Category Archives: Uncategorized

09.10.24
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This Evening?

I have today and tomorrow as good working days. Then it gets rainy/windy for a few days. So I go to the river, and dig shells today.

When I roll back in this evening I have to unload my take, store them in the shop, and put water in the buckets they are in, so they can hopefully stay alive for a couple of days. (They are a lot harder to process when they start dying.)

Then I have to take stock of my gear, make sure everything is up to snuff, and gas up the boat for the following day. Pre trip inspection goes like this: bags/flags/buckets/tools/fuel/wet suit/cooler. By now it’s darn near dark.

Day two, same as day one.

Then the day after that, I have to cook all of them out. Estimate 750-900 lb green shell for 2 days. Then, when I can manufacture a minute, I have to bag them up, according to predetermined sizing, and weight, for sale.

…and that folks is how two days of work, turns into nearly four days of work. Then it takes me a couple days to get over my exhaustion and pain, so I can go again. I have to be careful the entire time, not to have a muscle spasm, because then I’m done for a good while. Have to pace myself, and rest when necessary. Believe it or not, getting the shell is the easy part.

Wife is going with me today, so I’ll have a deckhand 😉

P.S. Our local buyer is currently shut down. Or I’d sell the shell green and avoid the extra work. But, there is an out of state buyer who wants them. So, they have to be processed. I also had to get a commercial tag for my 3/4 ton truck, as hauling shell out of state is interstate commerce. Also, have to carry $300,000 of liability! (all tax deductible!) And, if that isn’t enough, I have to keep a log of any commercial trip. Plus… The state of Tennessee wants to be paid a shell tax! (The buyer takes care of the tax, but it’s another step in the process.) Are we having fun yet?

It takes me a good while to get up enough shell to make a trip. Which by itself, is one long day. My truck is rated for hauling #3000. That is also the maximum weight I can legally carry, as that brings my total weight, truck and load, right up to the commecial tag rating of #9000 total weight.

I can only make three trips a year, as there is a limit to how much $$ I can make in actual profit. To be honest, it’s about all I can handle anyway, and that’s pushing it. But I’m going to get what they will let me have dammit.

Everything is loaded up, I got to go.

Daily writing prompt
What are you doing this evening?
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09.09.24
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Personality Trait Red Flag?

A person I’ve just met, who has to announce their particular religion, in the first few moments of meeting them.

I’m a natural born skeptic, I find all religions equally laughable. When someone announces their religion right off the bat, I feel like they are looking for the secret handshake, an attempt to curry favor on the basis of their religion, and not on who they actually are.

I’ve seen far too many overtly religious types, who are anything but, actual followers of their professed religion. They use it as a tool. To get the job, to get the favor, to see what they can get out of you.

I do not generally judge a person by their religion, or lack of it, I judge a person by their actions.

…and if your religion is the basis for you being a lying, thieving, manipulative, wife beating, child abusing, bigoted jack ass, then it apparently hasn’t taken.

You’ve seen them too. Or, maybe you prefer not to look.

“By their actions, you shall know them.”

Daily writing prompt
What personality trait in people raises a red flag with you?
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09.03.24
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Far From Home

Having grown up in an owner operator trucking family, and also ventured out a bit on my own, working for a trucking outfit, I’ve travelled a bit. I have been from Seattle to Miami, and from Maine to L.A. Seen a great deal in between. Few states I haven’t been in.

I was driving a 13 speed truck when I was 12. An early start.

I learned how to work on our truck. My stepdad was an old school trucker, who had been around the block a time or two. I learned a great deal from him about driving big trucks, as well as how to work on diesel engines, and the things that make them go. We didn’t pay to have things done we could do ourselves. I still carry that attitude with me. We didn’t do transmissions or rear ends, but everything else, we had the tools, and the know how, to handle.

I’ve been working on a motorcycle that was acquired lately, because I can. Replaced the coils in it, because after a time running @ 60-65 mph, it would spit-n-sputter, and sometimes die. 20 minutes later it would fire up and run again. Bad coils have a habit of misbehaving in such a manner. Took it for a ride yesterday, and the issue persists. So I’m looking around for hint or a clue, and I spotted a wet fuel filter, way down deep under the bike.

I pulled the filter, and you should have seen the brown crud that dumped out of it. New filter, fuel line, and a new fuel pump on the way. I think this might be the culprit. (It’s a 2004 bike, that only had 7064 miles on it, so it sat a lot. Which is not good for vehicles in general.) Being mechanically inclined, and having the experience of working on that truck, prepared me for most of my adult life. I’m still reparing most things that need fixing, which is darn near everything sooner or later. Though, I still have a car that myself, a good mechanic in town, and the Ford dealership have, to date, been unable to fix. I haven’t given up yet, but have been to busy and/or too tired to mess with it. It’s on my list.

Among other things, I also worked as a deckhand for a towboat company for a couple of years, I rode the Illinois, the Ohio, the Missouri, and the upper and lower Mississippi rivers. I learned how to handle rigging, ropes, capstans, and how to use a fid to splice rope, both poly and steel. Also, learned how how to make bumpers out of rope, for getting into and out of locks/dams. To this day, my rope experience pays me back in dividends. Knowing what knot to use for what situation is very helpful. Knowing how to splice an eye into a rope, or splice two rope ends together, is damn handy. Knowing how to properly use a cleat (Kevel, pronounced Cav’el, on towboats/barges,) is something I still do often in my boating/diving adventures. I also got to see much of our country from another perspective, from the rivers that run through them. I’ve seen big river towns lit up at night, and enjoyed the serenity of sitting on the front of a tow (a group of barges tied together with steel wire rigging,) far from the noise of the towboat, and only hearing the water lapping up under the barges as the town slips by. Pretty cool. You had to be there…

Of the many things I’ve learned in life, two would be: You can never have too much rope, and there’s no such thing as extra tarp! 😉

So, the things we learn in our travels, as young men and women, can be quite helpful in life later on. Though I gave up driving trucks, and riding towboats a long time ago, the experiences gained are invaluable to me still today.

Still shifting gears after all these years 😉

…and there’s no such thing as “far from home,” when you know how to find your way back, and can meet, and beat, the problems that pop up along the way.

Daily writing prompt
Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever traveled from home.
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08.09.24
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Eggsactly

I’m on my way to work soon, having breakfast as I type. When I go diving I need a good breakfast to get me going. It’s a high energy job that gives your entire body a workout. My usual diving day breakfast is a couple of eggs over medium, and a bowl of oatmeal. Lunch is often a ham n cheese sandwich and a snack.

I’m dropping an egg into the skillet this morning, and the yolk is barely as big as a quarter, the white didn’t spread very far either! WTF? I’ve had Banty* eggs that were bigger. So, this got me to wondering who, and how the hell, do they grade eggs anyway? Well, I used our monopolized friend Google to investigate.

Eggs are graded not by size, as one might assume. But by weight per dozen. Of course one will make the other, but I did not know this.

Also as it turns out, USDA has a standard for “wholesomeness and safety.” (how and what exactly makes an egg wholesome?) While grading of size is, get this, voluntary! Unless your package has a USDA shield on it, the eggs within were “voluntarily” graded for size. With the USDA shield, that means the company paid to have USDA oversee the grading process. The carton my eggs came in actually does have a USDA shield, and labeled Grade A, Large.

But, I still got to say, I have a funny feeling someone is voluntarily taking my money for what is actually a medium egg, that is packaged and priced, as large. And they have been doing it as long as I can remember. I also remember when Big Macs were big, when Reeses peanut butter cups seemed to be over 2.5″ across, when a bar of soap was 30% bigger than it is now, and when just about everything we bought and consumed was of a larger size than we see today. But those things AFAIK, aren’t regulated, as eggs presumably are.

I don’t have a scale in the range for testing this theory, but I’ll be looking for one. Maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps my suspicious nature is acting up. But something here doesn’t seem right. Wal Mart is the business from which these eggs were acquired. That alone does nothing to alleviate my suspicions. In fact that makes it worse. When I find a suitable scale, I’ll investigate and update.

There is another store in town that sells eggs that do not have the USDA shield on the package, and we will get our eggs there more often, because when you look them over, they certainly seem to be larger eggs, and consistently so. Having the USDA shield on the package is apparently not the be-all, end-all way to determine the size of the eggs inside. I’ve been complaining about Wal Mart’s Banty eggs for a long time, but never thought to look into this and see if I can figure out what’s going on.

Sizing Up Eggs

I’m heading out, wish me luck. What was supposed to be a N wind @ 5-10 turned into a N wind @ 15+ yesterday. Resulting in me getting blown off the lake. My next internet investigation will be why the hell can’t the forecast get the wind right?

*A Banty, or Bantam, is a small chicken.

** I’m aware that bird flu has devastated egg production, but that does not mean I’m ok with medium eggs in a large container.

07.21.24
by

What I Listen To At Work

The music in my head.

All I can hear on the bottom of Ky. Lake is the noise my regulator makes, the bubbles, and motor boats within 1/3 a mile or so.

You are alone. No TV, no people, no distractions but for the boat tugging on you whichever way the wind is blowing.

The job, harvesting freshwater mussels, I’ve done so long it’s damn near auto pilot. Don’t have to think about it much. So, you are very much alone with yourself. Having troubles? You have plenty of time to think. There’s a lot of thinking going on. But usually I’ll settle in, and sooner than later, a song pops into my head.

Which is fine. Except once one does, it sticks with you a while. It’s hard to change the channel. You will think of another song, and get it going, but the other song inevitably jumps back.

My song yesterday was “I Need You” by one of my old time faves Lynyrd Skynyrd. I warn you, it’s an ear worm, but a great song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kD1ruD7-2-I

Side note, I came up from my first dive yesterday, had lost one of my shell sacks, and it had my 4″ Washboard and Heel Splitter ring on it! Shit! Damn! Hell! Then it gets even better, I hadn’t been in the boat 10 seconds, and I see a boat near me with a man and a woman in it. The guy was waving, his boat motor was up, and he was moving under trolling motor power. “Well shit!” I knew what this was the second I saw it.

He needed a tow. His outboard failed.

I’ve been out here on this lake/river a long time. 40 years in fact. So, these things happen, and the river code is simple. You help people when they need it. I didn’t want to, I had a shell sack to hunt for. I was on a decent spot too. So my income for the day is going to take a drastic hit. All I could do though, was ask, “where do you need to get to?”

I’ll spare you the details, but I used Google Earth this morning, it was a 7.5 mile tow! Thank Njord, one of the Nordic gods, there was a marina close by, so I could get enough $5.25 a gallon gas to get me back to my spot to hunt for my sack. It took 2.5 hours to get back where I was diving. The trip back might have taken 20 minutes. Lots of boat traffic on a Saturday, heavy wakes and a N wind slowed me a bit.

Thing is, it was that guy yesterday, it could be me tomorrow. These are the kind of things you pay forward, whether you have something you’d rather do, or not.

Oh yeah, I found the sack 😉

Daily writing prompt
What do you listen to while you work?
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06.28.24
by

Oh Joe.

Yes, Joe Biden is old. He looked old, he sounded old, he struggled to find words. He’s old.

The orange idiot, all he could do was lie his ass off about everything, and show what an asshole he really is. You know how you could tell he was lying? It happens every time he opens his mouth.

When it comes right down to it, I’ll vote for an old guy, before I vote for another old guy, who also grabs pusssies, is a felon, a sexual assaulter, a classified document thief, a wanna be dictator who sucks up to and admires actual dictators, a habitual and compulsive liar, a Proud Boy/ KKK lover, the architect of overturning Roe, an insurrectionist, and a man so caught up in himself he creates his own reality, and no one in his orbit can say that the emporer has no clothes.

EVERY TIME.

I don’t care if they have to stuff Joe with straw, put a little American flag in his hand, and parade him around in a wheelchair, I’m voting for Joe.

Do I wish we had better candidates? Yes. Is there anything I can do to change it? No.

Our choice, is vote for an old guy, or another orange old guy who is a walking, talking, lying sack of shit. But here’s the thing, I suspect voter apathy will rear its head because of our lack of good choices, and if it does, that orange bastard actually has a good chance to win. If that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, you haven’t been paying attention.

06.20.24
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Can’t Do It

The minute I decide who my favorite historical figure is, something will come to light about that individual that will make me shake my head and have to look for another.

Maybe, if I go far enough back in time, how about Galileo? He took astronomy mainstream, and stood up to the church, with facts. Even in the face of the churches persecution.

Yeah, I’ll take that guy. For now.

Daily writing prompt
Who is your favorite historical figure?
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05.30.24
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Guilty, on All 34 Counts!

I just yelled out my front door, “there is justice!”

But wait a minute. This orange bastard walks out of the courtroom? You, or me, would have been frog marched to a waiting cell, to be transferred to an actual jail, and sit there awaiting appeal. (Which will surely happen.) But the point here, is that orange asshole is right! The system is rigged, rigged in favor of rich white assholes who think they can do what they please. We’d have probably been in a cell the entire time, except for when they gave us a free ride to the trial.

My disgust for this fucker aside, I’m quite pleased that we can now say “Donald Trump, felon.” Has a nice ring to it.

But wait a minute, felons can’t vote, or hold public office. (AFAIK) So this jack ass can’t even vote for himself, but he can run for president? Is there nothing in our rules anywhere that keeps a felon from running for, and/or being a president in this country?

If not, why not?

Regardless, I’m going to do my happy dance now. Whatever comes, this is a win. This is a win for all good people in this country. It’s a win for justice. It’s a win because Faux News probably exploded, and all the right wing propagators of bullshit, are scurrying around with their pathetic little heads looking for a clue, and waiting for the “official” talking point, avenues of attack, to come in on the fax machine.

A felony, as far as I can remember from high school, comes with a minimum 1 year and a day sentence, and misdemeanors a maximum of 11 months, 29 days. So the orange idiot is now a felon, he damn well better get jail time. Or this was all for naught. I want to see that orange bastard in an orange jumpsuit, for at least a year dammit! I hope the judge tosses in another couple of months for all of the asshole-ery in the courtroom, and the many violations of the gag order.

All we can do is wait. And hope this judge comes down with a heavy hand. I doubt it, but one can hope.

Dear Santa… all I want is 😉

05.28.24
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Nope

I’d rather do something useful, like practice guitar. Or practice vocals, which I really, really, need to practice. Or practice anything in the here and now, and not waste precious time on something that exists only between the ears of believers.

If you want to know how I feel about religion, watch a few George Carlin routines.

I’ll make it easy for you:

If I had to proclaim faith in anything, it would be in the scientific method. Where things are verifiable, observable, repeatable, and not based solely on a belief, rattling around in someones head, which is none of those things.

I also have faith that most people who are believers, are unmitigated assholes. They manage to prove it almost every time I run into one. Well, where are all of these assholes you ask? Try the church down the road, or a Trump rally, the internet, Congress, or even SCOTUS. I’m sure you will have really good luck looking in any of those places.

You’ll bag a shitload of assholes. If there’s anything I’m sure of in this world, it is that. No faith required.

Daily writing prompt
Do you practice religion?
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05.26.24
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What Am I Good At?

I’m a goddamn sexual Tyrannosaurus of course!

Well, maybe not quite, but close 😉

Seriously, I am a jack of all trades kind of guy. I weld/ fabricate. I fix stuff, from cars, to outboards, to diving gear, to home appliances. There’s not much I can’t manage in those departments. When I do run across something over my head, I’ll break down and pay someone who can do it. (Or in some cases if the numbers simply add up to it, I might as well pay to get it done, considering parts, time, and special tools for the job.) But I really, really, hate to pay someone to do it for me. I’ll scour the net for info, videos, for whatever I find myself in the middle of, and when all else fails, I call the professionals.

Long story short, I’m a hard headed, cheap bastard, who would rather do it myself than pay through the nose to have it done for me.

I’m a good enough guitar player that I understand how much I still need to learn, after playing one for ~45 years.

I’m a good enough amateur astronomer I can point out the planets, the constellations, and navigate by the stars if I had to.

Even at my age, I’m still a pretty good shelldigger too. But I can tell I’m slowing down. When you can talk about what hurts for 20 minutes, you probably need to slow down anyway 😉

Guys like me are a dime a dozen. We’re nothing special. We get by on the edge of existence, hoping things will finally allow us to retire to the rocking chair sometime soon. But know full well, it ain’t happening yet.

But it’s right around the corner, I just know it.

Daily writing prompt
What are you good at?
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