New Year, and the start of another struggle against the evils of living large...

  I seem to have become a member of a new evil class - fat old white men, you can add all the stuff I have been responsible for throughout History. I have been told I can fix the fat part, and If I paid any attention to the commercials, I can have pills and surgery to fix most of the appearance of OLD...

   Knowing I can control only me, I am working on the weight.. so 3500 calories in a pound of fat, I have about fifty of those in excess, and doing a pound a week will make me leaner by next Christmas. Breakfast is fine, the oatmeal, raisins, sliced almonds, with milk and peach yogurt and coffee. A fine start for every day, and easy to clean up after. Lunch is now a slice of meat, slice of cheese and lettuce or spinach or kale/seaweed on dark bread. one apple and two pickles. For harmony I will allow my wife to decide my evening meal - and I will try to leave food on the plate every dinner... but I will have to struggle against 'starving children in China, and clean your plate, we don't waste food around here'. I waist all my food intake, and that is a waste. It is also life shortening. Share more with others, especially those candy bars that my wife brought home. Get them off the table, or just leave them there as temptation resisted (I did quit smoking all by myself after eight years and being up to three packs a day in RVN and two a day in 1972). So I can establish control of excess, then work on better choices of what my exercising old fat man body needs.

    I expect the better portion of my fight against fat will be in exercise, boring repetitious machine exercises. If my feet got fit, I might increase the walking, but will do what I can now, and that little is really helping, not with the weight loss, but with the stepping out without a pronounced limp.

   The wind knocked the power out here for a few hours, the clocks are blinking at us in the bedroom, another early start for the day ahead, but my wife's alarm is off the grid so we would have awoken on time. I get up to turn off the cable and the lights inside, and to quickly put another 24hour shield up in the game, if they catch me without a shield they will attack to steal my resources - which will cost them dearly, but the big guys always do it, pretending it is protecting everyone else. Just like politicians everywhere. Lies and more lies.

   I have been attempting to use the new app for the YMCA, to record my calorie burn and what I did to produce it. I have started to put a weight training program for upper and lower body, helps make me older but does burn calories also. I found out today, that I cannot enter data from home, so I went back to the YMCA and entered today's efforts, and then I submitted them into my history, and although the date was my grand daughter's birthday, it recorded them on the fourth. Talking to the staff about the new app, they were impressed with my efforts, since theirs haven't been as smooth, and they talk about glitches. I put my phone down too much to be impressed.

   

What happens to the people without children at Christmas...

   Wall to Wall or lack there of news about silly things.... kids are more fun.

   For sure, we were lucky, we have Alexa to contact the kids and grandkiddos, if we only knew what we were doing with it. Then we were off to church and there were many children there, and the Pastor spent much time trying to keep the parents from silencing their children, or at least not worried about it. I wouldn't have mentioned it at all.

  I just don't fit in the box, I know, I must check one or they will check it for me...  truth is very relative, and hardly objective in the end. There were about seventy men and boys facing the light infantry at Lexington April morning. They were not all the same, but they were all standing there because Captain Parker had asked them to. You shouldn't make assumptions, find out who and why.

  The YMCA is running in the red it is reported, the goodness of their hearts and programs mean that many are served and encouraged to come, but many of the staff have their hours cut, or are just volunteers - and there is nothing wrong with volunteers but why does it seem there are so many back office managers when they could all come out to help?

   The YMCA keeping modern, decided that the ActivTrax program wasn't delivering - I was happy, but I am only one. So they went for an app on the smart phone. Well. I put the app on my phone and started dragging it to the YMCA with me, I get five points for using my phone and the barcode on screen to check in! Wow! Now the app hasn't helped me record my workouts, seems I can't touch it correctly, it isn't easy to scroll, to save, to figure out what it isn't telling you, and how to ignore what it is telling you (are you sure you don't want to do that exercise?) Ugh! But today! For whatever reason, when I finished my light workout, I had four exercises to record, and somehow I got them into the machine, saved and they are showing on my history. I have been trained, why do I feel like a pet that isn't getting a treat for my performance?

   Getting ready to switch calendars, except that my wife has her new ones up and using them already - probably miss New Years that way. Don't know. Nah, will sleep through it. I can catch the early fireworks from the other side of the Pacific, the ones over Germany and get a great night's sleep missing the Space Needle shooting off - should be raining here, right?

Oh, what a wonderful weekend... Appleseed!...

   I am in driving distance 1h 45m from Port Townsend and the rifle range for our Appleseed. Dark from start to finish of the drive, Winter is coming. I meet 'Janer', the Shootboss, and we are setting up in the pistol bays but maybe squeezed, over twenty with walk ons signed up. 'Never on Sunday', and Yankee Terrier are in IIT positions and we begin to check people in, set up equipment line and firing line. The fire is lit in the warm up shed, we expect cold but not freezing weather. I miss putting Josh on the right side of the line, for his left hand shooting. But we moved the instruction right along, just enough words to make the points. The morning was prone, and the afternoon was full of sitting and transitions. and the first Appleseed Qualification Test, and one former Rifleman, repeated and became our first Rifleman of the weekend. He wasn't going to be the only one, but Sunday would show that two others were hiding on the line.
  Sunday was the day of the wind, and the wind won. We had the canopies erected for keeping the rain off, and they decided to try flying away... almost made it. So took them down and moved to another range where the wind would be behind us, closer to the warm up hut and cover in case of rain, but the rain held off.  There would be target corners and sheets lifted by the wind, the chill would stay with us, but all instruction was given, and one AQT before lunch, Dangerous Old Men stories and back out to shiver on the line and we need to anchor the mats better, since they would lift and try to move the rifles on them.
   I must be getting old, didn't spend much time on the line just covered up and called the line commands. Didn't do too much instruction and no demonstration at all... hmm... My overall feeling was that the shooters overcame the wind and the chill, we didn't give them too many things to remember and they performed wonderfully. It is all a shared learning experience, and we could take the memory home and put it to bed.
   Off the line and away from the shooters the discussion was often about the threat of more constraints against the range by local forces that don't really know anything about shooting, the ranges nor safety. Just GUNs are bad. Never ending ignorance. Now to get ready for Christmas.

The government can't control guns, they can't control spending and accounting....

 Really, the list of things they are supposed to control: immigration, drugs, education, justice, welfare, taxes, retirement, secrets, aviation, transportation, scientific evidence of ______, and such. They can't control and for some reason, they think success in gun control will be wonderful.

  Why allow them to try? More people are dying of drugs -- suicide is killing more, but then guns are sometimes used for suicide. Anyway, my point is don't strain the government, they haven't caught all the killers yet. They need tax money and they haven't caught all the tax cheats either. They haven't caught all the liars in Washington, DC. That should be grounds for an appeal for all convictions for false testimony in Washington, DC. Not uniformly prosecuted, all those lying politicians.

  Report from Australia, the guns aren't all gone yet, and automatic weapons are coming in, or being manufactured in country. They aren't that difficult to make.

   I don't think that Gun Control will work. I know that I haven't decided to use a semi automatic rifle to commit crimes, most gun owners are with me - but lies on entertainment, news media and politicians' lips will try to make you believe that only the government is moral enough to control gun crime... not true. The government is not moral, the people in it maybe, but probably not.

Not nice to fool Mother Nature... nor mess with her...

  I have been having a doomsday feeling since Prayer Group last Saturday evening. Good study, fine prayers and great fellowship and food... and still I couldn't help thinking the end was near and we are not close to prepared for it. Brought on by the missionary that was shot by an arrow and returned the next day to get killed by more arrows - trying to bring enlightenment to the heathen, in an area put off limits by the local civilized authority. Can't help but wonder if it was a gun free zone. Very poor joke, but the missionary was certain that he could bring peace to the savages, and they were sure he was bringing destruction. According to modern Liberals, he was a token white man bringing all the civilized ills they had brought to the New World in 1492.

  Some fine point on the Facebook feed on the internet I found out that the windshield dead bug count is way down and efforts are being made to get a real count and difference from the counts done thirty or more years ago. You will notice, in the Spring and Summer, the decided lack of insects, except most of us only think of them as something to clean off the radiator grill and windshield as we drive across the country. But they feed lots of bigger feathered flying friends, and slithering long tongued almost slimy things... when enough go the whole food chain is in peril. Remember the beast at the top of the food chain? Yes, your local tyrant/ruler/representative/member of Parliament the one on top of the food chain... they will be the one that will ration, order, regulate and guide you into destruction based upon their need for other useless mouths to feed.   

  There will be many to jump upon the Climate Change bandwagon, and they could be correct. It could be a new bug from space, due to lack of a space force and a cosmic dome. Could be, my best guess, the weed and bug killers are winning. I am canceling all future business with Terminex. It could be that there are too many man made things that aren't food in all kinds of food and trash left around to be consumed by bugs that haven't found the proper acids to render and reduce them into basic real usable compounds. Evolution does take surviving and adapting and lots of time. Jump to the genetic manipulators and you have my other culprit - stuff that isn't real, but that fools (almost) Mother Nature.

   Humans hardly ever leave well enough alone - from forbidden fruit to communism - humanity has many original bad ideas that will destroy innocence, perfection and goodness for all. And as they say, we are all on the same boat, so be good, kind and at peace. Those that aren't going quietly will be loud and proud and dangerous. We haven't been paying enough attention and building stuff that we can use for power, but not love. And without love? there will be nothing...

Just another waking up at five morning... aren't they all?

  Adventures in the American court system are amusing, painful and not to be repeated. A whole level of government that should be very good by now, but really they tell me 1pm and they don't show up until 1:30, we are being treated like we don't count. And we don't. Allow that to set the tone.

  Interesting, to see a former coworker in town, and touch base later on Facebook. If I were a smartphone addict, I would likely have texted, shot a picture as we passed and later looked to see a response... could just have said 'hello!' with a smile, but it is all being recorded now - by our government, the Chinese or just trolls... who is watching over you? All I could do was smile a bit better and store the memory of the passing in my mind.

  Tennessee Ernie Ford's gospel got me started this morning, lovely to pretend I can match his bass and know all the words to all the songs. I am waiting to things to happen on my electronic game, so I am listening to The Gael, one window for music and the others for blogging, and another on a game, one for email, one for confusing our enemies. Remaining thankful that I don't really have enemies, just millions of people that don't love me because.... pick your reason - mine is fat old white man, and an American to top that mess off. I am chuckling, the false rage and anger about the imagined terrible type of person I must be.... My mother tried to make me be better than that. And good women have been trying ever since, don't give up, ladies. Just putty in your hands... ha, ha.

   I have some serious contacting to do on the internet today, seems the dental program is going and I must replace it... should we pay by the teeth remaining?

  I have a .58 dollar credit on my credit card, why don't they send me a check? Do they think I would lose it? First cup of coffee down, time to make a fresh pot... warming and waking magic. So Gandalf.Rx hit me hard with a spy and supply raiding, but I have 20k of his best this morning. Nicely rounding up my t5 which I can't create without some research. Not to worry, got to go, y'all be good. It will confuse them that are living bad, and badly.

Almost finished on my tenth year on the Appleseed trail, Custer Washington...

  So I signed up, prepared my vehicle and packed out and on the road north at 5 AM, it is dark and cold. Filled up at the Safeway and drove, and drove and drove and at 7:25 rolled into the parking lot at the Custer Sportsman range... been here before always interesting.
   Ben and Matt are on site, Ralph rolls up and we begin to set up. I have check in and t-shirt issue. Ten shooters to work on marksmanship and their heritage from our history presentations about April 19, 1775. I like to pretend anyone reading that date would automatically, if an American, know what happened and why on that date. But most Americans have no idea, they could google it or find it on Wikipedia, if they thought it important.
   Introductions, history lessons, safety and expectations of the two days are presented. There is a plan, a course of instruction that guides the instructors, and the shooters all have their personal expectations. Some of the shooters are back for improving what they learned on another Appleseed some times ago. Family and friends gathered to learn, practice and test their skills in a common, American heritage, marksmanship with a rifle. Something my American History teacher showed me in ninth grade Junior High Rifle Club, in the high school gym on Thursday afternoons.
   So, we start, building on little stuff, adding more, repeating the words, pointing out what we see, helping adjust the shooter, the sling and the rifle to the target with our techniques. I am sure they have much better ones in high power, competition and Olympic match levels. But we can bring you into 4 MOA at five hundred yards with our twenty-five meter targets... if the shooter pays attention and corrects one flaw at a time. And lots of dry practice, lots of dry practice.
  Gus joined us on day two, while we waited on Alec to return from border crossing adventures. In the end several cleaned Redcoats and three new Riflemen made. The future Riflemen were all around but darkness comes early in the wintery Great NorthWest, and my hands were chilling.