09:55 – Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate the holiday.
Our guests should be arriving shortly. Barbara has everything ready. She baked brownies and a cinnamon crumb cake yesterday and baked bread this morning. There’s a Christmas CD playing on our whole-house intercom system, and I have a fireplace video running on Netflix streaming.
No luck again with Santa. He and the reindeer ignored the poisoned milk and cookies. I did get off a snap shot at the sleigh with a 12-gauge magnum duck load, but it had no apparent effect. In retrospect, I probably should have used buckshot. That, or a flechette load. Next year for sure.
It’s so warm here we don’t have our heat on or the fireplace running; ridiculous weather for this time of year. Santa came early and left a Polaroid tower speaker that we’ve hooked up to my Lenovo Thinkpad laptop running Kali Linux and the IceWeasel browser; it’s streaming genuine classical Christmas music from radioclassique.com, 99.5 in Montreal, in French, but with a lot of English stuff, too. Pretty decent sound.
Princess didn’t show up last night and presumably will be here today; didn’t call, either. Nice and quiet in the ‘hood so far.
Merry Christmas, and Joyeux Noel, mes amis.
Merry Christmas!
The jolly fat man escaped up the chimney again. The reindeer food was eaten, the nog drunk, cookies bitten, boot print left, and reindeer tracks all over the place.
A huge amount of stuff ended up with 2 little girls, and a much smaller amount of stuff ended up with their parents.
Some cookies will need baking, as will a ham, and a variety of other food too.
Enjoy the day!
nick
The fat boy left some preparedness items under my tree.
I got a battery eliminator for my FT60, a Bivy Sack for the BOB, the Lansky Blade Medic pocket sharpener, and books -medical, food preservation, and reading schematics. Some non-prep stuff too.
Hooray!
nick
Princess allegedly enroute from some mountainside party in Quebec; G-Grandma will be enroute to Montreal from SF tomorrow and one of us will have to go get her on a probably dark and stormy night 75 miles north of here and back.
Baked stuffed haddock for us today with a salad and either spuds or rice, haven’t decided yet; cioppino tomorrow night, and the usual turkey dinner on Sunday. OFD will be cooking and cleaning for three straight days and nights, but I have the recipes down and it’s all pretty simple.
Monday back to intel ops here in this AO, starting with local police oversight committee and selectboard across the street.
Overcast and getting dark again already at 1:15 PM.
Joyeux Noel!
And while we celebrate Xmas or Winter Solstice or whatever, let us remember that the “peaceful religion” of whose fanatic adherents we are evidently welcoming millions to come, allows organ transplants from live infidels and cannibalism.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/islamic-state-okays-taking-organs-of-living-non-muslims/article/2579078
Speaking of eating: Taco shop trolls burglars by turning robbery footage into commercial
Oh, and Merry Christmas! 🙂
Hah, 85deg and 65%RH makes it feel like 94deg. Sunny and calm, sticky and hot.
Not so very xmas-y.
Spiral sliced ham, some fixin’s due up later.
So many whining babies in the world, “fedex ruined christmas” “(after we safely landed when an engine quit) it took a while for us to get to our destination- worst airline evah!” Meanwhile ISIS is harvesting organs, murdering whole villages, selling slaves, raping and enslaving christians. Dozens of US families have lost everything in tornadoes, families have been devastated by auto accidents, but FEDEX failed to deliver a package and Christmas is RUINED!!!!11111!!!
Whiners.
nick
84 F and 69 % RH here by the largest hot tub in the world (some people call it The Gulf of Mexico).
Stayed up until 3am last night watching a sappy Christmas movie with my daughter starring Randy Travis set in South Carolina on the tv. We had our extended family Christmas last Wednesday night so tonight the son is coming over and we are having immediate family Christmas then.
For Christmas this year, I gave the wife a new clutch and throw out bearing, a new timing belt and spark plugs, two ignition coils, and a new head gasket. For New Years, I am giving her a new alternator and EGR valve. We are rebuilding her 2005 Honda Civic one part at time. May not be a good investment but, she loves her fire red coupe with mag wheels, 5 speed and spoiler. And of course, she is a big fan of the house of VTEC.
“My Dream of American Renewal”
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2015/12/15/my_dream_of_american_renewal
“”I’ve always said that I would tell you when it’s time to panic, and that hasn’t changed. And it’s not time to panic. I think we’re going through a mini-awakening right now with this presidential campaign. I think the signs of so many people ticked off at what’s going on in Washington are everywhere. What’s gonna become of it, only time will tell, but I see all kinds of reasons for hope. I do.” -Rush”
Me too. It will take great effort and sacrifice to stop the slide of the USA into the dark but there is still time.
(Scrooge mode on) Twelve Days of Christmas here, too. Princess driving friends back to Montreal after a night and day of partying; more important than Xmas here with family, and previously some years ago, her brother’s wedding. She’ll pick up GG at the Montreal airport tomorrow around 5:30 and then instead of the 75 minutes it would take me to get back here, they’ll take twice that. (Scrooge mode off)
So just me and Mrs. OFD last night and today/tonight, which is fine; our next-door neighbor wishes devoutly he could have an Xmas with just him and his wife, but they’re saddled with two lazy ungrateful stepdaughters with no visible means of support but got kids, her 90-year-old WWII vet dad, and now some mentally disabled cousin or aunt in her 70s. We note that he has an incredible number of tasks and chores to do outside between the two houses on either side of us, just tons of yard work and riding back and forth on one of his tractors. We intend to invite him over for some relief.
I’m more pessimistic about the country’s future than Limburger or Mr. Lynn, but hope they’re right.
Full dahk now here and someone is lighting off fireworks a few blocks away, nice ones, too.
No fireworks here yet, next week should look like Baghdad on a moonless night in 1991.
But someone pumped about a half dozen rounds through a shotgun on the ranch 300 ft away from my home last night while I was out walking from 11pm to midnight. I would have thought it strange but the kids are continuously out there on the ranch shooting range in the late evenings. Why not go shooting late on Christmas Eve?
Or, maybe someone was shooting coyotes. If so, they have my blessing.
@nick, did you know that HEB is putting 30.07 signs up next week?
http://www.fox26houston.com/news/local-news/62009032-story
I had heard that they were going full bore with the 30.06 signs but looks like that did not happen.
Well, I got some stuff done.
Boxed up some ebay stuff.
Put my antenna (dual band) back up after the wind knocked it down.
Started on gun safety with the nerf crossbows, no finger on the trigger, no pointing it at anything you don’t want to shoot. It’s a start.
Got some decor cleaned up.
Found this link to a treasure trove of prepper info
http://www.ps-survival.com/PS/index.htm
Massive.
Gonna eat some pig now, happy dance!
nick
@lynn, I didn’t see that. I wonder if there is very specific signage rules, like the 30.06 rules that would determine if the sign is valid or not.
If they put up the 30.06, I’ll be really pissed. The open carry doesn’t bother me one way or another, other than as another infringement. But if HEB goes full retard, I’ll be standing in their offices to share my displeasure. They’ve been a good citizen and a good member of the community. I can’t see them posting, but if they do, I don’t really want to shop somewhere else, so I’ll fight it.
I haven’t set foot in Ikea since they posted a valid 30.06. If they want to say “800,000 Texans can just fuck off- we don’t want your business” I feel fine saying, “Then you won’t get it.” I’d be interested in what their same store month over month looks like since the change. (they had a gun buster sign previously, which I ignored)
Oh, and 30.07 won’t have any effect on open carry of long guns, so you can still walk in with an AR slung over your shoulder, without bothering with the classes or background check involved in the CHL.
Ignorant, superstitious bastards.
nick
“No luck again with Santa.”
I saw some six inch diameter two inch thick neodymium magnets on eBay. Over a thousand pounds of pull force. Strap a bunch under your roof and trap the sucker.
Assuming steel runners on the sleigh or steel shoes on the reindeer.
The taco commercial is pretty hilarious. And proof that most criminals are dumb, really dumb. Surely no small business leaves cash in the register when they are closed. If they keep change on premises, it will be locked up somewhere.
Found this link to a treasure trove of prepper info
Thank you, Mr. Nick! Very cool link.
Yep, funny how people get focused on a certain disaster. That guy is/was prepping for a pole shift. Which is one of those things that has happened and could happen, and probably WILL happen. But it’s not really on most people’s radar.
In any case, it led him to create this great archive for post collapse rebuilding. (Which is itself kind of an out there idea if you think about it.)
So win for prepping, win for society.
nick