Cold Dead Hand

H/T to Crook and Liars for the vid.

Don't Know If I'd Drink The Shit, But This Is Funny, Huh??

CPAC In Two And A Half Minutes

Funny Phone Call

Nuff Said

First Day Of Spring

 This was the scene this morning, peaceful, serene. Got several inches of fluffy snow overnight. Forecast is for 2-4 inches today and another inch or so tonight. This is why I never pay any attention to those lying groundhogs!!

The grader operator is beginning to think The Old Lady is stalking him. She's been taking pictures of him plowing our driveway all winter. Because the county road commission in this county still does driveway plowing for a fee, we don't have to worry about being snowed in. Because once you are off the list for driveway plowing you can't get back on it, we paid for several years when we weren't here in order to stay on the list as we knew we would be living here again.

Also this is why I didn't worry about fixing my plowtruck last fall when I had a problem with it. I'll wait until the snow is gone and the weather is warmer to fix it.  I need to pull the engine to change the motor mounts. Thought I could do it by just jacking up the engine a bit, but had a problem with a rusted bolt and will pull the  engine to get better access to remove the bolt.

This was put up on facebook by a local TV station this morning. I guess I was wrong about the amount of snow that we got last night. According to whoever called in to the TV station we got 8.4 inches. Well, like they say, snow is a lot like sex, you don't know how many inches you'll get or how long it will last!!

Answer To The Age-Old Question

Now We Know How They Do It

Happy St. Urho's Day

St. Urho the hero of Finland, he chased all the grasshoppers out of Finland and saved the grape crop, so we can celebrate the day.

Spring Is Just Around The Corner????

These pictures were taken yesterday after it quit snowing. There is still snow in the forecast, but we've had a couple of nice sunny days.

 Dude, where's my car?? Anyone want to buy a '55 Chevy station wagon??

 How soon will we see apple blossoms??

At least I have more than enough firewood to last thru the heating season.

Nudism Is A Racket????

The Expose Of The Nudist Racket (1938) from NUCAT: nudisme a Catalunya on Vimeo.

What gets me is all the "isms" they go thru before they get to the subject of the film, Nudism.

Underarm Spray

Who Needs A Holster When You Have A Vagina??

H/T to Crooks and Liars.

Got My Eyes Fixed, Now It's Time To Work On The Ears

Had cataract surgery on the other eye last week. It's looking good. Both eyes are now seeing the same colors; whether or not they are seeing the same colors as everyone else may be debatable.

Yesterday I saw an audiologist at the VA for a hearing test. Have been having trouble hearing stuff for some time now. Turns out my hearing in the low frequencies is perfect. The audiologist said she had never seen such good results on the low end. But on the other end I definitely have some hearing loss. She is ordering hearing aids for me. Supposedly they won't cost me anything as I am technically service-connected disabled. That was because I suffered a broken leg while in the Air Force and the VA ruled I was 0% disabled. (WTF, what does 0% disabled mean???) Now I think I need to see if I can get disability for the hearing loss as it started when I was in the Air Force. At my last hearing test in the Air Force I was told I had lost some of the higher frequencies. If I can get disability for the hearing loss, then for sure the hearing aids won't cost me anything. Medicare only covers hearing aids if you have them before you go on Medicare. Leaves me out as I've been on Medicare for 9 months now.

The problem I have is that the veteran's rep for this county that I talked to last year didn't seem to know FUCK-ALL about dealing with the VA. I wanted info on how to get back in the system (I had been in the system 10 years before) and he handed me the forms for a new application. Then I was near the VA clinic one day and went in and showed my VA card and after a few minutes I was entered back into the system. Thinking about checking with the DAV to see if they can help me.

Me Neither

Sounds Like The FuckingRepublican'ts

Fishing For Ice

The Old Lady keeps saying she doesn't understand why anyone would go icefishing when we have the technology to make ice!! Her problem is she is fixating on the first part of the word, not the operative part, the last part of the word.

This is me and a friend with our tents set up in the middle of the bay (at least a half mile from shore). Of the half dozen times I've been out icefishing the thinnest ice we've had was about 6 inches. The thickest was about a foot. Some will go and fish on 3 or 4 inches of ice or less. To be safe you need at least 4 inches to run 4wheelers or snowmobiles.

This shows the setup in the tent. My thermos of coffee, a camp stool to sit on, a Coleman back packing stove with a diffuser for heat, and my fishing supplies in a bucket. The heat diffuser came with an old Coleman one burner stove that I bought at a rummage sale. The stove never worked right and I couldn't get parts for it to fix it. When I did some online research, I found out that model stove got recalled about 6 months after it went on the market because it had a design problem. I modified the heat diffuser to work with the new stove as the new stove was smaller than the old one. Got 5 hours on one fill up one day.

This is a hole that I chopped with a spud. The ice auger that my friend has wouldn't work that day. Turned out there was a chunk of ice jamming the recoil start and couldn't get it to turn. It is surprising how much light is under the ice. The camera doesn't show how far below the ice you can see.  With a small lure on the line, I can see it over 20 feet down. Lake Superior is a pretty clean lake. Even with snow on the ice and a tent over the hole, there is a lot of light under the ice. With a light colored lure and light colored bait like a wax worm, the light reflects back off them a lot. It's hard to describe how it looks.

This shows just a few of the icefishing shelters. On the weekend it can look like a small cities on the ice with tents and shacks clustered in various spots where people have had luck catching fish. Also, the type of fish you are after will determine where you set up your stuff. I can see where having some kind of shack has its advantages. The shacks get left on the ice when it is thick enough and stay there as long as the ice is safe or until the end of March, then they have to be removed each day when you are done fishing. The advantage I can see to having a shack is the seating can be made more comfortable than a stool or bucket to sit on. Also you could lean back in the shack to get comfortable or if you have a bench in it you could stretch out and take a nap. Just put a bell on your fishing line.