Belts

 I used to own a number of belts.  Duty belts, dress belts, gun belts, casual belts and everyday belts. This morning, I was down to two.  A dress belt I used on dressy occasions, and an everyday belt that held the Model 60 on my waist.

That dress belt was bought, as I recall, sometime around 2004.  It hasn't been worn since I retired in 2019.  All the other belts that own, (excepting the competition rig that carries my Colt holster), went away over the years.  So, I'm down to three belts.  The dressy one, the everyday rig, and the competition rig.

Today, I had to go to a funeral.  I put on slacks and got out the dress bel.  Put it on and when I went to tighten it, broke that sumbitch in half. It had dry-rotted.  Just damn.  I put on the everyday belt and went to the funeral.

I need to go buy a dress belt, something that looks better than the plain, old everyday rig I normally wear.  And that pisses me off to no end.  It's just aggravating.  Now that I think about it, my everyday belt is about five years old.  It might use an update too. I guess it's time to go down to Boot Barn or Cavender's and see what they have hanging in the racks.

And that's where I am with that.

Harbor Freight

Referencing some recent comments on the previous post. 

Harbor Freight, or as I call it, Hobo Freight, is a constant in my shop.  I buy a lot of Harbor Freight tools, because they work.

My buddy, Jay, who died in December, had his A&P license and ran a small manufacturing business where he made tools for the helicopter maintenance trade.  Jay didn't mind spending money on tools, that is how he made his living.  His machine shop had big lathes, mills, all the high-dollar stuff.  In the welding room, I happen to notice one day that every bench had a cheap, Hobo Freight angle grinder on the bench.

I asked him about it.

"They work," he said. "And when they quit, I go buy another one for $15.00."  He appreciated high quality tools but realized the value in a cheap angle grinder that would work for him for two or three years. Sometimes there is value in cheap tools.

Twenty years ago, I didn't trust battery tools.  If I could find a plug and string an extension cord, I could work all day.  Nowadays I don't care to work all day.  When the battery needs a recharge, I take a break.

I can still do a full days work, it just takes me most of the week.

Any man who is 70 and works as hard as he did when he was 35, didn't do much when he was 35.

Mini Chainsaw

 I've run a bunch of chainsaws since my teens.  McCullough, Poulan, Husky, Stihl, Echo, you name it, I've run it.  As I approach my dotage, I am loathe to crank a gas chainsaw. I'm no longer felling timber or cutting firewood, I'm pruning trash trees on my little acre.

Battery technology has improved over the past decade, and the era of plug-it-in-the-wall power tools is about over..  I have gone almost solely to batter operated tools, and I use the yellow-black brand..  All my batteries are yellow-black.

Last week, I needed to do some pruning, so I stated looking around.  As it turns out, Amazon sells chainsaws.  Little handy saws that run on batteries and don't need pull ropes.  I did a little research and bought this one.  It's a no-name Chinese knockoff and uses those familiar yellow-black batteries.

The only thing that didn't come in the box was a syringe to put bar oil into the reservoir.  A quick trip to the feed store solved that problem.  This morning I filled it with bar oil, put in a fresh battery and went out to hairlip a little tree that is in the way.  Thirty minutes later, I wondered why I had waited so long to get one. The little tree is on the burn pile, the battery is on the charger and the saw is back it its case.

This little saw is On Time.  It may not last as long as the branded saws, but it proves the concept.

Weird Weather

 I'm out in the shop right now, with no heat on.  It's the middle of February and unseasonably warm.  The weather-weenies are predicting that the temps will be in the mid-70s this weekend.

The weather is teasing us.  Winter isn't over yet. It's not yet time to put away the propane heaters.

Belle and I are going to make a run to Sam's Club in a bit.  We need entertaining supplies, like paper plates and plastic flatware.  Later today, if Amazon cooperates, I'll be working on a project that should increase the comfort in the shop.

In short, it's just a standard Tuesday around here.

Tea Leaves

 This guy is reading tea leaves and it's interesting.  Watching military air traffic across the US and world.

Signals intelligence comes in many forms, and these days, air flight data can tell you a lot about what is coming. Or, he could b all wrong.

Nationals

 The Cowboy Fast Draw Association is shooting their national championship this weekend in St. Augustine, FL.   This championship moves around, and this is the first time it has been on the east coast.  About 150 shooters from all over the country are enjoying Florida weather and testing their skills.

Belle and I didn't make it this year, for a variety oof reasons.  It just didn't fit into our schedule.  We've pared our schedule back some this year.  We'll do Texas in March, Georgia in April, and we are hosting Louisiana in May.  We plan to go to Kentucky in September.

I'm told that there is some trifling football game tomorrow.   I don't follow football as much as I used to, but the Super Bowl was one game I always watched. I met Belle at a Super Bol party in 2001.   Back then, the big game was the last Sunday in January.  Sometime since then, it has moved to February.

More currently, today is Saturday and I have things on my list.

Quandry

 So I'm hearing about this kidnapping in Arizona and I admit that it is a compelling tale. The woman who has been abducted is in her 80s, and that simple fact alone puts this outside the standard bell curve. The locals and the Feds are working the case.  From what little I've seen of the local Sheriff, he seems to be straight-arrow.

Hopefully, they will find this lady and bring her home safely.

Newspapers

 Newspapers are a relic of a bygone era.  In the 20tth century, every town had a newspaper.  It's where we got the news, weather, and sports.  Classified ads and legal notices.  My hometown paper, the Alexandria Daily Town Talk, exists as a pale shadow of its former self. The press is gone; I'm not sure if they print anything at all. At one point, it was being printed in Lafayette, but now I'm not sure at all.

Other newspapers hang on, grimly.  The news earlier this week was that the Washington Post was eliminating positions and laying off staff.  That seems to be the trend in the newspaper business these days.  However, those journalists still have employment opportunities.

That's funny, right there.

Wednesday Wondering

 There is an old saying about "death and taxes" So far I've cheated death, but once again it is time to deal with the IRS. I despise those sonsofbitches.

Some ignorant twat I've never heard of was talking shit at the Grammys last weekend.  Something about illegals and stolen land.  Turns out, her house is on stolen land.

I can take the moral high ground here.  My land isn't stolen.  When this area was first colonized, a guy named Fulton bought a huge chunk of land from the Choctaw. Land north of the river was considered worthless, fit for nothing but pine trees and brambles.  Fulton bought it and started selling homesteads. The Choctaw are still around.  They own a casino north of here. That same tribe has a small reservation near Jena, LA.  When that area went dry, they opened a package liquor store.  That pleased the Baptists to no end.

Busy Monday

 I hit the ground running this morning.  Good stuff.  Got a lot of stuff done, made progress in a number of projects.

I have our annual state shoot in four months, and it's time to get busy on that. The only problem is that we can't start promoting it until we nail down some details and we simply could not nail then down in January.

The weather was beautiful today, the best we've had in weeks.  The weather weenies tell me that we're in for another cold snap. Maybe we are about to turn the corner for spring.  I think I saw the scouts for the local purple martin flock yesterday.  On the other hand, I have heard that our friends in Florida are having "falling iguana" alerts.  So, it's cold in Florida.

Winter ain't over yet.  We still have February to live through.

Renunion

 A bunch of guys I went to high school with showed up at the shop on Saturday to renew old friendships.

Food was consumed, cigars were smoked, and they hit the whiskey.  My bottle of Stranahan's is now defunct.

Friday Prepping

 I have a bunch oof high school buddies coming over tomorrow, some I haven't seen in 20 years.

This morning, I got a call from a CFDA shooter.  He's in town, enroute to a big shoot and wants to see my range.  He and his lady will be over this afternoon. He's retired Army, an old cavalry scout.  When we get together, no telling what is likely to happen.

I'm prepping a big gumbo for tomorrow, and i intend to violate the Ten Commandments of Gumbo. I am going to add shrimp to chicken and sausage.  Bless me Father, for I have sinned.

I will spend this afternoon and tomorrow entertaining. There will be laughter, lies told, and whiskey consumed. I have two very amusing American Single Malt whiskeys for those who choose to consume. There may be cigars, We'll see.

Right now, the chicken is boiling for stock.  Belle has gone to the grocer for last minute stuff.

Y'all have a very pleasant weekend.

Niche Cartridges

I've always had a fondness for niche cartridges. My very first centerfire rifle was a Marlin 336 in .35 Remington.  I preferred the 200 grain Remington load, and I carried that rifle for two decades.  It was my go-to choice for whitetail deer in central Louisiana. That rifle wore a 2.5 scope and was hot medicine for deer in our piney woods and hardwood bottoms. I never had to shoot a deer twice with it.

Ron Spomer talks about another niche cartridge, the 338 Federal.  It's nothing more than a .308 Win necked up to 0.338.  It throws big bullets.  Not far, but hard. It's not in the same category as the .338 Win Mag, nor the .338 Lapua, but it is not meant to be.  It's a cartridge for inside 200 yards.  Truth be told, that is where most North American game are taken.

Before Junior Doughty died, he and I talked about the 338 Federal.  At that time it was a new cartridge.  We thought that a good 200+ grain cast bullet would be the bees knees in this thing.  With hard linotype metal and a gas check, you could push it to 1900fps and get plenty of thump on the other end. In a short action, light bolt gun with a low powered scope, it would take anything we might point it at.

I'm glad to see that Ron highlighted this cartridge.  It is not for everyone, but niche cartridges never are.

Gumbo

 We successfully dodged the bullet of the ice storm.  Awoke this morning to clear skies and cold temps.  Belle said that she wanted some kind of soup or stew for lunch, and I started diffing in the freezer.  I found two partial packs of good Gulf shrimp that we could cook, so I chopped some onions and bell peppers and decided to make a shrimp gumbo.

Seafood gumbo is not my forte.  I am much more comfortable with a chicken/sausage gumbo, but I gave it a shot anyway. Toward the latter part of the process, I knew it needed something, but my palate would not give me the clue.  I had Belle taste it and we decided that a bit of red pepper flakes would help it.

Wehn the rice is done, we will get a bowl.

Monday Morning

We seem to have dodged the arctic bullet that is the Great Ice Storm of 2026. We lost power for all of abot four minutes The pipes are okay, and the roads are relatively clear.

Not so for our neighbors to the north. I understand that Oxford, MS took a major hit, with substantial damage to the electrical grid. Those folks are in a bind.

Drinking coffee with Belle this morning, we were talking about being cold, and the lessons we have learned over the years.  Both Belle and I grew up in the '60s and '70s.  I remarked that back in those days, girls would sometimes wear clothes that exposed a bare midriff. I seem to recall a universal trait, that when I would touch an ice cube to an exposed belly button, the lady would object.  Sometimes violently.

Moving to another survivor of the '60s, we come to the Air Force fleet of aging bombers, the old B-52.  During the '80s I was assigned to a unit in the Army Reserve.  Our headquarters building was just off the north end of the runway at Barksdale AFB in Bossier City, LA.  Barksdale is a major hub for the B-52.  They were aging machines in those days, but it seems that the service life of those airframes may be 100 years.  The earliest of them were delivered in the 1950s and may still be flying in the 2050.  Incredible.

Ice

 We're getting a little ice, but the ground is not frozen, so it is not sticking.  The power is on, so we are warm and have light.  I've talked to all my kids and they are okay.  We are weathering the storm.

The weather radar has lots of pretty colors.

We're hanging in there.  This too will pass later today.

So It Begins

 We shot our January monthly match at the clubhouse today. Yes, there is a winter storm coming, but it ain't hare yet.  We decided to have some fun.

We had eleven (11) shooters this morning, not a bad turnout when you figure the weather.

The worst of it is supposed to roll in here later today, mainly in the form of ice and sleet, not so much snow. Many of the churches are closed tomorrow, and the news is saying that the state will close the Interstate (I-49) later today, mainly because so much of it is elevated across Alexandria.

Belle and I are hunkered down, with everything we need to ride this thing out.

Prepping Friday

The big news this weekend is the winter storm that is going to hit us over the weekend.  Yesterday there were lines at gas pumps and propane filling stations.   From all accounts, we are going to be on the southern edge of the storm, so how bad it may get is a matter of which weather app you are using.

The temps are all predicted to get into the mid-to-lower teens, so the temps will be there.  The question is how much precipitation we are going to get, and in what form. Snow, sleet, freezing rain are all in the mix.

I think we are ready, though one never really knows.  The gas cans are full, the generator is ready, the propane tanks are filled. Now it's just a matter of how closely the reality matches the forecast.

We will see.

Just Wednesday

 The big news is the Ice-mageddon we are going to get this weekend.  Lots of folk in panic mode.

For myself, younger son came by this morning and we went to Academy to look at scopes.  Picked out a nice Vortex Crossfire for the Winchester.  Mounted it, life is good.  We didn't go shoot simply because it rained all day, and I'm not ford of being in the rain.  When I was in the Army, the mantra was "If it ain't raining, we ain't training", but I'll wait for less precipitation.

The weather-weenies are prepping us for a huge ice storm this weekend.  I'm ready, but I am not yet convinced.  What concerns me is the insanely low temperatures they are talking about.  Louisiana does not need temps in the teens.  It ain't right.

Tomorrow, it is supposed to rain some more.  The menu in the shop tomorrow will be chicken fried steak, mashed potatoes and cream gravy.  I may heat some english peas to go with that.  We'll see.

Optics

 My younger son came in for a visit today.  He'll be here for a week.  Belle and I picked him up at the airport and his brothers met us at the shop.

Stories were told, lies were explored.  At some point the conversation turned to optics.  I happened to have a rifle in the rack with an old Bushnell scope.  It will be upgraded tomorrow.  the boys took that scope off the rifle and began to disassemble it, exploring the mysteries of the internals of common optics.

That was interesting, and we concluded that young Philippine grills are better qualified to disassemble cheap scopes than middle aged rednecks from Louisiana.  They probably have specialty tools.  At one point, a pipe wrench was used in the disassembly, probably not something we would find in a technical manual. This was redneck gun-smiffing of the worst kind.  No alcohol was involved in this evolution.

For the record, the reticle was found in the second focal plane.

 We'll go get a new scope tomorrow and see how the rifle shoot.  It's a push-feed Winchester Model 70 in 257 Roberts.  More to follow.