That's All Brother over AggieLand

Awesome shot, caught this C-47 "That's All Brother" that led the Normandy Invasion flights doing a flyover past the clock tower at Texas A&M this afternoon. Was across the street in front of Kleberg BLDG and heard something. Took a minute to spot it because it was behind the building.

Oh Deer! New Year!

So last week was a LONG week that started the week before. When I got home from work Friday I all but collapsed and stayed that way until midday Saturday. I was physically and emotionally drained. Today, I finally had the energy up to go outside and survey the damage from the last couple days of wind. Not terrible. While out, we went by each game cam and pulled cards since they had been last checked at the beginning of the month/year. Please to make note, the left edge of the picture above is about 12 feet from the window of the guest bedroom/library. We don't put out corn or feed or anything this year. Especially wiht how thick the acorns are. There are two to five does bedded down in this corner of the yard almost nightly.

As I said, no feed but lots of acorns. We've got deer in the cameras every day. Anything form a single doe to a herd of them. Middle of the day, middle of the night.

They're out there wandering through.

Including one funky unicorn.

As far as damage form the storms, we had 43MPH gust with a 24 hour period that averaged in the lower 30MPH range for the entire time. Lost, well had come loose, two panels of tin on the roof of the barn. One managed to remove itself from the structure and the other was still hanging on but flapping and about to go. Lots of branches down and some large ones at that, but, no complete trees down that we could see. Granted it's warmed up to 32 and the chill factor is still in the low 20's with the continued wind so I have no intention of going out searching for trees.
Instead, Kelli and I will stay in and bake some fresh bread. Kinda like we did with cookies over the holidays. Vacuum pack (partial vacuum and seal) and freeze and the mini loafs will keep just fine. Just like the cookies.

Maybe at some point it will be warm enough and dry enough to get out onto the range and do some shooting. Right now our range is unusable because it is pretty much swampland along with good amounts of pasture.

Lights Out!

Started Monday at "Long before O'dark thirty" with the electrical contractors, the Utilities and Energy Services folks for the University and the FAA to shut down power to everything the feeds through our parking area so it could all be switched to generator power. We'll be on Gensets for a week while the contractors build a new slab and pull in a new underground feed for a new switchbank and relocated transformers. Then we switch back to line power and they remove all of the overhead lines from our area to make way for a new two story building. that will sit pretty much everywhere in the picture above. Mostly everything went right. A couple of hickups highlighted things for us and for the airport to have a closer look at.

Zombie Thriller Apaacolypse NOT

So this was me last weekend. Paul Martin held his annual Preparedness Conference at KRTraining and this year, Kelli and I were invited to talk Chainsaw Safety. We are planning a class on safety and use but that will be an all day thing or at least half a day. We had an hour. So we did our level best to get as much information out to the students about safety, choosing a saw, accessories, and some very basic techniques for disaster situations. Such as cutting your way out or back in from/to your home.

There were presentations on the years outlook, preparedness medicine, fitness, Kubaton use, and checklists for preppers. Not a single bad one among them and that was just day 1. So much great information