Books of 2010: Recap

53 books.  Though maybe someone should check my counting.  Some of them were thicker than others, but I figure that "Atlas Shrugged" averages out with "Old Man and the Sea," and we get an average of 53 real sized books.  That's a lot of books!




Sorry, I just watched Kung Pow! again. That's one of my favorite scenes.

2011, here I come!

New Converts

Some family friends liked my stout so much that they wanted to start making beer themselves. So today we're going to start another batch. Beer making is like shooting--show someone how to do it and they can't help but enjoy themselves!

"Give a man a beer and he will waste an hour. Teach a man to brew and he will waste a lifetime."

The one thing I had to splurge on right now

The only thing that the new truck was lacking was a functional way to play music--and music is the only way I can a drive of any significant length (and you may have noticed that I like music a lot).  So Yesterday I bought a new stereo off of crutchfield.com. It turns out that a new stereo requires about $45 worth of extra stuff on top of the price of the thing itself, and Crutchfield includes all of that stuff free if your stereo is over $130.  Assuming it all comes in in one piece, we'll see how easy it is to install...

The one thing that I don't like about these things is that they all look the same.  A big knob and some buttons along the bottom, with bright LED lights.  I miss the stock stereo from my jeep already, what with its manual equalizer and big buttons.  What ever happened to manual controls?  Every thing is so digital these days...

And I just reminded myself of a song:




Every band should have a saxophone player in it...

Books of 2010: Sherlock Holmes: The Montana Chronicles

I had been seeing "Sherlock Holmes: The Montana Chronicles," by "Dr. John H Watson, M.D.," "edited by" John Fitzpatrick, around the shops of Montana since the summer, and in early December I bought it just to see what it was like.  The premise is that Sherlock Holmes and Watson came to MT to help out Marcus Daly
(one of the Copper Kings of Butte's mining haydays) and stay for a short time to solve a few other mysteries.  Dr. Watson left the manuscript at the Anaconda library, where it was lost in a safe until recently, when John Fitzpatrick edits and publishes it.

It was written in the same style as all of the other Sherlock Holmes stories, and is highly entertaining and readable, especially if you have been in the areas described in the stories.  Also in the book are occasional pictures from the early 1900's showing the places as they would have been when Dr. Watson was "writing" the stories. I give it 10 pipes out of 10.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes started out my Books of 2010, and this modern incarnation appears to be the one to close it.  I should go back and count how many books I really read, as that was the whole point of this exercise when I started it, but right now I am lazy.  Maybe later.  What will I read in 2011?  Will I finally get back to Vlad Taltos, as I have been meaning to do for two years now?  Will I find new entirely series (series's? series'?  What's the plural of that word, anyway?) to distract me?  Stay tuned to find out!

It's finally below freezing and snowing!

It is winter.

We hitched the horse up to the sleigh,
Like Grandfather used to do.
Over hills and through the dells
We'd glide for an hour or two.
And soon my ears are brittle
And my mouth is frozen shut.
My eyes are locked wide open
And all I see is the horse's butt.

-Red Green

NOOOO!!! RUGER, WHY MUST YOU TORMENT ME SO?

I get the Ruger newsletter, because I can, and got this yesterday:

 

It's everything I wanted, since I read "To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Tell the Truth"... 

Just at the time that I really shouldn't...