Well so much for the "quiet weekend". I'll be on the road for the next week at least. I do have some posts saved up for such occasions, so please check back. I'm not sure if I will be able to post comments timely, but I will be reading. For this Friday, and the "I have NO idea what time zone my body clock is going to be in" a little HOTR Friday Pe...

Time to saddle up and head North.This was a very busy working week down in the fair State of Texas (look, I was married to an Aggie, one whose family raised Longhorns, so I still feel at home down here).I DID have time to have dinner last night before I left, with Christina, JPG, the epitome of what a Texas gentlemen is, and his lovely bride Holly...

I survived another week on the road. Met a couple of my Secret Squirrel heroes, even got to have an Amber Bock with one of them. Day after tomorrow I will be home and there will probably not be a new post til then.Conversations in groups like these are as varied as we are. But like always, we talk about those Gone West, and someone says "gee, I nee...

I grew up watching old Westerns. Most weren't original, having been out for years, and seen in reruns, though I always remember Gunsmoke from when I was little. I loved Rifleman, Wanted Dead or Alive, Palladin, anything with John Wayne. The good guys were known, the bad guys obvious. The heroes rode a landscape of the lever action, the name of thei...

It's been some busy traveling lately, Minnesota, Washington, Colorado, Oregon, some foreign place, and now Texas!!!Dinner tonight with Lawdog and Phlegmfatale, Holly and Expert Witness. As my sidekick sent via email "have fun and don't annoy the wait staff with your knives."...

Children tend to think of their parents as always having been old. Certainly I was no exception to that. My parents were much older than most new parents, adopting me when they were in middle age, so I just always thought of them being well (sorry Dad) old and boring.Til one day we came home from school to find two older ladies in the driveway inqu...

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong.No matter how fast light travelsit finds the darkness has always got there first,and is waiting for it.The Reaper Man -Terry PratchettIf you don't subscribe to Concealed Carry Magazine already you should, not just for the free monthly newsletter, but their magazine for members that has a m...

Riding with ThunderHands grasping the reins of that fiery steedan intake of breath, the sweat of pure need With a rush of hot wind, the rustle of leavesthe sky cracks with thunder, a power she believesThundering hooves keeping danger at bayon cold darkened trails, in the light of her day The sound and the fury speaks of so many thingsthe why and t...

I bet when I was a kid I ran with scissors as well....

I bet when I was a kid I ran with scissors as well....

"We carry our homes with us, which enables us to fly."-John Cagelet Going through the airport, I hear the grumblings about the security lines, note the little sign that the alert level for aviation is still orange. No one looks at the sign with anything other than mild disinterest any more. But there is always threat.Granted, most people don't want...

"We carry our homes with us, which enables us to fly." -John CageletGoing through the airport I see the usual grumblings about the security lines and delays and rolling their eyes at the folks who are trying to get them from point A to point B in one intact piece.There are signs up as I walk through the airport to my flight today that the alert lev...

It's hard to get a good picture with that whole opposible thumb thing going on.For my Mom - A HaikuI am your best friend,then, now and especiallyduring veal stew....

I know, you're thinking "Well it's about time". Yes, not much time for firearms the last few months, between work, Mom's death, and tending to Dad, I've only been shooting "just for fun" once or twice in the last few months. I'm taking ten days off in September to go hang out with Dad, and he's looking forward to it, but time is precious right now....

While I'm in "what time zone is this", a little something different for you all.I don't own a ton of jewelry, as some women do. But of the pieces I like to wear, most of it is Southwest in design, color and style (I pretty much live in Denim or black).This beautiful and unique Handcrafted Jewelry From the Desert is made and sold by the Mom of one o...

At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.--- Lao Tzu -author of Tao Te Ching ...

Short words are easy. It's the long strings of words that can break us, or make us. In the middle of a sentence formed today. I had a blank moment and what came to me was "I lost my train of thought". Sometimes I can't help it, I'm half Celt, the wild, passionate kind, heart brimming with songs left to play. I'm also half Norwegian, among those th...

Part of what I do is being able to work in the absence of absolute certainty. Perhaps it's easier to "think outside the box", when the there is nothing left of the box but trace bone and blood, shattered lives to be pieced together in late hours. It's why I've turned down promotions that would take me to headquarters or academia. I love the field w...

The sun dips towards the water, its glow, burnished breath upon my skin. The sky so clear, the soft trailing puffs of clouds, spun air gathered around the tops of the trees like cotton candy. I love that time of day, somewhere between the first cool breeze that blows against the back of my neck like a lover's kiss, and the first stinging bite of th...

Almost 4 million people have discovered daily life at Home on the Range. I'll probably hit it by the end of the weekend and am frankly, amazed. The first public post was in May of 2008 (though I have recipes archived behind that for lack of a better place to put them). A lot of people have visited, coming back again and again to share in laughter a...

Spaghetti Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Westerns that came out in the mid-60's, so named because they were produced by Italian studies, often with a Spanish partner. There was a cast of local actors and, sometimes a falling Hollywood star, sometimes a rising one, like Clint Eastwood, who starred in many of Sergio Leone's films. Th...

Laundry?No, that really wasn't how I planned to spend my Saturday. But with a lot of chores to do and a forecast for occassional heavy rain, sticking around the homestead was going to be it today.At least I can make something like. . .Cowboy Action Cookiesclick to enlarge food photos With peanut butter, oats, vanilla, dark chocoate mini chips and M...

A season suspendedbetween light and brillianceHearts transfixedbetween Spring and firereflected in the glassIlluminating glowas autumn nearsShedding lighton what we knowSummer held captivein voluptuary sweetnessA taste of warmthheld in our time.- Brigid...

I just finished reading "Haskell of Gettysburg" edited by Frank L. Byrne and Andrew T. Weaver (State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1970). I think it's one of the better personal accounts of the battle by someone who was there, simply a short volume of letters written by a Union soldier to his brother. Critics say Haskell wrote with future public...

It's a weekend to remember as long as no one's dismembered.- The Penguins from MadagascarBack to work. The weekend was needed. LOTS of sleep, biscuits, meatballs and gunpowder (though not IN the meatballs, that tends to cause some dangerous burping), a little TV, wheel guns and four wheel drive.Time away from obligations, to bake bread, read a book...

Woke to a grey, cloudy day, hardly enough light to take a picture. I'm going to take a couple of days off from posting and watch a movie or two and do some reloading.Been a tough few days, professionally and otherwise, finding that there are still things that can make me tear up like a girl, thereby totally ruining my tough as a kevlar gumdrop ima...

Why yes. Yes I do."Meat gun". I first heard the term from a hunter who had been hunting longer than I had been alive. While I was at his home, dropping off something for my Dad, someone delivered a custom load they had built for one of his many, many guns, delivering the gun and ammunition to his house. This was a house that was like catnip for a y...

Thanks to all of you that remembered my birthday yesterday and the phone calls. I've had much better ones, but there are many more to come if I am so lucky. For this morning, some past thoughts on life in general - B.Prayer flunked. The New York Times did a study a few years ago that stated "prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recover...

When they took the Sixth Amendment, he didn't speakbecause he obeyed the law. When they took the Fourth Amendment, he didn't speak because he had nothing to hide.When they took the Second Amendment, he didn't speak because he didn't own a firearm.When they took the First amendment, he wanted to speak but could not....

- a day in the life of a traveling Squirrel.I stay in places that have TV's in the bedroom bigger than mine, and with many more channels. I've always just purchased basic cable as I don't watch much TV, or HBO or anything like that. Mythbusters, Man vs. Food, Dirty Jobs, Discovery, History, war movies, sci fi like Firefly, B.G., Red Dwarf, that so...

Miles plays Bach. Somewhere far away - and years long past. Overhead, a sound passing by, the somnolent gnashing crunch of tires meeting gravel, the sound moving away, dying away, not to return. From somewhere close, a deep sigh within her, or the wind in the trees, shivering stalks against the sky. There have been tears, but they eventually slowe...

Before Barkley I had a Samoyed husky and another lab. The lab was the best duck dog ever, and we spent many an afternoon down in the south bringing home some quackers. I worried about gators, they'd been known to take a dog, but the snapping turtles could be dangerous as well.Back home, a bit further north, no gaters but still the occasional snapp...

. . . or how I woke to find a Budweiser bracelet that smelled of Pinot Grigio on my keyboard.The day started out quiet as usual, though there was a lot going on this weekend, Gen Con down in Indianapolis, several gun matches and of course. the usual chores to do around the place. But Dateless On Saturday (like Sleepless In Seattle but with reloadin...

Folks, I'm putting up links to some of the classic shooty posts over on the sidebar for my new readers, rather than just reprint them once a year. I'm playing with layout here, so if a piece pops up here in the wee hours, and then immediatley disappears it's because I'm playing with the formatting so you don't need to let me know.Hopefully I'll hav...

A deserted country airport at night. Unlike the bright clean song of day, aircraft clearing their throats with the prompt of a young flight students, two or three planes in the pattern, circling the aerodrome like returning swallows, the field sits silent.It was years ago, well before the increcased airport viligence of 9-11. I'd gotten a call late...