Category: Fun Stuff

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Some of My Favorite Things/Cutting Remarks

I’m not much of a “gun guy,” though I like ’em and even have open and conceal-carried handguns, and gone for lovely “walks in the deer woods” with a Model 1895 Winchester, etc. No, I find myself more drawn to knives, and in fact, I don’t really know exactly how many knives I own. . .

I usually walk around with something like five to eight knives on my person, depending on where I’m heading and what I plan for my day. All of them serve slightly different purposes, though some do overlap a bit. Right now, the number is nine, because I just noticed an old K-Bar pen knife sitting in a coffee cup (with a bunch of other small folders) just within reach of my right hand. Now, I don’t find much need for a pen knife (I don’t do a lot of writing with a quill pen, and I usually use other knives to trim/sharpen carpenter and other pencils, etc.), picked it up and appreciated its feel in my hand, so. . .

Yeh, now and again, I dig through my collection for some of my favs. In front of me, above the keyboard drawer on my desk proper, for example is a 65-year-old Schreade-Walden H-15 “pilot’s survival knife” a great uncle of mine used as a hunting knife for about 35 years, before it was passed to me. Nice knife, shaped along the lines of a K-Bar my Estimable Son-in-Law gave me a few years ago, just a couple of inches shorter. And yes, that K-Bar is another fav knife, as is another gift from him, a sweet, very small Spyderco Elmax “Squeak Sprint”. VERY nice lil knife! Exquisitely engineered down to the finest detail of ergonomics, fitting my hand just perfectly. Very well thought out finger and thumb choils for example.

Ah, but I could go on all day cataloging “favorites,” because so many are, for different reasons. The three everyday carry knives from Son&Heir that are on my person right now, for example, are favs and find daily use, as does the belt folder from my Wonder Woman that now sits on my belt at my left side and the Swiss Army knife in my righthand pocket that is also from her (its scissors “blade” is its most-used feature), and on and on and on. . .

And then there are my “car knives” which collection includes a fancy-schmancy multi-tool. . .

Yeh, I like–and use!–knives a lot. Such nifty, multi-multi-multi-purpose tools.

Continue reading “Some of My Favorite Things/Cutting Remarks”

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Ani-mules

Current situation with :ani-mules” here at twc central is not ideal, but it’s liveable. My Wonder Woman and I do not currently have a dog, but we have access to Son&Heir’s Wonderpup for canine companionship. We do have three cats, now, all via different processes.

Olde Fella (not his name) was “encouraged” into our family well over a decade ago by Lovely Daughter, who argued that the stray kitten who wandered up onto our front porch deserved a good home. With us. OK. He’s a bit cranky from time to time now, but he’s the one who’s also a real lap cat, and he’s otherwise very, very well-behaved, so win for him and win for us.

The Olde Fella has always kinda sought out my lap/company, and so my Wonder Woman felt a need for a cat of her own. Found one in a litter being offered by one of her students. Purty cat. LOVES my lap, too… but only when I’m sitting on the toilet. Otherwise, she’s very, very attached to my Wonder woman.

Latest addition, Pixel, was featured here recently. She’s a peach, but NOT a lap cat. Loves being petted ONLY on her own terms. Generally finds a place to nap/groom about 1/2 way between my Wonder Woman and me. *heh* Given the circumstances whereby she entered our lives, we have more intense investment in a short time with her than with the others, though the long term investment is, of course, less. So far.

Ideally, we’d have room/land for a few dogs, horses, small livestock, etc., but we’ll make do with these three, I imagine.

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This Is Rich

[With a tip o’ the tam to Ori Pomerantz, via John Lambshead]

Soldier Decapitates ISIS Thug with Spade in Afganistan

This is rich on so many levels. The primary story, sure: prevailing against odds with whatever weapon is to hand: great. But. . .

Calling a spade an “espada,” so to speak, and making it so: really rich.

spade?espada I like the etymology, too: [Gr] spatha? [L] spathan? [Sp] espada, especially since “spade” itself also shares some of those roots (pre-grecian). Using a spade as a [Middle Dutch] “spade” (sword) seems particularly fitting for a British subject, since the House of Hanover has roots in nationalities where “spade” also once meant “sword.”

Then again, root words for “spade” also meant “spoon” or “paddle” at times, in different languages, so “paddling” the ISIS thug to death with a “spoon” also makes me smile.

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Missed It? Here.

Interesting lil tidbit that comes up every “supermoon” (a term I had never read until 2017, strangely enough) is “perigee-syzygy” (a particular alignment of three celestial bodies–a term I had read/heard long ago). It refers to the particular Earth-Moon system condition that results in what is apparently called a “supermoon.” *shrugs* I find “perigee-syzygy” more congenial and felicitous as a term.

BTW, you can try again on the 31st, if that’s a thing for you.

Continue reading “Missed It? Here.”

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Rakin’ in the Goodies

Two fav Xmas gifts that have come my way this year:

In addition to my “rescue kitty,” my Wonder Woman found a 1946 printing of the 1943 edition of The Joy of Cooking for me. *heh* It’s actually in better condition than the well worn 1970s era copy [someone] gave us as a wedding present.

Then, of course, Son&Heir gave me a knife. ALWAYS welcome. I can already tell it will be one of my EDC knives. 🙂

Lovely Daughter and Estimable Son-in-Law are coming to share a meal with us Dec. 26, and I can hardly wait to see how Estimable Son-in-Law likes the gifts designed to fit into his latest “thing.”

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TOO MUCH STUFF!!!

*sigh*

Purging. And not just household items. Data.

Several years after my first computer, I went “big” for a 5MB hard drive on a 486. I ended up, in the long run, “purging” (well, discarding) most of the data I had on 5.25 floppies, tape (even audio cassette tapes *heh*), etc. I may never get around to sorting and purging the boxes (and boxes) of CDRs that are slowly decaying, although I do have quite a bit of original work I saved to 3.5” floppies transferred to other media/stored in several different archives. *shrugs* Useful mainly for review of how my views have changed/remained the same after dealing with new information. Apart from that? Destined for destruction when I’m gone.

The other day, I actually found an external 500GB drive I thought I had scrubbed; it’d been stuck in a (wrong) box during some house changes. Never missed it, since the data was all elsewhere, anyway.

I have way too much stuff, including just junk sitting around on various drives. Some of it is the result of a habit of saving web pages/sites for offline reading or even reference archiving, something I do for things that are more interesting/immediate than would fit in my 1,000s of bookmarks (also need purging, though I do that now and then with an app).

The flood back on the last day of April was good for purging stuff, but we need to go much, much farther, and are doing so. It just seems to go so slowly. . . *sigh*

It’s a daunting task, but must it be done.

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Fav Things

It’s funny, but of all the cutting boards I have, the two I use almost every day (one for meats and another for veggies–that one IS every day) are a couple I made in shop class 53 years ago (or was it 54? *heh*).

One (the solid mahogany board) was a Xmas gift to my paternal grandmother, and family “put it in my pile” when she passed away 37(?) years ago. The other (walnut and maple) was a Xmas gift to my mom, and she left it with me about 28 years ago when she was paring things down for a move.

While I have–and have had over the years–others, these serve almost all my needs quite handily, and have worn very very well over the years.

simple things, but real favs.

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Educating Medical “Professionals”

Annual “permission slip” Dr. visit last week: ears so plugged up with gunk I almost didn’t mind having the same questions asked again. . . and again. . . by two different forms and three different people. #gagamaggot

At least something educational came of the visit, though. Nurse dropped in to ask the SAME QUESTIONS as on the form in her hand that I had just filled out and noted that she didn’t have to ask if I were depressed, because she assumed that anyone whistling a “happy” tune was in fine spirits.

“That’s a fallacious assumption,” I told her. “I’m simply whistling a tune I am listening to ‘between my ears’ in order to drown out the dreck y’all are playing on your sound system. It doesn’t mean I am ‘happy’ but that I’m listening to something better than that stuff that would gag a maggot.”

“Oh. So do you have feelings of depression?”

“Oh, yeh. That ‘music’ y’all arer playing makes me want to end it all.”

“Oh, OK. I’ll see if we can turn it down then.”

“Thank you. Now THAT makes me happy.”

*heh*

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Something Different

I own a little revolver that is. . . different in several ways from the norm.

It’s a lil .32 ACP revolver that uses a round designed for .32 semi-automatics.

It is from a defunct maker of second-tier-quality knock-offs of other maker’s guns.

It’s a top-break revolver (semi-unusual nowadays).

It is one of very few the manufacturer made in this caliber with a six-round cylinder. By far, most of the .32 caliber revolvers made by this maker were 5-round.

Before it came to be in my possession, it had been fired only once, in 1929, by a man who committed suicide after the stock market crash. In the 84 years that intervened between that event and me coming into possession of the gun, no one else put a single round through it, and aside from two small spots of surface corrosion, the gun was in pristine condition, the bluing–apart from those two small spots–still perfect.

It’s a pretty good lil plinker, and ammo for the thing abounds, but I mostly just leave it cleaned, oiled, and in its case. I don’t really have a use for it aside from plinking, though I also have a nice lil IWB holster (that I picked up for ~$29 less than retail–$1–at my local “fell off the back of a truck” store) so I could, if I wanted, carry it concealed. . . if I wanted to, which–.32 ACP?–I do not.

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“Lucy”

Amusing to watch a movie on TV (I’m also reading a book and slipping out to do this during commercial breaks. a close approximation of my typical TV-watching habits for about. . . 6 decades) and watch, during a gunfight scene, one character’s wound move from one side of his body to another. Yeh, continuity shoulda caught that. But then, that was the least of the continuity errors and other flubs and wildly laughable mistakes in the film.

Suspension of disbelief was irrevocably broken in the first five minutes though, so all the errors, laughable mistakes of anatomy, mechanics, procedural “bind-moggling,” etc., were more amusing than distracting, because NOTHING about the film was in any way, shape, fashion, or form believable, even within its own framework, right down to the protagonist’s hair color.