"Say! How comes you are always calling me a dirty dog, eh?!" Leave it to Abbie to ruin a good wash job.
I have to admit...Abbie does get creative when trying to detect nefarious, ne'er do well, no good-niks. This is her "legs, tail, and ear antenna" reception position. She probably won't miss much. Good girl!
Have you ever had a dog try to "help" you while you are repairing a hose? I haven't either. Missy was in need of a "little" attention. Her idea of "little" is "Gimme all you got!". She plopped down in the middle of my work and I knew that this pretty girl dog wasn't going to take "No" for an answer. So, work was put on hold so Missy could be the center of attention for a while. She turned into a big ol' sponge.
Here's the Ol' Rancher and Connie the Canner with this week's haul from "Falling Prices". It took her a week to find a place for everything!
It's that time of year where we have to pay attention to our environment. We've had a few rattlers in our yard over the years.
Here's the "Bluesy Brothers". The brother on the left is long time friend and brother (60 years is a long time, eh?), Gene Sales. He recently returned home to this area. Though we have corresponded for many years, it's been a grand time getting reacquainted in person!
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Gene taking pictures of Success Lake.
A cool yard sale find! It's a like-new "Dorothy" cold coffee brewer. It only takes a few minutes (instead of all day) to cold brew your coffee with this handy gadget. They retail for 42.26 but we got it for 5 bucks.
Another super find is this "Ronco" "Ready Grill". It's basically a large toaster. It retails for 39.99 but we got it new-in-the-box for...get this...3 dollars!
Here's our new coolerator. She's a 22 cu. ft. beaut! We hope to salvage the other box because it hasn't quite croaked yet. We couldn't take any chances so we bought a new one. We'll see.
Our grapes are starting to ripen and should "sugar up" shortly.
Holy moly! It’s August already! We’re traveling through time
at what seems like warp speed! Didn’t January 2022 just get here? There must be
something wrong with my Flux Capacitor! I need to talk to Doc Brown about this!
Helpful hint of the month from Chef John (YouTube): “Never buy your eggs at the same place you
buy your motor oil”.
Mister Minnick or Let Us Spray:
The temps have turned brutal around here (106 degrees is
brutal) and we didn’t want any baked chickens. So, Connie, the headmaster of
the “Cool Clucks Clan”, determined that, if Elsie, “Carnation’s” contented cow,
can give great milk, then our peck-a-saurs need to be contented to give great
eggs. So we sauntered into “Lowe’s” and picked up a mister hose for the dirty
birds at the Huevos Hotel.
Things seemed to be going fine for a little while until the
nozzles plugged up (they’re only a pin hole in size). But, for a short while, it
was so comfortable that they were all gathering on top of the hutch in the coop
and having a kaffeeklatsch (well, so it seemed)!
This unwelcomed glitch forced some extra thought as for a
resolution to this clogging matter so that our birdies wouldn’t have their
gooses cooked.
The current thought was to order a mister kit with extra
nozzles from Amazon. They showed up in two days but have been resting and
unmolested while even higher priorities assailed the Ol’ Rancher.
Thankfully, we don’t have any scorched feathers because the
weather didn’t rise to the expected oven temperatures. We even got some rain!
That means that, on my next day off (uh-huh), I can re-rig the mister water
line and flush or replace the nozzles. The line actually needs to be moved over
to the windward side because the (really) light mist was being blown over the
chickens (and only fell on the hutch). Maybe if I put my running shoes on I can
dash out there and git’r done when/if I can find a few spare moments, eh?
Heap Big Deals - Big Chief Pinching Nickle and Squaw Squeezing Dime have been making great headway at “Falling Prices” and keep hitting it big! It’s been awhile since we’ve been in love and all shook up like this (Thanks, Elvis!).
One of the most outrageous of them all was a special supplement that retails for (gulp!) 60 dollars and we paid 25 cents for it! Others ranged from a few dollars to 15 and even 20 dollars each! It did help to have a general working knowledge of some of it (which it appeared to us that most of the other shoppers/divers didn’t have). In any event, it appears that all of our body organs will soon be rejoicing at all of the great gobs of gel caps and plenteous piles of pills we’re flooding them with. I can almost feel the waters of the Fountain of Youth now. Yeah, buddy! At this rate, our immune system will resemble Superman's before long!
Another special deal was a small electronic adapter that you
wouldn’t think would retail for more than 3 dollars at Wal-Mart. I snatched it
up and brought it home where I looked it up on the Internet. Do you suppose
that the Ol’ Rancher was floored when he found out that the little gadget he
purchased for a quarter retailed for 40 dollars?! Oh, yeah!
Most of these fabulous deals are found on the bottom of the bays. These smaller items stay covered up until most to the larger goods are hauled off. Then, some really great nuggets are produced. Other of these items are expensive but you have no idea what they are! Seriously! It’s almost exasperating since you know that they are worth up to fifty bucks or more (because of the size and quality) but you don’t even know what they are! Sometimes you can tell but it just isn't expedient to bring it home. You simply can't store everything when there is a dump truck load of stuff to deal with.
“Sale’ing” - This is not to say that the great deals at “Falling Prices” have quenched our penchant for yard sales: not at all. We keep stumbling into super deals all of the time. And, boy! Did we ever knock one out of the park! We went to a nearby moving sale which was next door to another moving sale (moving sales are our friends!).There were lots of nice (and cheap) goodies at both of them so we loaded up! But, the real ribbon getter was a brand new still-in-the-box “RONCO” “Ready Grill”. I would have gladly leaped at the deal for ten dollars but the big sign on the grill read, $3.00!! Looks like we can keep the ol’ “Fry–O-Matic” deep fryer parked for now and use this (mostly) grease free cooking device.
It works like a large toaster that cooks evenly on both sides. . You plug it in and stuff things in it and the fat/grease falls to a small pan in the bottom. We haven’t lit it up yet but are waiting for the right time to give it a whirl.
The only problem I can see is that I wasn’t smart enough to invent the thing and make a million dollar selling them.
At another sale, we picked up a new-in-the –package set of broadhead hunting arrowheads for 5 bucks. I immediately posted them on eBay and, within a few days, turned the fin into a 15 dollar profit! Yahoo!
The Frigid Air Man or
I only have ice for you (thank you Rocky and Bullwinkle) – Around the
ranch, we try to maintain certain modern standards such as running water, indoor
toilets and (at least) a swamp cooler (you can bet that the “ON” buttons for
the big A/C units are always handy).
Also, one of the things I’ve noted around that ranch is
that, if the lady of the house’s modern kitchen appliances are working well,
the milk flows easily around here (if you get my drift). That means that another
“must have” is a fully-functioning fridge.
So, when an ice box no longer gets cold, our attention span
increases significantly as we are about to lose some of our food. Food loss is
kept to a minimum around here so when our trusty-turned-untrustworthy 22 cu ft
refrigerator began losing its cool, so did we!
Thankfully, its chill began to wane slowly as opposed to the
“young” (5 years old) freezer that simple croaked and made hot air instead of
cold. That was a huge scramble session, I want you to know! Old people don’t usually
move that fast but, somehow, we saved most of our frozen goods.
Anyway, after shopping around online, we found that “Lowe’s”
had just exactly what we wanted. And, it was in stock, too! So, we hooked up
Wooly Pully and headed to “Lowe’s” the next day.
When we got it home, the Ol’ Cool Rancher had to swap the
doors over and get the shelves installed. A couple of days later, the icemaker
was installed. All went well and the installation was without any leaks. Icemakers are our friends!
Connie the Fridge Queen spent a couple of days hustling food
from one box to the other. That was fun. After all was racked, stacked, and
packed in the new ice box, she felt like she had just lost the
national bull riding competition!
Our shiny new fridge was made complete after she covered most of
it with a ton of those magnet thingies that grandmothers park on their ice boxes.
The old one will be tested so see if it is still useable. If not, we know what
to do with it.
Coffee is our Friend
or Pick a Pot of “Pete’s” - After
having strip mined “Falling Prices” of their incredibly cheap coffee selection
(paying .25 for a 10.00 bag of coffee is cheap!), it is easy (and fun) around here to
sample all kinds and types of tasty coffee. If the Ol’ Rancher desires a
hot latte’, he has but to light up the
espresso machine, crack open a pod of Starbuck’s, pull the trigger, and, in no
time, his set of liquid jumper cables are ready! If he just needs a good ol’ cup
of mud, he just pulls the Keurig brew rig out and has at it.
If the electricity happens to go out (which it won’t because the big “Generac” residential generator is at the ready) or just for grins, the Moka Pot is also on standby status on the shelf. Believe it or not, it makes a great cup of coffee!
If there is no more coffee and all the pots are gone, then there’s some instant coffee that snuck its way into the back of the garage. Most likely, though, it will only be used for killing gophers and ground squirrels in a post-apocalyptic environment.
One of the many brands and kinds are selected and sampled first thing in
the morning. There’s a lot of decaf
“Major Dickenson’s Blend” and lots of “Pete’s” decaf espresso roast that
gets consumed during the day. That way, there isn’t an issue with making it to
bed on time.
This fosters a memory of being in Juarez, Mexico. It was difficult for me to understand why I couldn't find a cup of freshly brewed coffee anywhere (with the understanding that I didn't canvas the entire town for coffee). Only instant coffee was served. That was in 2000 so much may have changed.
Talking Trash or Way to go, Radio: It’s no secret that things are a bit different around
here (OK…maybe two bits different). You just never know what’s going to happen
at any given time. The talking trash bag was a new one for us.
The other day (when lots of things happen around here), one
of our little Baofeng BF-888 handy talkies (or walkie -talkie, if you please)
was missing. Because they are so important, there are three on hand, three on
the charger, and a couple of them are kept on hand for spares (yes...they are that cheap). But, when a
charger is empty, it’s time to go looking for the compact 440mhz transceiver.
After a quick search
around the place and the van, it appeared to be quite lost. That wasn’t the
first time we’ve lost a radio so no thought was given because they almost
always show up in a day or two (except for the time my riding mower chewed one
up for lunch).
The next afternoon, as the trash hauling chore was being
performed, I heard the radio calling out, “Please change battery” (a built-in
vocal notification that you’re battery is low). All BF-888’s do that so, when
it started talking, the hunt was over. Well, it was almost over.
The problem was that I couldn’t get a fix on the bloody
thing! It was obvious that it was close by but it was still hidden. Connie the
Canner had to be called to the scene so she could help locate the missing radio
before the battery died altogether.
In a couple of minutes of trying to triangulate the radio,
we zeroed in on one of the seven trash cans we have out back. I lifted up one
of the bags and it began to talk to me: “Please change battery”. To make a long
story longer, the bag was untied and the radio was retrieved from (thankfully)
near the top. After taking a few moments to free it from the mucky grip of some
sloppy coffee grounds, the radio was happily, snuggly, and silently parked on
its charger: home at last.
It really was no mystery. One of the radios is usually
placed in the kitchen on a stand near the phone. There is a trash container by the stand. The transceiver somehow fell
into the trash from the stand (we're pretty sure it didn't jump). Glad we didn’t have to call our good friend
Sherlock to figure this out.
Hamming it up! Speaking
of radios, not long ago, (but longer than the other day), a friend
showed up at my front door with some older ham radio equipment. I examined them
and confirmed that they were rather old and agreed to buy them for 25.00.
One transceiver is a Kenwood TR-7950 2 Meter mono-band mobile
rig w/power chord. It’s a mid-80’s rig but is built like a tank and these models are still
highly regarded in the hamming community. I can use it for digital work.
Another is a Yeasu FT-2700RH DUAL BAND'er 2 Meter/440 mobile rig with the original duplexer.
It will likely be one of my back up units.
The prize cake, though, is an MFJ-986 antenna tuner. This big
baby can handle up to 3K watts of RF power and can likely tune everything but a
lawn chair! Since I’ll soon have a 250’ wire dipole to work with, this tuner
will come in mighty handy. I’ll also see how my other tuners handle it, too.
None of the equipment has been tested yet but it looks solid
so far. Stay tuned for updates (probably right after my next day off).
Let it rain! Let it rain! Let it rain! Or: “Yes, we have lots of raindrops. We have lots of raindrops today!” - On Saturday, July 31 at about 7:15 PM, and after suffering a significant moisture deficit for months, the clouds let loose with a big ol, rainstorm. Huge raindrops ensued with a tad of thunder tossed in. Of course, where we are, it was really just more “mad rain”. But, we try not to complain because every drop is welcomed. The Ol’ Rancher had to wash the “Coop De Ville” but, that’s OK. He’ll live.
Then, a few days after the first rainstorm, we had a “hot
water” storm in the middle of the afternoon. What was different is that we had temps
close to 100 degrees with that storm. I hadn’t seen that since Tulsa. Strange
weather we’re having.
Well....there you have it: another short episode of the long
happenings at Rancho Relaxo: home of Rancho Ran, the world's least-most
authority: home of the Yo-Yo twins and
home of a retarded duck: home of Connie the Canner, the world's greatest
side-kook and CEE (Chief of Everything Else): where the air smells and where
alliteration reigns supreme: where being modern is optional and there are no
slaves to fashion: where the eggs are always mostly fresh: where things can
get...interesting: where it's all news to me and where...you just never know.
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