Soggy Rancho Relaxo and Other Updates

In the words of John Fogerty, “Who’ll Stop the Rain?”…reckon no one will. Oh, well. We actually need the rain here. If it keeps up, we’re sure to have a nice seasonal snow pack in them thar hills. But, when it finally stops, I won’t be missing “Lake Constance” out front or “Stuck Duck Pond” in the back.

Lots of neat things happening at the ranch. For instance, we’re having a 20’ x 40’ barn built. The idea is to remove the goodies from the garage so that we will have room to…park the cars in! Imagine that! It’ll be great to have a place in which to park the lawn tractor too. The big co-ordinated blue barn (to match the house) has an upper loft for storage in which we can store all kinds of things. Most likely it will be junk but...hey...it's treasure, don'tcha know.

The residential water filter has been soaked and purged. It only needs to be plumbed. We’ll have three course filters in line prior to the big filter. That way we can use the Tule River water as a backup.

The big 36 slot gun safe arrived safe and sound (heheh…couldn’t help myself). It was purchased from “Patriot Safe Company”. I had been looking at the scratch and dent safes because it will be stowed in the garage and cosmetics is irrelevant. However, after discovering that I am a former police officer, the sales agent promptly gave me a new unit for the same price! Works for me! It will be bolted to the garage floor…once we find the garage floor.

Recently, Connie was perusing Craig’s List. One of her finds was a super clean Crate GLX212 120watt guitar amplifier (bless her darlin’ heart). We called the guy up on Fresno and advised him that we would be there the next day. It’s a good thing that we didn’t hesitate as it would have been unlikely that such a nice amp would have lasted much longer.  This was timely since my little Peavy amp has been misbehaving and throwing tantrums. It's about 12 years old and should know better. It'll work as a backup unit especially if I need humming and buzzing in the background.

While in Fresburg, we noticed that our tummies were growling. It didn’t take long to remember one of my favorite restaurants there, Yoshino’s. They have tappan/teppan cooking there where a chef defends his large hot griddle with a large knife, heavy duty spatula, and a mega-pepper mill. Not having knocked over the place in over twenty years (*sigh*), we beat feet to beat the crowd. We made it right on time.

Our Japanese chef was named “Benny”. He further tendered that he likes to go by “Benny Haha” (hear: Benny Hanna). That brought a smile to the middle-aged folks that sat around the perimeter of his hot arena. As he tossed on a batch of soon-to-be-fried rice, he dipped out some butter and slung it over onto the grill from about 3 feet away. “Butter fly”, he said. Nothing like a good groaner to aid digestion, I always say.

Needless to say, we had a grand time watching him slash the onions into large rings. He stacked them up to make a small cone. Then he fueled them with a splash of spirits (probably vodka) and then lit it with a match. It was a wonderful pyrotechnic “onion volcano” (which sped up the cooking process significantly, I should suppose).

After quelling the hunger riot with shrimp, pork loin, rice, and veggies et. al., we headed back home quite tired but content with the day.

I haven’t stopped playing this big beaut amplifier. It makes me look really good! There will be a lot of miles placed on the Telecaster, no doubt.

There’s no telling what was happening in Connie’s head but she was still looking on Craig’s List. She had me look at this one particular ad for a Breville espresso maker. Most everyone knows that Ol’ Ran is a bean head who loves having a couple of latte’s in the mornings to get the brain pressure up to nominal readings. We have a little cheapie espresso maker but it was lacking three acres of class. The one Connie was looking at retailed for about 400 bucks. Bill Clinton will be married to a real woman before I chip that much for a coffee maker! However, the guy in Bakersfield only wanted 100 dollars for this one and…it was new in the box! Now, that’s more like it!  “Ol’ New-in-the-Box”, they call me.

We called the guy and advised that we would be down the next day. After picking up the big 15lb stainless steel beauty, we headed off to “Zorba’s” for our weekly lube job (also known as the burger, fries, and soda combo meal).

It took a couple of days to get a feel for this awesome machine. It has a couple of minor idiosyncrasies that merely require paying attention to. After that, it’s no worries. I think I’m getting spoiled!

To round out the week’s activities, we picked up the new 20 GA Mossberg pump shotgun from Big 5. The quail need to fear and tremble. I like quail meat. Most likely there’ll be a few doves on the table as well. She’s all black and fairly light weight and is sure to be a real crowd pleaser.

More from Rancho Relaxo when the moderator has a tad more time. He’s off to finish setting up a client’s home network.