Home on the Range

I am on call, so no trip to the NRA gathering, just the usual Browncoats that hang around my place. I did get a call from the floor somewhere there last night, JP , Old NFO  and Jay G., talking together and  wanting to know where I was at. A couple of the gun bloggers called today and may [...]

Anyone who even suggests that a full time wife and mother doesn’t “work”.  This one is for Mom, watching over me from above, and my friend Auntie J , watching over her own little ones. My Mom quit her job as Deputy Sheriff  to take on two kids out of foster care. We came with scars and  fears [...]

There’s a song on the radio right now called “Flyover States” performed by Jason Aldean, which I particularly like.  He sings of the beauty of that stretch of land from Indiana, West through Kansas to Oklahoma. I’ve lived in that area, though in more than one state, for some 20 years. I go back West to visit Dad and [...]

Look around you, if you come face to face with a criminal in your home and you don’t have a firearm within immediate reach, what would you use to defend yourself?  (If you think electrical cord to choke your attacker, you have watched way too many movies with Matt Damon in them).  Spontaneous attacks in [...]

Looking for something that will bring everyone in from the Range at suppertime?  Beef and alcohol, always a winner (but alcohol only after all the firearms and accessories are put away). Cooking with ”adult beverages”  is something  perhaps not everyone has tried.  Certainly almost any dish can be doused in alcohol and set on fire (sometimes even intentionally!)  But cooking it

In our childhood home, Saturday night was always “hamburger night”. It didn’t matter if it were a holiday or during the school year, if there was disaster looming somewhere or news of war on TV, everything we could possibly worry about was held in abeyance until that Saturday ritual was complete. There could be snow on the ground, or heavy rain and winds of 50 [...]

Man, stacked up upon man, small spaces filled with shiny trappings of want, yet likely only provisions for a few days. Turn on the tap, and water flows, turn on a switch and light comes forth, as long as all is well with civilization. There may be some badly cut firewood for a fireplace that [...]

There’s some history with chicken pot pies around here, mostly from the time about 4 years ago when Old NFO bought a giant case of them at Costco and every time I talked to him on the phone and I’d tell him what I’d cooked that week and I’d ask wht he was was doing, [...]

Held backYou can’tYou shouldn’tHeld backShame and rulesHeld backAfraid to loveHeld backAfraid to lovemore than you could loseLet it runYou canHeld back no longer.For it’s your lifeyour rulesNo longer afraidLet it outeven if it hurtsDon’t be afraidyou’ve nothing left to lose – BrigidA few years back, in another life, another employer, one night late, I got [...]

Regular readers have heard me talk about how much I like my Dragon Leatherworks holsters. D., the artist behind them, is a friend. Now, I don’t review products for money, but I will share the talents of friends as well as products I just flat out love. (Yes, that’s a HOTR photo heading up his [...]

I made this for my team at work. I put it in a big glass jars and passed them around with the morning coffee. The third fellow who took a piece out of the jar poked his head out in the hallway as I was leaving and said, quite loudly, “Will you Marry Me??”That would [...]

I was in the paint section of a hardware store this week, looking for a brick colored paint to paint the island in the kitchen. I noticed the yellows, a color I painted my room as a teen. I noticed the greens, so many of them, some resembling the green of my parents house in [...]

I guess there’s times you’re driving down the freeway, stomach empty and rumbling and you think. “Dang, I wish I could have a giant prepackaged lukewarm dill pickle right about now.”If you’re traveling, travel safe, the weather is pretty ugly tonight up north of the Ohio River Valley. If you’re home asleep, consider yourself fortunate [...]

This is a Micro crack in steel as seen through an electron microscope.I’ve vacationed at places that looked like this! (click to enlarge)Of course the folks on NCIS wouldn’t need an electron microscope. Gibbs would just squint and go “ahh yup – micro-crack”, before Abby could even consider micro-cracks at the surface of metals detected [...]

My French language skills aren’t the best (though I know “colorful” words of various languages to use as necessary). I once had the back of a transport filled up and a few of the passengers were French Nationals. So I thought I’d show off my “I took a whole year of college French” skills, making [...]

It was perfect weather for a day outside, or time with friends. Broad Ripple was humming with activity. With the outdoor seating at the Brew Pub full not long after a couple of us arrived and our usual family area seating spot hosting a kids birthday party, the waitstaff took us to the (“are you [...]

The land is violently green and it is raw, morning breaking with a crash of spray against a sea cliff, days stretching longer than the beaches that lie quietly in wait for a footstep to make an impression on them.There in the sand, small bits of history, small stones, a piece of bone that appears [...]