Greets from the land of Geeks,
Heard from Nick today. He is finalizing his winter break China trip
plans in January. After a week here at xmas, he will travel to Beijing,
then to Chengdu in the Sichuan province. Chengdu is China's 5th biggest
city, with only 10 million people. Still a bit too many for Nick, so he
will travel from there to a remote mountainish village and give some
sort of aid for 2.5 weeks. Probably teach English aid, although kool
aid would be cool if he could talk that chubby singing red koolaid guy
to come with him. But his plans are the moment to go solo in china land.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, there have been a hunter spotted. Those
who don't like guns had best shut your eyes for a bit. Jessy tried
some deer hunting this season with her Dad and brothers. That would be
she in the 1st photo, sporting here new shotgun. I hadn't realized that
shotguns slugs are the only gun they allow deer hunting with here.
Those big slugs get the job done quick, and they don't travel too far.
So Zach got in the gun mood and bought himself a 22 something. I would
make up a number, but he would scold me, like he did in that last letter
when I said his friend Travis was snorting a V6 engine, when in fact it
was a Honda something. So Zach has a 22 something rife in that 2nd
photo, with a massive scope. On his first run out, he was shooting a 6
inch pattern at 200 yards. After shooting a box of shells, you quickly
figure out you would rather shoot reloaded shells, so the 3rd photo
shows him reloading shells with newly bought and borrowed equipment.
The next photo shows us doing rigorous tests with 3 types of eggs. 2
flavors of organic and one in-organic (must have come from one of those
plastic chickens). Lab results are not complete yet (that was this
morning's breakfast, so we are still testing for 2 day morbidity rates),
but no strong differentiators, other than the fact that the organic
chickens are probably more happy then plastic chickens.
I have a dept thanksgiving lunch tomorrow, and I was in charge of a pie.
So Helen and I cooked up 2 this weekend. Picture shows her having her
first spin on the amazing apple coring, peeling, and slicing machine.
The other pie we made was a pineapple upsidedown cake. That way I can
drop it upsidedown on my way to work and still have it work. Maybe kind of.
That is me in the next photo, sporting my newly knitted hat. Helen is a
master knitter, although she humbly only claims rudimentary skills. I
have scored 2 aweome hats and 1.5 scarfs (the .5 scarf is will likely be
a 1.0 scarf in a week).
Last photo is Jessy's Mia acting camera shy. She does not freak out
nearly as much as Helen's Toosie, who will run to the nearest bomb
shelter at the site of a camera. I will get a good photo of him
someday and show him I am not stealing is sole.
Looking forward to our Thanksgiving visit to Bozeman this week!
Bruce