These Speer Gold Dot Hollow Point rounds sure make a purdy wheel gun even purdier.
I posted this just in case you think I only think flowers are purdy. Click for bigger.
Red Epiphyllum Flower – First of Many
Last year, I think we got one or two red flowers from this epiphyllum. This year, it looks like there may be as many as a dozen of these beautiful flowers coming out. This is the first of many more to come. Click on the image to see the wallpaper-sized picture.
Flight of the Phoenix – Part II
NASA Video – click > to play.
May 25th is the target date for the landing of NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander, whose mission is to explore the Martian arctic plain. NASA adjusted the lander’s trajectory in April to refine the final approach to the planet.
Check out this really cool video of the landing and post-landing phase of the mission.
Launched in August 2007, Phoenix is a stationary lander equipped with a trench-digging robotic arm to bite into the Martian surface and scoop up samples of nearby soil and water ice. The probe’s top-mounted suite of ovens and wet chemistry instruments are designed to help determine whether its arctic plain landing site – a region similar in latitude to central Greenland or northern Alaska on Earth – could have once proven habitable for primitive life.
I’m looking forward to a safe landing for Phoenix. This will be the first Mars lander to use a retro-rocket to cushion the landing since the Mars rovers landed using the balloon-bounce landing technique over 1500 ‘sols’ (Martian days) ago.
Summer Garden Preview
We expect to have a pretty good crop of vegetables in our garden this summer. There are several kinds of squash growing (pumpkin, crookneck, zucchini), our usual green beans, hot peppers and several varieties of tomatoes including these heirloom tomatoes. The heirlooms are especially flavorful in salads or slices in sandwiches.
Colorado State University – Greenbat Award
If you’re not into global warming doom and gloom, you could lose your standing among the best tropical weather climatologists and be cut off by the greenbats at your local liberal university, even though your hurricane forecasts and tropical weather expertise is legendary.
A pioneering expert on hurricane forecasting says he may soon lose funding due to his skepticism about man-made global warming, according to a report in the Houston Chronicle.
Dr. William Gray, who once said that pro-global warming scientists are “brainwashing our children,” claims that Colorado State University will no longer promote his yearly North Atlantic hurricane forecasts due to his controversial views.
Gray complained in a memo to the head of Colorado State’s Department of Atmospheric Sciences that “this is obviously a flimsy excuse and seems to me to be a cover for the Department’s capitulation to the desires of some (in their own interest) who want to reign [sic] in my global warming and global warming-hurricane criticisms,” the Chronicle reports.
. . .
Gray contends it’s all a hoax contrived by scientists hungry for research funding, media professionals thirsting for Pulitzer Prizes and foreign powers seeking to create a single world government.
In fact, he says, the warming cycle will soon end, and the Earth will begin a period of temporary cooling.
Via Fox News
Avoiding “To Whom It May Concern” Rounds
One of the drills we like to practice when we go to the range is to fire at silhouette targets while trying to avoid letting any rounds fall outside of the body mass. We do pretty well when firing at the center of mass of a target. This assumes that you have a shot at the center of mass.
What if the target is partly shielded by an object, like a fence or an automobile? It’s a little more difficult if all you can see is the head and shoulders. So, I like to practice shooting at the nose of the target and try to keep the rounds close while firing about one round per second. I’m getting better at it, but I always seem to have a couple of outliers. One of these pierced an ear and could probably be considered a “to whom it may concern” round.
Hula Chicken
Today’s gourmet dinner consists of Hula Chicken with Pineapple Barbecue Sauce, roasted acorn squash and blended wild and long-grain rice. The chicken is prepared with boneless, skinless chicken breasts butterflied, pounded and rolled with prosciutto and Havarti cheese. These are then floured and pan fried in extra-virgin olive oil.
The pineapple BBQ sauce was the big hit here. The ingredients for the sauce are fresh chopped pineapple, chopped red onion, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, tamari sauce, tomato sauce and dried Bing cherries.
The dish is served with portions of rice, squash and the rolled chicken topped with a generous helping of the sauce. It was just wonderful. It just might qualify to compete with some of the gourmet meals that our Hawaiian friend Kini has on his site.
Damsel modified the Hula Chicken recipe from one that Rachael Ray had on her show last week. Click on the thumbnail for a bigger image.