I was out Thursday and Friday, so no blog posts. I’ve been at this company for over a decade and now get so much vacation time I can’t always remember to forewarn y’all when I’ll be out. Five weeks of vacation a year plus paid holidays, insurance, flexible spending, etc etc–let’s hear it for college …

’nuff said.
Or maybe not: This, folks, is the number one way of feeling self sufficient, to my way of thinking. This is a Lopi Endeavor woodburning stove, and as far as I’m concerned it’s one of the most useful objects I’ve ever purchased. Woodheat.org says the brand of stove doesn’t matter as long as it’s …

I have met a neighbor named John, who was a sniper in the Korean War. I asked him if I could bring over my .357 Magnum and have him show me a thing or two. So one evening last week we walked out to his shooting range, stapled a couple of targets up, and started …

Yahoo! The sun was shining Saturday so it was time to work on the garden.
Here’s how it looked at the end of the day. (Of course, Beautiful still put in another two hours afterwards on her flower beds up by the house.) On the left is the shoop, still half-painted, with the duck door and …

Not all of it, though. If I’d moved the camera up a bit you’d be able to see the strawberry bed that Beautiful moved up beside the driveway. Our real garden already has onions and garlic coming up, not to mention last year’s carrots (we’ll see how that works). Today after work I’ll borrow Kelly’s …

(Wow, that book The Moonstone is still quite a story!)
We all live by a white submarine–a 1000-gallon propane tank. A) Even though I’m not a terrific fan of the Beatles, it’s the first phrase that came to mind. B) I meant to get a picture of our propane tank this morning, but then I thought, …

Wow, that book The Moonstone is quite a story!
I thought about getting a quick picture of our generator this morning for this post, but I didn’t have time and it’s really nothing to look at: A yellowish box about three feet square and five feet long sitting out behind the house near the woodshed. But …

Mormons are known generally for our church’s counsel to store a year’s supply of food. Here’s ours. Now if the swine flu really turns into something (unlike avian flu, a passé disaster), we’ll be set for everything except milk, and we’ll even have enough of that if we start drinking dried milk (right now it’s …

Amazon’s Kindle 2 is all the rage–or at least it was last week when I took two days off which is why you haven’t heard from me. The Kindle, like the books it may supercede, is for people with time.
Here’s my Kindle:
It’s an iPod shuffle (it reflected the camera flash). Sans screen, it’s perfect for …

Beautiful has been doing this for me since we were married. I just called a local franchise barber to see how much it would cost to get my hair cut: $11.95. Which was less than I was expecting. When I was a bachelor going to school in California I’m pretty sure it was in the …