The January thaw is here. It began yesterday and will persist until this evening's  dinner hour,  topping out at 33 torrid degrees in mid-afternoon, then yielding to the next Canadian import. Tuesday and Wednesday night will be  somewhere in minus-six range. Around here the rustics abbreviate that as OFAGDSF. That is, "Oh fooey, another gol-danged scrotal  freezer."

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I have an inconsistent philosophy about weather moaners. When others over-gripe about a few little feet of snow and a bracing Alberta breeze,  I'm often prone to huff that they should shut up or move to Arkansas. When I do it it I am merely exercising my First Amendment right to bitch. Use it or lose it.

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The firewood stash is much diminished  but more than adequate for remaining season.  It is no longer a neat stack, and I've used a little more than I planned, probably because some of the ash wasn't as dry as I thought. Still, I should carry over a couple of months' supply to the  winter of  '11 and '12. This is known as a budget surplus, and I usually have one, confirming my long-held belief that I am morally superior to those in or seeking public office.

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Being a somewhat weather-driven man, I naturally read the  Washington Post reports of the end of the world yesterday.  That led to a mischievous Bing search for the Capitol's fool-proof plan for evacuation in response to nuclear attack.  If you need a giggle as badly as I did, do the same.

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This is the sort of thing you get from a fellow who feels compelled to write something but who has absolutely nothing to say. Please love me anyway.
.

Snort

Some news guy says, "They're getting rid of color terror alerts and replacing them with emoticons."

Fed Notes by the Number

...and with continued apologies to Ray Price,

"Troubles by the score...".


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Stocks scared us witless, so we took our serious money out of equities and parked it in good old gummint bonds. I mean, they're guarandamnteed by the feds, right?"


Yes, Ben warrants the fed numbers, but neither he nor Tim nor Barack will touch the question of what your bond proceeds will buy. The private money gurus are increasingly at pains to point that out, almost as a matter of daily routine.  For instance:

In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, billions of dollars poured from equity and mutual funds into so-called “safer” municipal and Treasury bond funds. But, as the economy improves, these bond funds aren’t looking like such hot investment anymore.

Two reasons to be wary about bonds now is the inevitability that the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates and the growing likelihood that some states may default on their debt.


Find what irony you will in another of Stacy's observations:


And, if you’re looking for an alternative bond investment, Lyndon points to corporate and utility bonds, which he feels, are “safer than treasuries and munis these days.”


That is, while the Government of His Obamaness and all of his plans for your prosperity are so much unicorn methane, that evil ol' private sector might just hand you a gas mask.   


(I'll pass for now on commenting on that sentence about muni default. It's just too depressing. Besides, I don't own any  bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the California Commission on Condor Restoration.   Illinois, either.)

Baby ballistics

The well-known instigator Tam has me sweeping brass from the living room floor -- .22 Super Colibri brass, to be exact. It is a way passing a few moments of dull winter.

As promised, I dug out the box I thought I'd filed in the "Miscellaneous" corner.

(There are four corners in this gun room. They are labeled "Will shoot," "Won't shoot," "Miscellaneous," and "Other."  But I digress.)

I stuck one in the BL22, stepped to the deck, and let fly. Of such simplicity is fun created.

The Colibiri descends from the old BB and CB short "caps" for .22 rimfires. It's purpose in life is shooting in places where conventional wisdom,  and sometimes the law, say there should be none. 

It looks a lot like the defunct .22 Long -- a Long Rifle case stuffed with a 29-grain bullet. The small difference is that the Colibiri uses a 20-grainer.  The big one is that there's no powder behind the bullet, just a hot priming compound giving you about 500 fps, a low pop instead of a bang, limited range and penetration. However, my lashup buried the bullet to its depth in soft wood 30 feet away, so the Four Rules apply.
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The North Wind doth blow, so I plot for comfort. I will block the front doors open,  fire out the door, over the deck, across some 20 feet of drifted back yard, into a target, using the  shed as a berm.

The  target? One of those ridiculous little shovels with a four-inch blade and a foot-long handle, sold in better WalMarts everywhere as "roadside emergency tools."  (I gaze at it and  speculate on my probable need, to, some day,  inter a small budgie bird, at roadside, in an emergency setting, in soft earth. More is beyond its capacity. But I digress. )

Ram the handle into the snow and the blade makes a nice aiming point. Hit it and it moves a little.  I make it move 20 times or so, bare-handed and bare-headed in January. Grinning all the way, even at something like eight cents a round, counting the tax.

I can't really comment on accuracy other than that, offhand, I got consistent minute-of-useless-shovel groups according to my examination of the hit marks -- faint smudges of lead.

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The Calibiri, left, next to a .22 Long Rifle.

The box warns that you should fire these rounds only through a hand gun because, it says, the charge may fail to drive the bullet all the way through the rifle barrel. Then, if you fire a full-power round behind it you'll wind up with Elmer Fudd's barrel  after the wabbit stuck his finger in the muzzle.  I report this at the command of the TMR Legal Review Section.