Republican State Legislatures Assume Leadership of Insurrection.

Only had time for 9 holes yesterday afternoon. Had to go visit with the family of a many whose funeral I will be preaching on Saturday and get that done before midweek Bible study at 7:00. Shot a 49 ... which is better than a 50 for the nine. I played the last 4 holes at 1 over. My buddy shot a 41 and he usually shoots in the 30's for nine and is usually around par or just a few strokes over for a complete round. Loads of fun though. Planning to go again in the morning.

We need rain!. I thought we'd broken the drought a couple of weeks back when I got about 3.5 inches at my house. It is gone and everything is dry as a bone again. I'm really learning how to hit the ball off of hard pan this year.

Heading to my doctor's appointment in about 10 minutes. Blood work, listen to the man gripe about my weight ... the works today. Then I come back to school and stay here until 9 pm for partent/teacher conferences. I hope some parents show up to keep me awake.

Lots of deaths here lately. The man whose funeral I have to preach on Saturday has been battling cancer for 1.5 years. A good fellow. He was 83. My good friend and our science teacher lost a brother-in-law the same day. This young man had battled cancer for less than 6 months. He was in his 40's.

Made gumbo for the teachers here this evening. Kind of a tradition for me to make gumbo for parent/teacher conference night. Have been in my classroom smelling it all day as it cooks in the crock pot. I'm hungry. But for now, out the door I go to see the doctor.
 
Can gumbo me made without the shellfish in it?

I understand that the roux takes forever to make, and I don't see any canned version on the shelves of Boston area supermarkets.

Even picking out the crayfish (crawfish?) to which I'm allergic, if they're chemically anything like our local lobsters, I had authentic gumbo once, and it was delicious.
[h=2]Jokamo fi na nay ![/h]
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Can gumbo me made without the shellfish in it?

I understand that the roux takes forever to make, and I don't see any canned version on the shelves of Boston area supermarkets.

Even picking out the crayfish (crawfish?) to which I'm allergic, if they're chemically anything like our local lobsters, I had authentic gumbo once, and it was delicious.
Jokamo fi na nay !
Click to expand...

Chicken Gumbo is very good, or just use sausage.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Can gumbo me made without the shellfish in it?

I understand that the roux takes forever to make, and I don't see any canned version on the shelves of Boston area supermarkets.

Even picking out the crayfish (crawfish?) to which I'm allergic, if they're chemically anything like our local lobsters, I had authentic gumbo once, and it was delicious.
[h=2]Jokamo fi na nay ![/h]
Click to expand...

Yes. You can make gumbo with almost anything. From everything I’ve read and talking with my Cajun friends gumbo was a way of making the meat stretch to feed more people.

I’ve made gumbo with chicken, fish, shrimp, crawdads, venison, rabbit and squirrel. I always include some andouille in mine. My Cajun fishing buddy who we lost to COVID back in December of 2020 talked about making it with whatever they could get when he was a boy…even things like hawk, gator, drum (a trash fish I’ve never been able to make palatable) and such.

So … I’d say you can make gumbo with almost anything. We love gumbo.

As to the roux, I cheat and brown my dry flour in my oven in a cast iron skillet, then begin the process. Browning the dry flour greatly reduces the cooking time whilst still giving a great flavor. I’ve seen the ready made roux in the grocery stores but have never tried them.

And the critter … crayfish, crawfish, crawdad … all the same critter called by similar but different names depending in which region of the south one is.

I had the best round of golf for the summer today. Shot a 96 even though I had a 9 on the fourth hole. I’m improving slowly but surely. Mostly, I’m moving instead of coming home to sit in my recliner after work. That has been the goal.
 
The wife is gone to the state fair in Tulsa today so I am going to go to the golf course when I get off work.

Deer season opens tomorrow so I will shoot my bow a few times this evening and hit the woods tomorrow morning. It was 44 degrees here this morning and my neck is starting to swell a bit. Deer season came along just in time. ;) Looking forward to the weekend.
 
leaningright said:
The wife is gone to the state fair in Tulsa today so I am going to go to the golf course when I get off work.

Deer season opens tomorrow so I will shoot my bow a few times this evening and hit the woods tomorrow morning. It was 44 degrees here this morning and my neck is starting to swell a bit. Deer season came along just in time. ;) Looking forward to the weekend.
Click to expand...
Why the wife’s away, the hubby plays. Good for you, be safe, enjoy!
 
Did I say I hate flying? I hate having to deal with the airlines. You are at their mercy. We booked a flight for my son from OKC to Nashville via Dallas months ago … for his trip to his grandparents Thanksgiving. The return flight is on the Saturday following. We purposely got his time on the return flight for in the neighborhood of 10 am. It’s a 2 hour drive from his grandparent’s place to Nashville so this keeps us from having to get up in the wee hours of the morning to get there. Also, we have a lot to load in the vehicle for the trip back to Oklahoma for his mother and me. We bring home 1/2 a beef and whatever deer I have killed during the week. Bottom line is that it takes time to get ready to travel. We purposely chose the timeframe we chose to fit the time needed to be ready and on the road at a decent hour.

So we get an email saying they have now changed the time of the flight to 8 am. There should be a law against stuff like that. If they aren’t going to stick to a schedule they shouldn’t put one out there and charge the prices they charge, then once they get the money from you change the schedule. Makes me want to punch someone in the nose.
 
Commercial air travel is now a complete clusterfuck in too many different ways to list.

My feet first left the ground in 1957. Rev is the mathematician; we'll let him figure out how long ago that was.

I can tell you definitively that air travel was VASTLY more pleasant back then that it is now--even with propellors.

I've actually stopped pleasure traveling specifically because flying is so bad now.
 
My family took me to my favorite Chinese restaurant for my recent 76th birthday.
Then we all came back to our place for cake and coffee.

My daughter, a Boston Police Lieutenant Detective, always gets a kick out of my ordering something not on the current menu and actually getting it.
I've been a regular customer at this establishment for over fifty years, and she's only forty-five.
I've been eating there long enough to actually learn some Mandarin words from the staff.
As long as they have the ingredients. they'll make whatever I want, especially if I try to order it in Mandarin.
Doesn't matter if it's a Cantonese or Szechwan, not Mandarin, dish. If I make an effort to order it, I get it.

I absolutely love their Fog Cutters, and since I wasn't driving, I drank three of them.
Might not sound like that much, but three of their Fog Cutters takes one for a pleasant ride.

Not the exciting story of the week, perhaps, but I'll share my good time anyway.
At my age. one doesn't take them for granted.
 
When I was a kid in school we got out for two days in October. It was for the state teacher’s meetings taking place in OKC. I think it was mandated by the state that schools allow all of their teachers to attend if the teacher wanted to. To keep from getting themselves in a bind superintendents just worked it into the school calendar to dismiss school on those days. Nowadays we call it Fall Break. I’m not sure there is even a teacher’s meeting.

Fall Break is this Thursday and Friday. My in-laws are driving out here to spend Fall Break with us. I’ll admit we’re plenty worried about them. He is 78 and she is 80. The trip is 640 miles. They’ve made it to within 200 miles today and are in a hotel resting. She just had her heart shocked back into rhythm Friday from being in A-fib. My FIL is in pretty good health and is hoping to help me put doors on my shop when they get here.

The weather is nice here but we need rain badly. The weathermen are saying that it is as dry as it was during the dust bowl days of the 30’s. We got about 1/2 inch yesterday and have a decent chance for some more tomorrow, but we need a good 5 inch rain to help fill our creeks and river. I’m sure it’ll happen this winter and I’ll be looking for a dry spot but right now there’s way too big of a dry spot all over the state.
 
We get an occasional major blizzard, and while it's a monumental inconvenience, it's nothing like the hurricanes in the
southeast, the droughts, floods and tornados in Middle America, or the massive fires and mudslides in the west.

Millions of people are stuffed into the Northeast Corridor for a reason. It's a pretty good place to live.
But there's no perfect place to live.
It's not that kind of a world.

The jetsetter class that lives out of luggage has it figured out, I think.
 
Four day weekend over. First day back at work completed. Need to go home and pick peas and peppers out of my garden as there is a very good opportunity for frost tonight. I'll be shelling then canning peas while I watch the playoffs the rest of the week.

My in-laws came to visit and are back on the road. They're somewhere between Memphis and Jackson, TN. They plan to stop at Jackson for the night. Can't ever think of that town without thinking about the Johnny Cash song ... not even sure that was the Jackson he was singing about.

Got my shop doors installed and am now ready to install a walk in door that can be locked. I can now secure my stuff. I've lived in the same house for over 34 years and have only ever had a chainsaw and a gas can stolen. I just started taking the keys out of my vehicles 3 years ago. My wife of 20 years has trained me to lock my house doors ... but I never did before we were married. Times are a changing ... and not for the better, I fear.

Looking forward to black powder rifle season for deer which opens this coming Saturday. I took my FIL to the range (a slate pit where I go shoot) to make sure my rifles were still zeroed in. All was good, guns are cleaned and waiting on Saturday morning.

Our school is hosting an elementary basketball tournament this week. I will be here from 9 am until 9 or 10 tomorrow night keeping the clock for the games after I teach my classes. But that is the only day I am scheduled to work ... because I'm semi-retired. It's another of those hidden jobs that teachers do that they don't get paid for and not many people notice. I was shocked that back in 1989 to learn that I was expected to work in the concession stand or take money at the gate, in addition to my regular teaching duties.

We finally got a little over 1/2 inch of rain. Happy about that and praying for more. Looks like Winter will start tonight, though. And there are spoons in the persimmon seeds.
 
It sounds to me, Rev, that the teachers in your town don't have a very good union.
That stuff wouldn't fly in Boston.

Nevertheless, looking at the total picture, we're both in the right place.
There's no black powder season in the Boston Public Gardens.
I'd love to be at the City Council meeting when one was proposed, though.

One could write screenplays just from attending Boston City Council meetings, which I often used to do before becoming completed jaded.
"The chair recognizes Mr. Niblick."

I wasn't a star, though.
Some of the concerned citizens from the various neighborhoods and precincts could have you laughing too hard to retain continence.
I remember this one guy from Chinatown who almost made me burst a gut,
but I can't quote what he said, even in the sordid setting of JPP.

Good times, although it didn't always seem like it at the time.
 
Got home from work today about 2:15. The missus was in Tulsa at a workshop for payroll clerks and wouldn’t be home until about 6. It was a cold and rainy day so I put together a pot of gumbo for us and some sauerkraut and pork steak for me (she won’t touch sauerkraut). Those are both the perfect slow cooker dishes. I got both slow cookers hooked up and going then I went deer hunting until she came home. Had a hot supper waiting on us. The shrimp I used was huge. My son had bought it when he was home to prepare some dish he never got around to preparing. It was all good.

So happy to get some rain. We’ve had 3 to 6 inches throughout the area and the weathermen have officially declared the drought to be over. I’m not so sure. The river is still pretty low. When it gets to normal I’ll feel better about things. At least we have reached a cycle of widespread rain for a couple of weeks.

Halloween is Monday. I must make popcorn balls for the kiddos. We have some store-bought candy for most of them but the ones that come by that know me will be expecting popcorn balls. Even some of their parents will be expecting them. My mom’s favorite “holiday?” Is Halloween considered a holiday? I don’t know, but my mom loved it and loved getting to see the kiddos all dressed up.

Looking forward to the next few weeks. Sports and politics … a couple of my favorite things to watch. I predict that the next governor of Oklahoma will be a Democrat … a female Democrat. We’ll see. Like I said, I’m looking forward to it.
 
My daughter is abroad on holiday--divorced life really seems to agree with the good lieutenant detective-- and her brother and I are in charge of going to her house and taking care of the cat.

This is to what seventy-six years of life on this miserable planet have amounted: I'm a servant to a nine-year-old house cat who doesn't particularly like either me or the scent of my dog on me.

No caretaker to the late Queen Elizabeth was ever given a more detailed and complex set of written instructions than those presented to my son and me.

Today's Saturday, so I have the day off and the boss's big brother has cat duty; good luck, son. Good luck with that little assassin and her foul moods.

Well, not a complete day off for me--I still have dog with her own demanding requirements.

I'm not sure whether it's better to reflect on how things came to this, or to just try to relieve my mind of any thoughts at all.
 
leaningright said:
Looking forward to the next few weeks. Sports and politics … a couple of my favorite things to watch. I predict that the next governor of Oklahoma will be a Democrat … a female Democrat. We’ll see. Like I said, I’m looking forward to it.
Click to expand...

Wish I could say the same, Rev.
The Patriots are playing as if this were 1990, and the politics are putting holes in my stomach lining.
 
Had a pretty productive weekend. It rained Friday and Saturday … pretty heavy at times. So thankful for it because we needed it badly. Things are looking up as far as our drought is concerned. I killed a nice doe Saturday.





Got her skinned, quartered and iced down. I’ll start butchering and packaging tomorrow. I need to make some popcorn balls for the trick or treaters first though. We’ve got plenty of other candy but some demand popcorn balls…sometimes it’s the parents doing the demanding. :)

I plan on going to the golf course Tuesday afternoon. Temp is supposed to be in the 70’s by then. I have to keep the clock for the High School basketball game that night but I’ll be through with my round long before then.

The wife and I are planning to go to go see the offspring next weekend under the guise of going to the football game. OU plays Baylor and will very likely get beaten but I’m going to see the kid so it doesn’t matter. Can’t wait.

The series is tied 1-1 and both have been pretty good games. Football this weekend was pretty blah. Series resumes tomorrow night at Philly. Go … I don’t really care, I’m just enjoying the games.
 
Although I feel guilty about it, I'm not a vegetarian. Just because I don't do my own wet work doesn't give me the right to criticize you over the poor deer.

At least I know that you're going to eat it, and that's the system we have in this deplorable universe which some people actually believe is the creation of an all-loving deity.

I just instinctively flinch when I see the photo of the deceased animal--I who used to punch people in the face--really hard--for gas and beer money. Yes, it makes no sense, I agree.

City-kid instincts. Here we have more people than animals, so we value the animals more. If one doesn't grow up that way, one can't understand it, probably.

Anyway, Rev, you had a successful hunt, so please do the poor animal justice and get some sustenance out of the transaction.
I know that you will. If you didn't take her down, either a wolf or starvation eventually would have.
 
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