You can not bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You can not help small men by tearing down big men.
You can not strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You can not lift the wage earner by putting down the wage payer.
You can not help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You can not keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You can not further the brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You can not establish security on borrowed money.
You can not build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence.
You can not help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
--Abraham Lincoln

We are getting ready for a long weekend in Chicago. We will leave early Thursday morning and come back mid day Monday. This is just a little adventure for no other reason then the bride said “let’s go to Chicago over labor day weekend”. As I do most of the time I said okay. The only down side I see to this is the fish are really biting out at Wilard bay. It would so much cheaper if I just stayed home and went fishing. Maybe I should talk to the bride about this?

 

Fishing wwas great last night. We threw back more then we kept.  I have my fish in the Smoker right now, should be done just about bed time tonight. 

Ava expressing herself

My weekend started this morning with the dogs deciding that I was no longer tired. That is okay I had to get up to get my coffee anyway. The bride and I both work a compressed workweek. We work 9 hours a day Monday through Thursday and 8 hours every other Friday. That adds up to 80 hours in a pay period. So every other Friday is a day off. We love this arrangement. This is also payday, and we tend to run around and take care of errands.

I have been calculating what my retirement will be when I decide to pull the plug, the numbers look pretty good I have 18 months until I am eligible. 36 months until the house is paid off. Talking with some people that have retired already and they claim everyday is like Saturday. How cool is that?

My daughter and her husband had to run down to Salt Lake City last night; they were buying a used car from private party. So the bride and I had to care for the new granddaughter. Oh my, she was a fussy little thing last night. I had forgotten how much a little bundle of joy could cry. Ava is about 9 weeks old and crying is the only way that she can express herself. No one will ever have to wonder what this child is thinking. She can express herself. But it was fun. The bride would get her all calmed down and hand her off to me. I would hold her until she started to express herself then hand her back to grandma. I like this arrangement.

The bride comes home this afternoon. She has been gone for 8 days. It will good to have her home. I am cooking a spaghetti sauce in the crock pot. The house is pretty much clean; I just have to run the vacuum a little. That is mainly because the dogs are still shedding. I have been feeling a little under the weather the past few days, just tired and achy in my muscle and joints. It seems that something is going around. I know the bride would want to go to the spaghetti factory down in Salt Lake (one of her favorite restaurants) but I don’t think I am up to it. So I am cooking here at home. I am heading to the store as soon as I post this. I need to get some French bread for garlic bread and some cheese.

I never did get to go fishing, my neighbor invited me over to have a bar b qued steak so how could I turn him down. We watched preseason football, Chargers vs. Bears. My Chargers lost big time it is just preseason and it does not count. They play mainly second and third string and to see who will make the team.

I hope everybody has a great weekend and Nate gets over having to fax certificates to the training monitor ;-)

I am planning a fishing trip Friday afternoon. The bride comes home on Saturday so Friday is the last day I don’t need to get kitchen pass. I am hoping to catch a bunch of fish. I want to try out my new smoker on them. I love smoked fish. I bought the smoker for the fish I plan to bring back from Alaska ( I leave in 30 days). But I am going to smoke a chicken tonight. Please no joke about how am I going to light it or how big are my papers. We are all much to mature for low brow humor like that. Besides the chicken wings kept poking holes in the papers, I’ll use a pipe this time. ;-)

My friend Dave from Dave’s place( http://akshot.blogspot.com/ ) is taking a hiatus from blogging. He has had a thorn in his side with an over the top and obnoxious fellow that calls himself prophet of god (pog). I know my buddy Dave used his blog to share about his life his excitement in severing God. I am going miss his posts and hopes he enjoys his new grandson. I am a Christian and I do believe in the ministry of laying on of hands. If I could find pog I would be willing to minister to him with the laying on of hands real fast and frequent. But that is an issue between me and God.

I am looking forward to a quite evening at home with the dogs. I have been staining the deck for the past couple of days. I am at the point where it is all the little stuff that takes so long. So I will put the chicken in the smoker when I get home put on some grubby clothes and get to work.

My sister came home from the hospital today. she says she is feeling alright, just tired.

The bride is gone again; she will be back next Saturday. So again it is me and the dogs with no adult supervision. My buddy Nate from Wasted electrons and I dropped the bride off at the airport 5:30 AM yesterday and headed for the desert with a truck load of guns. We got to my shooting place about 6:30 and it was a beautiful morning. There is nothing like the desert in the morning. I just love it.

We wandered around for a couple of hours, the rabbits were breaking a ways a head of us and we didn’t get many good shots. That is okay it was more about hanging with a friend and shooting guns. We walked back to the truck set up some targets and increased the lead content of my secret shooting place. Nate had gone to a thrift store and bought a bag of plastic figurines that we used for targets. Yes we picked up our trash when we were done. There were a couple of Mickey Mouse figurines; you have no idea what a 230 grain bullet out of a 45 acp can do to Mickey until you shoot the little rodent. All I can say is Mickey went away.


Before the bride left me we went to the movies. We saw World Trade Center. For me it was a very powerful movie. I think it is a must for folks to see. The only knock I had on the flick was they did a Hollywood gun thing. They had a gun start to cook off rounds. The gun started to fire by itself. I am here to tell you there is no way in God’s green earth that this could happen the way they depicted it. But Hollywood makes movies to make money.

I talked to my sister this afternoon, things are going very well. She told me not to make here laugh because it hurts. So I hung up. Not much else going on, I think I will go and stain the deck before I make myself some dinner.

The surgery is done and she did well. She should make a full recovery. Praise God. I only have one big sister and I would like to keep her around for awhile.

I just got a phone call; they canceled my sister’s surgery at the last minute. It looks like the patient before her had complications and it took longer then they had planned. So they wheeled her out of pre op and she is sleeping off her morphine. She is going to go sometime tomorrow

My sister is having a triple bye pass on Wednesday.

Bad News, my sister is in the hospital. They think it may be her heart

Some of the forums I read on line tend to support the second amendment. Most lean a little to the right when it comes to politics. But what I have noticed in every forum there is a thread that warns about a shortage of ammo coming. I am sure that most have noticed an increase in price and a decrease in availability. I bought some ammo at sportsmen’s warehouse at lunch yesterday. Not much, 150 round of 357 mag, 100 rounds of 22 wrf and 50 rounds of blazer (aluminum case) 45 ACP. I want to make sure that the 45 and 357 feed and ejects reliably before I buy a bunch. The price was not bad, $10.99 a box for the 357 and $10.49 a box for the 45. I believe I will head for the gun range this evening and shoot holes in paper. I may post a range report later.

I do have an appointment this afternoon with my eyeball doctor, so the range will depend on what he does to me. There is a chance that I will have my eyes dilated. If that is the case I will not be going to the range. I will sit around the house and watch TV with my sunglasses on.

Back to the ammo, those of you that own guns, I would suggest that you buy as much ammo as possible as soon as possible. It never hurts to be prepared.