January 8, 2024: The Annual Bird Shoot
As advertised, I'm beginning this season's log with my yearly "opener," a bird shoot at Holland Game Preserve in Glade Hill, Virginia. You can see this venue if you click here in a video from—of all places—the local Public Broadcasting Station, WBRA. My friend Phil and I have been going there for some years: this is now an annual ritual. We left Blacksburg in time to be there about 9:00 AM (it's a bit over an hour and a half away). John Holland met us, then set the birds out. John has well-trained dogs and I wish I were as good at shooting the birds as the dogs are at finding them.
We bought 4 pheasant and 12 quail. I shoot pheasant because they're big enough that I can hit one now and then. Phil shoots quail, because he likes the flavor. I have nothing against quail but they're so small I almost always miss them.
Bottom line: I got 3 of my 4 birds, Phil got all his quail and a "bonus" quail left over from the previous day's shoot by another group.
I made a spectacular hit on that cock pheasant, and on one of the hens. I even did manage to hit a quail: I'm not sure which of us was more surprised.
I had some trouble with misfires in my otherwise-reliable Stevens 311 12 gauge double but had brought a single-shot 20 gauge as backup and finished the day with that. I need to get that gun to a smith, it's given me some issues before and it has to be sorted out.
Beautiful day, good times all around. The weather tomorrow will be lousy, we timed it just right.
January 10, 2024: The Stevens 311 Goes To A Gunsmith
I had to go issue a DWR deer kill permit so I took the opportunity to take my misfiring shotgun to a gunsmith. Gunsmiths are thin on the ground around here. The Sportsman's Warehouse in Roanoke tried to "repair" the gun two seasons ago; it was sent off to Utah, and they had it for six months finally returning it un-fixed and charging me a ridiculous amount. I was able to get a refund; I then took it to a very good gunsmith in Rocky Mount, a man who works on very high-dollar shotguns like Perazzis and Fabris. He fixed it, though he was pretty dismissive of it as "...not a very good gun..." Maybe it isn't, but there have been more Stevens 311's made than any other double barrel shotgun in the world, most likely. His fee was very modest.
When it started to misfire two days ago I wanted it put right, but as I say, finding a gunsmith locally is a real challenge. There was an excellent one in Fairlawn but he is now 90 years old and retired. Even if he were still working I'd hesitate to use him because there is a real chance he might die before I got the gun back.
I bought that shotgun in Washington DC in 1981; it may well have been the last firearm legally sold in DC under the old bad law that was struck down in the Heller decision. I have far more money in it than it's worth, to be honest, but it's been re-stocked to fit me, I've had choke tubes put in, I've used it for 42 years, it's taken a lot of game. In short, it's an old and valued friend. I want it to be in complete working condition. I don't want to have to replace it.
Google and Yelp had some names of local gunsmiths, most of whom clearly work mainly on things like AR-15's. The man I took it to is a genial older gentleman who lives in the country and clearly does gunsmithing mainly as a hobby, but given how common Stevens 311's are I suppose just about anyone can work on one. He said he'd take it apart and see what he could find out, then call me. He said he was "...pretty backed up..." which could be taken as either a good or bad sign. After my experience with Sportsman's Warehouse I'm pretty desperate.
January 12, 2024: Never, Ever, Ever, Use Sportsman's Warehouse's So-Called "Gunsmithing" Service
I got a call from the man with whom I'd left my Stevens 311 double. He asked me, "Which barrel did you have the most trouble with?" I told him the right one, and he replied, "Yes, that's what I thought. The firing pins were OK, the screw for the left one was loose, but the hole for the screw on the right side was completely stripped; no thread left."
When I had taken it to Sportsman's Warehouse, they told me they "...completely dismantled it and gave it a thorough cleaning..." but it's pretty obvious that whatever ham-fisted yahoo was given that job buggered it up and damaged the screw seat. See the entries for February to August 2021 for details of this saga.
The man who has it now was concerned that it might not be repairable at all but promised to try. "Maybe I can put some sort of Helicoil in, or possibly Lock-Tite or something."
So I may end up with my shotgun as a safe queen. More or less unusable, at least as anything other than a single-shot. Thanks to trusting it to the incompetents at Sportsman's Warehouse.
I am seriously honked off but there isn't anything to be done about it now.
January 29, 2024: Addendum
The gunsmith called me tonight: he says he believes my shotgun is fixed. I'm hoping he's right! He put in a Helicoil to repair the stripped threads. I'll pick it up in a day or two and see how it's working. I now have far more in that shotgun than it's worth to anyone but me.
March 7, 2024: Lucy Is Gone
My beloved Border Collie, Lucy died on the morning of March 5th, very suddenly, at the age of 14 years and 4 months. She was being treated for a really nasty infected pressure sore on her leg for the past two months; it was getting better, and I'd hoped it would be healed soon, but it wasn't to be.
For some time she had been unable to deal with stairs, so I had been sleeping in the basement with her because she didn't like to be left alone. I had just brought her up for her breakfast about 7:00. She started eating, then fell over on her right side, gasped a couple of times, and was gone in seconds. We suspect she had a massive stroke.
We're very grateful her death was fast and painless, even though it was shocking to us. It was what we'd wanted for her: an easy death at home. I had promised her she would not die in a clinic, that I would be with her to the end, and at the end. I'm glad I was able to keep those promises. We are also glad and relieved that we didn't have to make the painful decision to have her put to sleep. There were times when we thought we'd have to, but she went in her own way at her own time. I hope we gave her the good life she deserved. I like to think I did everything I could for her, that there was no way I could have predicted what happened.
Her death has torn a huge hole in our lives. Really, nobody can "own" a dog. We are privileged enough to borrow them from God for a little while, but we always—always—have to give them back.
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity.
All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?
Ecclesiastes III: 19-21
March 12, 2024: Culture
Well, we must be very cultured people, if our last two months of entertainment are anything to go by.
We both enjoy live opera. As it happens the New York Metropolitan Opera has a program in which they live-stream performances into local theaters, even up here in The Boonies for the benefit of us hillbillies. Additionally, the Moss Center, Virginia Tech's performing arts venue, has a yearly season of Culture, including one opera or two, plus other types of performances.
So on January 23rd we attended a Wynton Marsalis concert. Marsalis directs the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. I was naive enough to think that he, as one of the most prominent and important classical music artists in the USA, would include some of his repertoire, but I was wrong. Rather than the fantastic trumpet work he does, the concert was a very raucous and clanging full-charge modern jazz one. It was undoubtedly well done, but it wasn't something I'd have gone to had I known the nature of it. Well, it was Culture. With a capital "J".
On January 31st we went to see "Cirque Mechanics," which I had no real desire to attend, but it wasn't like the Cirque du Soleil performances we've seen. Nowhere near so pretentious; the show was "Zephyr," which I found very funny. It was entirely done in pantomime, and quite enjoyable.
Then on to the opera, with "Carmen" streamed live from the Met. The Met seems to feel that performances in modern dress and with non-traditional staging are de rigeur, and perhaps they're right. "Carmen" was 
extremely well done, with all of Bizet's music left intact, though the setting was transposed form a Gypsy (whoops, of course I mean "Roma") camp to an arms factory. The title role was sung by a phenomenally talented 27-year-old woman, Aigul Akhmetshina, who is from The Republic of Bashkortostan in Russia, of which I'd never heard (no, I didn't make that name up, it's a real place).
At one point in the performance she was draped over gas pumps berating her lover, but who cared? To be a top Met star at her age is a great achievement; putting her on top of a gas pump for dramatic effect was entirely acceptable. By the way, they were old pumps: the price on them was $1.65 per gallon.
The Moss Center had a Broadway touring company production of "My Fair Lady" which hardly qualifies as Culture (pace, Lerner and Lowe) on Valentine's Day (very appropriate); immediately after that we rented the DVD of the movie version from, I think, 1964 and watched it again.
Then came a ballet: The Jefferson Center in Roanoke had a performance of "Swan Lake" on the 18th. We'd seen that in Russia on a Viking trip. I enjoy classical ballet, and "Swan Lake" is as Classical as ballet gets. The plot—to the extent it has a plot—is more or less incomprehensible, but that's true of nearly all ballets. Mrs Outdoorsman loves dance performances of any kind; "Swan Lake" was right up her alley.
As I say, I like classical ballet, but Modern Dance I can take or leave alone; I prefer to leave it alone. Nevertheless, I went to another Moss Center event, a show by the Mark Morris Dance Group, set to the music of....Burt Bacharach. I swear I'm not making this up. Ten dancers, all of them with a folding chair (don't ask me why) leaping about, waving their arms, and generally Dancing very Modernly. That was an hour and a half out of my rapidly-shortening life that I'll never get back. Well, it could have been real Morris dancing... Soon I'll be attending a performance of "Ballet Trockadero of Monte Carlo"; I'm not entirely sure I'm prepared for that.
Then we had two—count 'em, two—more operas, back to back: Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" by a local semi-pro ensemble, Opera Roanoke, also at the Moss Center. The very next day, back to the movie house for "Forza del Destino," an opera I'd never seen or heard because the Met hasn't done it in thirty-plus years. Unlike "The Marriage of Figaro," which is a comedy, "Forza del Destino" is one of those stories in which a lot of people die violently. Opera Roanoke is doing "Amahl and the Night Visitors" but I've seen that three times and nothing would get me to sit through it again.
We have the Met's production of Gounod's "Romeo and Juliette" coming up next week. Then next week it's presenting "La Rondine," another one I've never seen. At this rate I'll be so Cultured I won't be able to walk.
March 13, 2024: Lucy Comes Home
I received a call from the vet clinic this morning that Lucy's ashes were back, and I could come and pick them up. The cremation service provider was the same one used for Tehya three and a half years ago. This company works with clinics in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina; in my opinion they're very sensitive and caring.
Her ashes were returned to me in a little cedarwood box, along with a tuft of her hair and a molded paw print. It's all I have left of her now besides many memories and an enduring regret at her death. I do feel I did my best for her and that there was nothing more that could have been done. I could never have predicted the suddenness of her passing.
What's done is done; I hope she is now at peace. I'm not the least bit religious, but I do feel that if there is an afterlife that's a reward for a virtuous life here, dogs belong there.
March 25, 2024: More Culture
Last Saturday we went to another Met performance: Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette." This was done in 18th Century dress, much closer to the time of Shakespeare's play than the more modern setting of—say—"West Side Story." Very well done, and starring as Juliette the beautiful and gifted soprano Nadine Sierra, seen here about to stab herself. She has a marvelous voice. Everyone knows the story: it doesn't end well for the principal characters.
We have another on tap: La Rondine which I've never seen. A Puccini tragedy—I'm not sure if there are any Puccini operas that aren't tragedies, come to think of it.
Planning A Trip
Since I was about 6 years old it's been my dream to make a transatlantic crossing in an ocean liner. We're now in the final stages of planting such a trip, and almost a month in England between leaving New York and returning. I've been looking forward to this for 70 years. Going to be $$$$! "Britannia" class aboard Cunard's Queen Mary 2 isn't exactly steerage but what the hell, I'd go in the cargo hold if that were the only way. New York to Southampton and return: the classic round trip. Below, she is passing under the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge. In my youth the great ships moored at piers on the West Side of Manhattan but today they leave from the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal.
April 1, 2024: The Buzz
Mrs Outdoorsman was slaving away in her front garden this afternoon. She came in to tell me, "Bees are swarming!" and so it proved. Thousands of them, whizzing about but seemingly not interested in stinging anyone.
My neighbor and sometime hunting partner is an entomologist and bee specialist: I called him and asked him to come over, which he promptly did. He confirmed that yes, they were swarming and "...looking for a place to settle..." which I sincerely hoped wouldn't be in my house.
He keeps bees but asserted that these weren't from his hives: that they'd come from another neighbor who also has hives, because "I checked my hives yesterday." Honeybee colonies, it seems, are a bit like rural protestant churches: there seems to be a "trigger size" at which a congregation (or a hive) decides to split off another group. It might be over the decision on whether to pay for a new roof on the church or something else, but in time a splinter group goes off and "plants" a new church. Same with bees: the hive grows to the point where "There ain't enough room for all of us!" so some of them fly away to "plant" a new hive, taking a queen with them.
We went over to his house and brought over a spare hive box, which he said would lure the bees in, which is exactly what happened. By the time we got back to my house the swarm had settled into a clump of bushes in my back yard. I asked how many he thought there were: "A typical swarm is about 12,000 bees, this one is a bit bigger, maybe 14,000." Yikes!
He set the hive box down and sure enough, the bees started to explore it, found it to their liking, and started moving in, trooping along the ground to the entrance, a veritable river of bees. Apparently the earliest bees to initiate the exploration leave some sort of scent marking that attracts others, a sort of synergistic situation in that the more bees that explore, the more bees want to come into the hive.
There were quite a few old pieces of wax in the box, which he said would be an additional attraction. Furthermore the incoming bees would renovate the hive and dispose of any wax they didn't want. This is akin to the way a new house-holder removes and replaces "window treatments," I suppose.
An hour or two later all the bees had settled in. Later he came over with his smoker widget, "anaesthetized" them, and took the hive home to add to his collection. He said he'd never seen a swarm so early in the year, it usually is a couple of weeks later than this. So now he has some...ahem..."Free-Bees"!!
April 6, 2024: Someone Else To Do The Gardening
Every year at Virginia Tech there's a "Big Event," a day on which students from various campus organizations go out and do stuff like garden work for local residents. We always have them come and do mulching in Mrs Outdoorsman's gardens and flowerbeds. I'm happy about this for two reasons: 1) it's free, and 2) I don't have to do it.
A few days ago Mrs Outdoorsman placed an order for ten cubic yards of mulch. The technical term for that much is "A shitload of mulch," which a lovely dump truck put onto our driveway. Ten cubic yards makes an impressive pile, believe me. We're equipped with wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, gloves, and all the assorted paraphernalia require to move it from the pile to the gardens. In addition, She always puts out some snacks and water etc. for the volunteers, all of whom are VT undergraduates.
The Big Event in past years has usually sent us a number of girls, not one of who weighed much more than 100 pounds; they were always willing workers and usually got stuff done. This year, however, we had twelve husky lads, all members of The German Club, a fraternal organization. That many boys made short work of the 10 cubic yards of shredded tree bark. In the course of 2 hours they had it all moved and raked. There were in fact so many workers that Mrs Outdoorsman put some of them to work weeding. We ended up with seven, count 'em, seven bags of weeds plus a bunch of junk like old fencing, a couple of defunct garden chairs, a rug that should really have been discarded long ago, and similar items. This was all put out to the curb for the Town's Spring Clean-up event next week.
Those boys worked steadily and they ate steadily. We'd bought two bags of Honey-Crisp apples, with I think 15 in each bag: they ate all of them plus a couple we'd had in the fridge; in addition several granola bars. Then they went off to do some work somewhere else. The best part is one of them said, "The German Club is a service organization: if you need help again just let us know." When my next-door neighbor's massive oak tree inundates our yard with leaves in the Fall, I certainly will!
April 14, 2024: More Culture, More or Less...
Yesterday we went to the Moss Center here at VT, to see The Trockadero Ballet De Monte Carlo. I can take ballet or leave it alone, but this company...well, I'm really unable to describe it adequately. You just have to follow the link and watch them in action, so to speak.
Ballet is pretty silly anyway, but these guys have made a very good living out of spoofing and parodying it. As Mrs Outdoorsman remarked, they really have to be very good at the "real" thing to create a funny version, and I will give them their due, they are, technically, very good. Sort of slapstick comedy in tutus,
The first "ballet" was the second act of Swan Lake. I've seen Swan Lake a couple of times (once in Russia). If Swan Lake has a plot I'm unaware of it: and yes, I have consulted the Oracle of Google and read the plot, but it still makes no sense. But I digress...Tchaikovsky would not have recognized the "Trock" version had they not played his music. Didn't matter: the "Trock" version was played for laughs.
In summary let me say that the show, while entertaining enough, was pretty repetitive. It could easily have been half an hour less and still got the message across, whatever the message might have been. Two and a half hours out of my life that I will never get back.
Getting Closer To Sailing Time
Cunard sent me an e-mail that it's time for us to check in and download our boarding passes for Queen Mary 2. Twenty-one days to sailing across The Pond in the only real ocean liner in the world. The tour guides have been thumbed through to the point of being dog-eared, preparatory to our landing in Southampton and a month of dragging baggage around England. Next year, if I'm still alive, we may take a Viking ocean trip along the coast of North Africa and in the western Mediterranean. My bank balance has to have a year to recover from this little English jaunt first.
April 17, 2024: Mice
We have mice in our garage, thanks to having a pretty fair amount of things to attract them, mainly birdseed, which we buy in obscene quantities. (We have the fattest birds in the Commonwealth.) Perforce, I put out traps. All winter long the traps remained untouched, but in the past week I've caught three or four mice in them. They seem to be very young ones, very small, much smaller than the "winter" mice we've caught in the past when cold drove them indoors. I like mice, of all kinds, even grey house mice (Mus musculus) because they're cute and pretty inoffensive beasties, so really, I hate doing this. They don't come into the house; were it not for the chewed corners of unopened birdseed bags, gnawed "squirrel logs" (what is a squirrel but a huge mouse?) and the tiny droppings, one would hardly know they're there.
But I put out the traps anyway. God knows, I've done a lot of killing in my lifetime, but it seems a bit wrong for me to kill more or less harmless animals who are merely trying to survive by stealing a bit of birdseed. Coaxing them into a break-back trap using a bit of cheese or peanut butter is all too easy. I can't eat them, nor have I a pet snake to whom I could (theoretically) offer them as food, as some people do. It is disrespectful to just toss them away into the garden or in the trash, so I bury them in the mulch in our yard. A mouse has little enough dignity in his life to begin with; a decent burial seems the least I can do for one I've killed.
Addendum: May 22, 2024: Another Mouse
Two days ago I caught another mouse. Unfortunately he wasn't killed. His right front paw was trapped by the bar, and he was still alive. I don't know how long he had been that way, but it had to be ended ASAP. I put a short piece of wood on his head and rapped the end of it smartly with a hammer, crushing his skull. That was an ugly and upsetting thing to do, but it had to be done. I didn't re-set the trap, which I would have done had he been killed outright.
Mrs Outdoorsman no doubt would feel differently, but I'm done with killing mice: they can have all the birdseed they want, so far as I'm concerned.
April 23, 2024: More Culture
Last Saturday we went to the opera again. This time it was La Rondine, a very rarely performed work by Puccini. It's sometimes called an "operetta," though to my mind that term implies the sort of thing Gilbert & Sullivan wrote, not a full-blown production. I'd never seen it—in fact, until the Met's season calendar came out I'd never even heard of it—so I was glad to have a chance to do so.
The story is pretty typical: a beautiful "courtesan" falls in love (more or less instantaneously, as is typical in operas) with a handsome stranger. She then decides her life of ease and comfort with her patron isn't worth pursuing any more, so she runs off with the stranger. Unlike most such plots, in this one she later changes her mind when the money runs out and back she goes to her ex-patron. She justifies this to her lover by arguing that with her reputation she can't marry him, it wouldn't be good for his career. No zanier than most opera plots, but zany enough. Unusually, though, for an opera, nobody dies in this one.
Typical Met production: very lavish sets, huge cast, and plenty of singing. The work was written in 1913; the Met's version is set in the 1920's, close enough. How did I know it was in the 1920's? Because all the women were wearing feathers in their hair and hideous clothes. Nothing says "1920's" like women with feathers and dresses down to their ankles.
Signing Off For A Few Weeks
We leave for England in a week. The frantic stage of pre-trip preparations is winding down, but there is still stuff left to do. So I'm temporarily putting this blog on hold until late June, and will resume posts when I return and recover from my "vacation." I'll have no Internet access while I'm gone. I hope all my loyal readers will miss me!
July 4, 2024: Back And Working On The Report
Thank you for your patience: I'm working on updating the site, and will shortly report on my trip(s) via Queen Mary 2. Short version: I will never fly across the Atlantic again. A ship is, as the saying goes, "The Only Way To Cross." A week each way in luxury, with a real bed, good food, and no jet lag: what's not to like?
I came home with mild pneumonia (not QM2's fault!); while I have recovered, house guests and other obligations have delayed things. To put the capstone on it, three days ago I got stung by yellow jacket wasps that had used the time I was away to build a nest in my barbeque grill, who took exception to my opening it to cook. A badly swollen and inflamed hand was the result, but there were worse places I could have been stung!
An old friend and I went to spend a day on Claytor Lake yesterday, fishing: but the fish had the weekend off. All we got were sunburns.
To my American readers, happy Independence Day; to my Canadian friends, my best wishes (if somewhat belated) for a happy Canada Day. Please watch this space! A full account is coming soon.
July 11, 2024: It's Up
Okay, I posted the account of my trip aboard Queen Mary 2, and the weeks we spent in England. It's too long to put here, but please visit the "Trip Reports" section if you want to read it. Thanks, enjoy!
July 26, 2024: A Busy Couple Of Weeks
Well, it has been busy, busy, busy since the beginning of the month.
An old friend of mine, whom I've known for nearly 60 years (a college roommate, in fact) has been ill. Some weeks ago he had a heart attack, which sent him to the hospital and to a rehabilitation facility in Maryland. Since his situation seemed pretty dire, I felt I ought to go visit him if possible. I proposed this to Mrs Outdoorsman, originally planning to rent a car to get there. As is usually the case with our trips, it ended up being more complicated than a simple trip to visit a friend.
Aside from wanting to visit my friend I wanted to give a rifle to my cousin, it being "surplus to need" for me. Moreover, we know an elderly couple, now in their 90's, who live in West Virginia. Both they and my cousin live not too far from my friend's rehab facility, so we decided to put all our various errands into one basket, so to speak.
Jim, the older gentleman, and I were colleagues in my days at Texas A&M's veterinary school, His wife Jill and Mrs Outdoorsman became good friends after Jim and Jill moved to Virginia and joined the faculty at Virginia Tech's vet school.
Jim and Jill were—indirectly—responsible for our having had two Chocolate Labrador retrievers: I first met him when he was walking an insanely cute Lab puppy, named "Hershey," in the halls at TAMU. After they had moved to Virginia, they had acquired a second Chocolate Lab, "Quik." We baby-sat the two dogs for a few days, and Mrs O fell in love. Shortly thereafter we acquired Tessa, our first Chocolate Lab; when she died we got another one, Tehya. All these wonderful dogs are now on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge, alas.
Well, we were going to spend a couple of days on this extended visit, so on the 11th we went to Winchester, Virginia and booked a night in a hotel. We stopped for lunch, and lo, next to the restaurant was a bird store, which sold "Florida Dancing Birds," plastic ones that sway in the wind. I am a sucker for ducks, so I bought a duck to go with the Heron and Woodpecker we already had (don't ask, it's complicated).
The next day we went to visit Jim and Jill. Then it was off to my cousin's house, where he and his wife had plans for a huge family dinner. One of my sisters who lives nearby, her Significant Other, my brother's daughter and her Significant Other, were to be in attendance at that as well. Since eating is a big family tradition, everyone brought food.
My cousin and I also went to the Coast Guard Exchange. Don't ask me why the Coast Guard has a store in Centreville, Virginia, nowhere near the coast; I have no idea. As a disabled veteran I'm entitled to shop in Exchanges and Commissaries, and the CG Exchange sells a lot of stuff—including guns and ammunition—in which I have an interest. I didn't buy any guns but I did pick up some odds and ends I wanted. Then we went back and stuffed our faces, as well as indulging in substantial quantities of adult beverages.
The next day—the 13th—I was off to Maryland and the rehab facility. My friend loves Chinese food, especially Peking Duck. In the days of our mis-spent youth we would hie ourselves to a restaurant in Fairfax that specialized in it, so I thought I would bring him some. I found a very good restaurant in Bethesda ("Q" by Peter Chang) and bought some stuff, including said Peking Duck (I told you, I'm a sucker for any kind of duck). My friend was delighted.
We took my cousin and his wife to dinner the next evening, at a place called "The Fava Pot," in Falls Church. The Fava Pot specializes in pretty good Egyptian food; lo and behold they had hamam mahshi, (at right) a dish of whole stuffed squab, which I haven't had since the last time I was in Egypt! It is to die for when properly made.
I am also a sucker for oysters. When we were in England I had wanted to go to Whitstable, a seaside resort famous for oysters, but somehow that never materialized. So I had suggested to Mrs O that after leaving northern Virginia we should go to Topping, Virginia. Topping is just a wide spot in the road, but there is a restaurant there, Merroir, famous for its oysters. Topping not having any place to stay we booked a hotel in Urbanna, Virginia, a slightly wider spot in the road a few miles away. I had my oyster fix.
We had one day at home to do laundry, because the very next day we were off to Worthington, Ohio, to visit Mrs O's sister and her husband. We spent six days there, and I will add that my sister-in-law treated us like royalty, especially because it was nearly Mrs O's birthday. Thanks to our experience in England with suitcases that were too large, she wanted to find a smaller one, which she did; and not incidentally she bought more plants. (We could move out of our house for the plants, but as the Duchess of Windsor once remarked, "You can never be too rich or too thin; or have too many plants.")
Worthington is a suburb of Columbus. Columbus has evolved from the fuddy-duddy Midwestern medium-sized place it was in my college days to the largest city in Ohio; in doing so it's gone pretty far towards being Politically Correct. It's the sort of place where you get beams of approval if you ride a bike and/or have purple hair. It also has many very seriously good (and expensive) restaurants. My sister in law and her husband took us to one, "Lindey's" which has a beautiful outdoor patio shaded by trees and populated by Beautiful People. I hasten to add that I am not in that latter group. One day we had a very good deli lunch in "German Village," a neighborhood in the city with brick streets and Quaint Olde Worlde Charm(e). Their pastrami was excellent, very nearly as good as what I used to get in my youth in The Bronx; and head and shoulders above what they serve in "MacAlister's Deli" here in Blacksburg.
Among other things Columbus has a National Veteran's Memorial Museum running an exhibit on the "Ghost Army," the WW Two deception operations mounted to fool the Axis before and after the Normandy Invasion. There was at least one inflatable rubber tank on display. I'd heard of these things but never seen one before. There's a lot more to the Museum; I recommend it to anyone visiting Columbus.
There are a number of book shops in Columbus, including one that scared the bejesus out of me. It's an old house, four stories tall, crammed with books—which are of course highly inflammable—and NO fire escapes. The place was jammed. Very narrow aisles, so narrow you had to turn sideways to get past people. Rooms subdivided into a maze that was hard to negotiate at all and would have been been fatal because finding the only exit was difficult. If there had been a fire hundreds of people would have died. How the Columbus authorities—who presumably have building and fire codes to enforce—allow them to operate is beyond me. It's a firetrap waiting for a tragedy. I was glad to get out of there as soon as I could.
Mrs O's sister has a daughter who runs her own restaurant, "Natalie's Grandview" (yes, this is a shameless plug) serving excellent pizza as well as some of the most imaginative cocktails you never heard of. This is a music venue as well. We enjoyed a performance by "The Whirlybirds," a semi-hemi-demi-traditional group, not your usual raucous type of music. After that we had some very imaginative cocktails and a fine pizza in "I Like It Like That," one of the venues within Natalie's. We also got to meet Natalie's Significant Other, who is an accomplished chef in his own right.
Our last night we were invited to the Niece's home, where her SO had made a very fine meal for all of us, complete with wine pairings and a nice menu at each place.
Then it was back On The Road Again, homeward bound. It's a 7-hour drive. We were glad to get back, after nearly two weeks' travel, to do laundry again!
August 7, 2024: Stung AGAIN, Damn It!
Yesterday I wanted to grill some steaks for dinner. I opened the lid of the grill, and one of those damned yellowjackets nailed me again. This time on the ring finger of my right hand. It immediately started swelling up, becoming red, sore, and painful within minutes.
I hate those bloody things. I have no idea why they seem to like my grill, but they do. Thirty-seven years in this house without stings and that's two in a month. Something has to be done. I lit a small fire to bake the bastards alive, then when it was cool —wearing gloves—I cautiously opened the lid again. If the fire I built for the steaks didn't kill them I don't know what might.
August 14, 2024: More Stupidity
Just in time for Halloween: a giant chicken skeleton for your front yard.
What's wrong with just drinking more water? Wouldn't that work?
You simply can't be too careful if you have a cat in the house.
And Up We Go....
Up my large intestine, actually. I had my third colonoscopy yesterday; it was no worse than the previous two, but neither was it any better.
The worst part of a colonoscopy procedure is having to drink four liters of "GoLytely," a solution of something that a) makes you shit your brains out, and b) replaces the ions in the stuff you shit out. GoLytely is marginally preferable to the Gatorade I had to drink the first time, but really, it's like drinking seawater. Well, basically, GoLytely is seawater. I now understand why shipwrecked sailors are advised not to drink seawater.
You have to drink four liters of the stuff, a bit over a gallon; after having taken four, count 'em four, laxative tablets. An hour or so after starting the GoLytely, things start moving. Fast. The movement continues through the night. By the end of the night—during which you get up several times to go to the toilet—there are no "solids" left. What comes out of your ass looks like urine, though it smells a lot worse.
So needless to say I got very little sleep the night before. Bright and early, my wife drove me to the Salem VA hospital, dropped me off in the appropriate place in that rabbit-warren of a building, then sat down to read a book. A nurse came and asked me my name, my Social Security Number (God knows why the VA still uses SSN's for ID) and if I knew why I was there. Well, hell yes, I knew. I'm always tempted to reply, "Don't you know?" but when someone is preparing to stick a tube up your butt, perhaps it's inadvisable to be flippant.
I was led into the room where I was to be "prepped," told to remove all my clothing and don one of those hospital gowns that leave your ass exposed (which made a certain amount of sense, in the context of a colonoscopy) and that "Someone will be with you soon." I was told to lie on one of those robotic hospital beds that do everything except wheelstands. It was quite comfortable, I will admit. If I were going to die, this was a good place to do it.
Indeed, someone came, in fact several people. First the anesthetist, who asked me my name, my full SSN, and whether I knew why I was there. See above. This guy was going to knock me unconscious so I didn't smart-ass (ha, ha) him either. Shortly thereafter a woman came and introduced herself as the doctor who would do the job. She asked my my name, my full SSN, and whether I knew why I was there. Yes, Doctor, I do. Absolutely.
The first nurse returned. He inserted an intravenous line, which hurt like hell. He swore he was using a 22-gauge needle, but it felt like he used a piece of sterile sewer pipe. Then he went away and told me, "Someone will come soon." Someone did. A second nurse, who asked me my name, my full SSN, and whether I knew why I was there. Then she wheeled me into the Chamber Of Horrors.
Once there I was asked my full name, my full SSN, and whether I knew why I was there. There were six people in this room, all of whom repeated the information to each other, just to be sure. I was reminded of the stories about surgeons amputating the wrong limb, so that it's now a common practice to write WRONG LEG on the one that's not to be removed. I was wondering whether they'd whip out a Magic marker to write WRONG ASS, but no one did that. Having had me repeat everything they were sure they had the right ass; it was time for The Main Event.
I had been told the tube was "...the thickness of my finger..." but I know they were lying. It was about the size of a vacuum cleaner hose. However, I remember nothing of it. Once they started pumping in the anesthetic (Propofol, Michael Jackson's favorite sleep aid) I was out like someone had flipped a switch. Next thing I knew I was somewhere else. A third nurse told me, "You're in Recovery," which was a real relief even if it did make me sound like an alcoholic who's taken The Pledge. The IV line came out, and I was given some diet ginger ale. This was very welcome because by that point it had been nearly 40 hours since I'd had anything to eat, 12 hours since I was allowed to drink anything, and I was so ravenous I could have eaten the bedding.
I was then told I could get dressed, my clothing having traveled to Recovery with me. I got dressed, though I was still a bit groggy; I was able to stand up, wobbly as I was, to make it to the waiting room, where my wife closed her book and stood up.
We then went to lunch at a restaurant nearby. I ordered a pastrami-on-rye, which came—I swear I am not making this up—with melted cheese on it. This is an obscene thing, but in this part of the world it's nearly impossible to get any sort of sandwich without cheese, so I swallowed my pride and ate it. I hope that the man who ran the kosher deli in my old neighborhood in the Bronx never learns of my transgression.
September 8, 2024: My Usual Opening Day
Yesterday our early antlerless-only deer season started. This is a season to limit the spread of CWD in some counties by killing off as many does as possible, and since I don't give a poot about antlers, I go out as often as I can to Give Back To The Commonwealth by helping to thin the herd. Yesterday I did nothing to further that goal.
I don't usually get up a the Crack of Dawn any more, but I do on an Opening Day because they are Holy Days of Obligation. So at 5:00 AM I dragged my aging carcass out of bed, kitted up, and headed for the field, with a stop at Bojangles for coffee and a ham biscuit. Got to my favorite stand at the Nine-Deer Dip and was sitting down on my (increasingly-uncomfortable-as-I-age) stool by 7:00.
I always see deer at The Dip, and yesterday was no exception. About 7:40 in my peripheral vision I spotted a flash of white in a very dense thicket immediately to my left. Sure enough, there was a deer in there. Looked like a big one too, but I couldn't take a shot. First because I wasn't sure it was a doe: it was pretty large and might well have been a buck, therefore un-shootable. Second was the brush. This was some very, very thick stuff. That deer was no more than 30 feet from me but if I'd fired the bullet would have bounced around off the branches, not going where I wanted it to go.
There was no wind at all, so that even that close that deer had no idea I was waiting to kill it the moment it stepped out into the open on the logging road into the Dip. Didn't smell me, I had my face veil down, so it couldn't see me either. I watched it for at least 10 minutes, perhaps more, catching glimpses through the branches as it moved slowly left to right. Then it sidled into a particularly thick section and I lost sight of it. A few seconds later I looked at the logging road, and damned if it hadn't somehow sneaked past me: I saw its butt as it slipped into the equally heavy brush on the OTHER side of the road! Never had a chance for a shot at all. It's simply amazing that an animal that size can move through heavy brush without making a sound. I never heard anything: had I not initially spotted its tail I'd have had no idea it was there. Ten minutes after crossing the logging road and disappearing, it started to snort at me from maybe 25 yards off. So I suppose it was a doe after all.
The rest of the day went as Opening Day usually does. Not a thing showed up, but the little forkhorn below somehow slipped past me at 7:40 AM:
I couldn't have shot him, even if I'd seen him, which I didn't, because it's "antlerless only" now. The weather was perfect, a real "bluebird" day. Aside from being outsmarted by that deer, it was well worth my time to sit there and enjoy some peace and quiet. Well, there's a month of this season, so that deer and I may meet again.
September 16, 2024: The Deer Are Still Winning
I've been out three times for our early "CWD" season in Montgomery County. Opening Day was a bust (see above). I went out again on the 9th; Saturday the 14th was no better than either of the previous two days. I was in my usual spot, a place where I always see deer. So far I've spent 27 hours on that stand so far, with nothing to show for it.
At 7:40 in the morning of the 14th I looked up and lo, a big doe was crossing the logging road about 80 yards away. An easy shot, had she give me the chance, but she was halfway across when I noticed her, so I never had the opportunity. It may well have been the same doe I saw on Opening Day: a sly lady, that one. Phooey.
The Stupidity Continues
We were at a Cracker Barrel a few days ago: they had out decorations for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, simultaneously. The lady there told me, "They been out for two weeks now, we got 'em around Labor Day." Why in the heck CB doesn't just leave all that junk out year round is beyond me.
Everybody is putting out Halloween junk, but the item that takes the cake is the magazine whose cover is shown below. I saw this in a Tractor Supply store two days ago. I guess Martha Stewart isn't making enough money on her books and advertising cat litter.
How are the mighty fallen. Who's next? Queen Camilla?
September 23, 2024: Today's Stupidity
Seen at a fancy-schmancy grocery store in Roanoke. This "pumpkin pie" stuff is really getting out of hand.
The Derelict Ice-Maker
Our house was built in 1963. The kitchen as originally designed had a space for a 14-cubic-foot refrigerator, which was then regarded as perfectly adequate for the family of seven who built the house. By the time we moved in the people from whom we bought the place had modified the original refrigerator cubby to hold an 18-cubic-foot design. No appliances came with the house when we bought it, so before we moved in I went and bought a new stove, a new dishwasher, a clothes washer, a dryer, and an 18-cubic-foot refrigerator, all from one store, which made them very happy indeed. Over the past 37 years all those appliances have been replaced at least twice. The kitchen was again re-remodeled about 12 years ago, at which time we bought the gleaming stainless-steel Fridge #3, shown at left. This was also 18 cubic feet. Fridge #2, the one that replaced the one bought in 1987, was moved to the basement as a spare.
Fridge #3 came with an ice-maker attachment. A convenience that has become a necessity: when we'd lived in an apartment in Washington DC (1974-82) we didn't have one but during our exile to Texas (1982-87) we rented a place that did; I have never looked back. Today, anyone who gets between me and my ice-maker is in serious trouble, I can tell you.
Shortly after our return from the trip to England the ice-maker in Fridge #3 started going wonky. There was some sort of leak that dribbled water into the collection bin, creating a chunk of ice that had to be removed daily. Well, it was still making ice, so we didn't worry about it. Until last week. One morning Mrs Outdoorsman came down to find the entire collection bin filled with water; not an ice cube to be seen, just water. The next day the same thing happened, and overnight it not only filled up, it froze solid, leaving us with one cube of ice—about 18x12x6" in size. We were just lucky that this problem didn't arise while we were away for six weeks!
After several tries I found the water cut-off valve in the basement that fed the ice-maker line and shut it off. (I found out later that it also cut off supply to the water heater!) Then we 1) started to buy a bag of ice a day for the duration; 2) began searching for a solution. We had two options: first, get the ice-maker repaired/replaced, but we weren't sure that was possible, given the age of Fridge #3. However, the rest of the unit seemed to be working well: the stuff in the freezer compartment stayed frozen, the food compartment stayed cold. Maybe we wouldn't have to go to option #2, which was to buy a new refrigerator. I was really, really reluctant to spend $2K+ on what would become Fridge #4.
Moreover, we found very few refrigerators that would fit in the cubby. It seems that these days, 18-19 cubic feet is considered small. Very few of what the sales people at Lowe's and Home Depot called "...them 36-inch refrigerators..." are available. It seems everyone wants a double-French-door model far wider than anything we could fit into our cramped kitchen. There were only one or two options. Both of them are made by Whirlpool, which is in reality The Refrigerator Trust. One was branded "Whirlpool," one "Kitchen Aid," but other than the name plate they're identical. Both were priced far higher than I wanted to pay.
Worse, both stores told us that if we wanted them to install the new unit, we had to (had to) have a water cut-off behind the fridge. The one in the basement wouldn't do, nor would their installers enter the basement. More than that, we would be required to buy—from them of course—a brand-new water line. Now, the braided-steel line that was in place was perfectly serviceable but both places were adamant. No water line, no cut-off behind the refrigerator, no installation. Take it or leave it. We decided to leave it.
First step was to have a plumber come to install a cut-off valve behind the refrigerator. The plumber didn't understand why we wanted it, since we could cut off the water in the basement, nor could he understand why the big stores demanded it to be done. If we'd opted to buy a new refrigerator we'd need it. Hey, that's how he makes his living, so the valve was installed.
The Derelict Ice-Maker
So then we were ready for the ice-maker to be fixed or replaced. One of the smaller local appliance stores referred us to a local repair service. With some trepidation we called and set up an appointment. The man came, and in an hour he'd replaced the entire unit: he had one in his van, and told me that, "All these Whirlpool-made refrigerators use the same ice-maker, so I carry spares. That's most of what I do: replace ice-makers." We rolled the fridge back into position in its cubby; now we are back in business, until something else goes wrong.
My parents bought a house in 1961 that had belonged to an old couple who'd moved into it in 1937. When my family left in 1982, the same fridge that had been installed in 1937 was still in place and still working. Mrs Outdoorsman was born in 1949: when we moved her mother out of the house in the early 2000's the fridge her parents had bought in that year (to keep her infant formula in) was still in service. So far as I know both of those old wheezers are still chugging along.
September 29, 2024: Bo Peep Finds Her Sheep…And Her Goats Too
Yesterday was the opening day of the annual “G.O.A.T. And Sheep” Festival, held at the New River Valley fairgrounds in Dublin, Virginia. I like goats and sheep, so Mrs Outdoorsman and I decided to attend. Miss Bo Peep was present: if she couldn’t have found her sheep there she couldn’t have found them at all. A man whose property I hunt raises Leicester Longwool sheep, and I was told his wife was present but I didn’t encounter her. I did get to pet someone’s Border Collie, which alone made the trip worth while.
Among the events was a presentation by veterinary students on how to handle goats and sheep. Now, I am an ex-Goat Wrangler: one of my graduate students had a project that was centered on the development of the placenta in goats. For this work she required a fairly sizable flock of goats, 50 in all. They were Boer/Spanish crosses, pretty sizable beasts (for goats) running 100 pounds or so on the hoof. I found that for a kid from Da Bronx, I was pretty adept at wrestling these animals so she could work on them. That project instilled in me a liking for goats. They’re far more intelligent than sheep (not a difficult standard to meet); plus each one has a distinct individual personality. If I could have a goat or two in my back yard here in Blacksburg I would, but the local authorities frown on keeping livestock in town.
So off we went. I’d never been to the NRV Fairgrounds before. It’s much bigger than I expected it to be, with a number of buildings for animals, exhibits, etc. In addition to the sheep-handling demo there were displays of different sheep and goat breeds, cooking demos for lamb and—praise be—mutton, something I’ve been trying to find for a long time. There were of course things to buy (fleeces, goat cheese, woolen goods, etc.) and herding dogs, though we missed the last due to time constraints.
The weather couldn’t have been better. All in all it was a very pleasant morning, in and out of the barns and exhibits. Mrs Outdoorsman likes goat cheese (I don’t) so she bought some. We were given a nice carrier bag emblazoned with the logo of the NRV Sheep and Goat Club, as well as a number of brochures. It was nice to get away if only for a few hours, from the toxic political environment. Sheep and goats couldn’t give less of a damn about who will be the next President.
September 30, 2024: Idiots, Idiots, Everywhere Nor Any Stop To Think
Today the Town of Blacksburg and Montgomery County issued a "boil water advisory" because of the high water levels in the New River, whence comes our water. I think this was mainly to cover their asses "just in case," but what the hell, why not? So Mrs Outdoorsman had me turn off the ice maker in the fridge—see the entry for September 16th—and said to go get a bag of ice from Kroger's. Off I went.
When I arrived I couldn't get into the parking lot: there was a line up Glade Road that simply wasn't moving because the entire lot was filled up. I parked across the street in the lot for the VT Bookstore (which was also filling up) then went to Kroger's. Every damned undergraduate in Blacksburg was there, buying bottled water. Hundreds of them, and every one of them had at least one large cart stacked as high as it could be with bottled water. Most of them had six or seven cases of it. the "water aisle" was completely stripped. Someone said, "There's plenty of water in the back, pallets of it!" Well, it turned out there was ONE pallet. That was rolled out and in 30 seconds—I'm not making this up—it was completely stripped, totally empty, as the Beautiful Brats took all the water to the registers. Then there came another announcement that "We have no more water!" I was lucky enough to score one, count 'em, one pack of pints of water; I did that only because Mrs Outdoorsman had asked me to get some for her Mah Jong group coming Thursday. I managed to get a bag of ice, too. That was going fast as well.
The only time I've ever seen anything like this was during the COVID pandemic when you couldn't get toilet paper because it was gone from the shelves within minutes of the announcement of the (totally illegal) "lock down." This water panic also occurred within five minutes of the announcement by the Town via e-mails and texts to the "emergency notification" system.
Nuts. Just plain nuts. Don't these kids have pots at home? What's a "boil water advisory" mean except to BOIL WATER? I suppose most of the girls—nearly all of them were girls—are of an age when boiling water taxes their cooking skills.
October 4, 2024: More Damned Stupidity
We had some errands to run today, including a trip to Wal-Mart. The bottled water aisle, as predicted, was completely empty. But so was...the TOILET PAPER aisle. What on earth are these people thinking? How can a "boil water" advisory be translated into "Buy every damned roll of toilet paper in the largest store in the county?" Even if someone runs out, well, hell, there is still The Roanoke Times . That's about all it's good for anyway.
October 5, 2024: Death Of A House
Today I received an e-mail from someone with whom I grew up, someone I have known all my life. He sent me this message:
I feel compelled to confirm that 3117 is no longer there....I used to be able to see the chimney from West 232nd Street and Corlear Avenue. Today something seemed missing. I took the bus home, and as we passed Kingsbridge Avenue I could see that it was gone.
So it has happened. The home in which I grew up is gone forever. I followed the fate of that house for the past year and a half on the web site for the New York City Department of Buildings, and Google Street View ever since I heard it was condemned. I had hoped that if it were to be destroyed it would happen after I'd died, but it wasn't to be. It stood for 136 years; it saw births and deaths, good news and bad news, youth and old age, and a whole lot of Kingsbridge history. A great crime has been committed. Ave atque vale.October 7, 2024: More Opera
A couple of days ago we went to see Les Contes d'Hoffmann, an opera by Jaques Offenbach. This ws shown live via simulcast from the New York Metropolitan Opera. we'd never seen this one, though we'd heard of it. Very entertaining, with the Met's usual enormous cast and opulent costuming. These simulcasts are a great service, and we really enjoy them. Next up is a new production, "Grounded," which is to be sung in English. I prefer operas that aren't in English: understanding the words interferes with my enjoyment of the music.
October 8, 2024: Stove #4
When we moved into this house in 1987 we bought all the major appliances, including a stove. Knowing no better we got one of the execrable kind with coil-type burners and the senseless burner bowls with holes in the bottom for gas elements, which were senseless because the stove was electric. But that's all there was.
A few years later we got tired of replacing bowls every couple of years and of cleaning the inevitable staining and discoloration of the enamel that resulted from cooking. We bought a second stove: we hadn't learned our lesson, and bought essentially the same thing.
Some years after that—in 2011, actually when the kitchen was remodeled —we bought stove #3. That one had a glass top that was easy to clean, plus controls on the front; it served us well until a few days ago, when one of the burner elements started going wonky. I found out the burners were $200 each, and there were actually two that should be replaced, the wonky one and a second that didn't get as hot as it should. Everything we read advised that if the cost of a repair was 50% or more of the price of a new one, buy new. I'm not sure I believe that, but the old one, #3, was going to go away, ASAP. So began the search for a new stove: #4.
We found it at Lowe's, but while it has 90% of what we wanted—glass cooktop, would fit into our recess (we hope), convection oven, self-cleaning, proper burner sizes, what it also had was controls on the back splash panel, something I hate because I think they're dangerous. But the price was right, it would be delivered the next day, and we bit. I hope this one lasts as long as #3 did and gives satisfaction. We'll see.
October 9, 2024: The Stove Is Dead, Long Live The Stove
Lowe's, true to its promise, delivered our new stove today. Two guys who spoke almost no English came about 10:00 AM, carried the old one out and brought the new one in, setting it nicely into its recess. The major difference between this one and the old one is that I have to reach over the burners—and any boiling pots that may be on them—to access the controls. I hate that but electric stoves with controls in the front, as God intended them to be, don't have backsplash panels. Thanks to the way our wall is tiled, we have to have a backspash, so I bit my tongue and bought the stove you see above in all its gleaming stainless-steel glory. If this one lasts as long as the previous one did, I will be 90 when it needs to be replaced. By then I will likely be dead.
October 23, 2024: Catching Up
Been a while since I've been able to make any entries, so here's the summary of the last couple of weeks.
Another Opera
We went to see "Grounded," as part of the Met In Cinema program. It's sung in English, not my top preference for a language in opera, as it interferes with my enjoyment of the music. It's a modern opera, also not my preference, but what the hell, if the Met puts it on, I'll watch it.
The story is somewhat more coherent than most opera plots: "Jess" is a USAF F-16 pilot, a hot-shot, no-nonsense female warrior, the best pilot in the Air Force. She's stationed in Wyoming after a stint whacking Bad Guys in Iraq in her F-16, whose praises she sings (literally). One night she goes to a bar with some of her buddies, and there meets—now, what the hell was his name? Oh, yes, "Eric"—a down-to-earth rancher who really has no business in an Air Force bar (he's told as much by some of the macho guys) but hangs around long enough to meet Jess and—as usually is the case in operas—is instantly smitten, as is she. They run off for what is supposed to be a one-night stand (or perhaps a one-night lie-down), Jess returning to her base.
Lo and behold, Jess has been knocked up. Now, preggies can't fly in combat, which is the only thing Jess wants to do, but she's up against The Rules as enforced by The Commander. Out of active service she goes, to raise her little girl-to-be (whom we first see in an ultrasound image: I am not making this up).
Heavily pregnant she returns to Wyoming to Eric's cabin, where she tells him "I know this isn't what you signed up for!" but Eric, as much of a gentleman as he is, decides they will Face Life Together. Of course, since this is an opera, they are in love and have been from the instant they met. Even before Jess got her bun in the oven.
Five years on—five years—Jess returns to the USAF but since she is told the F-16 is "a dinosaur" (which would be news to the Ukrainian forces) she's assigned to a drone squadron in Las Vegas. She isn't happy about this but she sings, "This is how I help!" so she takes the assignment, sitting alongside a sloppy "sensor" who spots targets for her on the ground. She is amazed that the cameras on the drones are so good she can see faces and even read license plates.
The basic assignment is to kill The Serpent, the leader of the Bad Guys, but The Serpent is ever so sly and careful. The Commander gives Jess orders to have "Eyeballs on The Serpent" before she lets loose a missile to kill him.
While waiting for The Serpent to be incautious enough to expose himself, Jess goes on merrily blowing up convoys from 5 miles in the air. However...she notices a troubling thing: she can see arms and legs and body parts being blown sky-high by her missiles. But as a good USAF officer should she follows orders and keeps on whacking the convoys and their personnel, suppressing her misgivings.
Then one day, The Serpent gets careless. His personal vehicle is spotted and Jess—the best drone pilot in the world, as she was the best F-16 pilot in the world—is given orders to follow him, and when he steps out of his vehicle, to let him have it. Eventually The Serpent's car is tracked to his home. Jess is ready to pull the trigger as soon as he gets out of the car, but...The Serpent's Little Daughter comes running to meet him, proving that even monsters have families; they're really Just Like Us. Jess at that point is so traumatized by the impersonal nature of her job that she decides, right there and then, that She Ain't A-Gonna Study War No More. She deliberately crashes her multi-million-dollar drone. Another squadron kills The Serpent, and presumably his child.
Jess is court-martialed. She is convicted of numerous offenses and sent to prison. This, however, is not so much a punishment as it might seem, since it absolves her of all responsibility for future killings, and as she sings at the end, "I am Free!" I forgot to mention that at the very beginning of the opera there is a foreshadowing: Jess walks across the stage in prison garb and handcuffs. It was obvious from that moment what the ending would be and why.
Now, this is all very well but the person who wrote this opera was born in 1961 so he has no personal experience of war and its demands. This is pretty consistent with the general anti-war rhetoric of the 1960's and early 70's. That war is horrible and degrading no one doubts, but the "War Is Not The Answer" thinking so clearly displayed in this work more or less demands that anyone who is attacked "turn the other cheek" and not fight back.
I was in a war once. In it I did nothing of significance, but I understood that had that war not been fought evil things would happen to millions of innocent people. In fact, evil things did happen to innocent people because the spineless cowards in the US Congress—succumbing to the War Is Not The Answer propaganda of those days—threw away the victory we'd won. That a man with no experience with war at all dares to tell me that my service was pointless, wrong and, yes, evil, is beyond insulting.
The woman who wrote the opera's music mentioned in an interview that "My uncle was in Vietnam," using that as an excuse for her stance that War Is Not The Answer. Well, lady, so was I. Like nearly all my compatriots, even those who saw heavy fighting, I am proud to have served there and I would do it again.
God's Waiting Room
Mrs Outdoorsman has been leaning on me about "downsizing" and moving to a "retirement community," which can most accurately be described as "A place where you go while you wait in comfort to die." We have one here in Blacksburg, but there's a much flossier place in Roanoke. We went there to a (very good) lunch and a sales pitch. Mrs Outdoorsman has a friend who lives there, so we visited her apartment: nice apartment, but it's an apartment. We started our life in an apartment and it looks likely we'll finish it in one. Of course, I could get lucky and die before they drag me out the door, kicking and screaming all the way, to God's Waiting Room.
The Damned Deck Again
If you have been following this blog for a while you'll know that for some years I've been doing battle with the deck we had put on the house in 2009. It's a very nice deck, well designed, and well built, but it was perforce made of inferior materials.
Why? Because the Eco-Nazis got the Feds to ban properly treated lumber on the grounds that it was "polluting the environment." So a deck that should have lasted 40 years—as did the deck we replaced—is in constant need of repair after 14 or so.
The repairs usually consist of replacing boards when they get decayed. So far I think I've replaced 15 or 16 boards. A couple of weeks ago I noticed that one of the steps on the stairs was getting in bad shape, so I decided to replace that today.
Everything, every project, no matter how small, take three times as long as you think it will, and requires at least twice as many tools as you think it will. Replacing a single board on one step took me all morning, despite appearing to be straightforward: remove the screws, cut a board to length, screw it in place. HA!
That board did not want to come out. In the end I had more or less to cut it into pieces, use a prybar to get the pieces off, then cut and insert the replacement board. The wood was so rotten you'd think it would have come up easily but the screws holding it in place were zealous in their desire to keep it where it was.
A word of advice to my readers: if you ever are faced with the prospect of building anything of wood that will be exposed to the elements, use stainless steel fasteners. They cost the earth, but they don't rust: when the time comes you can get them out without breaking them. I had to use Vise-Grips to get out the stumps of several of the "weather resistant" coated screws the builders use. I hope I never have to do this again, but I probably will: so I bought a ruinously expensive box of stainless steel wood screws for the next time.
Life in a "retirement community" may not be such a bad idea after all.
November 6, 2024: It's OVER, Thank God...For Now, Anyway
Well, the Democrats seem to have got what they deserved for their arrogance, their condescension, their vitriolic name-calling and demonization. Not before time, either. One thing they will never understand is that people get tired of being labeled "deplorables" and "garbage," and that ten years of it, getting increasingly vicious as the decade wore on, would inevitably result in a repudiation of their party and its beliefs. It's telling that the electoral map shows "blue" only on the West Coast and the East Coast: everywhere else is "red." Trump is not only on his way to the White House with a major electoral victory, as of this writing he's 5,000,000+ votes ahead in the popular vote as well. The Beautiful Talking Heads are going to be hard pressed to explain that in their usual contemptuous way.
Enough of that....time to talk about my hunting, and my lack of success so far. I've been out several times for the early "CWD" season and last week for the first black powder season. I have seen deer, but not killed one.
I should have killed one yesterday. I damned near hit one on Graysontown Road; I kicked up one at Harry's place when I drove in. Walking to my stand I spotted a couple of scrapes and two rubs, one of which is shown here: a good-sized buck made that one.
I reached my stand at 6:42; at 8:15 I spotted a doe sneaking across the logging road at the Nine-Deer Dip. I was using my T/C "Firehawk" with .54 caliber Minié projectiles. These have proven to be very accurate in that rifle. She was at most 60 yards away.
She came out of some very thick stuff on one side of the road, walking from right to left. I put the cross hairs on her—I'm sure of that—and fired. I thought I saw her fall, but there was a fold in the ground and perhaps I didn't thanks to smoke from the muzzle. I don't normally get "buck fever" but for some reason I was pretty rattled, enough so that I flubbed my reload: those Minié bullets are not full-bore diameter and I dropped one into the muzzle before I put in the powder, i.e., I damned near "dry-balled" the gun. Fortunately it was only a couple of inches into the barrel. I had the wit to pop a cap on the rifle, which pushed the bullet out. Had that trick not worked I'd have had to go home and blow it out with CO2. I got a grip, calmed down, and reloaded properly, then went to see what I could see.
I saw...nothing. No evidence whatever of a hit: no hair, no blood, nothing. I had watched her walk calmly back into the brush, incredibly thick stuff with lots of downed limbs, etc. that might have impeded her. She didn't have her tail up, nor was she running, so I was eventually forced to conclude that somehow I had managed to miss her cleanly at short range. It's happened to me before...
About 9:00 it started to rain lightly. Muzzle-loaders and rain are not a happy combination but I stuck it out for 45 minutes then retreated to my truck to wait things out. Went back to the stand and sat down.
About 1:00 PM I heard an almighty racket in the woods whence had come the doe. Five minutes later a flock of wild turkeys came strutting out, bold as brass. Now, turkeys can see blaze orange. I am certain they saw me but equally certain that they knew damned good and well that it wasn't turkey season. They spat contemptuously and walked away. Not that I would have shot a turkey with a .54 caliber rifle. I've done that to a squirrel with devastating results.
At that point my aging ass was getting pretty sore from sitting on my stool despite two new cushions. I normally leave the Dip at 5:00 PM (I don't want to have to track a deer in the dark if I wait too long) but yesterday I upped stakes and headed home at 4:00 instead.
So all in all it's been a stressful week. Mrs Outdoorsman is not happy with the election results, but I don't much care: we'd have been screwed either way.
November 10, 2024: Oh Deer, Oh Deer
Well, it has been a hell of a week. The election has thrown Mrs Outdoorsman into a depression and periodic rants about "Fascism" and "tyranny" and all the other stuff that's bandied about in NPR, PBS, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Roanoke Times, etc., etc. The Left was mightily beaten this time, but they will never learn that calling half the population of the country nasty names, and incessant beating up of one man for a decade has been counterproductive. No, no, it's not they who were wrong, it's all those Christian Fundamentalist Nazi White Supremacists—all 75 million of them—who stole what was rightfully the Democrats' victory. Demonstrations have already begun: watch for them to devolve into destructive riots—excuse me, "mostly peaceful protests"—any day now. What will happen on January 6, 2025, do you suppose?
Big Day At The Dip
On a happier note, I broke my jinx out at the Nine-Deer Dip yesterday. I got to my regular stand at 6:42 AM after a (groan) 4:00 AM wakeup and settled in. At 8:15, three does came wandering down the hill into the Dip, but they never came close enough for a shot: 60 yards is fine but these gals were 100+ yards away. I'd have done it with my .308, but wasn't about to try it with a muzzle-loader sighted to be dead on at 50 yards. The lead doe (the others were likely her twin fawns) watched me for a minute or two, stamped her foot once or twice, then decided she didn't like the situation, put up her flag and all three of them fled.
About 11:00 I was getting to be in serious need of a toilet, and my aging ass was aching. I drove home (27 miles) did What Needed To Be Done, and headed out to another spot, in Giles County. On arrival the landowner there was working in the field where I'd planned to sit, so I turned around and went back to the Dip (37 miles). Got there at 1:15 or so and sat down again, not expecting much. I read a Tony Hillerman novel off and on, keeping an eye on the end of the logging road where the does had come out. Nothing doing.
Then, at 4:30, I was literally just getting ready to stand up and leave. At that point the buck in the image above stepped out of the brush to my left, 25 yards away, crossing the road from left to right. He had his nose to the ground, and was obviously after Only One Thing, so his mind wasn't on potential danger. Big mistake, the last one he ever made. I shot him behind his right shoulder. He fell down, and it was obvious he wasn't going to get up and run. It was a lung hit, and the bullet smashed his shoulder to pieces. He was struggling, though, so I popped him with my .380 pistol and that was that.
Deer are not, as the catalogs would have you believe, covered in armor plate; nor do they require heavy charges of powder and fast-moving sabot bullets. I have no idea how fast that bullet was going. I was using a .54 caliber Minié projectile made of pure lead, weighing 439 grains. Thompson/Center's load tables suggest that over a charge of 80 grains of FFg it was doing about 1300 Feet Per Second. No speed demon, but a very heavy bullet has a lot of momentum. Oddly enough, that bullet didn't exit. I think that perhaps when it hit his shoulder bones it flattened out so complete penetration and exit didn't happen. No matter, it did the job. He was an 8-pointer, and my guess is he weighed about 120-130 pounds on the hoof. Not the biggest deer in the woods, but very respectable. I believe this probably was the buck who made the rub pictured in my post for November 6th.
OK, after getting him field dressed (why is it field "dressed"? I was un-dressing him, when you come to think about it) and winching him into the truck, I was off to the processor. My truck's execrable electric transfer case/4 wheel drive system is going wonky again. It seems to have a mind of its own about when it will work and when it won't. When I left home it was NOT working. That presented a problem: I don't like to drive into the woods, even on a logging road, in 2 wheel drive. Luckily it decided to work when I got to Sunrise Farm, so I left 4WD switched on. Very glad I did: I was able to drive in and load him up. Had it still been on strike I'd have had to drag him out, something I really didn't want to do. I was also grateful that he dropped on the spot. He was headed for the terrible brush and logging debris on the uphill side of the road: had he got into it I'd likely still be trying to get him out.
OK, he was in the truck. The processor is in Shawsville, 15 miles or so from Sunrise Farm. I called Mrs Outdoorsman to tell her I was taking him there, and off I went. As I turned off the dirt road leading to the farm I normally switch back into 2WD, but shortly afterwards, on a paved road doing about 45 MPH I noticed that 4WD was still engaged! It wouldn't disengage even though I switched it off. There's an upper limit of safe speed in 4WD...I had to drive on the Interstate to get to the processor. I stopped, turned the engine off, and thank goodness the 4WD light went out.
So I got to the processor about 6:30...to find no one there. This place allows 24-hour drop off and has a big cooler, but I wanted those antlers and wasn't about to leave him there. I drove home (20+ miles) covered him with a tarp, and left him in the truck.
Today I sawed the antlers off, and took him to the processor (another 20+ miles) where he awaits becoming deerburger.
"Thank You For Your Service"
Tomorrow is Veteran's Day. That's the day when people who don't really mean it and who have no idea what the military does or what it entails, say "Thank You For Your Service." These are likely the children (and sometimes grandchildren) of people who staged protest marches and spat on military members 50 years ago. I read in the Roanoke Times today that something like 6.5% of the population consists of veterans. That would include the dwindling numbers of WW 2 and Korean War vets, plus everyone since then. My own cohort of Vietnam Veterans is shrinking rapidly; there are perhaps 30% of those who served in-country still alive. I'm a Vietnam veteran, not a "Vietnam-era" veteran who served somewhere else. Not that their service wasn't honorable or deserving of recognition, but I do faintly resent being lumped in with them. God knows nothing I did in the war was significant, but I was there and took my chances.
November 15, 2024: Bend Over, Here It Comes Again
I as mentioned in my last entry, the 4WD function on my 25-year-old F-150 has been giving me fits. It went belly-up last Saturday; I had to have it for tomorrow because that's the Opening Day for the main firearms deer season. Can't drive in to get a deer without 4WD, it isn't safe.
So back it went to South Main Auto Service last Monday morning with instructions that I needed it by today, Friday, absolutely, definitively. They did the job, and I got it back today, to the tune of $639.69. So far that damned 4WD has cost me $1147.54, according to my records. It goes bad about once a year. This is the second transfer case motor I've had installed, and the second vacuum control unit. I just hope this time the fix lasts long enough until I stop hunting.
Mrs Outdoorsman is horrified at the cost of operating that truck, but in truth, I couldn't even begin to replace it for what I have in it, including the initial purchase price in 2014. Around here even well-used pickup trucks command shockingly high prices.
I drive it about 3000 miles per year, nearly all of that in the hunting season. I'm going out tomorrow, but having killed a buck in an Earn-A-Buck county, I have to shoot an antlerless deer now. I'm gunning for that big doe I saw on Saturday. If she cooperates she'll go to Hunters for the Hungry.
November 17, 2024: The Yield
I got the meat from that 8-point buck back today: 32 pounds. Less than I had thought it would be, actually. Using various formulae I calculated back to a live weight of 128 pounds, about what I'd estimated. Other formulae gave me less. One said the live weight would be 78 pounds, which is plainly ridiculous.
I was at the Dip yesterday: kicked up two deer going in, one of them a very nice 4-point who stood and watched me for a minute and a half about 50 yards away. I couldn't shoot him legally. Montgomery is an "Earn A Buck" county. Had his girlfriend done that I could have shot her, but until I take an antlerless deer, I can't take a second buck. Maybe he knew it.
November 19, 2024: The Ugly Gun Trend Continues...
...with the Citadel "Trakr" .22. Here it is in all its freakish "glory."
There is a typical laudatory "review" from the American Rifleman web site heaping praises on a gun that shoots, at best, 5 MOA. My 60+ year old Nylon 11 will shoot much better than that. And my Nylon 11 weighs 4 pounds, the same as this...thing.
Honest to God, things are going from bad to worse. Time was you could rely on AR for an unbiased assessment, but no more. At least they had the decency to say "...Accuracy was not exceptional..." which constitutes damning with faint praise. Best you can expect from the AR these days.
Oh, yes, I should mention that it also is available in the useless .17 HMR caliber. Can the .21 Sharp edition be far behind?
November 28, 2024: The Mating Dance, or The Agony Without The Ecstasy
We have recently completed the agony of buying a new car: we last did this ten years ago and I’d forgotten how horrifying it is.
Mrs Outdoorsman had decided she wanted a new car. I could easily have done without one; I’m still driving my 17-year-old Toyota Corolla, which has not given me a lick of trouble in its long life (124,000+ miles) and still looks good. The car we traded in, a 10-year-old Kia Sedona with only 70,000 miles on the odometer, easily had another 5-10 years of life and 30-50,000 miles left in it, but I have been married nearly 50 years. I know what arguments I can win and which ones I can’t, so a new car it was going to be.
We (She) decided it would be a Kia Sportage SUV. Don’t ask me why. I think her brother in law—a man who buys a new car every three years or so—convinced her that that’s what she wanted. So we began the Mating Dance a couple of weeks ago, looking for a Sportage that she liked. And it had to be a hybrid: again, I’m not sure why but I didn’t argue. (By the way, “Sportage” is really a French word. I would pronounce it “Spor-TAAJE” with the accent on the second syllable; but out here in the Hinterlands it’s pronounced “SPOR-tidge-” With the accent on the first.)
She had decided she wanted a white one, specifically “Snow White Pearl.” Our previous van was white, but it seems that white hybrid Sportages are more or less made of Unobtanium. Gasoline powered ones in a dozen colors are a drug on the market, but a hybrid it had to be. There are two Kia dealers more or less locally, one in Christiansburg and one in Salem. Neither had a white one, so we started looking farther afield. We did, in fact, locate some white ones in northern Virginia. It was suggested by the saleswoman at the Christiansburg dealership (of whom more below) that it might be possible to “swap” one of their inventory with another dealer to get one of these, that one might be transferable to Hillbilly Country, if the dealers that had them were willing to do a swap, and if “…my manager...” approved. This however seemed to be un-doable since dealers in NOVA are engaged in a land-rush trade in white hybrid Sportages, selling them as fast as they arrive, therefore disinclined to send one to southwest Virginia. The other colors for hybrids were limited: “Fusion Black,” “Gravity Gray,” and “Sapphire Blue,” the last a screaming color so loud it would keep you awake while sitting in the driveway at night. (It would have had the advantage that it was so hideous no one would want to steal it.)
God alone knows who thinks up these names. My late father once bought a Chevrolet station wagon whose color was—I am not making this up—“Champagne Mist.” A nice light “Wolf Gray” was only available in gasoline powered Sportages; “Fusion Black” was unacceptable, so in the end we settled for “Gravity Gray” by default.
We spent a lot of time just sitting around in dealerships waiting for “…my manager…” to provide answers to questions like “What is the price?” and “What’s our trade-in worth?” However, I learned some things. One of which is that you don’t just get the first salesperson you see when you come in the door. No, no, the process is much more complicated: there are different types of sales people for different types of customers. For example, while we were sitting around a young man came in: he was assigned The Very Pretty Sales Girl in her late 20’s; presumably she would be more likely to sell to him than to a pair of Old Farts. A middle-age 
couple in blue jeans and sweat shirts got The Good Old Boy salesman, who swapped life histories and told jokes as he jollied them into spending more money than they wanted to. We, as Certified Old Farts, were assigned a saleswoman who was more or less a dead ringer for Granny Clampett on the old Beverly Hillbillies sitcom. Very folksy, with a southwestern Virginia accent you could have used to slice ham. The “Aw, shucks, Ma’am” act probably concealed the fact that she had a marketing degree from the Wharton School of Business, because she was a lot sharper than she looked. Or sounded.
One reason why we spent so much time sitting around was because Granny’s office was in “…another building.” The Christiansburg dealership sells many other brands of cars: there’s a building for Mazdas, one for Kias, one for Mitsubishis, etc. We were looking at a Kia: Granny had her office in the Mitsubishi building, requiring her to walk over to the Kia building. This of course increased the time spent twiddling our thumbs and building up our exasperation level to the point where I suppose they hoped we might be coerced into paying MSRP just to get the process over with. We’d wasted an entire day at the Salem location but in the course of this purchase we spent several wasted days in the Christiansburg one.
Actually getting a real price on a vehicle is akin to finding hair on a chicken. You know it’s there somewhere but you have to explore under every feather and scale to determine where it might be. The make-them-wait tactic is presumably designed to make the potential buyer contemplate the error of his ways, and to wish that he were somewhere else, anywhere else. For every minute spent in actual discussions of price (rather than exuberant exposition of the features of the vehicle) you spend ten or twenty sitting around waiting for something to happen.
Then there is the matter of a trade-in and its valuation. Our Kia Sedona was ten years old but in pristine condition since we always kept the interior covered with blankets and Weathertech car mats, had never had an accident of any kind, as well as periodically having someone vacuum it out and polish the dashboard and seats with Armor-All. Needless to say, Granny felt this was a splendid opportunity to low-ball us on the trade-in value. She offered us about a third of what it was worth. But thanks to the wonders of the Internet we were able to counter this: the Edmunds.com site was pretty emphatic that it was worth at least twice what she was offering; furthermore, Carmax (an Edmunds subsidiary) made a flat-out offer in cash for two and a half times what Granny said it was worth. We waved those numbers at her, and she said, “I’ll talk to my manager...” (of course) disappearing into the Mitsubishi building again, for another hour or so.
Eventually her manager agreed, or so Granny said, and the offer for the trade in went up by 25%. This was still less than we wanted but by then she’d worn us down so we accepted that even though it was well below what Carmax had offered. Since I am a veteran I was entitled to a $500 “dealer discount” on the strength of showing them my DD214 form, something I was happy to do for $500. In the end it paid about a third of the sales tax on the final price.
From start to finish the entire process took nearly two weeks, with back-and-forth to and from dealers, contacting dealers in other areas (including one very persistent guy in a northern Virginia dealership who kept sending me texts, urging me to come and “…have a little vacation…” in the DC area. Maybe if he’d have been willing to pay for our hotel I might have taken him up on that. We spoke to dealers not only in Virginia, but in West Virginia and North Carolina; there were some in eastern Tennessee but I ruled those out. None of them had a white Sportage hybrid anyway except the guy in NOVA who kept sending me texts. He wasn’t willing to swap. Perhaps a good thing, it would have raised the price some more.
Eventually Granny wore us down but we actually pinned her down on a real out-the-door-all-taxes-and-fees-paid price we were willing to pay. Then it was time to go to the dealership to get the car and drop off our Sedona. That took another three hours, and any number of papers had to be signed. We didn’t finance the car, we paid cash. I wanted to ask if they took American Express, but Mrs Outdoorsman wouldn’t let me (I think they would have but Granny would have had to talk to her manager). So even though we were metaphorically walking in with a briefcase full of $100 bills (we actually wrote a personal check, but they had to verify funds with our bank) we still had to put up with this sort of nonsense. By the way, I was unaware that dealers won’t sell to you, even for cash, unless they have your Social Security number. Why is this? They couldn’t do a credit check, we have our credit records frozen, so what in the hell did they need that for? Do they plan to garnish my SS money? Divert it to their account? Just to be bastards about it?
The damned thing is replete with “technology” and touch screens and more bells and whistles that I a) don’t need; b) don’t want; c) in most cases don’t understand, but that’s a subject for another essay. I am a man who hunts with a muzzle-loading rifle, who can drive a manual transmission vehicle, and used a fountain pen for decades. The “Home Screen” on this Sportage would give good service on the Space Shuttle. Of course the Shuttle is no longer in service: I wonder what Kia would give for it on a trade-in?
The only reason it took as little as two weeks from start to finish was because we already knew what we were going to buy. With any luck I’ll never have to do this again. If this Sportage lasts as long as our last Kia (no reason to think it won’t, I suppose) I’ll be in my late 80’s and probably either dead or no longer driving. There is always hope.
December 5, 2024: Nanny Kia
Well, I drove the thing today. Had to go to the County Offices to make sure we got our "car tax" (a hateful aspect of Virginia government, the "Personal Property Tax" they levy on automobiles) rebated because we traded in the van on which we'd already paid it. This involved my going to our safe deposit box to get the "Buyer Order" form, showing we'd paid the tax on the new vehicle, and then driving to the County offices. All in all I drove about 15 miles to do this paperwork chore.
Nanny Kia scolded me whenever I did anything she didn't like: changing lanes without signaling, going above the speed limit, that sort of thing: she also warned me when I put her into reverse to "Check your surroundings for your safety," and was distinctly unhappy when I set the somewhat squirrely cruise control, I had the impression that Kia would not have put cruise control on at all except that these days you can't sell a new car without one. It drives well, and at least it doesn't have "adaptive cruise control" where the car makes a decision to slow down automatically when you come up behind someone going slower than you are. I think it does have "automatic braking" in case you are so stupid as to not step on the brake when Nanny Kia thinks you should: she takes over the reins and does it for "...your safety and convenience..." whether you like it or not.
Nanny Kia would warn me if someone was coming up into my "blind spot" (which is a good thing, but why in the hell someone can't design a car without a blind spot I don't understand). When I tried to change the setting on the inevitable touch screen panel (which of course diverted my eyes from the road momentarily, which Nanny Kia doesn't like) I had to metaphorically scratch my head as to which of the various non-button buttons I needed. I committed the cardinal sin of not locking the doors when I stepped out at the County center and Academy Sporting Goods, so Nanny sent a text to Mrs Outdoorsman twice to tell on me.
Nor does it have a CD player. We often have used books on CD's on long trips, but it seems no one puts CD players in cars any more, God knows why. But what it does have is a "Bluetooth" connection so that Mrs Outdoorsman can play downloaded books from her "smart" phone. It also has "Kia Connect," which allows Kia, Inc. to know where Nanny is at all times, how fast Nanny is being driven, and whether the driver is doing things Nanny doesn't like. It also means that should they decide to report the driver to the police or the National Security Agency or some other strong-arm part of the Government, they can do it. Probably without a warrant or a court order, of course.
I don't much care for this vehicle, but thank goodness it's Mrs Outdoorsman's car, not mine. It drives well, it's quiet, and all that bullshit, but I still don't like it.
Stupidity Of The Day
This was on the shelf at our local Kroger store. This "from plants" stuff is getting out of hand. I see signs for "plant based beverages" and "plant based meats," and now this nonsense. OF COURSE these things come, ultimately, from plants. Cows eat plants; I eat cows, so when I eat beef I'm eating plants. Chickens eat bugs that ate plants (and they also eat chicken feed that contains plant material) so that when I eat a chicken or an egg, I am eating plants. All life on this planet is based on plants. Don't these idiots know anything? Well, of course they do: this "plant-based" bullshit is simply a marketing ploy to gull some of the more idiotic members of society (read: vegetarians and vegans) into buying things.
December 10, 2024: On The Banks Of Huff Creek
My friend Rick, with whom I have hunted for 30+ years, owns a nice property in Amherst County, about 2 hours from here. It's mostly wooded, plus it's crawling with deer. He urged me to come up and help him thin them out.
I had already taken two this season; so did he, but we're both meat hunters. Rick said he wanted a small doe for the freezer. My freezer is full, but any deer I can't use gets donated to Hunters for the Hungry, so there's no problem with "carcass disposal." I went up on Saturday morning and hunted that afternoon and on Sunday.
Huff Creek, a very small rivulet, runs along two sides of his land. The place is heavily wooded, mostly oaks. Saturday I chose to sit in a place where I've killed several deer, a spot I call "The Rock," from a large boulder that projects up from the ground, affording me a "wind shadow" plus a place to rest my back. At that spot I saw several deer, all of which met the description of "small doe," but nobody came close enough for me to take a shot. I decided to go to a different spot on Sunday, choosing to sit along the bank of Huff Creek. The deer like to use the ravine in which the creek runs as a means to get from one place to another, coming down from the road into the creek bed. My spot was looking down into a wooded bowl, 100 yards from the road and well below it, affording me a safe zone of fire should a deer come by.
That morning a deer did come down; I saw it coming along the creek bed from my right. She was headed for the road, but she dipped down below the bank and vanished, a feat deer are very good at. I knew she was there, so I watched the spot for a good half hour waiting for her to come out, but she must have bedded down. Eventually she figured out that there was danger lurking, so off she went up the hill opposite me, snorting. Oh, well, more often than not the deer wins the contest.
I went back out to the same spot that afternoon. This year the deer seem to prefer moving late in the day: I've made my previous two kills at 4:30 PM, which seems to be about when they get started on their nightly rounds. It was the same this time.
Rick was sitting about 200 yards away, also looking down into the creek bed ravine. At 4:45 I heard him shoot his .270. Ten minutes later, two deer came down the hill from the road towards me, both of them smallish does. I spotted them and snicked off the safety on my drilling. They stopped, both of them looking at me: I fired and one dropped stone dead. The second one stood there still looking at me—these were clearly very naive deer, despite it being well into hunting season when they should have been "educated." I was so startled by this unexpected behavior that I tried to reload to kill the second one. Unfortunately it took me about 10 seconds too long to get a round in the chamber. The second deer spotted my movement—they won't run from a gun shot, they want to know where the danger is so they stand still to look for it. By the time I'd chambered a round and closed the breech, she'd figured it out and off she went.
I was using my lovely Burgsmuller drilling which has a rifle barrel chambered for 8x57JR that's freakishly accurate. I'd sighted it in for an inch above POA at 100 yards: the deer was perhaps 60 yards away when I fired. I was aiming at her chest but hit her in the neck, maybe because the bullet was still rising in its trajectory. No matter: she was Dead Right There. The picture shows the exit wound: I didn't get a picture of the entry wound but it was very small. I imagine that deer died so quickly she is still unaware of what happened. Rick had made a similar shot on his deer with his .270, and "...almost blew its head off.." The 196-grain bullet in S&B's 8x57JR is a soft-point round nose with a good bit of exposed lead. I didn't "blow her head off" but came reasonably close.
It was a very small doe, maybe 55-60 pounds live weight, clearly last Spring's fawn. Back in the days when we had actual check stations (now we do it on line) some wag would certainly have looked at it and said, "That ain't much of a deer, but it'll eat good!" So she will, though not for me. With a full freezer I have no room for any more venison, so since Rick didn't want her (he'd killed his button buck about the same size ten minutes before) I decided to donate her.
We dragged her out together. Despite being a small animal, the drag was uphill all the way (why don't I ever get a downhill drag, I wonder?) so it was easier with two of us, especially since I hadn't gutted her. Rick has a "cleaning station" where he hangs up his kills to gut and skin them. Once we got up to the house I did mine on the ground in The Old-Fashioned Way. By then it was dark enough to require a flashlight; the first time I ever gutted a deer it was by flashlight. This one was easy enough since she was so small.
Since it was getting late we decided to put her in my truck, cover her with a tarp, and deal with the rest in the morning. I'd found a local processor who would take her as a donation to H4H, so the next day that's where we went to drop her off. I didn't want to pay the rather steep fee that our local processor charges for a deer that would yield maybe 15 pounds of ground meat, so donating her was the obvious answer. The processor said, "I been getting a lot of these tiny deer this year!" I believe there was a heavy level of fawn recruitment last Spring thanks to an excellent mast crop in late 2023, which accounts for that.
Amherst is surfeited with deer. We see them every day, and there are so many you have to be really careful on the roads, especially at night. There isn't (yet) any CWD there, but that's only a matter of time, I suppose.
Sunday was the 8th of December, my birthday: I turned 77 that day. Had she but known it that deer was a birthday gift from Mother Nature.
| OPENING PAGE|
|SEASON LOGS |
| HUNTING | GUNS | DOGS |
| FISHING & BOATING | TRIP REPORTS | MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS |
| CONTRIBUTIONS FROM OTHER WRITERS|
| RECIPES |POLITICS |