Bob Wells Nursery

After much research I packed up the Suburban and headed off to Lindale, Texas and Bob Wells Nursery. As a cantankerous, contrarian curmudgeon, anytime I have so many people saying good things about a company I usually go in with lowered expectations. Happily my expectations were far exceeded.

I went in on a Monday in mid-October and had the place basically to myself. I spent almost an hour just walking through and getting a feel for their inventory. The employees were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful and gave me plenty of space to just wander around like a poor kid in a toy store. I ended up buying a plethora of trees, bushes, and vines. The guys loaded up my trailer, happily gave me my TSP discount (it paid for the next several years of membership with Spirko by the way) and I was on my way.

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.

Swales - Just a Ditch on Contour

For those of you who've owned a house already, you understand the time/money pit they can be. Setting up a homestead adds another level to that, in addition to the electric bill etc, you have the additional costs of trees, bushes, animals, feeding troughs, feed, tools et cetra.

Some of these are simply sunk costs, like renting the excavator to dig the swales, while others like the fruit trees themselves will give me at least 100% ROI per year for 10 years (if I can keep them alive, 50/50 that.) I get that ROI number based on assuming $25 paid for tree, and getting at least 25 pounds of fruit valued at $1 per pound for at least 10 years of the trees life.

The first big project that I had to get out of the way was getting the swales dug in. I dug in three, the first one ended up being in really poor soil. The next two swales were in beautiful black clay/loam and that's where I ended up planting a majority of my trees/bushes/vines. In the row that was poor soil, I only planted three trees, two Advacados and a plum. We'll see how they do.

Bob Wells Nursery

After much research I packed up the Suburban and headed off to Lindale, Texas and Bob Wells Nursery. As a cantankerous, contrarian curmudgeon, anytime I have so many people saying good things about a company I usually go in with lowered expectations. Happily my expectations were far exceeded.

I went in on a Monday in mid-October and had the place basically to myself. I spent almost an hour just walking through and getting a feel for their inventory. The employees were friendly, knowledgeable, and helpful and gave me plenty of space to just wander around like a poor kid in a toy store. I ended up buying a plethora of trees, bushes, and vines. The guys loaded up my trailer, happily gave me my TSP discount (it paid for the next several years of membership with Spirko by the way) and I was on my way.

If you're anywhere nearby go in and talk with the guys there, they'll tell you what will grow and what won't. Amendments you need, and those you can do without.

The VA as model for Nationalized Single Payer System

While I was in Ground Radar tech school in Mississippi, I had A LOT of time on my hands, so I turned to Facebook to reconnect with some friends from high school. One of the topics turned to the ACA, and how the VA was THE model to emulate. This was early 2014, February or March, and the suggestion came from one of the smartest women I've ever met. Which is what disturbed me most.

Now she's a great person and I'd describer her as a libertarian leaning Democrat. College educated, well read, independent in her thinking, and completely ignorant of the realities present in the VA. I'd seen some shenanigans in my time with Uncle Sugar as a Rater for the VA, but even I had no idea how bad it really was at the time with the scheduling fraud that was rampant around the country. In hindsight I truly wonder how close the counrty was at the passing of the ACA to having a national single payer instead. Had the ruling party simply have trotted out what most people thought was fantastic care at the VA as how it would be, I wonder if they could have passed it...

Hopefully more and more people are waking up to the reality that an incentive based model is always going to offer better care than a non-profit. That's Profit, for those who don't like dirty words or Charity for the religious amongst us who worry about how they treat their fellow man more than how many cars they can fit in their garages.... All men are created equal, but all men are not the same. Some win in the lottery that is life, genetically, financially, or simply in where they're born. To punish any for this in my mind is no different than discriminating against someone for being born a certain color, handicapped, or gay. To take from them as punishment for success no different than holding another down to prevent them from their Pursuit of life, Liberty and Happieness.

It's going to be interesting moving forward to see how the big problems facing our nation play out. As Winston Churchill reportedly said, "Americans will always do the right thing when they've exhausted all other options."

The Journey to a Homestead

In the fall of my last year coaching women's basketball (2008) I took a step back and began to take inventory of my life. I had a dozen nice suits, a Honda Del Sol, and a sweet Jeep Rubicon (that I owed roughly $15,000 on) and no real assets to speak of other than a few thousand dollars in my retirement account. All told I was right at $60,000 in debt.

I'd been exsposed to enough successful people by this time that I knew I had to make a change in my life, but I had no idea how or where to start, so I do what I always do when I have a question, I turned to Google and begun to research how to get out of debt. I found Dave Ramsey's plan which can be boiled down to this:

1. Pay cash, if you can't pay cash you can't afford it, whatever it may be.

2. If you have a bank loan on the car sell it and drive a beater. (I stupidly fought this for a year.)

3. Attack the smallest debt with all your money, and progressively, ruthlessly, and unwaveringly start paying off from one to the next.

4. Get a second job and be even more heartless in killing the cancer that is debt. I was already a drilling guardsman, so I had another avenue, GI Bill cashola.

5. Get a savings fund of $1000

6. 6 months expenses

7. Start putting away 15% of your monthly income, and then pay off your house as fast as you can.

It really is that simple. It's a matter of how much do you want to be free?

I was a motivated young man. I had a plan, and I worked that plan. I decided that I was going to give being an assistant one more year, and if I didn't get a head coaching job it was time for me to find a job with real earning potential. Knowing what young coaches are supposed to look like I got up at 5:00 three times a week and lifted my guts out. I messed up a ton, ate out too much, cared about not wearing the same shirt twice in a month at work, but I was still searching.

My mom had always kept a garden when I was growing up, I knew how much better I could eat if I was raising it myself, but I didn't have the skills. In the Spring of 2009 in the midst of my search for gardening knowledge I found Jack Spirko and The Survival Podcast. He was Dave Ramsey with a country twang, a healthy bit of profanity that I could appreciate, and a man working a plan. I was hooked. For what it's worth and for the faint of heart, he's not leaving in a bunker (nor his mother's basement) wearing a tin foil cap, he's good ol' boy who was in the rat race, and decided he was going to get out.

This Is Still Who We Are

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-kellys-speech-about-marines-in-ramadi-2013-6

Read this today. I was sad and proud. More than anything I was given hope. I don't believe non - lovers of freedom make this decision.

As a better man than me once wrote, "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13

EDC Leatherman Surge

Leatherman with Bit Kit and Extension

I picked up the Leatherman Surge before my deployment to Kuwait in early 2013. I didn't know how I'd feel about it since it was so much bigger than The Gerber Multi-Tool I was issued almost a decade prior for my first all expense trip to an equally exotic locale.

I went to Kuwait this time thinking I was going to be the CSA for the Delaware and Texas Air Guard (I filled a slot for Delaware). Much like my last trip to the desert this one wasn't exactly as advertised... I ended up being a jack of all trades this trip. Was there a lot of computer work, yes, but I was also the building custodian, cell phone guy, bird predation Alpha team member with SMSgt B (best gig ever, BTW), Plaque Maker, and the First Shirt's Officially Designated plow horse. I had a blast this deployment. Part of it was the fact that no one was trying to kill me, and the other part of it was my attitude was ask me and I'll say yes! Weird what age and perspective will do for you.

At my going away dinner the Colonel described me as the Chewbacca of the Squadron, didn't say much but could fix anything. Computers, plumbing, raining death from above on pigeons,  metal work, scrounging semi-truck wheels for the Shirt to turn into a bitching barbecue pit. So what does any of this have to do with the Leatherman?

I used the heck out of that thing, the extension, and the bit drivers. Need your reading glasses tightened Chief, I'm your Huckleberry. Need to tear apart a computer so that you can prove to a Lt. Col. that there aren't scorpions in their computer stealing their reports? Check. Adjust water flow to a sink whose Hadji handle has broken off, Sure.

This piece of kit has been used every day. The bit kit gives you Torq bits, flat heads, Phillips,  Robertson, and Pozi bit heads. The extension gives you a screw driver without having to get the Leatherman clear of the case, and combined with the Leatherman slot allows you a ton of torque on whatever you're working on.

The Leatherman itself has been a workhorse. The finish has held up to a lot of hard use and  remains tight to this day. Can't recommend this piece of kit enough.

Gay Marriage - AKA Questioning Why Anyone Has to Ask Permission of the State to Marry

I remember my senior year English teacher saying in class my senior year that one day, in our lifetime we would see gay rights viewed as we viewed race. I had never thought such a thing possible at the time.

My first real memory of the adult world was the Carter-Reagan election in 1980. The one television we had in the house in Arkansas was upstairs and tuned to PBS, the sole channel we received out in the hinterlands. My parents had sent me upstairs to find out who won the election. When I returned with news of Reagan's victory, I remember my father's disbelief that a man from the "Sodomite" state of California was now President. Now I didn't know what a sodomite was at the time, but I knew it wasn't good. (Strangely enough 4 years later, both my parent voted for Reagan, but as always I digress.)

I spent my formative years as a boy in Pentecostal churches in the rural, poor south. I never met an Out person during that time. Yet, for all the sermons, you would have thought that we were about to be over run at any moment by roving hordes of Gay Bikers with magic dust that could make every young man a wanton cock gobbler.

From this I moved to Idaho, land of the Mormons, and funeral potatoes. I met my best friend, one of six brothers and one sister. I was eleven, and we've been thick as thieves ever since. I've watched his attitude evolve as well through time. One of the things I love about the West is, for the most part, people do not feel the need to be involved in other peoples business. Adam watched me fall in love with a girl, who broke my heart when she broke up with me by coming out to me. All my life I'd heard how evil "the Gays" were, and here was this wonderful girl who was brave enough to tell me the truth, to be true to herself, and who was hurting, and scared of what her friends would say.

I left Idaho for Utah, then SoCal and eventually Corvallis, Oregon. I was in the OSU ROTC when I got a call from a buddy who had just taken a head coaching job in Eastern Oregon and needed a white assistant coach who would work for $800 a year. Three years later, and a side trip to Iraq, I took a job coaching women's basketball.

I still remember the conversation that crystallized my position on love being equal. One of my favorite girls on our team was Out and comfortable in her own skin, finally as a senior. We were talking one day about how it was for her to be Gay in Idaho. She said, "Coach, I'd give anything to be straight, it would be so much easier. I've tried dating guys, and kept trying, but it's not who I am."

I watched another girl, who had a great relationship with her folks by the way, hide who she was and who she loved, because they were LDS, and she was terrified they would disown her. It still hurts my heart to this day. I've been impressed that the LDS Church (updated from one of my former players' FB pages) has really softened their stance on gay kids. Hopefully it helps.

So here ends my rant. The state should have no role in who can and cannot marry. Free Men and Women don't have to ask the King for Permission on Who They Love. Staight, gay, whatever. Herein lies my problem. Religions, churches, sects, cults, should be as free to set there standards for performing marriages as I am not to give a sh!t as to what they think if our beliefs do not coincide. I see conflict coming in the area in the future, centered around tax exempt status if they're exclusionary.

Churches should have every right to call whomever they want sinner and "Sodomite", and no duty to perform a ceremony they feel sacred for some one they don't consider worthy. Somehow I don't think there would be a big waiting list for gay folks to express there commitment to one another in the unfriendly confines of an institution that publicly sentences them to hell. As hard as I try to not judge others, defending "Offensive Speech" and free exercise (not freedom from) religion is also the bedrock of the First Amendment.

As for me I saw the harder road that my Gay friends have to walk. Smaller dating pool, social stigma, self image issues, fear of family rejection, and a myriad of other challenges that straight folks get to take for granted. As someone who felt estranged from G-d for the better part of a decade, I still can't feel that I'm worthy to judge anyone else with all the sin hash marks I have on my heavenly chalkboard.

There's my two cents on a subject no one wants to talk about.