A young couple near where we live both work at Lowe's. Their baby was born in August, but has had some serious health problems and been hospitalized for weeks. The family has posted a GoFundMe to raise money for the insurance deductable. I know that things are tight for lots of folks, and people in the mountains are hurting from the hurricane, but they're a young couple just starting out - not making a lot of money - and their baby is really, really ill.
I know Cisco, not Palo Alto. If any of you do know hoe to do this, Old NFO could use some help.
Not for me, but for Big Country's lovely wife Gretchen. She's been diagnosed with cancer and any change you can toss her way for medical bills would be greatly appreciated.
I'm late to this and most of you read the other blogs like Divemedica and BC himself, but Gretchen is super nice and way too young to be going through this.
#1 Granddaughter has entered the Miss Teen Rhode Island contest. If she wins, she will move on to the Miss Teen USA contest. The pageant is running a voting contest as a fund raiser for mental health awareness and education, and the winners will move on to the semi finals.
Obviously, The Queen Of The World and I are pretty proud and excited about this. We're asking for your help (and small donation) to help her along. Voting is here.
Next, I'll be running a fund raiser to get her Dad (the Chief) a shotgun. For obvious reasons.
Never one to walk away from the Good Fight, BCE is fighting (in Court) to get her back. As you can imagine, this take a LOT of coin.
Here's the description of the situation from the GiveSendGo page:
Adriana Grace came into this world on October 26, 2020 in Kingsport Tennessee. She's a beautiful and inquisitive 22 month old, who means the world to her Gigi and Papi. Unfortunately, her parents are completely incapable, if not downright dangerous. Her birth father/donor she was born to is an abusive person, small minded, petty and viscous. He suffers from 'small man syndrome' (4'11-5ft only) and enjoys hurting smaller and weaker people, especially women and children. He's also someone who has previously lost custody of her older sister Kylie, as well as his child from a previous relationship. He has a slew of arrests for Domestic Violence, (8 arrests, one felony conviction) and her Mother, my step-daughter, Emily suffers from extremely well documented mental health issues from the age of 5 until present day, never mind that she's lazy, entitled and incapable of any sort of basic human decency. Needless to say, they should NOT be raising this child.
I knwo that the economy is in the toilet and money is tight, but even $5 or $10 helps. BCE is a good man, and this is a Good Fight.
Late to the posting keyboard on this, but Mike over at Cold Fury has some really serious - maybe critical - health issues.
Here's his GoFundMe.
Here's info over at Cold Fury.
Here's info at Big Country's place.
Mike's one of ours, and has been blogging since the really early days of the blogosphere.
The Queen Of The World went out shopping and one of these followed her home:
So here's the question: any thoughts on a magazine extender? The pinky finger just barely fits, and the palm is half hanging loose on the other side. Having something that would drop down a bit would make it easier to grep.
A couple weeks ago I posted What deer rifle for an old hunter? Many of you left comments and I'm happy to say that Tim emails saying that the hunt was a success and he got his deer. He has a nice After Action Report posted.
I agree with him that the local deer populations seem to be pretty strong. I used to see them regularly in Maryland and Wolfgang would chase 'em if he got a chance. He never got close, of course, but if you're a deer in a subdivision then neighborhood dogs will be an occasional encounter.
Friend of the Blog Tim Wholer is getting into deer hunting now that he is retired. He has been borrowing a rifle which is obviously less than ideal. He is looking for advice on what to look for in a deer rifle and I expect that more than a couple of you will have some good advice.
His post has a picture of the terrain from his tree stand. It looks wooded, with a fair amount of brush (i.e. no 300 yard shots).
He also has a very interesting question that some of you might have grappled with as well:
It's my hearing that is the problem.
My sons tell me that they generally hear the critters before they see them. Well, other than the deer that must have nearly crashed into my tree ten minutes before shooting hours started on the Opener (and Lordy that musta been one big, clumsy deer) I pretty much never heard the deer coming.
Now, I do have hearing aides. These were grudgingly accepted a couple of years back when my Better Half put forth the unanswerable argument that I did not want to miss anything the grand children said. They are really sophisticated, I can adjust setting from my phone for instance. But they are also: A: expensive and B: designed to pick up higher frequency sounds. Small, delightful child's voices. Also spousal voices, as it's best not to wait until things are repeated at a volume or in a tone of voice that cannot be missed.
I tried hunting without them, worried that anything lost in the woods would never be found. I tried hunting with them. I even tweaked the settings. There's an outdoor mode. There are options for volume...crank that up. And for speech discrimination....crank that down. But I still can't say I reliably heard the deer. Oh, one or two times I had a dim perception of "something", but that was usually about two seconds before I saw the insolent white tail flashing as the deer ran off. Really, it's like a stylish middle finger.
Mostly I heard everything else. Leaves rustling. Squirrels and small mice cavorting. A scratchy noise every time my jacket moved against the tree bark. And at my age every pivot of my neck beyond about 30 degrees causes a crackling noise that sounds like several large deer rolling around in a pile of dry sticks.
If you have any advice or experiences to share, drop by his blog and leave a comment.
Highway worthy heavy and fast enough to be comfortableLooking around Cycletrader, there are two offers that seem to fit this list:
Decent seat with sissy bar for riding 2 up
Low enough to be comfortably flat footed at a stop
Inexpensive enough that there's no reason for me to say no
Will probably only put on 5k miles a year, at least for a bit
Ideally light weight within these parameters
