Mowed the lawn yesterday and the manse looks pretty good.

This year I'm going to eliminate a couple of flower garden spots because the amount of work keeping them weeded has made the juice not worth the squeeze. The weeds have won.

Several years ago I did this to a flower garden that became a nuisance. I simply salted it one September and killed off everything. It was a bare patch but the snows and April rains drove the salt well underground so I reseeded the area with grass seed and it looks pretty good now. I'm probably going to do this somewhere else come fall. Thistle has taken hold and that's a fight that is hard to win as they are hard to kill. Time to fall back and regroup and go scorched earth.

Sometimes it's a lot easier to just wipe the slate clean and start over.

I'm wondering what to do about a fallen tree in the wayback. I'll likely buck it up and hire some kid to hump the bolts to the pile and just let them rot which actually happens fairly quickly around here.

When we moved in 30 years ago and my Charles Atlas course was still current we rented a chipper and created a chip pile that was 10 feet tall and inside of five years had vanished.

Anyway I suppose I will spend a chunk of the day outdoors which is always rather nice.

 

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April is almost over and God only knows what's coming up in May

March and April have been pretty boring months although shooting season has started and I have gotten out a couple of times.

Winter seems to be pistol season and now we're working into rifle season. We shall see what we shall see.

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I just read where some city is up in arms over an LGBTQ pride event.

I didn't have to read very far to decide that if you permit the LGBTQ crowd to have a pride celebration that you have to permit the straight community the same opportunity to have a straight pride event.

It's either all of us or none of us.

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I think I am going to start shooting five stand

but for my own reasons.

There's something about the different stands where they send up the clay bird and some kind of order but I'm not interested in that or prizes, awards, and so on.

I have not been out with a shotgun for a long time and I would like to relearn wing shooting. Skeet and trap seem too repetitious and maybe five stand will get that way but it'll take a while for me to get used to it. 

What I'm looking for is something that pops out of nowhere and I have to react and shoot it. For me there generally has to be a somewhat practical reason before I try something out.

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WOW! Close call!

That asteroid damned near hit the visitors center! It would have vaporized it!

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Yesterday's work day

where we bit off a piece a little bigger than we could chew.

We managed to clean out two block houses at either end of the range which was a chore in itself. They hadn't been gone through in years and years and we threw out a lot of stuff.

One of the problems with a chore  like that is the tendency old men have of saying "Hey! That's still good!" even though it hasn't been used in twenty years. 

Of course that will be met with "I just used that the other day!" 

Yeah, right. The other day was April 7th...........1984.

Anyway, that was only a part of the activity. The firing line got leveled and the sod replaced with a layer of fine limestone and that will dry out quickly after a rainfall and should be better for the shooter in the prone position. It'll eliminate the mud, too.

That was a pretty big job and was close to completion when I left.

Needless to say, the first person to complain that wasn't there is going to get a damned smart answer.

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I'm caught between a rock and a hard spot.

I was watching someone load a bunch of grub into his car. I offered to help as I sometimes do and commented "That's a lot of grub."

"Yeah. I got it for $40 because I got a self check-out discount."

If he was being sarcastic (I don't think he was) then he got me. Fair and square.

If he wasn't he was a f***ing thief. 

On the other hand it's hard to blame him because self check-out makes it too damned easy. They say that it saves us money but I doubt that seriously. 

People are divided into three categories. There are the great minority of those that are 100% honest, a minority of those that are patently dishonest and the vast majority of people that wish they were 100% honest.

What irks me is that a lot of idiots think that theft is a big victory over the corporations when the bottom line is that it isn't. The corporation doesn't lose a dime. They simply raise prices to compensate for their loss. WE pay for it.

Whoever came up with the self check-out idea should be made to live under the 38th Street Bridge. He's cost us a lot of money.

On the other hand if I have to go to the store and help unload trucks I WILL pay myself via self check-out.

8888888888888888888888888888

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I just sent to Casablanca for a QSL card.

which I want even though I have Morocco confirmed. 

Having seen the movie I've always wanted to work the place.

I was seriously tempted to ask if Rick's Place is still there but at the last minute I decided that it might be misconstrued as being insulting or otherwise offensive.

Normally that would not bother me but I do want the card.

In other gnus I worked Easter Island last night on 12 and 15 meters, about 5 minutes apart.

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