Monday, July 31, 2006

Ming The Merciless Finds Her Forever Home

We are now Pug rich and cash poor. Seems that the Pug Rescue crew came through for us. For some reason Blogsplat is not letting me post pictures right now so I will do that later.

A short verbal description: Ming is a female Pug that just turned nine while she was in a rescue home. She had been given up because of someone in her home having allergies. Please do not ask why the allergies just popped up, I have no clue. Perhaps some new person came into the house.

At any rate Ming had been with the same woman since she was weaned. Her color isn't perfect, she is what the dog show people call "muddy". She is fawn, with too much black on her back and tail. Since we aren't show people, nor are we breeders of Pugs, we don't care. Oh, in case anyone is curious, we are done breeding anything else.

Anyhow Ming is kind of shy but seems to be warming up fairly fast. She is already my pal. Kids and dogs have always liked me, it's adults that I can't hardly stand. Long before bedtime she was in the recliner with me and then I got her to sleep with Linda Lou. The puppy gets to sleep in his crate until the ordeal of housebreaking is done.

The puppy manages to pee on the paper but has that terrible habit of poop, two steps, another little poop, two more steps, etc. He starts on the paper, ends up halfway to the other end of the house. As long as we get him outside at the right time he is fine. This will improve, he's just a baby. We are not yet able to take them both out at once, though, at least not with only one person trying to hold both leads. This, too will come.

Oh well, more pictures when Blogsplat is over it's tantrum.

Sunday, July 30, 2006

Vicious Killer Attack Dog



As anyone can plainly see I now have to stop beating Linda Lou with a brick because her attack dog will protect her.

Friday, July 28, 2006

The Apprentice Pug

I had to lay off the saga of the big circular trip, we got busy with other stuff. We spent quite a bit of yesterday begging the credit union for a loan, we finally got one. We then discovered that we didn't really need it as the Postal Service had a check for Linda Lou, the vacation pay for the time she'd been put off the clock, illegally. We didn't know that this check had been sitting around for months but we were glad to take it.

This morning it was up early to go to Carrollton, a suburb north of Dallas. There was a Pug in Doggie Jail there and his people had not come after him. Today was the first day he could be adopted. We got up there about thirty minutes before the shelter opened. Good thing. There were two other people there before the shelter doors opened, each behind us, each after Wilbur the Pug.

Wilbur is another Black Pug Of Doom and he and Linda Lou did not quite hit it off. Instead we let the other woman there have him, in part because his eyes were full of goo and he wouldn't stop coughing, in part because he wouldn't calm down for Linda Lou but did for the other lady. And in part because Wilbur looked too much like Captain Fatbob.

Instead of a grown dog bailed out of Doggie Jail we spent $500.00 on a new fawn Pug puppy. Quite frankly I would have rather waited around and found a grown dog from the Pug Rescue people and not had to deal with the chewing and house training but Linda Lou liked the little guy. So now we have a new puppy that we have to teach how to be a dog. I'll have a picture or so up within the next few days and finish the great saga, too.

We have not yet figured out his name, it usually takes a few days for the personality to show through. He was born on May 16 and is cute as a bug.

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Garden Of The Gods and New Mexico.

We got up fairly early and reloaded the van and drove south into Colorado Springs, past Zoomie U. I was disappointed because Linda Lou would not take over driving for long enough that I could moon the Air Force Cadets. Drat!

We got into the city of Colorado Springs and drove over and saw the Garden Of The Gods, a lot of red rock, piled up in amazing fashion. We did not take the time to drive up on Pike's Peak, we had miles to go. More than I knew at the time.

We did drive over to the cliff dwellings nearby. When I saw how much it was going to cost I was for turning the car around, so was Linda Lou. I'd seen some cliff dwellings before, maybe not so well preserved but still, this wasn't our dime. Brian handed the money over from the back seat, We asked if he was sure he wanted to pay for this, he said sure. We got out of the car just as they were getting ready to have a display of some of the Indian Dances. When the drum started up I was about ready to dig out the shootin' irons but it was just a demonstration. Fortunately they seem to have stopped torturing their captives to death. I have no big desire to be staked out on an anthill or suspended over a fire.

What was surprising was how cool it was inside the houses, it shouldn't be, I suppose. I used to do some cave climbing. Solid rock is some pretty fair insulation. We then went through the souvenier stand, er museum. The sign said museum they sure were selling a lot of stuff, though. Anyhow, the cliff dwellings of Colo Springs is a worthwhile stop but it's close to ten bucks a head.

A quick lunch and back on I-25, headed south. We blew past Fort Carson, I didn't get to moon the Doggies, either. Phooey. Then it was just miles and miles of miles and miles.

We got into New Mexico and started seeing herds of speed goats, the American Antelope. I had never been through that part of New Mexico before. I-25 through that part of Colorado and New Mexico is right at the top of the plains, the Rockies are right there in the right and we ran into a few foothills but mostly it was just the high desert plains.

The Antelope co-exist nicely with the cattle and horses, grazing on the same pasture. I am not quite sure about what the cows think about the antelope leaping over the fences that stop the cows. I'll have to ask a cow psychologist next time I see one. I am not sure how New Mexico's hunting regulations go, if they're anything like Texas those ranchers will make a pretty penny on hunting leases.

Just north of Santa Fe we ran into the Sangre De Christo Mountains and the road started doing some fancy twisting, I noticed the compass in the car saying we were going north a couple of times.

We stopped in Santa Fe just to pee and head on, it was our intention to spend the night in Albuquerque and we'd spent so much time in Colorado Springs that we just didn't want to spend any more time stopped. I can out of the john and Brian was on the cell phone, saying that we didn't have the money for another motel room. So I decided that, rather than have anyone wire more money that we'd just try to drive staight through. After all, three licensed drivers and it was already getting dark, surely someone could get some sleep and then drive when I crashed.

Drive I did, we filled up the car in Albu-Q and headed west of I-40, the heir of Route 66. It's been a long time since I drove that route, it filled up with Indian Casinos since last I drove it. That's why they no longer torture their captives, they've found a new way to scalp the whites.

Anyhow we charged through the night and all I can say about that stretch of highway is that it was dark. I know nothing of the vegetation, wildlife or terrain, just that it was dark.

We pulled into Phoenix right about sunrise. I had got about a two hour nap in the backseat but Brian was so flakey on the road from Flagstaff to Phoenix that I took over the wheel again.

Phoenix is where all Hell broke loose. That's the next item, tomorrow or the next day.

Monday, July 24, 2006

Hornady Bullets and Fort Kearny

So, there I was in Grand Island, Nebraska. I got up early and, since no one else wanted to go, drove to the Hornady Bullet Co plant alone. The Motel was in the same area so that was a short drive. The office had about a hundred stuffed critters. I', not really sure how well I could work with a dead Moose staring at me but these folks managed. I guess after a while one learned to ignore the critters. I had to leave the camera in the car, they would allow pictures of the critters but then, everybody has seen a stuffed critter.

I got a tour, by myself with one nice lady from the Hornady staff as a guide, only through the bullet making shop. I did not see where they make cartridge cases or loaded ammunition, of course the bullets were what I was interested in so that is fine. A jacketed bullet starts as a long strip of bullet jacket materiel, a compound called gilding metal. This is an alloy of copper and zinc, mostly.the strip of metal is sent through a bunch of machines, starting with one that punches out precisely sized cups. These cups are run through a series of dies that stretch and thin them until they become a bullet jacket.

Meanwhile another set of machines turn large cylinders of lead alloy into lead wire. A different alloy depending on the projected velocity of the bullet, a fast rifle bullet needs a harder core than a slower rifle bullet which needs a harder core than a handgun bullet.

The most interesting part of the tour was when I actually saw some of Hornady's new Leverevolution bullets.These new bullets, not yet available to handloaders, are the Next Big Thing for hunters. The Hornady people have figured out the kind of plastic that is hard enough to hold a point during the bullet's accelleration down the bore yet is soft enough that it can't set off a primer in the magazine of a lever action rifle. For the first time since the 1860s a lever action rifle with a tube magazine can shoot pointed bullets without the risk of the rounds in the magazine lighting off. These new bullets add a hundred or two hundred yards to the effective range of the Marlin or Winchester toting hunter, depending on the particular cartridge. With these rifles the problem is not whether or not the hunter can kill the critter it is the trajectory of the bullet. Past about 100 to 150 yards the old style bullets start dropping so quickly that a hunter needs to know the range to withing fifteen or twenty yards or the bullet misses the vitals.

These new bullets extend the range, a lot. The Hornady people say that it will be at least a year or so before these bullets are available to handloaders. Until then they are available as loaded ammo in .30-30 Winchester. .35 Remington, .444 Marlin, .45-70 Government and .450 Marlin. The .30-30 is now a reliable 250-300 yard deer rifle.

I resisted the temptation to load up on caps, T-shirt and factory second bullets, thanked everyone and went and picked up Linda Lou and Brian and we got on the road, early still. I did ask, those are soybeans growing everywhere that corn doesn't.

Next stop, Fort Kearny. Oddly this fort had no battles but it was important none the less. It was a major stop for both the Mormans going to Utah and the folks going on the Oregon Trail. Unfortunately we lost all the pictures in some sort of electonic camera accident.

The most amazing thing about Fort Kearny, to me, was a look at the handcarts with which the Mormans crossed to Salt Lake. No covered wagons, they walked, pushing and pulling handcarts with everything they were allowed to take, seventeen pounds of stuff per adult, ten pounds per child. I presume this included one big ol' Morman Bible per family. Each train had a couple of wagons for food and other supplies.

Driving off from the Fort we had a flat, I drove on the low tire to a place where we could safely pull off and air it up. We drove into Kearny and found a Wal Mart and bought another tire as we had weakened the sidewall. This is where the wheels started coming off the whole trip.

Anyway we got the tire on and drove on, we passed the museum at the Buffalo Bill Trading Post in North Platte as the tire took the time we would have spent there.

We turned southwest onto I-76 and drove into Denver where we spent the night.

More of the saga tomorrow.

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Grand Island

We're stopped for the night in Grand Island, Nebraska. Last night was Topeka, Kansas. We didn't get very far today, we started off visiting Linda Lou's parents graves in Topeka, then we drove north on a US Highway, Hwy 75 into Plattsmouth. This is a town that grew up at the spot where the Platte River meets the Missouri. Being somewhat of an amateur historian I had to go to that spot, being a guy I had to pee in the river there. A little present for St. Louis and New Orleans.

Anyhow, we picked up my daughter in law's brother and got moving. Simply because I never have, we crossed a narrow little toll bridge into Iowa and drove up Interstate 29, caught I-80 and blew west through Omaha and Lincoln.

There is a heck of a lot of corn up here and something else that grows next to the cornfields, I suspect it may be soybeans but I am not quite sure. Linda Lou is a Kansas girl but not a farm girl, her family was railroad, the Santa Fe. Anyway, we're going to take the tour of the Hornady plant and then head for Kearny and see the Fort Kearny State Historic Park. If i bemember my history that was a fairly important Cavalry Fort in the Indian. Wars Anyhow, there is a visitor's center in an old caboose right next door by the truck stop/restaurant. I'll ask there. Then, with just a little luck, we might make it to Denver for another night. That would make it an easy trip down to Phoenix in two days. Only a couple of four hundred plus mile drives, heck some folks commute almost that far. It's an awful long one day drive, two is a piece of cake.

Anyhow, bullet company blogging coming up, for now it's time to relax some.

Captain Fatbob Didn't Make It.

Captain Fatbob, the Black Pug Of Doom didn't make it. He apparently had a heart attack after getting too hot. He was doing fine when we stopped for lunch just north of Oklahoma City at a Cracker Barrel, a crew of children found him and were happily petting him, except for the kid that was messing with his curly Pug tail, he always hated that. A quick warning about a suddenly removed arm stopped the messing with the tail, though.

We got back in the car and kept driving north and he wouldn't stop panting, even after I directed most of the car's air conditioning down on him.

We started getting worried so we stopped at the last rest area in Oklahoma, I poured some water over him but by then he was unconscious. I hit the road with the flashers on while Linda Lou got on the cell phone, we found a Vet Hospital in the small town of Wellington, Kansas. Too late.

Linda Lou is heartbroken.

Monday, July 17, 2006

On The Way

Well, we're headed off to Phoenix, by way of Plattsmouth, Nebraska. If it seems odd that we're going to Arizona from Texas, by way of Nebraska, well, tough.

I have to go to Phoenix, I forgot my new hat, on top of the kid's freezer. It's too bad that this is kind of a rush trip, I'd like to stop in Oklahoma City to meet two bloggers, Rave and Hippie, of the Bad Example Family. Maybe next time.

Anyhow, it's time to go, I'll post from an overnight stay someplace.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

A New Front In The Old War

I am not sure why Iran and Syria are using their wholely owned subsidiaries, Hamas and Hezbollah to attack Israel right now. Seems to me it would have been more worthwhile for them to hold off until after "the world" and the Democrat Party had allowed them to finish the job of getting nukes. Perhaps the nutcase in charge of Iran has decided that no matter what the appeasers decided that Dubya is not going to let nukes happen over there.

Anyhow, the Izzies are ticked and "the world" is telling them to act proportionately. There is no word yet on just how Putin or Chirac or Dubya would react if rockets were raining down on their cities.

I had initially thought that Syria was in deep trouble but Iran was quite safe. It is not like Israel has much in the way of strike aircraft with the legs to reach Tehran or Quom or the other areas that the Mullahs hold dear. Then I remembered Israel's submarines. Israel has not got enough subs and missiles to hurt Iran badly enough to make the Iranians stop what they are doing without making portions of Iran's coming smoking holes glow in the dark.

There is actually a way to avoid Israel sending nukes into Iran but "the world" will not take it. Only a hard military action by a coalition including Russia, China and Europe, as well as the USA will prevent Iran from continuing this attack. Seeing as how Iran won't stop how do we expect Israel to? What else does Israel have to make Iran stop? Perhaps there is someone smarter than me that can figure out a non-nuclear end to this game but I don't see it.

Assuming that, a hundred years from now, there will be historians to parcel out blame for the millions of dead and the hundred dollar a barrel oil, that grinning idiot Jimmy Carter will bear a large share of the blame.

I do not know how heavily we Americans will be involved in this fight, I suspect that will depend on what the Chinese and the North Koreans do, We may well have nothing to do but try to clean up the radioactive glass, we may be just as likely be up to our eyeballs in it.

Anyone know hoe to make Iran step back from the abyss?

I'm going for a nice long drive as there is nothing else to do.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Another Road Trip coming

Well I thought I was safe at home for the next few months, no such luck. We stayed in Phoenix so long to house sit so the kids could help my daughter in law's brother move to Nebraska, Plattsmouth to be specific. It turns out that the guy needs to go home, to Phoenix, and needs some help.

Since everyone but us is stuck working we are being drafted for assistance. Various members of his family who are not on skinny pensions are underwriting this, financially. So, I get to go to some more of the country and see if there are any Bushco Gulags full of Leftists having their dissent crushed. I keep looking. There seem to be none of these in the parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California that I drove through. Unlike the previous administration that burned a bunch of previously harmless religious loonies to cinders.

Anyhow, Nebraska must have something going for it, Linda Lou won't let me make this trip alone. Must be all those loose Nebraska women. It couldn't be that she doesn't want me scurrying on an over three thousand mile trip by myself since that stroke.

Anyhow, I've never been though Nebraska, seems like I'll see much of it through the windshield. Anyhow, anyone know of any must-see locations in Nebraska? I must check the map and see where Grand Island is, I believe that is where Hornady Bullets is located. We'll also be going through a part of Colorado and New Mexico we've never seen.

Later...Well, I googled Hornady Bullets and found a bunch of stuff I'd written, I'll have to go to another search to see if I'll be able to drop by and say hello. I have only used Hornaday bullets for a couple of rifles, I'd always used Sierras, mostly. About all I've used Hornadays for is revolvers since the XTP Hollowpoint up until I started loading a little ammo for my son in law who is still getting used to the recoil of a full fledged .30-06. Ah, there it is, just as I suspected, right there at Hornady.com. Anyhow, the Hornady 130 gr Single Shot Pistol bullet in front of the 60 percent of the maximum load of H4895 is a real good light load that will also take down any deer. Then as he gets used to that level of recoil I upped the charge some. If he ever gets out and practices I can switch to a 150-165 gr. bullet built for the full rifle velocities. And I just figured out that I have been spelling Hornady wrong for something like forty years, now. It's Hornady, not HornaDAY. Awk!

What? I'm supposed to be writing about another trip. Well, we'll be driving on I-80 west until we get to I-76 and duck southwest into Colorado. Then it's south on I-25 and wave at the fledgling Zoomies at the Air Farce Academy as we blow through Colorado Springs, then duck down and sneer at the Hippies of Santa Fe. We have driven through Colorado and New Mexico east-west and west east, we've never happened to drive through those states north-south. It's going to be hard to drive and moon the hippies at the same time. I guess I'll have to make Linda Lou drive through Santa Fe.

Anyone know of some must see sights along that route, please let me know.

Monday, July 10, 2006

1951






Here are a few photos from another trip out west of here, this one was in 1951. You can see me, I was the little short guy, my big sister, Carolyn, my Mom, Virginia and James, my Dad.

I have a bunch of slides from back then, too. Slides from around then and up to 1959, six or eight boxes, each with room for 150 slides. Each box has several to many empty slots, those are probably slides that were commandeered by relatives or ones that did not survive being stored in a garage.

One thing I am noticing, again, is how many of these old photos contain the cars we had. I have dozens of old slides with pictures of my folks in front of their cars, it seems people don't do that much anymore. I have seen photos of folks standing in front of their cars from the turn of the 20th Century to about the 1960-1970 period, then it seems to have pretty much stopped. I wonder if it is because we're so used to having cars or maybe it's that so many cars look alike these days.

At any rate, it will be a matter of months before I have all the slides turned into prints and scanned into the computer for blog fodder. I shall have to go through them, pick out the ones to turn into prints and then print a dozen or two out each payday.

Anyway, here is a small look at an American family fifty-five years ago.

Sunday, July 09, 2006





Just a few pictures of this last trip. I have been calling it The Vacation From Hell, it wasn't really. The downside was simply a lack of money, we were about three thousand dollars short of the minimum needed. California has been expensive for decades, and it's not getting any better.

Then we got to Arizona and had to wait until we got our checks to make it home, meanwhile I couldn't even go shooting. We couldn't afford even the range fees and even the National Forest land was closed to casual shooting because of the wildfire danger.

Anyhow, here are some pics of the one shoot that I was able to attend, plus one shot of our grandniece. This was the shoot outside of Prescott, AZ that I wrote about. I am semi-confident that the pics of the 12 gauge will prevent any potential Deb Frisch types out there.

I really don't understand that mess at all. I know that Lefties and (some) righties can be hateful but leave the kids out of it. Actually I know of no right-types that would go so far as to imply threats to a child. When we on the right tend to disagree politically, we think our opponent is wrong. When a Lefty disagrees, they often think their opponent is evil. I'm not positive as to why, perhaps it is because for so many on the Left, politics IS their religion.

At any rate, I had some words with Goldstein awhile back, over nothing really that important but it annoyed me. So I quit going to and commenting on his blog. There were no threats against anyone's family.

Oh well, lots of smart people have commented on the Goldstein/Frisch situation, perhaps someone smart enough to understand it. I certainly don't. All I know is that if someone threatens my family I'm going hunting. 'Course if anyone further away than across the street wants to threaten my family I hope they wait until payday. I'm not sure how well I'd do hitchhiking with a couple of rifles and a shotgun. Maybe if I showed some leg.

Well, I have lots more pictures to post and not much to say, so let me close this. More in the next couple of days.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Home, Safe

We are finally home, the Vacation From Hell is over. Of course we got home and the house was an oven. The ants had got into the air conditioner's switch, again.

It was entirely too hot to mess with unpacking, except for the miniumum, toothbrushes and stuff. So, tomorrow will be unpacking everything we own, plus stuff that we borrowed, after I spread ant poison everywhere. I have tons of pictures, everything from nieces, grandchildren, holsters, elephant seals...if it is safe for work I probably have a picture. Seeing as how this trip broke the bank I will be blogging and posting about these pictures for quite a while. For Blogfather Harvey and anyone else wanting to know about NSFW pictures, well, we are sixty years old. If we have any, you don't WANT to see 'em.

Anyhow, a few days and I'll be back in harness.

Sunday, July 02, 2006

We Can't Prosecute

I have seen much in the way of complaints about the Bush Administration's seeming indifference to hauling the NY Tines and the LA Times before the Courts. It's all over the right side of the blogosphere and in many columns, too.

Unfortunately, the bloggers and columnists are dead wrong. If there were one jurisdiction in America that we could haul these clowns before that was not tainted by Bush Derangement Syndrome, fine. Haul 'em up. Where is this place? Where can we go where there would not be one juror, out of the twelve, who would simply ignore the harm to America in order to get Bush.

Two out of the four airplanes of 9/11 struck New York City, yet who published this latest outrage? Where was the Millennium Bomber aimed?

I do not understand the antics of these BDS sufferers. It is not like Bush is going to be around past '09.It is not as if any of the awful things they have been screeching about since they failed to steal the '00, '02 or '04 elections have come true. The same people are still screaming before every available microphone that their dissent is being suppressed. Should not at least Susan Sarandon be in a gulag by now? Should I not have seen some new walls up on this long trip through the southwest? Or Army Wife, Toddler Mom seen some new prisons in Nebraska driving The Collective through in her Truwk? I mean somebody would notice new prisons going up, right? Would we not notice that Michael Moore or the Dixie Chunks suddenly disappearing? Would we not hear the cheering?

Meanwhile, there is an outfit killing gays. There is an outfit raping women for not wearing burkas. There is an outfit issuing death penalty fatwas to Leftist novelists. There is an outfit sawing the heads off Lefty Journalists. This outfit is not the Republican Party. It is not the CIA. It's not even me, though there is not much in this world that I would rather see than a lefty with a brass bead over his chest.

I do not see how we will get through this. Sooner or later the Islamists will get their hands on some nukes and carve a humongus hole in the middle of a few of our largest cities. The surviving Leftists will then blame us and do everything possible to keep the surviving government from responding.

It would be one thing if the Left still had some Trumans around. Is there one person in government that the country can unite around to see this war through?

We are screwed.