Random observations

I parked near an old foundation when I was hunting yesterday. The owner started building and then contacted the county for a permit. The county took a dim view of the liberties he took (no perkable land for a drainfield, for instance) and refused to issue the permit until he presented documentation that he had permission to pump his septic to a perkable site or had installed a suitable mound above grade-level.

The builder abandoned the site.

Next to the abandoned, three-hole, 8" cinderblock foundation is a Bitternut Hickory tree, Carya cordifomis. It looks like it was a banner year for production.

I saw three red squirrels playing on the foundation. It got me to thinking that the perforations in the cinderblocks might have been acceptable to the squirrels for cacheing mast. That is something to think about. Concrete blocks are not that expensive and are easy to find.

Hope

Hope is the antidote to fear.

While I was in the deer blind I noticed that I had left a Bible in it. The year had not been kind to it. Paper, moisture, time....

I asked Belladonna if there was such a thing as "weatherproof Bibles"?

Funny thing, if you ask the right questions, you get interesting answers.

Waterproof Bibles, printed on polymer pages. Sorted by Customer Reviews.

They aren't cheap unless you amortize them by the number of minutes of counseling $60 can buy.

Battered and beaten (and then deep-fat fried with hush-puppies)

Between the dead-lifting program, isometrics in the deer-blind to forestall hypothermia and life in general, I feel battered and beaten.

MTV, one of my high-school friends, informed me that you have to lean into the soreness. Most people stop and wait for the soreness to go away. Bad decision.

It never will. If you are not sore from working out then you will be sore from not-working-out.

You can either be sore due to reasons you can identify and have the solace of imagining that the shoulders of your shirts are getting tight. Or you can roll over and die with a whimper-and-whine before your time.

I tried to do some lifting during Quicksilver's outdoor time. I was able to get four reps in before she disappeared from sight. Once I got in six reps but I was going too fast to have good form.

I don't know how many reps/sets I got in but I was able to squeeze in two honest sets of ten reps later in the day. 

And this too will pass.

Agility

Handsome Hombre's work trip was extended and his return has been delayed until early next week.

Mrs ERJ is still on track to return late this weekend but due to the timing of the flights she will be jet-lagged and need time to recover.

And this too will pass.

Trail-cams

I installed a sensor at the end of our driveway to inform me of when HH pulled in to drop off QS.

It went off multiple times in quick succession in the wee-hours and I was curious as to what manner of beast or spirit was traversing our driveway. So I purchased a cheap ($40) trail-cam.

It is a cat with a tail striped like a raccoon.

Who could have guessed?

Radiation

I have a brother who used to be a fire-fighter. At some point in his career he was assigned a specialty. Every fire-fighter wants to specialize in extrication because it is the glamor specialty. Unfortunately, my brother drew one of the short straws and got Toxic Spills.

He informed me that at least nine-times-out-of-ten the correct decision is to tell residents to shelter-in-place. Usually, they will be told to seal their windows-and-doors to the best of their abilities and to relocate to the highest floor in their domiciles. He also said they will be told to turn off their clothes drier (which actively pulls in outside-air) and switch off their furnace.

It is a very hard pill for most Americans to swallow, to hunker down and let ventilation, sunshine and biological agents to detoxify the environment. We are conditioned to DO SOMETHING, to DO ANYTHING!!!

Sheltering in place is pretty much the order of the day for nuclear fallout. Stuff plastic grocery bags into air-leaks around your windows (butter knives and pizza cutters work a treat on this job), fill all of your empty containers with water (you are likely to lose pressure) and depending on the nature of the detonation, either camp-out on the second floor of your house or in your basement with as much concrete between you and the ambient environment as you can manage.

People in high-rises are actually in pretty good shape (as long as their city was not the target). Particulate and water-soluble radio-active isotopes will be mostly at ground level. The danger will be in people going nuts and the urge to evacuate and thereby expose one's self to said dangerous people.

If you are one of "those" people who likes to be prepared, then have a plan to hermetically seal your house (duct tape, plastic and so-on) AND landscape the area +6' from your foundations to aggressively kick any rain run-off away from your house. Many of the elements that a designer of a dirty-bomb might salt the device with produce to produce biologically active, radio-active compounds  are water soluble (sulfur and phosphorous and iodine). 

Storm-tracks are moderately predictable at certain times of the year. From one perspective it makes sense to use that tracking information to deliver the fallout. For example, tropical storms tend to track up the eastern US coast in September and October. If this were a game of Clue, I would bet on dirty-bomb in Del-Mar-Va or No-Fulk, Va in October in a hollowed-out pallet of gypsum-board in a CONEX container from Algeria.

Slug Guns

My nephew has a very fine, 20 gauge shotgun with rifled barrel. It is his primary deer hunting gun.

With the recent changes in Michigan firearm hunting regulations, it is a dinosaur. He had a hard time finding ammo.

I COULD help him reload a life-time supply of ammo. Or, since it is an NEF single-shot, help him find a 45-70 barrel for it.

The 45-70 case is too long to qualify under Michigan regulations but the brass can be trimmed back to 1.75" and to qualify. If push came to shove, the .45-70 could be reloaded with home-made blackpowder, slugs cast from sinkers and wheel-weights and lubricated with lard.

For a little bit more money, he can purchase a Savage Axis or Mossberg Patriot in .450 Bushmaster or .350 Legend.

For a bit less money he can buy an insert and change his 20 gauge into a .44 Rem or .357 Magnum.

Decisions, decisions, decisions.