so waht ya doin today?

[Ian]

I had to buy a new Bic the other day just for burning paper/cardboard at work, finally used up the last of the fuel in the last one of my butane spares I had leftover from when I quit smoking sometime around 2012. Still have my beloved Zippos, though, just that there's no point in keeping them fueled anymore. Last fall I picked up a deer tick while digging a post hole in a grassy area on a deer trail (cleared property line) right at the edge of the woods. First tick I'd seen here since I was a kid.

 

[Brad]

Of course Ian found a tick in Texas. It was the size of a small dog and had it bit him he could have bled out.

 

[waco]

Of course Ian found a tick in Texas. It was the size of a small dog and had it bit him he could have bled out.

 

[Ian]

Nah, I just picked it up with both hands, bit its head off, and wired it to the front gate post to dry in the sun next to the old boots and catfish heads.

 

[Pistolero]

A tick in Texas. WOW. What a shock.

I need to get the snow blade put away, wheel weights and chains off the tractor. Time
to get the mower deck greased, check the gearbox oil and back installed to mow. Gotta plug the
one rear tire, too. Apparently a big thorn worked it's way out over the winter with the chains
on in the snow, tire goes flat in 30 minutes. Damned black locust and hedge. I swear if you were
running and stumbled and fell against a black locust tree around here, it would kill you and the
body would be stuck on the tree forever, like a bug on a pin.



I was plugging ONE TIRE one day, pulled these out and plugged them.



the biggest one is about 3/16" diam, about 1 1/4" long. One tire, one time.

Bill

Bill

 

[Brad]

The make a good fence post. Just drive your staples in when it is green because once it dries it is some damn hard stuff.

Those thorns are serious stuff. I hate those trees.

 

[Pistolero]

If I cut down all the hedge and locust, I'd have damned few trees, unfortunately. And I like the
shade. Hedge (osage orange) is harder than hell when it is dry and burns incredibly hot, lots of
resin in it. A friend still heats his 1880s home with wood entirely, only bothers with hedge because
it puts out so much more heat. But he warns, "don't burn it in a cheap stove, it'll burn through".

Bill

 

[Brad]

Good old hedge apple. Burned a fair amount of that stuff camping.

I just replaced the ignition on the pellet smoker. Nothing like crawling on wet, muddy pavers to remind yourself how to do it. Not bad once you remember.

Need to order a couple more igniters.

 

[Bret4207]

hehe . . . What can I say? Grass is already green, got flowers blooming, rose bushes leafed out, It's that time of year. BTW, today will only get to about 70 degrees.

We have a "like" button, now we need an "Oh, you rotten so and so!" button.

 

[S Mac]

Bret
Guess you can use this.

 

[fiver]

went to the home depot today since the wife and oldest girl HAD to go to pokey.
the lady there tried to get me to get one their cards, promised me 25$ off my order if she couldn't get it to go through.[50$ if it did]
okay,, 2 minutes later she is ringing me up and subtracting the 25$.... LOL.
no E-mail, no credit history, no income, and you own a house?
yeah, got a near brand new truck too.
extremely puzzled look on the other side of the counter.

 

[462]

Pulled the last of the front weeds. The side is next, but rain is scheduled starting Monday evening, so it'll have to wait till next weekend.

Fiver,
I ought'a try that.
A couple years ago, after one of the massive data breaches, my wife did the free credit report thing from the three credit reporting companies. Her credit information was not compromised. (Honey, it's only Macy's, Kohl's, etc. just in case . . .)
For me, it was Michael who?? I haven't had a credit card since the early part of 2001 and am a credit non-entity. Perfect, I love it!
House, truck, car, motorhome and boat are paid for. Want something and don't have the ready cash, save for it.

 

[358156 hp]

went to the home depot today since the wife and oldest girl HAD to go to pokey.
the lady there tried to get me to get one their cards, promised me 25$ off my order if she couldn't get it to go through.[50$ if it did]
okay,, 2 minutes later she is ringing me up and subtracting the 25$.... LOL.
no E-mail, no credit history, no income, and you own a house?
yeah, got a near brand new truck too.
extremely puzzled look on the other side of the counter.

I had some issues finding a reasonable consolidation loan to eliminate my credit cards. All of my credit history was really ancient. I had quit buying big-ticket items, and was paying all my bills on time. All this equals no credit history. All I wanted to do was get away from the revolving interest surrounding past emergencies and whatnot. I finally found a lender with terms I can live with, starting with an interest rate under half of what I was getting quoted elsewhere. Cash is King, until it isn't.

 

[Ian]

I paid off my student loans and credit debt by the early 2000s after putting myself through college a second time and never looked back. I have no credit score. I checked into getting a loan in preparation for making offers on several adjacent properties and everyone looked at me like I was from Mars. Middle-aged, paid-for house, property, cars, nice investment portfolio, and no credit history on the books? Are you kidding? One banker said "well, we can borrow against your investments...." I told him never mind I'd keep saving dollar bills and make cash offers like I paid for everything else. If you aren't eyeballs deep in debt nobody will loan you a thing, it doesn't make any sense.

 

[Rick]

I'm in the same boat, no debt at all, everything paid for. Couldn't buy a postage stamp with 30 cents down payment. A banker told me one time that the very worst credit you can have is no credit, he said it's worse than if ya had bankruptcy's and late payments. He said to them your a black hole and they have nothing to look at.

 

[Ian]

Spent most of the day cleaning up my reloading room, actually made some progress for the first time in several years. Packed up six, five-gallon buckets mostly full of various cast bullets that for one reason or another never got shot and organized the bullet shelves with only the 26 designs I'm currently using. The goal is ultimately to pare down to no more than two designs per cartridge and no more than four per caliber, getting real close to that now. I can see most of the floor and benches again, and actually was able to vacuum the carpet for the first time in several years. Emptied the canister vac in the middle of the driveway and set it off with a few inches of cannon fuse and let me tell you a big lint/powder ball with a few live primers in it makes quite a flash-bang and a neat little black mushroom cloud!

Still need to weed through the brass, bullet moulds, a few more die sets, go through the safe again to clean and examine everything and then go through all my hunting, range, and S&G bags, but it's shaping up. Texas weather doesn't provide much forced downtime for "winter projects" except when it's raining so this stuff keeps getting put off.

 

[uncle jimbo]

and actually was able to vacuum the carpet for the first time in several years.

You actually have carpet in your reloading room?
Damn, I must really be living on the poor side of town. All I have is cement floor.

 

[Pistolero]

Carpet in a reloading room. Wow. I have a bare concrete floor like Uncle Jimbo.

I use a credit card for most purchases, but we pay it all off every month. If the card company
tries to charge us a fee, we tell them, "We''ll cancel if you do" and if they do, we cancel. So pay
zip for our credit cards, which are really needed for traveling in Europe and way easier traveling
around the USA. I normally get on the web in the car if my wife is driving, and we decide when
we want to stop, then make the reservation online, get the usually cheaper online rate, hold it with
the card. Easy check in. And easy online purchases, too. Wouldn't be without the cards, but will
not pay extra for it, either.

To each his own. We have a loan on one house, decided that with a 3 5/8% loan we are
making way more than that on the money in our investment accounts, so leave it there. Could
pay it off any time, but just stupid to do it. A couple hundred K bucks invested and making like
10-12% beats having it doing nothing in a house.

Bill

 

[Bret4207]

I'm digging my way out of stupid decisions. Did manage to chop 10% interest off one payment and get rid of a ridiculous CC (I only have 1) in one fell swoop with just a phone call. That near 800 credit rating does help. Next in line is Lowes which I did not realize has a stupid high interest rate. Even taking the "no interest" offer on the fridge we had to have you pay a lot extra. It's not easy learning all about money at 45 years old or so, but it was the best thing my wife ever did to me. "Here Bret, I'm tired of taking care of all things financial, you are now in charge of your money." Scared the crap out of me. My parents never, ever, EVER talked about money in front of us. That was a mistake. I've tried to rectify that with my kids. Oldest girl is a lost cause but oldest boy is catching on, just not real focused. Boy #2 is a work and saver, daughter #2 is a work and spender. In a few years I should be where I want to be if I don't get a bad case of stupid or someone gets in real trouble. I can recall when someone with a credit card was a rarity. Now I see people I know for a fact have been bankrupt on multiple occasions, with a revenue stream that is no more than a SS check with literally 15 or 20 CC's. Yeah, the limit might be $1500 or $4000, but there's why everyone elses interest rate is so high. Can't see how the banks make any $$.

Freakin' cold here! Spring is a Bi-polar old witch! Make up your mind, cold and wet stinks!

 

[smokeywolf]

We have no debt other than the mortgage which is down to about 20% of the value of the house.
College Boy should end up with no more than about $5K in student debt when he has his bachelors degree in hand. However, he'll have another 1 to 2 years, as he's going for his masters.
Youngest is looking at a career in medicine. I fear I'm going to be putting some assets on the auction block.