Survive the end of the world.

Today, I am officially half way to what the average life-expectancy for me should be. Cheery, eh?

And apparently lots of other gun blogger sorts have birthdays in late October. Someone should do a study about that.

Or how to tell you’re about to get your ass kicked.

Watch this video from where Great Britain Used to Be. If you’re wailing and screaming and huffing and puffing while the object of your aggression stands there calmly and quietly with his hands casually folded in front of him then it is probably a good sign he hasn’t quite felt threatened by you yet.

Via David.

It’s not just for the end of the world. Tam and Les both mention loss of a job. Sure, it’s not as glamorous a survival situation as the zombiepocalypse but it’s worth considering and preparing for. Les has guidelines on it. A bit back, I was unemployed for six months. Well, we had planned for such a thing prior to by having a decent savings. We still fed the kids, paid the mortgage, paid the bills, and put money in savings. But we were living tight. Very tight. The only thing that suffered was I didn’t make six months worth of contributions to the old 401k and my wife’s birthday gift could have been better.

In Cali.once again in a place where most of the stuff in my checked bags is illegal. Heck, I’m practically illegal here.
Red eye home. Such fun. What to do for eight hours in an airport with no wifi?

I let my sister in law sample some dove I had prepared. This conversation takes place:

Her: It tastes kinda gamy.

Me: Well, it is game.

Collection of survival resources.

A fishhook in the earlobe really hurts. Moving stuff in the garage and a rod fell. Ouch.

what feeding a family for a week is like in different countries, visualized.

Update: Link fixed.

I type 79 words per minute. With 100% accuracy. Can’t figure out why I have so many typos on the blog though. How about you?

Damn fine idea: Take a Vet to Lunch

The Mrs. is not a fan of my language choices, a lot of times. But good news, dropping a few f-bombs is healthy:

Well, it turns out a potty mouth does more than earn your conversations an R rating: it actually relieves pain, according to a new study by Richard Stephens, John Atkins, and Andrew Kingston of Keele University in the UK. But that’s not all: you’d never know it from what your mom told you, but there are many positive, beneficial aspects of swearing, including harmless venting and social bonding (not to mention reams of adult comedy). Bad language does a lot of good.

Fuck yeah!

Phelps looks at wet-shaving with a detailed post on his set up. As for me, I don’t quite have the beard Phelps has. I shave in the shower with a waterproof mirror. I use a Gillette Fusion, Williams Mug Soap, and a loofah instead of a brush to work up the lather.

Later this month is my 20 year high school reunion. These are always fun and I have a blast. See some folks I haven’t seen in ages, catch up, swap numbers with people (knowing you’ll never call each other), and reminisce. I was talking about it with the Mrs. the other night and I said:

Ya know, I’m tempted to have my hair cut into a mullet, get some parachute pants, buy a pair of Vans, wear an AC lightning bolt DC T-shirt and load up my Mp3 player with some Bobby Brown, Paula Abdul, Milli Vanilli and Warrant.

She said if I did that, she wasn’t going. She’s no fun.

I will be spending part of mine at the walk-in clinic. You see, yesterday, I happened to be holding the kitty when the dog decided to introduce itself. Cat was not a fan. And, in its escape attempt, bit me. Wake up this morning and where I was bitten is swollen, red and ouchie. So, based on my Google fu, I think I have this.

Update: Yup, that’s what I got. Tetanus shot. Antibiotics and if no improvement by Monday, a potential hospital stay. Cat bites are apparently serious business.

A look at The Grab And Go Survival Pack.

Cool pictures of a volcano erupting taken from a space station.

Just the other day at lunch, I was mentioning how we hadn’t seen any coyotes since I capped the last one about two years ago. This morning, my wife said she saw another.

Cool pic of a tornado forming.

And if that’s not enough, here’s a video of one.

test results negative.

Today is a good day.

So, I look in the mirror and realize that I have longish hair, a beard, and I’m wearing plaid shorts. I think to myself Self, is it 1994 again? About that time, The Second bumps his head on the bar, starts crying, and I realized that it’s actually not 1994.

20 year high school reunion invitation just showed up in the mail.

When repairing something around the house, I wonder what the average number of trips the American male makes to the local big box home improvement store is? I’m guessing between 3 and 7. I’m up to four repairing a sink drain. And I’ll probably wind up calling a plumber. Feh.

Easy way to grow tomatoes.

On the blog here, I have a category called Notes to Self so that I can leave myself notes about things. That does no good when you forget. You see, I forgot how much it can suck to put on Chapstick that’s been sitting in your car in the hot sun all day.

I mentioned my garden a bit back. I planted some stuff last week. Notably, Swiss chard, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, variety of tomatoes, carrots, radishes and various peppers. The chard, peppers, and tomatoes came as plants and not seeds. In less than a week, the radishes, carrots and lettuce from seed have broken the soil.

If it goes well, I’ll build another raised garden next year.

I have them. The are obviously forming a nest in my attic. They’re coming in from the outside awning where they wriggle through the some of the space between it. Ordinarily, I’d just wait until dark, spray it and knock it down. But there is a particular level of difficulty here. See, the wasps are in the furthest corner of my attic from the entrance. So, if I went through the attic to spray them and pissed them all off, I’d be hard pressed to make it to the exit while navigating the support beams in the attic without getting stung all to hell. Now, you say, Just attack them from outside at the awning. Trouble with that is that this particular spot where they are is, at a guess, thirty feet off the ground. So, different problem but similar. Get up there, spray them, piss them off, then try to haul ass down the ladder without getting stung all to hell. And I can’t reach their nest from the outside.

Any ideas?

Cigar porn:

From Home Life

My dad decided, based on my post, that it was a good idea. He came by today and now we’re both sitting on the porch sipping some Evan Williams Single Barrel that he bought. And I have a Rocky Patel Vintage 99 and he has a Gurkha Legend.

It’s ten o’clock in the PM and I am sitting on the back porch sipping bourbon and enjoying a fine Rocky Patel Vintage 1990.

ETA: Speaking of, while I do my Spring cleaning, I like to again prime and season my humidor. Also a good time to replenish your stash. I don’t smoke cigars when it’s cold outside and didn’t notice my supply was light. A quick trip to ThompsonCigar.com remedied that.

Thanks to comments here, I’ve discovered that Ezra Brooks is also pretty damn good for the money.

I usually like the good (i.e., more spendy) stuff. But, note to self: for the money, Evan Williams is pretty damn good.

Last night, I get home and the house is a nice warm 78 degrees. Time to turn on the AC.

And, this week, I cracked the first beer. I don’t drink beer all winter long because they just don’t sound good. But when the weather is warm, beer is good.

Last night, I went to bed and it was about 60 degree outside. This morning, I wake up to see this:

From Home Life

Toolmonger:

Golden Nozzle car wash customer John A. O’Leary was riding through the car wash when he noticed something was terribly wrong. Yards away, fighting for her life inside the car wash was 19-year-old employee Stephanie Carpluk. The lone attendant had taken a short-cut through the car rails and her scarf had become ensnared in one of the wash’s rotating mechanical brushes. The machinery had pulled the scarf tightly around her neck and was quickly strangling her. Unable to free herself, Carpluk passed out. Within seconds, O’Leary sprung from his car and pulled out a pocket knife that he was carrying and cut her free.

CNBC is currently running a documentary entitled House of Cards on how we got into the economic mess we currently face. So far, it’s quite good. If you’ve missed it, it’s repeating at midnight Eastern time (11 PM Central). I’ve set the TiVo to catch the repeat.

UPDATE: Another review here.

A couple of weeks ago, I was on vacation in a downtown hotel. My room number? 1911.

I was eating in a restaurant at a shopping center in suburban Memphis when this happened. I didn’t hear or see any of it happen, but was around when the cops showed up. On the surface, it sounds ok: person A charges person B, person B warns person A that he has a gun, person A keeps coming, person B shoots person A dead. If that were all there was to it, I’d say it’s pretty cut and dry.

But there are a few things that give me pause. For starters, person B (the shooter) had been drinking in a bar before the incident. Compounding that, according to people on the scene (some of whom I know), person B was told that person A was “messing with his car” (I’m paraphrasing), and person B went out there specifically to confront person A. So while person A was indeed trying to fight person B, it’s unclear who started the fight, and it’s also unclear as to whether person B was justified in being afraid for his life. From what I’ve been able to piece together (admittedly from very limited information), without the shooter’s gun, the chances of anyone ending up dead or even seriously injured as a result of the altercation were pretty close to zero. And in any case, if I’m afraid for my life, I don’t go initiate a confrontation.

The crowd at the bar, many of whom know and like person B, seemed to have mixed opinions about whether or not the shooting was justified. The whole thing is a mess, and it makes me just sick. I’m glad I’ve never been in a situation where I’ve even considered pulling a weapon on someone, and I hope I never am.

UPDATE: There are a lot more details here, and they demonstrate the dangerous nature of rumor and innuendo in such matters. It apppears that my person A above was the one who had been drinking in the bar. And the details about someone charging someone else don’t get any mention. Second-degree murder charges have now been filed against the shooter (H/T: commenter chris).

So much for the Vice Fund being “recession-proof.” Oops!

Chris looks back at 1989, the year I graduated high school.