The Hayseed Gun Market: Yep, another country auction

I didn't go for the firearms; nothing there I cared to own.  My goal was to steal* a power washer. I failed.

Nevertheless, I stuck around and recorded hammer prices for those of you keeping track.

--Thunder Hawk black powder rifle (straight line; plastic stock) $60

--Another one $75

--Hawes SA .22/.22mag, vg/exc $240

--Browning Buck Mark .22  as NIB  $400

--Ruger 77, .308 Winchester - laminated wood stock, as new, $440

--Howa 1500  .270 Winchester, fancy laminated stock, cheap scope, as new $525

--Ruger GP 100, .357, scope, as new, $610

--Ruger Super BH, .44 mag., stainless, straight optical scope.  as new, $700

--Another one, identical but with magic battery driven Buck Rogers scope, $700

Two 26.5 mm flare pistols (ComBlock? Didn't look closely) @$100

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I did leave a very few dollars with the clerk, biting on four nice new chairs for the commandant's conference table. The old ones were becoming matted with chocolate lab hair beyond the capacity of any vacuum cleaner. The new ones are, OEM,  in a better color, about like chocolate lab hair. Besides they're slightly smaller and on better casters and lend my headquarters a gracile, elegant, air,  not to mention smelling much less like a wet chocolate lab.

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*Since Eric Holder reads my stuff, looking for a way to jail me, by "steal" I mean "get it cheaply."  It's like, y'know, Eric, a figure of speech.

Taking a Chance on Spam

Blogger seems to be doing a better job of trapping spam. So, since we all hate it,  we'll try turning comment moderation off.

You really ought to hear it done by Ella Fitzgerald.


Things are mending now 
I see a rainbow blending now 
We'll have a happy ending now 
Taking a chance on love 

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Also, she's beautiful.

Death Dawn

About that time of day I'm a little sleep-drugged and wobbly. Chore One is to set the Mr. Coffee gurgling. In my altered state, that requires intense concentration
lest I omit the coffee, the filter, or the water. *

In the groggy process this morning something flickered in my port side peripheral vision, maybe twenty yards south of the uncurtained kitchen window, near the pickup. I registered two adolescent rabbits. No big deal; they're all over the place. Then something dark whooshed down from a nearby cottonwood.

The lucky bunny found shelter under the truck. The hapless sibling was last seen squirming in talons a dozen feet up and climbing.

The light was poor so I can't be sure, but I offer odds that the bandit was a rough-legged hawk even though they shouldn't be here in this season. They are scheduled to spend summer in the arctic north, making little hawks, but perhaps the settled science of global cooling offers an explanation.

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*(I know people who can bound out of bed and instantly whip out a bowline on a bight with the left hand while jotting down differential equations with the right. I hate them.)

Lazy River Sing Your Song

Even miles and miles above the head of navigation at St. Anthony's Falls, the Mississippi is a substantial river, wide, deep, and fast. We have claimed a 13-mile stretch of it as our own ...

....including Moose Island,  a pebble and shingle bar named for a GOOD Dog of treasured memory. This time we made it our lunch stop, premium sausages ludditically cooked (pick up some wood and set it on fire; sorry Mr. Coleman).

A thirteen-mile paddle is by no means a heroic endeavor, but it it often strains ancient muscles and even younger sedentary ones. Not so this trip, even though the evil shape-shifter raven whistled up a goodly wind in our faces.

Wisakedjak held the more powerful magic this day, and his current vanquished the raven wind, permitting what you see -- three canoes and a (barely visible blue) kayak rafted for a free drift down to Clearwater. We actually paddled perhaps one-half of the distance, maybe a little less.

Lazy is good, of course, but there's always one guy who overdoes it. We woke him up when ever it was time for Cokes or sandwiches.