Martin House

 In 2014 I put up a Martin house that my dad had on his place.  After he died in 2007, and Mom was making some changes on the family property, she asked me if I wanted Dad's Martin house.  I did.  It had stood beside the trailer for a decade of longer and the trailer was leaving the property, so the Martin house needed a new home.

Last year, the Martin house fell after a storm, and the impact shook everything loose in the house.  My elder son and I performed an autopsy and decided that we could rehab it.  The internals were made out of the same material that yard signs are made of, and I had some yard signs left over from my political campaign.  So, we used those.

In a couple of hours, we had it back together and strapped to a fence post in the back yard.  The Martins won't get here until March, but the scouts will find it in February and lead the other in.  I like watching them fly, and hearing their warbles.  Dad's Martin house is ready for another decade of service.

Turkey Gumbo

 Juvat asks if I could post my leftover turkey gumbo recipe.  Easy-peasy.

My basic gumbo recipe is here.  We make a few small changes for the turkey variety.  Take that leftover turkey carcass and break it apart, putting it into a stockpot.  Cover with water and boil it for an hour or so, making stock.  Set it aside to cool, then pick the meat from the bones.  Discard the bones, but keep the stock and meat.

Make your gumbo as usual, substituting the turkey instead of chicken.

I boiled our turkey carcass yesterday and today I'm making a gumbo that we'll eat tomorrow.

White Bean Soup

 Belle was watching the weather yesterday and concluded that we were going to have our first frost, so we moved her potted plants indoors. After three days of prepping, cooking, partying, and cleaning, I didn't want to spend much time cooking today, so I dredged my memory banks and came up  with a recipe I haven't cooked in over 20 years.  White Bean Soup.

White Bean Soup

Ingredients

1 lb dried lima beans

3 small russet potatoes,  peeled and chopped

1 cup leftover ham, diced.

8 cups cool tap water

Salt, pepper.

Dump all the ingredients into a slow cooker, on low for eight hours.  I put mine on last night and let it go all night.  Closer to lunch, we'll make a cornbread.  I have less than four dollars in that pot, and could probably feed six people with it.

A Great Day

 Baked ham, fried turkey, cornbread dressing, egg gray, cranberry sauce, corn casserole, candied yams,  green bean casserole, yeast rolls, pecan pie.  We fed nineteen folks and one dog.

Tomorrow, I'll prep what is left of the ham for a pot of beans on New Years Day, and I'll prep the turkey carcass for a gumbo on Sunday.  Belle and I will eat leftovers tomorrow and count our blessings.

Prepping

 Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, a uniquely American holiday.  Belle and I are prepping for the big meal, at noon.  We're having ham and turkey and all the fixings.  Each daughter has her responsibilities, one for the corn bread dressing, one for sweet potatoes, one for green bean casserole.  Belle's brother is bringing a corn casserole, and my sister is in charge of dessert. It will be a great time.

We have one dear friend, Vovo, who lives across the little lake in our subdivision.  He spent a lot of time in South America, and his wife is Brazilian.  His wife's family is Brazilian, and they are hosing the Brazilian expats who live locally. He expects about 25 for lunch tomorrow.

He was over on Monday, teasing Belle about her cornbread dressing recipe. He wants to give the Brazilian crowd the full experience.  Belle graciously to make a big corn bread dressing, and it took him about two seconds to graciously accept.  Belle is making a big dressing that he can slip into the oven for a half-hour before serving.  He will pick it up today for the party tomorrow.  We hope the South Americans enjoy it.

I'll spend today prepping, getting the turkey ready for the frying pot tomorrow and generally giving the shop a good wipe-down.  Y'all have a good Thanksgiving.

Campaign Wores

I am given to understand that while Kamala cools her jets in Hawaii, Failed VP Tim Walz is asking donors to help puck up the tab for vendors that haven't been paid and for campaign workers who said that they were stiffed because the campaign is over. 

Wait, what?  These folks thought they would be paid by the campaign until January 1st?  Why?  The campaign was over at 8:00 pm local when the polls closed.  At that point the campaign is over.  They should have seen that coming. Turn off the lights, lock the doors, it's over.

I ran a campaign once, and there was a little paperwork that had to be done, post-election, but for all intents and purposes, the campaign is over when the polls close.  Honestly, the campaign workers should have seen this coming, whether they won or lost.  In this case, they lost.  Campaign is over.  Go Home.

Declination

When I was a young'un, as a Boy Scout, learning how to read a map and use a compass, we had to learn about magnetic declination.  The compass did not point to true north, it pointed to magnetic north, which in central Louisiana was about 6 degrees east of magnetic north.

 As a young Army officer several years later, this was important  Land navigation was all about map and compass. The first thing we checked on the bottom of the map was the declination diagram, which showed the difference between the actual north pole, and some spot in Canada where your compass was pointing.

For no particular reason, I decided to check the local declination and found that it is zero degrees.  Magnetic north is moving, and will sometime in the future, be somewhere in Putin's Siberia.

Of course, no one uses map and compass today.  Today, it's all about GPS navigation, but I find it strangely interesting that the magnetic pole is moving, and has been for some time.

One of the things I learned as a young Armor officer is that a compass will not work in a tank.  Too much steel around you.  All land nav in a tank was terrain association.  I was thrilled when the Army put GPS sensors in the M60A3 series.

Blind Hog

 The house that Belle and I call home was built in 2001.  Very few problems, but recently we noticed a problem with a switch that controls the back porch light.  Not a problem, easy-peasy.  I took the face plate off and found a double switch.  I had never changed one of those.

So, I took a picture and heded down to my local electrical supply.  Wandered up to the counter.

Counterman asks, "What'cha got?  I showed him the picture.

"Is that a two-way, or a three-way?"

"Hell, I don't know."

"Well, " says he, "It matters.  The backs are different.  I'll sell you a two-way and when you get home and find out it won't work, come back."

As it turns out, it is a two-way, it works, and Belle is happy.  Sometimes a blind hog does find an acorn.

Gobble, Gobble

 I went to the grocers this morning to pick up some stuff for Thanksgiving.  Like q turkey and a ham, and some other stuff that Belle thinks we need.  One of the things on her list was a spiral cut ham. I didn't get the most expensive ham in the cooler, but there were none there that we could consider a bargain. A roughly nine-pound ham cost a smidgen over $40.00.  The turkey was no screaming deal either.  When the butcher starts the conversation by apologizing, you know his heart is in the right place.

I had a buddy, now departed, who would wait till after the holidays and buy a bunch pf hams after the season.  He'd cut them, slice them, and freeze them for use year around.  I recall deer camp breakfast would be ham and eggs.  Not a bad way to start the day.

Oh, I'm frying the turkey this year.  I know what I'm doing and won't burn the place down.  Regular old store-brand vegetable oil was $10.00 a gallon.  That price-gouge hurt more than the price of that ham.

I don't know what the new administration can do about food prices, but Bidenomics is killing us.

Education

 President Trump is making his picks, and it seems that he picked Linda McMahon for Education secretary. Trump is not a big fan of the department (neither am I), and it seems he wants to give Education back to the states.

That is a screen from Fox this morning.  Evidently, McMahon has been tapped to reduce the scope and size of the department.  Hopefully, she can reduce it to zero.

Defrosting

 We have this freezer in the garage, a stand-up freezer that I haven't opened in six months.  THis morning I opened it, to take stock, and found some deer meat in there from last year, which is okay.  And some stuff from several years ago that isn't okay..  Freezer burned, it's time to go away, so I moved the deer meat to another freezer and bagged up the discards for the garbage dumpster.

There is a huge layer of frost over the main cooling coils, and even though the freezer was billed as frost-free, every five years or so, it's a good idea to unplug it and let everything come to room temperature. That is the plan for today, which doesn't require much effort at this point.

I'll be prepping for Thanksgiving later this week and with Christmas just over the horizon, freezer space may be at a premium. So, it's time to get the freezer cleaned out.

Don't Touch The Boat

 Did you hear about this?  It seems that a Norwegian fishing vessel accidentally fouled the screws of a US Submarine.  Yeah, really.

Harald Engen was delivering halibut to a village on Norway’s west coast when he got a message that a U.S. submarine had gotten entangled in his 32-foot boat’s trawl nets while sailing near the surface and were dragging them out to sea, broadcaster NRK News reported.

Dude!

 The 377-foot, 7,800-ton, nuclear-powered USS Virginia was headed to port with a Norwegian Coast Guard vessel escorting. The Coast Guard crew needed to cut the submarine free.

Yeah, I don't know what to do with that information. 

Leaving X

 I see where Don Lemon, Stephen King and several other butt-hurt liberals are leaving the social media platform X.  Cool, they have caught up with me.  I've never had an X account that I am aware of.

Stephen King is a renowned author.  Great horror books, and I think that Shawshank was a magnificent work, but I don't care about his politics.  I simply do not care.

Don Lemon, the CNN host, has had his disagreements with Elon Musk.  One of those is a smart Arican American who moves America forward.  The other is Don Lemon. No one gives a shit where Don goes, as long as it is away.

The Young

 I see an article where it seems that colleges are increasing counseling services because the students are threatening suicide due to the reelection of Donald Trump.  What?

I was in college when the Watergate scandal embroiled the US.  Did I care one white?  No.  I was focused on three things.  1) Girls, 2) Grades, and 3) My part-time job, which allowed me to chase girls.  I married in early 1974 which changed my focus a bit, but the grades and partying on the weekend were just about all I had time to worry about.

But then, when I was in college, we were supposedly adults.  We could enter into contracts, get drafted, be went to Vietnam and die early.  We could also consume alcohol.  Life was different then, and no one treated us like children.  We were not children, that ended at high school.

Somehow along the way, we lost the idea that there is a bright line that a child steps across and becomes an adult. A time when the entire focus changes.  We had college counselors, but there was very little sympathy in those rooms.  The message was simple.  Grow up, get a life, or go home and tell your momma how bad it is in the real world.  I remember one bit of advise I got, that sympathy fell in the dictionary between shit and syphilis. No one cared how I felt.

Let's Talk About PT Tests

 In 1973 I took my fist PT Test at Fort Knox, KY.  A trainee in E-13-4, I lost 40 pounds in basic training.

In 1998, I took my final PT test for the Army.  I passed it, just barely, but I knew that it was time to retire.

The Army PT Test is weighted for age.  Old farts like me don't have to run the two miles as fast as the kiddos in the ranks.  My last PT Test I had to run 2 miles in 19:36.  I made it in 19:30.  And damn near puked at the finish line. I knew it was time to retire. I was 45 years old.  I think that at that time an 18-year-old had to run the test in 16-something to pass, with the max score in the 12 minute mark. Or something like that.

The point is, the Army PT Test is weighted for age.  No one expects a 40-year-old to make the same times or scores as an 18-year-old.  Bust, there are standards for the old farts, and they need to meet them.

As a trainee at Knox, I was surprised one morning to a General Officer doing PT with us. Then, he got in line for breakfast. At our company mess hall we had a horizontal ladder we had to traverse before we could enter the mess hall.  The General went through the ladder with the rest of us.  That is leadership.

When I was training with the 5th Division at Fort Polk, it was not uncommon to see the commanding General huffing and puffing his tired ass around the water towers.  From tower-to-tower was a 3-mile run and the General was out there with us.  That is leadership.

If a General Officer in the Pentagon cannot pass the standard APFT, he has no business being on active duty.  It's simple, it is a bsic standard,

The Appointments

 He's naming them quicker than I can keep track, but just about the time I heard the SecDef pick, I found this  comment.

Thomas says:

Pete Hegseth as SecDef! Exactly the kind of fire-breathing shot in the arm that's needed to clean house and start rebuilding it the way it needs to be.

I concur.  Were it me, the first meeting I'd have would require every flag officer in the Pentagon to meet me at a PT Field in gym uniform.  Those officers would take the PT test that they require basic trainees to pass.  Any that failed the test would be handed retirement papers and told to report to whichever office conducts out-processing.  That would send a message that basic standards must be enforced and that leadership is top-down.

House Control

 According to 270 to win, Republicans control 219 seats, Dems control 210, and 6 are undecided.  That gives the Republicans a slim majority to keep the house.

Trump has appointed Elis Stefanik as his ambassador to the United Nations,  Stefanik is from New York and I'm not sure how that state fills House seats between elections.

Until the House is decided, Trump needs to keep a close eye on appointing Congress-critters to his administration.  We don't want to give the Dems a foot in the door. We have to keep the House, and the Senate, if we want to get the agenda fulfilled, and this is certainly something that should be considered.

If Trump is looking for a Secretary of the Army,  PawPaw is available and won't wreck the House majority.

Jus' Wonderin'

 I heard something today and went to the Google to see if it was true.

Joe Biden got just over 81 million votes in 2020.  Trump got a little over 74 million.

Kamala got 71 million votes last week, and Trump got a but more than the 74 million he got in 2020.

So, I'm wondering what happened to those 10 million Biden votes?  Did they just stay home, or did they ever exist in the first place?  Did Biden get 10 million bogus votes in 2020?

Veterans Day

 The eleventh day of the eleventh month, and we recall the Armistice that ended the Great War to end all wars. Today is Veterans Day.  You are welcome.

I see that President Trump has appointed Tom Homan to be the new Border Czar.  That's a good pick, Tom knows what he is doing and what needs to be done.

I also see that some of Harris' acolytes are asking Biden to step down and make Kamala the president for the lame duck session.  Harris has that in her power via the 25th Amendment, but of course they are calling for a man to do something for her that she is eminently able to do for herself.

I have some stuff to do today, so I'd best get after it.

Deluge

 We have an atmospheric river overhead, dropping coious amounts of heavy rain on us.

It's been raining like this for about four hours and it doesn't look like it is going to let up anytime soon. We have vertainly gootn an inch or ore since it started, and I hope I don't have to build an ark.