  I think impersonating a Federal Agent should be grounds for deportation.  Just because I am old, vote Republican and have a few dollars in my bank account doesn't mean I am stupid."

*****************************************

*****************************************

My 85 year old mom gets these kinds of calls on a frequent basis.  She worries that she might start to slip (mentally) and fall for one of these scams someday.  She says, "It is hard to tell for sure who you are talking to on the phone because all of the kids mumble now days."  I thought I would have a little bit of fun with how some of them might turn out.

Big Hummingbird

This guy has been raiding the hummingbird feeder for the last five days.  I finally got a photo.

52.49" (No dwarfs were injured in the production of this blog post)

Somehow, the dwarfs are bigger than I pictured in my head.

Belladonna is done throwing for the season.

Today was a smashing success.  She went into the competition seeded 21-out-of-23 competitors and she finished 3rd.

She set two personal records.  Her first throw was 50".  Her second throw was 52.49".  I guess the dwarfs in Florida are more aerodynamic than the Michigan dwarfs.

A picture of the children chillin'

Kubota claims full responsibility for her sterling performance.

He claims she is so skilled because of all the times she sailed him across the living room like a dried up road-pizza.  Hard to argue with that kind of logic.