The adventures and semi-coherent ramblings of an overworked, middle-aged, libertarian-leaning, corporate drone who is immensely proud of his girls and his long-suffering wife. With maybe some gun stuff, travel stuff, cooking stuff, genealogy stuff, and other manly pursuits.
What's on tap for this weekend? All Indian. Tonight is Mulligatawny Soup and Chicken Tikka Masala.
Tomorrow is more Mulligatawny Soup (because I'm making a large pot of it) and Pork Vindaloo. I haven't attempted Pork Vindaloo (or any othe vindaloo, for that matter) so this may be an experience.
Hokay, kids. This one will probably only be gotten by rural folk/hunters/bucolic people. But I'm one of them and I loved it when I heard this story probably 30 years ago. And the embedded version is definitely not the exact version I remember from the salad days of KFAT radio. Specifically, I remember the line:
"The boy pulled out a steel ball one one inch in diameter. Both ways."
Otherwise, it's mostly how I'd have transcribed from memory, except for the immortal line "It's a sin to lie to someone older than you." But it does have the great line, "You're goin' to Hell on a bobsled." Listen to it all, it's pretty much how I remember it, but I'll transcribe the punchline here as I remember it:
"How about that. A little bitty left-handed kid..."
"Mister, I ain't left-handed."
"How come you chunk left handed? How come you don't chunk right handed?"
Heh. JeffS sort of got the reference but isn't a fan. Emily didn't get the reference at all. So I'll tell the two Justin Wilson stories I remember from all those years ago on KFAT [bows head in memory] radio. First story is about two drunk (is there any other kind?) Irishmen down in Louisiana.
They crawl out of a bar at closing time. Crawl across the road in front of the bar. Crawl onto some railroad tracks. Then they start crawling up the RR tracks.
After a while, one says "This is the longest damn stair-step-way I ever climbed."
The other says "I don't mind the long stair-step-way, but this low handrail's gonna kill me."
So I called the solar heating people today to set up an appointment to get the solar heating system for the swimming pool fixed. The system is about 15 years old so it's not surprising that it has sprung a leak.
In point of fact, it had done so last year and I patched it myself with a little bit of plastic piping, a couple of rubber sleeves and a few screw-band thingies. It held for a while.
But the solar company is going to charge about $140 for the job. $11 in parts and sales tax, the rest in labor. Seriously, I'd have expected at least a few hunnert more. And while I could probably pick up some plastic piping and such for slightly less the $11 at Orchard Supply or elsewhere, it just ain't worth it.
And I'll gladly pay the roughly $130 in labor to avoid going up on the roof in the broiling sun and have someone else do it. Because I GAR-ON-TEE* that whoever does it will be up on the roof in the broiling sun for many hours less than it would take me.
*Anybody get the reference? Just curious, you know.
Why "Fifth String"?
Well, I pretty much plug along on the same note like a good little drone, but I'm everywhere the action is and if I weren't there, things would fall apart.
