Work last night

Last night at work I did something pretty neat. You might have heard that there is a national ammunition shortage. (It happens before every election but this year is worse because of covid.) What you might not know is that the shortage isn't just modern cartridges but extends to reloading supplies (e.g. primers, gunpowder, and empty casings) and black powder/muzzle loader supplies. Well, last night a couple came in looking for .50 & .36 cal bullets (not cartridges. just the lead.) and black powder. And we didn't have any. So I showed them how to make black powder and where to go to get the ingredients, and, using a pocket knife and pliers, disassemble .50 BMG rifle cartridges and 000 shotgun shells (000=.36 caliber) so they can use the lead therefrom in their guns. The end result: They bought all the .50 BMG and all the 000 buckshot we had on the shelves, and the customer has a new hobby.

I think I should get paid extra for that.

Pumpkin and Pistol

 Sunday night the boys came over and we ate a Pumpkin Stuffed With Everything Good.  Rather my version of it, which is better.  I use croutons made from day old baguette buttered and dusted with powdered sage and thyme, and I use 1/4 pound of bacon, cubes of beef, and slices of bratwurst all fried in bacon grease. And I use more cheese and cream, too.  Oh, and many 12-15 cloves of garlic sliced in half and fried in bacon grease, too.  It's a dish that can be changed many ways and still be amazing.

After the dinner we watched John Wayne in Henry Ford's 1939 film, Stagecoach.  I wanted to take them to see it at the Stanford Theater in Palo Alto this year but, because of COVID, the theater is closed.  I took Anselm there to see the movie when he was 5 but he didn't remember it.  He remembered the theater but not the movie.

Yesterday, Kathleen and I worked in the garden.  I think I like the winter garden as much as the summer garden.

Last night I completely disassembled and rebuilt my pistol.  It was the first time I had done it since I bought in 1994.  It was long over due and much needed as the gun would not cycle nor would the magazines eject properly.  I replaced the recoil spring, lubricated the firing pin, cleaned the carbon build up off of every surface (It was carbon on the grip screws that was hindering the magazines.), and greased it up.  Now, it's as good as the day I bought it.  I've very happy about that.  Hmmmm.  Maybe I should become a gunsmith.

Vegetables and Shotgun Maintenance

I had a nice day.  This morning Kathleen and I picked up some seedlings from Valley Verde: cabbage, lettuce, parsley, broccoli, sugar snap peas, and Brussels' sprouts.  We transplanted them in one of the beds where the kale seeds I planted never germinated. (I don't know why the never germinated.  The seeds in the other bed are doing well.  It is a mystery.)  We also pulled out the last tomato vine and the last three zucchini vines.  We won't taste those again until next summer.  Right now, in addition to the seedlings we got today, we have pumpkin, acorn squash, melon, spaghetti squash, cucumbers, bell peppers, eggplant, and Thai chilis growing. 

The last time I went shooting with Kathleen my shotgun malfunctioned.  I went, today, to the hardware store, bought a special screwdriver, and took the whole thing apart, I mean the whole thing.  I had already cleaned it and blasted it with a powerful solvent a couple of days ago so it was clean, but it still wasn't working.  Therefore, today, I did EXTREME maintenance on it; probably, the first time since the old side-by-side was made in 1944.  It works perfectly now.  I heartily recommend Birchwood Casey's "Gun Scrubber" solvent. (It's so good you can't ship it into California without a license.) and Hoppe's #9 Black Gun Grease. 

My whole shooting life, since I was a 17 year old private in the Army I have only used Break Free CLP on my guns but this job needed something a more powerful. I will still use Break Free CLP for regular cleaning and lubricating but it's nice to know there are other products available when my regular product isn't enough.

A note about this shotgun:  Long ago I used to share this Blog with Jeff Miller.  This gun and two others were his dad's guns.  When Jeff's dad I bought the guns from his widow.  I have one and each of my brothers has one.  When my dad died and I inherited his library I gave many of the books to St. Katherine College but the most important of them I gave to Jeff Miller.  He has our dad's books.  We have his dad's guns.

Kale, Beets, and the Priesthood.

The weather is still warm so I planted some more beet seeds and kale seeds in the ground.  If everything goes well they should be ready to harvest in mid-December.  I've never planted anything so late before.

I saw this on the website of the OCA today.  It is a fairly desperate presentation of a very soon to occur priest shortage.  I predicted this shortage more than 10 years ago, when the bishops decided to require the completion of a three year M.Div. program before ordination.  That means a total of seven years of school, the first four of which have nothing to do with the priesthood, are required with no guarantee of ordination.   

Let's look at a 18 year old right out of high school and living in Fresno, California.  He works full-time as a painter, and lives at home with his parents.  Amazingly, he gets all his classes and graduates from Fresno State University with a degree in business in 4 years.  According to Fresno State's website, that student will wind up paying $80,000 for that degree.  Then he quits his job goes to St. Vladimir's Seminary in New York, where the lives in the dorms for three years (or nine months out of those years.  The other three months he has to find somewhere else to live.) That will cost him another $66,000.  But unlike Fresno State where he was able to just go to class and ignore the whole "campus life" thing in order to hold down a job, the seminary is really big on "campus life" and keeping the seminarians busy with mandatory extra curricular activities.  So this imaginary man can not hold down a job while attending seminary.  

But hey! After $146,000 dollars he now has a M.Div. degree (With that money he could have bought a house in Fresno.) and a three year interruption in his work history, and because he is too young to be ordained (He must be thirty according to Canon 14 of the Quinisext Council) he can't get a job as a parish priest.

But there is a better way to do it:  He's been an acolyte since he was 5, so by the time he is 14 he should be able to be a reader.  So Make Him A Reader!  And during his high school years he attends all the services and meets with the priest, together with all the other young men in the parish to study the Bible and learn the jobs of subdeacon and deacon.  And while serving in his parish as deacon he continues studying with his priest.  And by the time he is thirty, he might be ready to be a priest.  And look at this:  He didn't have to put his life on hold, leave his job, leave his parish, move across the country, and spend $66,000 on a seminary degree.  And the church gets hundreds new deacons, and priests every year. 

The summer is over

I finished up my work for the U.S. Census Bureau this week.  It was a good way to finish up the summer.  Most of my work was here in San Jose but they sent be to Reno for a little over a week and to Stockton for five days ending Tuesday of this week.  While I was on the Stockton trip they named me to the permanent travel team, and I thought my next trip was going to be Wyoming and Montana where I would finish up the census on Oct 31.  But then, the very next day, Wednesday of this week they shut down all our operations.  Well, it was fun while it lasted.  Now, I'll look for something else.  I still am working part time at Bass Pro Shops but that is only a few hours a week because of Covid. (The health department only lets us serve 2 customers per hour at the gun counter and two customers per hour at the ammo counter.)

A lot has happened in the garden.  About 2 weeks ago we took delivery of a truck-load of horse manure and covered all the beds with it.  Then we planted beets, garlic, kale, and radishes.  Everything except the garlic has sprouted.  I don't know if I mentioned it or not in earlier posts but we made an 8 foot tall tube out of cattle panel, set it in a trash can full of our compost, and planted a bunch up stuff in it last spring.  All the vines climbed to the top and have produced spaghetti squash, butternut squash, cucumbers, melons, and last and getting ripe right now, a pumpkin 6 feet up in the air.  We planted some beit alpha cucumber seeds a few weeks ago and harvested the first one yesterday.  We have a volunteer acorn squash in a 2' pot.  We had filled the pot with our compost but, I guess, our compost doesn't get hot enough to kill all the seeds.  But that's okay.  There are six acorn squash on the vine.  And we still have four potted zucchini vines from the spring that are producing.  Not as much as in June but each still produces one or two per week.  The star of the garden right now is the eggplant bush.  We have given away a lot of eggplant to neighbors and there are 8 or 9 on the bush getting big and ripe right now.  Today, I mailed a bunch of our Thai dragon peppers to my brother in Modesto. 

A couple of weeks ago, Kathleen and I visited Fort Bragg, a little coastal town in northern California.  We rode the Skunk Train, ate at some amazing restaurants (Silver's and the North Coast Brewing Company), watched seals playing in the harbor, and stayed at the Anchor Lodge.  Almost everything in town was closed because of Covid, but the Silvers and  North Coast had outside and socially distanced seating.  

Oh!  We found out that there is a small preschool that visits the garden a couple of times a week.  The teachers talk about the different plants, the compost bin, take measurements, etc.  They also sampled some of our millions of sungold tomatoes when they were still growing.  When we found out they were visiting the garden Kathleen gave them cucumbers.
 
I made 6 fruitcakes today.  Well, they are still in the oven so, to be more accurate, I'm still making them.  Basil Wenceslas is coming over tomorrow and together we'll make six more.