Another Day Older

 59 laps complete as of yesterday.

Fuuuuuuu.....

 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FExBwfQHXlE

Gains and Losses

 Several years ago, mostly to spite a doctor, I got myself on a low carb diet and ended up losing about 50 pounds in total. Unfortunately since then, altogether due to my own actions, about 40 of them have managed to find me again.

Since Mrs Hades stopped teaching, she's gotten into gardening and now she has an app on her phone to track calories. She is now participating in a diet plan based on that app, and she is seeing positive results even though her new job is less physical (chair work instead of standing all day and chasing kids at recess).

Even though I am not actively participating in her dietary changes, I am nonetheless benefiting from them as well. I got on the scales today, and I have managed to lose eight of those 40 pounds, and that's measuring in the middle of the day. I have not significantly changed my lifestyle at all to see that loss.

I'm not saying I'll go all in on Mrs Hades diet plan, but if I continue to benefit from it, perhaps I'll start paying a little closer attention to myself as well. 

Vehicular Carnage

I am no longer a Subaru owner.

Way back in 2019 the motor spun the rod bearings (totally my fault), so I bought the Jeep. In 2020 I found a motor for the Subaru, so I put it back on the road. About that time Eldest Son needed a car due to deer, so he took it for a while. Of course, he hit another deer with it, but fortunately it wasn't horribly difficult to fix. A little over a year later he gave it back, and it needed transmission work.

I haven't really been driving it much, so the neighbor has had it on long-term loan for a couple of years (yes, I said years, as in about two of them). He brought it back a couple of months ago because it needed a clutch, and since it was my car, of course he expected me to pay for it.

I told him then that either he was going to buy the car or I was going to take it back, because between the clutch, a set of tires, and the AC work that I had done to it in the past two years, along with the license and insurance, I was spending about a grand a year on a car that I wasn't driving. He thought about it for a while, and when I offered a really good deal on it he decided to take it. We finalized the deal on the 7th, fifteen years to the day since I bought it in 2010.

Last week I took the Jeep in for some AC work. I don't really use the AC, but when it's hot and raining I have to have the top on it and the windows fog up, so it would be nice to have it. It worked fine when charged, but it wouldn't even hold the charge for 12 hours. I spent more on the Jeep than I collected for the Subaru, but Friday they said it was done and I took it to work.

They replaced the compressor since it was leaking very badly from the front seal, it was making a lot of noise and wouldn't build pressure very well. I checked it as I drove away and it seemed to be fine, but I drove it to work with the top off since it was a nice day. It looked like rain overnight so I put the top back up while I was at work.

Saturday morning I started it up and turned the defrost on to clear the windshield, and the AC didn't work.

Yesterday evening I dropped it of at the shop again, and they found a leaking condenser (the part in front of the radiator, not the hard-to-get-to part in the dash) that had not been leaking with the old compressor since it couldn't build the pressure. They agreed to replace the part and recharge the system for the cost of the condenser only, no labor or shop costs (mostly R134 freon). Hopefully that will cure what ails it, I guess I'll find out this week.

Last but not least, the poor Mustang has been sitting outside (as have all the rest of the cars) and the clear coat has bubbled and peeled on the passenger door and rear fender. I'm going to try to get it in the paint shop over Beach Week (another week and a half from now) and get that taken care of. I haven't driven it much since Mrs Hades and the pups have come into my life, we usually take her Explorer whenever we go places because it has more room.

That should take care of my vehicular issues for a while. It had better, because now I need to rebuild my auto expense account back up. Between the Jeep AC work and the Explorer needing brakes (not to mention it's registration season for the Mustang so it needed an inspection and tags), it has drawn down to nothing, and I had to put some on the credit card.

And to think, I just got that credit card all paid off. (I rewarded myself by buying fun stuff.)

NOTE: The appointment with the paint shop has been made and the applicable decals have been purchased. What the hell, I didn't need a zero balance on that card anyway (besides, it gives me another chance to pay it off again and reap another reward). 

 

Experimentations

Following up from my last post, today I took a couple of pounds of tomatoes, an onion, and some garlic from the garden and made tomato sauce. I then sliced a zucchini lengthwise into thin slices and made a zucchini lasagna.

I didn't raise cows for the cheese and meat, and I used store-bought spices because we don't grow basil (something Mrs Hades has resolved to change), but the rest came from our garden. I think it turned out pretty well all things considered.

We're going to experiment with the sauce to perfect the recipe, but then I anticipate not having to buy tomato sauce or tomato sauce based  things (like spaghetti sauce). It's kind of fun seeing what we can get from the garden, and Mrs Hades is having a good time with it now that she has time to spend on such things.

I have said before that most of my cooking is done with pre-made ingredients, and that eating healthy means having to cook. It's even better when you do your cooking with things you grow yourself. 

Satisfaction

 

 Mrs Hades has green things growing.

Today we chopped up a zucchini and cooked it with chicken. Then we went out and harvested onions and scallions. I have several large red tomatoes on my window sill getting redder.

Part of our gardening experience has just been seeing what we can make grow. There is a surprisingly large amount of things you buy at the grocery store that you can harvest seeds from and grow on your own. Among the other things we are now growing are cantaloupes, spaghetti squash, spinach, and garlic.

We also have blueberry bushes and grape vines. We had Muscadine grapes growing wild and there is a persimmon tree in the front yard, but we planted Concord grape vines and we have a couple of bunches of those growing nice and big. There is also a blackberry bush in the back yard that has grown up by itself. We also have various spices such as rosemary, sage and peppermint. 

There is something pretty satisfying about eating produce you have grown yourself. 

Toys

In my last post I was complaining about FedEx. They did finally deliver, and so did UPS. I spent that next weekend happily assembling my first upper.

I should stop here to mention that since the last range day I paid the local gun shop to rebuild the troublesome 6.8SPC with an AR upper to go with the AR barrel, leaving the M4 upper surplus. The packages I was talking about in my last post were the parts to go along with that surplus M4 upper to build another complete upper in 5.56. I went with 5.56 because I really didn't want another caliber to have to buy reloading equipment and supplies for, otherwise .300 Blackout would have been on the table. But I digress.

Anyway, all went well until I discovered that putting the hand guards on is nigh unto impossible by yourself. I finally had to have Mrs Hades put the hand guards on while I held the delta ring down. There has to be an easier way, I thought... and indeed there is. It is humorously listed on Amazon as a "Steel Wrench Removal Tool with Vinyl Coating for bike repair (1 Pcs)." Just as well, I needed sights, too. So an order was placed, then received. The sights were installed and then range time was scheduled.

(No I had not been to the range since I last posted about the 6.8. Yes, that really was February 2023. Yes, I know that's way too long. No I have no excuse. But at least I have been dry-firing. In fact, for Christmas, Mrs Hades and I bought ourselves a Strikeman dry fire system with both 9mm and .45 ACP cartridges. We have yet to take it out of the box, but we have it.)

But first... when I had the 6.8SPC upper built the shop put both front and rear sights on the picatinny rail atop the upper, and I was given the reason that vibration may throw them out of alignment if the front sight was on the gas block. I thought that was a BS reason, so I relocated that front sight back to the gas block again. 

My thought is the farther away the sights are from each other, the better the aim will be. Perhaps I am wrong, but it makes sense to me, and I need all the help I can get. So, when the sights arrived for the 5.56 upper, I put that front sight on the gas block, too, for the same reason.

Did you know that the gas block picatinny rail isn't always the same height as the upper picatinny rail? I didn't. I do now.

The 6.8SPC upper has the Adams Arms piston system installed, and the rail on the gas block with that system is the same height as the upper. Not so on the standard gas system that I had on-hand (it was taken off of the 6.8 upper when the Adams system went on it). As a result, the 6.8 upper sighted in with nary an issue, but the 5.56 upper shot way high. Like, off the paper and onto the cardboard way high.

I figured it out by shooting at the bottom of the target, and finally hit near the center of the paper. I then took a close look and saw the problem, the gas block rail is about a quarter inch lower than the upper rail. I moved the 5.56 front sight back to the upper rail and then was able to sight it in.

The verdict... both guns now shoot flawlessly. The AR 6.8 barrel feeds perfectly from the AR upper, as it should, and of course the M4 5.56 components work perfectly together, too. I can't really say which one I like the best. I like the 6.8 for the bigger caliber which will allow me to use it for hunting if I so desire, but the 5.56 is the first one that I have built both upper and lower from individual parts (I did build the 6.8 lower), so I have a sentimental attachment to it.

I found a gas block height flip up front sight for the 5.56 and ordered it, so sometime in the future I will install that sight on the gas block and re-zero the rifle, but it's just fine for now. Mrs Hades insists that the next time I take her with me to the range, she was quite annoyed that I went on her work day.

I also acquired that .357, a Smith and Wesson 340 PD. That's the scandium framed 5 shot snubbie, and it is every bit as painful to shoot with full power .357 loads as I remember it being. I put a full box of .38 through it and found that it shoots about 3 inches low at 15 yards, which is still within an acceptable strike zone. Aiming high center mass will still get you a hole somewhere in the torso, and with full power .357 loads that should be plenty close enough to carry the message.

What's really nice about it, in its pocket holster it slips unobtrusively into a front pocket and is so light as to be un-noticeable... until you try to put something else in that pocket, that is. I tried the round type speed reloaders, but I was actually faster with the strip type, and the strips fit inside the cargo pocket on my right side (yes, I wear cargo pants. Deal with it). 

I carry two reloads in strip clips, which gets me as many rounds as one magazine in the Glock 19. I hope to never have to find out if that is sufficient. It has become my EDC carry, but much like the friend from whom it was obtained told me, if I ever need to use it I will try really hard not to shoot them to death, because I would rather beat them to death for making me shoot it with full power loads.

And that's it for this range report. I promise it won't be two years until my next one. 

FedEx

Three packages from Palmetto State Armory were supposed to be delivered to me today via FedEx.

I saw the FedEx truck a few doors down from me when I was driving home.

Three packages from WalMart were on my porch when I got home.

Needless to say, they weren't mine. But I'll say it anyway.

I loaded the packages up and took them the aforementioned few doors down to the correct address, where the FedEx driver was just leaving after telling the proper recipient of said packages that they must not have gotten loaded onto the truck. 

He sat there in the driveway as I went to the front door, knocked, asked if the occupant was in fact the proper recipient, and went back out to the car to unload the packages. Then he drove away... in the opposite direction of my house.

My packages are now scheduled for tomorrow.

I wonder if the driver is smart enough to realize that the three packages I took out of my car as he sat in the driveway were the same ones that he left on my porch.

Part of me hopes that he's not, and that FedEx has to pony up for the cost of the contents of the three packages that they miserably failed to correctly deliver. 

Anyway, my packages will get delivered too late for me to play with before I have to go to work this weekend.

They damn well better show. 

I have two packages (one from PSA and one not) that are due to arrive tomorrow via UPS. Let's see if they do any better.

(The status for the PSA package says that UPS is not yet in possession of it as of this posting, so I will be very pleasantly surprised if it shows tomorrow. I'm guessing Monday at the earliest on that one.) 

UPDATE: On Friday, UPS delivered and FedEx did not. Once more, on the truck out for delivery, delivery not attempted, try again tomorrow. On Saturday they finally delivered. Two days late, but I guess better late than not at all.

Now I have the barrel, the delta ring assembly, the gas block and tube, and the forward grips. I also have the armorer's tool. I can assemble what I have, and then I'm only waiting on PSA to give my bolt carrier group, charging handle and flash suppressor to UPS so the final parts can be delivered. Then, I'll have another toy to play with.  

UPDATE II: UPS has my package, the final pieces should be here Wednesday. I'm going to have a busy weekend...