other dog

I've been fencing all week, except when I was watching TV- I had to watch the news in the morning, and sometimes Family Feud before I got started because it would be 25 degrees in the morning and in the 50's by afternoon. I put up new fence from the far corner of the chain link fence, out around the well, then down the hill and across, then back uphill to the house. I had much difficulty getting the wire tight with all the elevation changes, and putting up fences is not really my field of expertise. The home made wire stretcher I made worked pretty good though. We were going to pay a buffessional fence putter-upper, but couldn't find anybody that was interested. So my job might look crappy but I'm sure we saved a lot of money by doing it myself. It still wasn't cheap- 3 100' rolls of 4' wire, 20 metal posts, and a 6' gate were over $700. Then I went back and got 6 wooden posts and some other items for $139 more dollars. All so these fellas will have more room to run. They're watching the driveway people now... I ran the tiller through the garden a time or two and planted a row of potatoes and a row of onions this morning too, before it started raining. Then I took the rest of the day off. We also had the driveway biggerized. Zina's gotten stuck in the yard twice. I would have put a circle driveway in here at first if it was up to me, the driveway was kind of... weird. And, in the "this doesn't have anything to do with anything" department, I ran across this picture today when I was looking for a different picture. I know we were talking a while back about how the propeller of a plane or helicopter looked like it wasn't moving in a picture. This is a picture I took of a chopper that was leading the "Truckers Against Cancer Parade" the year before last.

I had an old '71 F100 pickup one time, bought it from one of the mechanics that worked in the shop at H.H.Moore's. Pretty good old truck actually, except it was really light duty. It came from the factory with the smallest Ford 6 cylinder and a 3 speed on the column. He swapped in a 351 out of a station wagon or something at some point, so it ran great but you still couldn't haul much with it, or the rear bumper would be dragging. The exhaust manifold on it cracked and I located a used one close by, already off the engine. Went over to get it and it was laying under a tree in the front yard amongst a pile of junk. The guy wanted $100 for it, and said "but if I was you I'd just go get me a pair of cheap headers". So I guess he didn't really want to sell the manifold anyway. It made no sense to me, but I did go get a pair of headers and slapped them on, back then they were about the same price as what he wanted for the used cast iron manifold.

I agree, the Keystone museum is great, well worth the trip!..me and Zina got married there you know. Dave took us on a tour of the shop where he did most of the restoration work one time, a few years ago. I still owe Dave a hotdog and a Pepsi, but he says I owe him a steak dinner- which I would be more than happy to buy him. When me and Zina reconnected in 2017 it was because she somehow saw my picture on Facebook when I was sitting in Keystone 's PIE Freightliner in Winchester, Va. and Dave took my picture. I was glad to see he made the trip to Florida recently. Let us know when you're going, we're only a couple hours away! And we've been saying for years that we were going to Don Garlits' museum in Ocala when we were in Florida, but we just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Thanks Vlad!

This is the house I grew up in, and both of my parents lived there until they passed away. I believe it cost $8,000 to build in 1964. I have no idea what it's worth now, but I'm pretty sure they financed it for 20 years. To me, 20 years sounded like forever in 1964.

A house just down the road from us was just put on the market. 3 days later the sale was already pending, $279,900. 1 acre of land. Beautiful place, but geez!

Yep, there's quite a a list. I've seen them all posted before somewhere.

It's just something I slapped together out of scrap lumber, when we biggerized the front porch and put a roof on it I saved every piece of wood that was left over. Roman likes to sit and look out the window, he sits there the whole time when we leave.

Yeah, from northern Virginia to Boston is all pretty much the same thing, all the way. I preferred going up 81 to 84 rather than deal with all the traffic, tolls, and b.s. on 95.

For the barbecuing page- it'll be barbecuing season soon you know. I just did this last week- I saw a little video a while back that showed a guy slicing a whole pork loin lengthwise into 3 long strips, except for a small section at the end. It looked good, so I decided to try it too. I've cooked many pork loins whole, and they're good, but this way you can get the rub onto a lot more area, and your favorite barbecue sauce too. I used a metal skewer to hold the ends together. Video guy used a wooden skewer straight through it and broke the ends off, but I didn't have any. His came out looking like this- Mine came out looking like this. His might have been prettier, but I bet mines was more deliciouser. We had it sliced, used it in a cabbage stir we made, and I chopped the rest of it in a chopper device and threw it in the freezer. Looks great. The dogs were impressed too.

I remember hauling structural steel to Lynn, Ma. in the 80's and I don't remember a thing about it. Everything in that part of the world looked pretty much the same to me. 😂

Happy birthday!

I'm kind of like your wife when it comes to that kind of thing, I don't like "fat and yucky stuff"🤢 and I like steak medium, maybe medium rare, but chicken has got to be fully cooked, and if it's got skin on it, the skin has got to be crispy. I know people that cook Boston butts and just chop the whole thing up for barbecue, but I always take out "most" of the fat, and any gristle and stuff I find. I like my barbecue to look like this- Wilbun's Supermarket in Appomattox used to have good meat, in fact some people said you couldn't beat- well, never mind that, but sometimes he would put chicken leg quarters on sale. I think a 10lb. bag was $4.99, 10 in the bag. They were great for cookouts. I would process them the day before a cookout, clean all that goop out, trim all the excess fat, and cut any loose "flappy" skin off, or sometimes just pull the skin off altogether. Then I'd coat them with the rub and leave them in a Tupperware container in the refrigerator until tomorrow when I cooked them. And I used to hate that job, cleaning and trimming all those leg quarters, it was disgusting. But taking the time to do all that was well worth it, and it showed in the finished product.

Speaking of grilling, I ordered a new offset fire box for the Char-Griller smoker. It was starting to rust a little bit, my own fault, but the rest of it is in pretty good shape. It's my own fault because one of the worst things you can do with a grill or smoker is to leave ashes in it. They absorb moisture and cause it to rust very quickly. I'm guilty of not cleaning the ashes out until the next time I'm starting to cook something. You know, food gets done, "let's eat" and cleaning the ashes out of the smoker or grill is about the last thing on my mind. This is the new unit installed. It's slightly smaller but not enough to make much of a difference, I wouldn't think anyway. The old one looked like this when I took it off. My son said he'd like to have it for a freestanding grill, so I put the legs on it and covered the hole in the end and slapped some Hi-Temp paint on it for him. I even wire brushed the cast iron grates and reseasoned them for him. They were rusty too, from being in the shed, but I don't remember ever using them but once. They fit across the top on that little edge there. I didn't need it, I have more grills than I know what to do with now. And there's another little round one like the one in this picture in the shed, along with the Pit Barrel Cooker.

I've never done it myself, but I saw Myron Mixon, AKA "the winningest man in barbecue", do it on TV on the barbecue competition show I used to watch all the time. It was called "Barbecue Pit Masters" I think, and I learned a lot. They smoked ribs, brisket, whole hog, chicken, or Boston butts, pretty much something different all the time. They had a certain length of time to cook then they turned it in for judging. Great show. Anyway, he cooked chicken thighs and he pulled the skin off first and scraped it on the inside, then put it back on before he put it in the smoker. His came out great, and the skin was crispy, which is what he was shooting for.

It truly is. I know I told the story here when it happened, but I still think of the time I watched the woman at the bakery that I was parked behind throwing away hundreds of loaves of bread in the dumpster out back. Not a thing wrong with it, just loaves the bread trucks had brought back because it was past the expiration date and they couldn't sell it. I was tempted to go dumpster diving and get myself a few dozen loaves, but with my luck I'd have gotten arrested for trespassing or something.

I marked out the bad word, don't want to corrupt any chern.

Great!

Talk about fake- just this morning I saw sleepy joe on the news saying that the problems at the southern border were the direct result of the previous administration. What? Really?!. and the sad part is that some people actually believe his b.s.

I did that too, when I worked at a garage when I was just out of high school. I would save all sorts of small parts, like brake springs and adjusters when we replaced them with new pieces, all sorts of things that I thought I might use...someday.