Month: November 2020

November 25, 2020 – You Have To Want It… Being Thankful

November 25, 2020 /

This is the last time that I will write on this, for a while anyway. It got three days because it obviously struck a nerve with me. Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, most Americans give a topical examination what we think that we should be thankful for.

I have heard time and time again that people can’t wait for 2020 to be over. We all know what is going on between politics, pandemic and such as if the calendar is going to change those things. Are we as a people going to put our faith into the the number of the year or are we going to thrive despite that?

Thanksgiving brings out stories and lore as the birth of the United States of America. A small group of people left the Netherlands to seek religious freedom and a great unknown. The celebration was the end of the harvest season, one last time to celebrate and hope they did enough before things got really bad – winter.

Thanksgiving is a romanticized holiday that we have put a silver lining on a dark time much like our own. The very event that we celebrate was a time where many people starved to death or succumbed to illness. The native population was decimated by European disease and changed the landscape of the world forever. I bring all of this up to say that maybe 2020 will have a new perspective two or three hundred years down the road.

So again, I am writing about being thankful because I need to remind myself to make my world better. For me, 2020 wasn’t so bad. Yes it didn’t go exactly the way that I wanted it to go. Yes it will require new ways of thinking to thrive. No I didn’t get many of the things that I wanted. But, there is a lot to be thankful for here are many of the big ones.

  • No one in my immediate family or even extended family has suffered from the effects of COVID or any other major illness for that matter this year.
  • We rang in the New Year on a family vacation in Southern California visiting Hollywood, Disney, Universal Studios and the beach!
  • I completed a whole new set of pantry cabinets in a woodworking project that used lumber milled from this property
  • We spent three months developing a relationship with our exchange student.
  • I completely remodeled our little rental house, hopefully giving it another 20 years of useful service.
  • We replaced our beloved ‘Snow Dog’ with a handful of puppy Raya.
  • I got this site going after talking about it for a year and thinking about it four years. I am learning many new skills as a result.
  • I got the freedom to pursue interests and desires, testing entrepreneurship and creativity.
  • I have forged a stronger bond in faith and built techniques into my routines to continue to improve and be successful.
  • I have some steadier work work delivering packages and still have time to keep going.

If anything 2019 was a worse year for me. I was burned out and bitter beyond belief. I was at a point that I went out into the unknown and try to do better just like the pilgrims. I know that from a financial risk standpoint, it is a terrible decision to up and quit your job. But, there are times when you just have to do something different than what you are doing.

For me, 2021 is going to be a better year because of all the things that were done in 2020 to do so. And, it is not going to be better because the calendar changed. With that, I hope that you have a great Thanksgiving holiday. I thank you for reading and I hope that you consider the things that you should be thankful for.

November 24, 2020 – Mantel Project is Complete, More Have to Want it

November 24, 2020 /

I finished my mantel project on Sunday. I kind of fell off of keeping track of my hours and I definitely didn’t hit my target date. I suppose if you are keeping up with the theme, I didn’t really want to.


I had other things that I would rather do. I had bids that I needed to get out. I had interviews to attend, I had blogging I wanted to do. I had other things that I had to do like hanging light fixtures, moving furniture for new carpet and assembling new furniture.

As with all projects, I ran into some things that didn’t go exactly as I expected. I was going to use a special router bit to make the 45 degree miter stronger, but I found the setup to be way too fussy without a proper router table. I also found that the air dried fir was too brittle to precision route an touchy joint. Those kind of derailments made me pause for a new strategy and that kind of pause put the brakes on momentum of the project.

To be truthful, I am looking more forward to the table that I am going to build next. I built this one first to get it done because the next project is going to be significantly bigger. I will need to do some more planning to get a more accurate estimate of how long things are going to take. One thing for sure is that I am not going to have the kind of time that I had previously.

With the holidays approaching, there is always significantly less free time. I also took a seasonal job delivering for Amazon. I may be working four to six days a week doing that for now. I think it will allow time to keep looking for a replacement job and writing but there is only so much time in a day and week for doing projects.

This is a job that I wanted. Don’t get me wrong, it is my lowest, post college degree paying job by a long shot. But, it is a four ten hour shift a week, turn it off when you clock out kind of gig. It is going to bring in some money consistently and there are worse jobs for less money out there. Believe me, I have been looking.

I have always thought that I would be interested in a job driving. I can download my playlist, listen to my podcasts and get paid to do so. I will talk more about my experience later, but I am thinking that this could be fun for a while.

If you were to ask me what my favorite job was, I would tell you that it was when I was a student janitor my senior year in college. Many people could find the downside in being a janitor, but I actually liked it, a lot. Beside the obvious benefit of getting some spending money, it forced me to budget my time effectively because I worked every week night. The best part was getting away from my complicated cerebral calculus and high level science projects and spend three hours a day sweeping, mopping and doing event setup. I lost twenty pounds, stayed focused and got paid.

I am hoping that this job will be a motivator with some of the same side benefits. In the mean time, I still have some days to do my own business if I get any or work on projects.

November 23, 2020 – You have to want it

November 23, 2020 /

I will be more forthcoming about what I am up to as time goes on. However, let’s just say that I was busy this weekend and I missed church for the first time in months. Since we host a small group, we just can go willy-nilly, we are committed to attending as much as possible.

Good news for me, they have started releasing the audio in podcast format and it works really nicely to listen to it while I am walking the dog in the morning. This is something that I have started about a two months or so in the spirit of getting more connected to faith and doing something different than I always have. The real intent is to spend time reflecting on the day, to prioritize the most important things and to pray on the issues, particularly my issues.

The big message this week is about healing wounds by doing something different. Of course it is bent towards doing something different in Christian tone. But, some of the first words of the sermon got me right where I was week, I suppose that you would say committal or even want.

I have talked about this some in the past. I have talked about my lack of jumping when there are two sides of the fence. As I have analyzed my situation in life, it is a bit like arguing minutia. If both sides have significant drawbacks, than is one side better (or worse) than the other? The answer is probably not and by staying on the fence, I am delaying the inevitable including the the inevitability to move on in life.

This idea continues to play a theme in my life. I first realized the significance of the concept when I was dealing with addiction. I was reading the pamphlet that came with the gum and one of the first things it said after all the false congratulations was that “you have to want to quit”. I was immediately struck by my stance. In past attempts, I really didn’t want to quit, I wanted to 95% quit. I wanted the freedom and choice without the reality. I wanted my wife off my back, I didn’t want to be judged or condemned, I didn’t want my kids to see me. I didn’t really want to quit.

Since I realized my issue, I have seen it crop up in other scenarios. For instance, I have noticed on most job interviews, I don’t really want the job. I feel the pressure to need the job is high, but in every instance I am very reluctant to give my soul away again to another employer. The alternative is to seek unacceptably low paying jobs that don’t require that level commitment. That has not really been an option either. So, the results have proven that I have had just enough self sabotage to not get the job. I am too good for entry level and no where near good enough to go up a level.

When it comes to branding and building my own business, I can find lots of things that I don’t want to do. I really don’t want to get too deep into social media. I know that is probably the number one thing holding me back at this point. I haven’t wanted to ‘advertise’ on Nextdoor or Facebook. I haven’t wanted to become active on MeWe or YouTube. I am not quite sure what this says about me and what I think I want, but I think that it says that I probably won’t be successful in this area either.

Turning the corner toward inspiration, I believe that once we as humans set our minds to something, those obstacles fail to become issues for us. Quitting addiction is a mindset much more than it is physically (in most cases). Once the conscious decision is made, the rest is commitment and follow through. I won’t say it is easy because you have have resolve that every day is a new battle and you will be tested. You can’t rest on success yesterday and it does becomes easier.

As for my other problems, I don’t know where I am being led. It is not easy for me to always know or see what I want. It seems like I am in spiritual boot camp of sorts. This journey is breaking down the old thoughts and reforming new ones with the wisdom of age. That has to count for something.

November 20, 2020 – French Toast, from garbage to delicious

November 20, 2020 /

This is one of those recipes that I don’t make often. The biggest reason that I make it is usually to use up old bread before it becomes inedible. How many of you bake bread? My observation is that a whole loaf can last several days if the crust stays intact. Once the loaf is cut in any way it will start to become stale overnight.

This time I had half a loaf of the pumpkin bread left and half a loaf of gluten free bread that has been sitting for two weeks. Another nice thing about this recipe is that is prepared ahead of time so it can all you have to do is pop it in the oven in the morning. As long as you have an hour to wait, you don’t have to do any work to make it.

  • 2 tablespoons Butter
  • 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
  • 4 slices of Bread
  • 2 Eggs
  • 1/4 cup Cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon Vanilla
  • 1/2 teaspoon Nutmeg
  • 2 Apples or Pears

I cook a lot by ‘feel’. Meaning I am dynamically sizing and scaling ingredients as I go. For instance, I may add more or less egg depending on the initial moistness of the bread and the size of the pan. Pumpkin bread was pretty moist to begin with so it shouldn’t need a lot of egg. Unfortunately in this case, I had eight pieces of bread to begin with of which the dog ate four while my back was turned and I was melting the butter and scrambling the eggs. So all that is to say my pictures don’t really match what I should have done.

Start by melting the butter and spread across your baking pan. Then, add the brown sugar on top of the butter in an even layer. Put the bread on top of the sugar/butter layer. Next, mix eggs, cream, vanilla and nutmeg. Pour over bread. Finally, slice apples and put on top. Cover the dish in foil and put in the refrigerator overnight.

When ready to cook, start the oven at 350 deg F. Leave the foil on the dish and bake for 45 minutes. Take the foil off for ten minutes and it is done. Serve with maple syrup or whip cream or we usually eat it alone and enjoy.

Enjoy some french toast and enjoy the weekend.

November 19, 2020 – ‘Tacticool’ Thursday

November 19, 2020 /

Some would say, and I agree with them that the pump action shotgun is the most versatile firearm there is. As with every compromise, none is the ideal solution. It just so happens that this is a pretty good one.

I own several pump action shotguns of different brands and gauges. It used to be back when I was young there were essentially two brands Remington and Mossberg. The Remington 870 was the king of pump action shotguns. The most popular Mossberg 500 came with two barrels: a field barrel of 28 inches and a defense barrel of 18 1/2 inches.

Today Remington’s future is in limbo, Mossberg is going gangbusters and there are a whole lot of clones out there. The clones have interchangeable parts with one brand or the other. That allows you to accessorize by adding or changing your shotgun as you please. Some examples of things that you can change are: barrels, stock, fore end, add a laser, add a light, add an optic or extend the magazine.

I would be remised if I didn’t mention some of the other peripheral details. There are some other brands like Weatherby and Winchester as well as old brands like Ithaca. I am not sure what the situation is with aftermarket support. So, buyer beware in those cases. You might want to ask the seller about those details.

Also, not every shotgun is as easy to accessorize, notice I didn’t use the adjective ‘pump’ here. When you start to get into the foreign brands like Berretta/Benelli or Browning there are some extra barrels available but they are far and few between. Mossberg does a pretty good job of supporting all of their products and offer rifled barrels for their semi-automatic shotguns, but that is it.

I wanted to talk about my experience shopping for used shotguns for a minute. My son and I were looking around this time last year. We went to a very large gun show and I had a difficult time finding an inexpensive and serviceable shotgun for him. In fact, there were not that many to choose from period. We saw a couple and they were old for nearly what we could buy a new one.

Old is not bad but be aware there are a couple potential limitations. If you are not hunting, it probably won’t ever matter but the first limitation might be chamber length. Old shotguns could only chamber 2 3/4″ shells (really old might be 2 1/2″ chambers). Three inch shells are prevalent for waterfowl hunting.

The second is the interchangeable choke feature. Almost all shotguns come with the ability to change chokes. The choke is the mechanical restriction in the barrel dictating how broad the shot pattern will be. That makes your shotgun a turkey gun, a deer gun, a trap gun or a sporting clays gun. Chokes are not 100 percent necessary to change for every situation, my son shoot everything with a full choke. But, they do give a little more advantage when applied in the right circumstance.

In my opinion, if you are going to buy used it needs to have the features above or it needs to be a significant discount because all of those things can be added, but at a cost. If you are buying something specific or rare discount this advice however you are not reading this for education anyway.

I should also add that most what I am talking about has been in twelve gauge. I have noticed that there is lesser aftermarket for Remington in the 20 gauge and even less so with other brands. My dad has a 870 in 16 gauge. Good luck with finding extra barrels or chokes for that. Sometimes finding ammunition is even difficult.

I have found that looking for accessories is best done online. I guess that there is not enough interest in keeping well stocked stores with extra barrels and such. You will often find one thing but maybe not exactly what you want. For instance, there are three types of rifled barrels. One has a scope attached, one has just a mount and one has sights (or neither). They also make one that has sights, but is not rifled. All of them are called ‘slug barrels’. Not everything is equal.

One experience that I had was I bought a Mossberg barrel for my Remington 870. As the barrel heated up, it didn’t have the clearance between the barrel and the forend and the action would get stuck. I had to Dremel out more clearance (this is a good reason to test your gear, it only happened after the second shot).

There is lots more to say about this subject, but this is a pretty good introduction into what to know about accessorizing a pump action shotgun.

November 18, 2020 – Updates to the Virtual Book Club today

November 18, 2020 /

Yesterday, the thinking about 1984 by George Orwell left me partially excited to go into that book again and partially disgusted to think about what has happened on my watch. I am going to save the stronger editorials to another time to get to a happier place today.

I spent this morning backdating the progress of the Left Coast Cellars Culinary Book Club. With the impending second lockdown and the weather really getting wet, it is a good time to read and cook. I have created separate pages, by year on where we have been as a club in case someone was interested in where we have covered. Those links are on the left hand margin.

I am strongly thinking in the future that I will repurpose the ‘Approachable Wine’ page and change that into a ‘Resources’ page for people interested in the things that I am such as freedom, gear, skills and books. That page was really intended for a different purpose. I was wanting to build an app and tie all of this together, but I didn’t get started and probably wont.

So, we have bunkered up into our ‘two week freeze’. Our Thanksgiving shopping is done and the menu is largely set. There definitely won’t be more than six people at our table. As Thanksgiving signals the end of the harvest season, it is time to appreciate the year behind and look forward to the year ahead. Do some reading in your free time.

November 17, 2020 – When will 2020 cross into 1984?

November 17, 2020 /

I have been mulling over this topic for a while now. One catch-22 is that I want to stay as apolitical as possible. But I watch some of the things and I have a hard time not screaming for people to wake up as they seem to be stuck in a logic wormhole. I am trying to evaluate fake news and propaganda versus real problems and I have a difficult time separating or seeing the truth.

One thing that is extremely apparent is that many people are scared out of their minds over Covid-19. I hear it and see it all over the place, particularly with the more aged and health susceptible people in my life. I know people that still believe hiding out or washing and sterilizing shopping bags, voting for the right person or refusing to associate with people will tip the scales on this virus and outcome.

I am one of those people that believe that collectively we have more in common than we have differences. I watch in disbelief as our governor threatens the citizens of my state. And, just as fast as the threats went up, they seem to have been whitewashed. It is difficult to find the quote in the news stories for this post.

November 11, 2020; OPB

I would like to point out (again) the extreme lunacy in the current social distancing schemes by using an example.

  1. Put on mask to leave the car and enter a restaurant
  2. Be seated, take off mask
  3. Be served with mask off
  4. Get up to go to the restroom, put on mask
  5. Return to table and remove mask

Does anyone remember the earliest debates about mask usage? They were originally not recommended, largely because they are generally not considered medically viable. Just as all things get thrown into the meat grinder and become distorted and re-propagandized, it has now become the ‘must have’ accessory to make people feel better about doing nothing. I believe that the guidance was changed for the appearance of doing something that we as humans have very little control over, the spread of a disease.

I am not saying masks are equated to freedom. What I am saying is that people are losing their ability to discriminate between fact and feel good. I have no issues with wearing a mask when required to participate in society. Any private entity has the right to make rules or conditions for entry i.e. masks. People have the right to ask people to adhere to hygiene practices or social distancing to enter a residence. I do have an issue when the government limits how society will associate together. This I find to be strictly un-American practice.

People are abdicating their responsibility to use common sense in situations and wanting the government to handle it by policy, rule and regulation. I draw that conclusion based on the overwhelming election results to double down on state policy that will never work. I read a headline this afternoon that 75% of Americans support an national mask mandate. I am wondering if this is really true or this is another propaganda push?

I will leave with the non-scientific but logical litmus test for this entire situation.

  1. Does the bubonic plague still exist? The answer is yes.
  2. Does polio still exist? The answer is yes.
  3. Does the Spanish flu still exist? The answer is yes.

Covid-19 is never going away. It is never going to be eradicated. Children still get cancer, not just smokers. Shit happens and we don’t know why. Pharmaceuticals may some day do wonders, for now have to do the best with what we have.

I feel like I am living in the transformation of the world of George Orwell’s 1984. We have the surveillance state with the Patriot Act in collusion with social media. We have perpetual war in the middle east and Afghanistan. We have xenophobic hate egged on by the partisan groups. We have a population that subsists on processed food garbage and funded by government rations. Most of all, we have a population that is numb to critical thinking and is spoon fed ‘news’ that gets rewritten .

Just wait, there is going to be some neighbors turning other neighbors in when seven people are gathered. I can sense that it will soon be time for my re-education.

November 16, 2020 – Testing some changes and building a template

November 16, 2020 /

Supposedly, things are working the way they should. I did finish my post on Friday, not without struggles. Things were adjusted again and I will see if they working better. In technical jargon, there was some caching issues and a bunch of sessions on the server, more than were allowed. I have a hard time buying that, but I guess time will tell.

As another side note, I have discovered that it seems like my maximum image size is 2500×2500 pixels without upgrading server resources (paying more). It seems like I am going to have to edit every image in order to get them to post. I guess where I find this frustrating is that this is not the cheapest plan, I don’t know how the cheaper plans would work beside just plain text or a simple static site.

OK, accountability time. I didn’t finish the mantel on November 4 because I didn’t stick to my schedule. And I didn’t stick to my schedule because I wasn’t feeling like it. Part of my excuses were fiddling around with this site more that I should have. Part of it were other things in life going on and a lot of it was I was just not being disciplined.

That doesn’t mean that I haven’t made progress or that I am not close, because I am. I have the final fitting and the finishing to complete. I think that I should be close by the end of the week. But, what I wanted to talk about today is making a template for the proper fit.

The mantel is not even depth across the width. It is an inch wider on the right side than on the left. I was also concerned about different angles so I built a template of what the top should be so that I could try to get this as close to perfect on the first try. This is a technique that is used by counter makers to try and accommodate for uneven walls.

To build a template, one way to do it is use thin pieces of wood, hot glued together to follow all of the contours and angles. This also helps as a mock-up technique as well to make sure that you have an idea of the proportions of what you are building. This template is then used to trace on your work so that with an accurate cut, you get a perfect fit.

To get the very best fit, the template should be scribed against the wall. Scribing involves using a compass following the wall at a set distance. Once the line is made to fit all of the contours, cut to the line and test the fit, it should fit like a glove. I realize that this is vague and probably warrants a video or separate post. Check this tutorial for a primer.

Templates can also be made with paper or cardboard as well. Use what you have on hand and what is convenient to work with. Take your time and sometimes a template is the right technique to use.

November 13, 2020 – Persimmon Pumpkin Bread

November 14, 2020 /

On a whim, I bought a couple persimmon fruit at the local grocery store. I always enjoy the challenge of finding something to do with unusual ingredients. I don’t usually see them in the stores and haven’t worked with them since I lived in South Carolina. So that has been over fifteen years.

Persimmon is an Asian fruit. To me it has a little melon flavor and texture. When I was looking up what to do with them, the majority of the suggestions were to bake with them. Apparently, it can be used to swap in with pumpkin on a 1:1 basis. Note: this is a double recipe, so it makes two 5×9 loaves.

  • 3 1/2 cups all purpose flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground clove
  • 1/2 teaspoon ginger
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 4 eggs, room temperature
  • 1 1/2 cup sugar
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 3 cups pumpkin puree/persimmon
  • 1 cup vegetable oil
  • 1 cup walnuts

We also had some leftover pumpkin so I mixed the two of them together. I used the immersion blender to unify the pumpkin and persimmon. Pre-heat the oven 350 degF while you are assembling and mixing all of the ingredients together.

Combine all of the dry ingredients together. Combine all the wet ingredients together. Once both are thoroughly mixed separately, combine the wet and dry ingredients together.

Once everything is mixed together, pour into two loaf pans and bake for an hour or so. Don’t forget to grease the pan before hand.

I paired this bread with some Vietnamese rice porridge. I kind of made up the recipe after looking at a bunch of different variations. Regardless, it was well received. I think it would pair well with any kind of soup. I also believe this would make good French toast as well.

November 12, 2020 – Escalated to Level 2

November 12, 2020 /

I spent probably an hour with support today. They can duplicate my problem, but not resolve it. My support case has been escalated to level 2 (which is a good thing). So, I am definitely slow playing anything further until I can resolve images.

I have to say that I have been very happy with the support that I have used so far. The level one is not just reading from a script but is actually trying to fix the problem. So far, level one has been two out of three in resolving issues. I know that this is a tough one because I have been working on it several days myself.

I have some good stuff in the queue. Hopefully, it won’t take too long so I can really get started.