Timestepper

Two things: First, I'm glad you're doing well (or at least as well as can be expected). Been there, done that got the T-shirt and the coffee cup & do not envy you in the least. Second, I'm even more glad that I figured out that the STD you're talking about in this case stands for short term disability.

I posted this in another forum a few years ago and recently ran across it again - seems too cute not to share here: A teacher is explaining biology to her 4th grade students. “Human beings are the only animals that stutter,†she says. Little Johnny raises his hand. “I had a kitty-cat who stuttered,†he volunteered. The teacher, knowing how precious some of these stories could become, asked young Johnny to describe the incident. “Well,†he began, “I was in the back yard with my kitty and the Rottweiler that lives next door got a running start and before we knew it, he jumped over the fence into our yard! “That must’ve been scary,†said the teacher. “It sure was!†said Johnny. “My kitty raised his back, went ‘Fffff, Fffff, Fffff’… and before he could say “F*ck!â€, the Rottweiler ate him!â€

Got an older brother who's been doing it for years - turned himself into a coin collector in the process - living in Kansas, he researches to find the old stage/wagon/freighter trails and has found some really amazing stuff. Don't know what the policies are, but I'd be willing to bet that there's a whole bunch of lost stuff just waiting to be found on the Natchez Trace.

As far as I know, owls are opportunists - just like other birds of prey (or predators for that matter) - and will take whatever will brings the most calories for the least amount of effort. Seems like a big juicy chicken would be a tough meal to pass up. Our somewhat over-sized chicken house and run (where we also store feed for both chickens and goats). The top of the run is covered with a light weight but very strong plastic mesh to keep the Banties in and the 'coons out. And after I added a goat shed and yard to one end. Even built a sleeping shelf at one end for our (goat) girls.

Yeah, like four feet, eight and a half inches odd.

We've got 7 Rhode Island Reds and about a dozen or so Bantams of varying breeds. We generally sell or trade the "big girl eggs" and save the Banty eggs for our own use (they're so much richer than the others even though they all eat the same stuff - and you ain't lived until you've had home-made Banty egg noodles!) Before we got our two little pygmy goat does, the chickens were only allowed to free-range from late spring through early fall - when there were leaves on the trees, because of the hawks. But now my wife lets the chickens and goats out together about mid-afternoon and lets them free-range the rest of the day until just before dusk. Evidently to a hawk, a pygmy goat looks like a dog because we haven't lost a bird since we (she) started this practice. Oh, and our chicken house isn't insulated, but we keep an incandescent heat lamp burning 24/7 during the winter months. Keeps the birds warm and toasty and egg production doesn't drop off due to lack of sunlight.

AN INTERESTING HISTORY LESSON. Railroad tracks. (I found this fascinating.) Be sure to read the final paragraph; your understanding of it will depend on the earlier part of the content. The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a Specification/Procedure/Process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with it?' you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. Now, the twist to the story: Moving forward ...before the end of the shuttle program, when you'd see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there were two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRB's. The SRB's are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRB's would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRB's had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRB's had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the rail road track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds. So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what was arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's butt. And you thought being a horse's rear wasn't important? Ancient horse's rears controlled almost everything ... and now ... Horse's rears continue to control nearly everything else...

Yep, for real. Actually came across this a couple of years ago and nearly laughed myself to tears.

:lol:

Never been able to figure out what the big deal with sushi is. I mean heck, if you fry it up it tastes just like fish! (And we've got a bait shop just down the road that sells what looks and smells like the same stuff! - Want the address?)

On a similar, but not quite related note, the Cherokee (among others) would make hickory nut milk by crushing the nuts, shell and all, to a paste, adding water and boiling the whole mess. Eventually a white creamy film forms on top. This is the "milk." It's high calorie, sweet and nutritious. As we have several Shagbark Hickories on our property, I've tried this a couple of times in small batches and it does indeed work and the result is indeed rich and tasty. (My wife even made an excellent batch of fudge-like candy last year using hickory milk I'd made - don't know what kind of recipe she used or if she just kinda' played it by ear. Whatever she did, it was damned good and very fattening!) One thing I've learned (the hard way) is that, before you start, if you'll toss all your gathered hickory nuts in a bucket of water and pick out and throw away the ones that float, you'll have much better results. Apologies for going off-topic. ...TS...

My mistake. Actually my ex reminds me of an old Harley Davidson Enduro I used to own: Take her downtown and she smokes, gets loud and raises all kinds of hell - take her out in the country and she won't do a damn thing...

Oh my god! I think I was married to one of those! I'll bet they don't do dishes or clean the house - just sit around looking and smelling good and costing a man his paycheck, right? Yep, I was definitely married to one!

Nice dog! My apologies, but I kinda' thought I was going to see something like this:

Thanks again, everyone. It has been posited that, thought not all philosophers are fishermen, all fishermen are philosophers. John was not only proof of the posit, but among the best of both. We'll have a memorial service for him in a couple of weeks (he disdained funerals as entirely too depressing) and remember John the writer, John the tournament fisherman and tackle designer and John the occasional obtuse jackass (when he and my wife were married, he once returned from a fishing trip to Alaska with a pair of souvenir ear rings for her - Problem was, they'd been married for several year and he'd never noticed that she doesn't have pierced ears! ), but mostly we'll remember John the friend. In a few hours it will have been exactly one week since his passing and the tears have dried for now and I've been making plans with another friend to fish Cosby Creek and float the Nolichucky River in John's honor... And I'm pretty sure he'll be there too...

This first: Then this: Between raising chickens and having a neighbor who feeds wild critters, 'possums and 'coons have been the bane of my existence. Because the chickens peck at everything I can't use expanding foam, so I built a very tight henhouse and used quikcrete around the bottom of the chicken wire. It keeps them from getting in, but thanks to the neighbor lady getting them use to eating kitchen scraps, they still scatter our garbage from time to time. When it gets bad enough, I just make a "cave set" (four cinder blocks, or three cinder blocks and a stump, stacked to make a tiny cave) with a couple of camouflaged leg hold traps and bait it with either honey buns or chicken/turkey/ham bones. Works every time! In your situation you could probably just use the honey buns to bait them in the same way bears are baited. Once they're out from under the house and munching the honey buns, just step out from behind a tree and shoot the little sh!ts with a .22. Good luck.

Easiest and best - Nature's supermarket, the lowly cattail. After that, dandelion, plantain, fiddle head ferns, blackberry & wild strawberry just to name a few.

I went to the store the other day. I was only in there for about five minutes, and when I came out there was a motorcycle cop writing a parking ticket. So I went up to him and said, 'Come on buddy, how about giving a guy a break?' He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. So I called him an idiot. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having bald tires! Then I really got angry at him. He finished the second ticket and put it on the car with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket! This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote. (Hell, I didn't care. I was just having fun and my car was parked around the corner!)

Point taken!

And Mexico is the parasite sucking the life out nearly everything in between?

Thank you all. Since we first got the news last evening of John's passing, the following passages from the Norman Maclean novella "A River Runs through It" (a mutual favorite of myself, my wife and John) have been going through my mind: ~~~~ "I've said I told you all I know. If you push me far enough, all I really know is that he was a fine fisherman." "You know more than that," my father said. "He was beautiful." "Yes," I said, "He was beautiful. He should have been--you taught him." ~~~~ "Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand when I was young are dead, but I still reach out to them. Of course now I am too old to be much of a fisherman, and now of course I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn't. Like many fly fisherman in western Montana where the summer days are almost Arctic in length, I often do not start fishing until the cool of the evening. Then in the Arctic half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four count rhythm and the hope that a fish will rise. Eventually all things merge into one and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters." ~ Norman Maclean ~~~~~ John Padget Baird 1/10/49 - 3/17/12 Rest easy, friend John. In just a little while we'll meet again on the river, and the words and water will both be clear and beautiful and the fish will be plentiful and magnificent. /'~~~~~~<(@)><

Indeed.

I'm guessing that if this is the worst thing you ever have to deal with, you'll probably live a long, long time. Yeah, he was a jackass, but guess what? The world is full of jackasses and they only have power over us if we allow them to. Still, that's a pretty bad insult... makes me want to buy a glock and stipple it just to tick him off further on your behalf. And then I could walk up to him on the street and say, "You know who I am? I'm the guy who stippled my glock just to piss you off! C'mon, tough guy, let's see if you've got the guts to call me a Baptist in person!" Ya' know something, Joe? Life is just way too short to sweat the small stuff. And jackasses only have power over us if we allow them to. Block him and/or report him to the moderators and forget about him. He has to live with the fact that he's a prick - YOU don't.

Got word just a few minutes ago that a dear, dear friend - my wife's ex-husband & my "husband-in-law" - Dr. John Padgett Baird, one of the finest fisherman I've ever known, shuffled off this mortal coil at 11:00 a.m. this morning following a massive heart attack. I posted this here because although John was (among other things) an accomplished writer, he was first and foremost a fine fisherman. He and I spent not nearly enough time together on the water and equally insufficient time discussing our mutual passion for the written word. My wife was his editor and one of my own main characters in an ongoing writing project is based entirely upon him. I have lost a friend, but I feel as if I've lost a part of myself. John and my wife were together nearly 30 years before they divorced and they remained close afterwards. Though there are, of course, tears, I can only begin to imagine the depth of grief that she is experiencing right now. He was a good man and a good friend and he will be missed. RIP Brother John

Recently - or at least since I last posted in this thread back in early January, "We Were Soldiers Once and Young" and "We are Soldiers Still" both written by Lt. Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway and both excellent reads. "Bad Business" a Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker "The Hard Way" a Jack Reacher novel by Lee Childs (Pen name of British author Jim Grant) And (for probably the 50th time, literally - I love this little novella) "A River Runs Through It" By Norman Maclean. Also re-read probably a half dozen Louis L'Amour novels plus Jack London's "Sea Wolf" and "Cruise of the Dazzler." Seems like there were a few more, but I've slept (just a little) since then.