Project: Build rifles for the boys with granddaddy

Now that I've been back home in Mississippi for a few years, I am getting back to my roots a bit with respect to gardening, hunting, and other skills that I let founder over the course of my college and Navy career. When I was 8 I started with a single shot .410 shotgun from Harrington & Richardson. From there, I moved up to a rimfire rifle with my Marlin 75C .22 caliber rifle (the old carbine version of the Model 60, which now IS the model 60). Both of these were squirrel terminators. Neither kicked to speak of and were easy weapons on which to learn marksmanship and firearm safety. I later moved up to a 12 gauge identical to my 410. There is a great set of videos from Dave Canterbury (of Dual Survival) about the H&R 12 gauge and its versatility. My sons are old enough that they & their friends are starting to get BB guns and at an age close to where I got my 410. But now I look back and think of how I would have made different purchases if I was doing it now to end up with weapons that are more versatile long term but just as simple to learn and use as a kid. My dad always wants gifts to be meaningful. Between his desire to be meaningful and our shared goal to teach the boys lots of skills that everyone used to know, I think the next couple of birthdays/Christmases are going to focus on building up the boys sets of long-term tools like firearms and knives.

That leads me to starting them out on a 22 and letting them use my 410 until they can handle a 12 gauge and centerfire rifles. I've looked around at 22s and I certainly considered buying a couple of Marlins. After all, 2 is 1 and 1 is none. So 3 Marlins is like having 1.5 or something like that. However, that means I would spend somewhere north of $100 per rifle and be limited to 14-shot 22s. A little more digging and review reading led me to drop in conversions of AR-15s chambered in .223/5.56NATO to allow shooting 22s (25-round magazine). It provides an affordable alternative to shooting .223 or just a reliable platform from which to shoot 22s that can grow up to a 223 as the boys grow. To end up with a working AR-15, you need either 1 -OR- 2 AND 3 (more customizeable and cheaper) below. I threw in 4 below just for fun. It's a good little gun, best pump 12-gauge for the money, though admittedly is basically a copy of the Remington 870. To get the working AR-15 to become a 22, you also need 5 (or something similar from their comptetitors).

1. Whole Rifle: $650 & up You can literally spend as much as you want on these things. But if you spend $1000 or more, you're paying for the label. Mil-spec is mil-spec. Almost all of these rifles will be better than the marksman pulling the trigger.
Olympic Arms "Plinker Plus" flat top ("A4") with collapsible stock and railed gas block. This is kinda the bottom end of what I'd want to get for them. It has no customization and would require optics/backup iron sights to function.

2. Complete AR-15 Kit EXCEPT Stripped Lower Receiver $400 & up. This is all of the parts necessary to build a rifle except the lower reciever, which is the part of the rifle that is actually classified as the firearm by the feds. Similar to the entire rifle, you can go anywhere on the price spectrum from Yugo to MacLaren with these parts. The kit linked below gets you into a functional rifle with an adjustable length of pull (so the kids can use it) as well as a flash hider to which a suppressor that my family is considering can be mounted. J&T Distributing
- LW (lightweight) Barrel
- 6-Position DS-4 adjustable stock
- Picatinnny Rail Gas Block
- CAR Handguards
- Standard carrier, charging handle, trigger, trigger guard
- Hogue grip +20
- Phantom A-2 flash hider +$25

3. Stripped Lower Receiver: This is the only part of the rifle that has to be bought/picked up from a firearms dealer locally. Can't ship to your house, etc. But there are multiple options here and if it's mil spec it truly doesn't matter that much which you go with. Just find one you like, click, buy, pick up at local federal firearms licensee.
Mega Arms "Gator" with atom logo $109 (What nuke shouldn't have an atom logo reciever?)
Spikes Tactical SP-15 with spider logo $99 (The spider is just bad news)
Aero Precision $79
CMMG $79 (If sold out, there are others like DPMS for +$10-20)


4. 12-gauge Pump Shotgun for Home Defense/Hunting
New England Firearms "Pardner Pump" NP1-P18 (18.5" barrel, black synthetic stock, 5+1)

5. Drop in 22LR Conversion Kit from CMMG. You literally open up the rifle, remove the bolt carrier group, insert the kit and insert the 22 magazine... poof! You have a 22 on the AR platform.

Once you have 2 and 3 in your possession, it's a relatively simple matter to put all of the parts together assuming you have a couple of tools around like a strap wrench, vice, and some punches. Assembling your own rifle allows you to be familiar with its inner workings and I think letting my sons help assemble their rifles would be both a great learning experience and a fantastic memory with their dad and grandfather.

Poppycakes - Fancy cakes that are actually good

My sister-in-law Jen has started a company called Poppycakes, which makes high-end cakes, cupcakes, & other baked goods. She is based out of DC, but we occasionally get her to make a freebie batch here in Mississippi or at the in-laws in North Carolina. She has always been great with the tail end of a meal. But since 2004 when my first son was born, she has really focused on her craft and built up a set of tools & techniques that would make a mechanic proud. When she began branching out from family birthdays to showers and other larger events with cakes that knock the socks off of anything we can find here in Mississippi, the word started spreading.

If you're in the DC area and have a thousand calories to spare, get in touch with Jen (Poppycakes on Facebook) and let her bake your party into a creative realm that you won't find anywhere else with her quality and prices. Poppycakes makes me kick paleo to the curb quickly, only regaining control once icing and crumbs are all over my face.

Dinner with my wife

I think everyone who has been married more than a couple of years has had a dinner like the one Marshall Ramsey relays on his blog today:

The Entree - Marshall Ramsey

It's the things rolling around in your head that don't break the silence that are really interesting. If the marbles rolling around my wife's head are anywhere near in line with the marbles that I haven't lost yet, we'll be OK for a long, long time.

Social Network Prepping

So I am all about prepping for food/water/shelter/energy and am a gung ho fan of people like Jack Spirko at The Survival Podcast. But prepping is typically described as what to do to continue on living, surviving. But we all recognize something is going to get us eventually. When it does, what about your Facebook page? In 2011 a high school classmate, Thomas Baggett, succumbed to a unexpected illness. Following his death, his Facebook page lit up with messages of rememberance from his old friends as well as his students in the St Louis area. However, the lack of a reply was palpable. I ran across an article today about a new Facebook app call If I Die that allows you to pre-record messages that can play once the 3 people you assign confirm your death. I am curious how things might have been different if Thomas had been using it.

I also wonder, though. Do you say the things now that you would say to your friends and family after you die if you could? Are you even capable of putting yourself in the right mental frame of reference to speak to them with not only the right perspective to understand how they will receive the message but also the words that you really want to say given that you would now be dead? I spent about 5 minutes thinking about what I would say and I'll tell you... it takes a lot more than that.

I think that you should get as much off your chest while you are alive. If nothing else, it removes the need to have to use this app. I recently reconnected with an old friend after about 3 years of radio silence - attributable to me, by the way. It was eating at me that I hadn't picked up the phone and finally just did it. We had a wonderful conversation, but it was weird that so much of it had to be spent on catching up.

If you read this far, here are a couple of action items for you to bring prepping into your Social Network:
1. Think of someone with whom you haven't spoken in a long time but should have or you are estranged.
2. Figure out how you played a part in it. Note: Even the most 1-sided arguments have 2 sides somewhere. Find it.
3. Reconnect. Use your face, a phone, or a handwritten letter. Save Facebook & email for those who you don't really care to talk to or who you already connect with enough that there's no need.

Lily Price's First Photo Shoot

We were extremely pleased with the work that Olivia Grey Pritchard did for us right when LP was born. Check out her blog OliviaGreyPritchard.blogspot.com

Olivia did an awesome job for us and I would recommend her highly. She took control of our unruly models and made some photographic magic happen.

Here, deer...

I'm hoping for a discount on venison today. Worst case, beautiful day in the woods.


Update: No venison. I flirted with a doe for about 45 minutes after she came running toward my antler rattling, which sounds pretty realistic if I do say so. I rattled 2 more times while she stood there and tried to figure out why she couldn't see the two studs she could hear 75 yards away. I was trying to take one with more meat so i waited. A dad and 2 kids squirrel hunting in the same woods came too near and flushed another doe, who convinced the one I had been engaged with to mosey on. I sat around and enjoyed the afternoon, trying to tease another one in with antlers and a call. No joy. To all my northern hunter friends... you should really come down here and hunt sometime. I burned up while wearing a T-shirt and BDU pants - SOOOO glad I don't live in Minnesota.

The boys went out with Papaw and their new Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun. They didn't see anything in the 15 minutes they were able to stay in the stand, but they spent some time learning what rubs and scrapes are. Then they went to the "range"... my oldest proved he will be another sharpshooter nailing coke cans from about 15 yards away while my 5-year old plinked the cans a few times and scared the bejesus out of the oak trees behind the cans.

Nerdliness is Genetic

Tonight I introduced my kids to astronomy via telescope. One (hyphenated) word... awe-inspiring.

Previously we have used a pair of 70s vintage 7x35 binoculars from Sears or just gone out with the old eyeballs. You can see a ton of objects with your eyes and even more with binoculars, but there are some advantages to the telescope that I had never considered for the kids. Namely:

1) I find interesting things and they can just walk up and look - We started with the moon via a 25mm eyepiece and worked them up to the 12mm and finally 4mm eyepiece. That gave them 3 different chances to look at the moon over the course of 30 seconds, see the same thing 3 times at increasing magnification, but feel like they were looking at 3 completely different views.

2) The increased detail makes things look "like the box" - Too often things disappoint compared to the marketing. Beginner/entry-level telescopes certainly fall into that category. Trying to head this off at the pass, my sis-in-law (who bought the scope for Christmas) and I explained that stars will still look like points of light but we can see more. We also explained that we will barely be able to see the details of the planets (Jupiter's stripes, Saturn's rings, etc.). They were stoked when they could see extreme detail in craters along the shadow terminator on the moon. They couldn't (be still enough to) resolve the stripes or red spot on Jupiter, but I saw the stripes. That will take a little practice for the boys to master.

3) They can actually see things moving in space - We often sit outside and watch satellites orbiting and figuring out which ones we are seeing during visible passes. Until the telescope, this was the peak of their observed understanding of orbits and motion in space. The 4mm eyepiece changed that tonight. I lined up the westernmost lunar horizon with the eastern edge of my field of view and let the moon traverse the field. My 5-year old asked how I was making the telescope move across the moon without touching it. But my 7-year old jumped in with "Daddy isn't moving the telescope, the moon is moving around the earth. And DADDY, YOU CAN SEE IT MOVING! LOOK!"

That was enough to brighten my night and put a smile on my face as I got more acquainted with the scope in the cold after they went to bed. It also rekindled my desire to eventually buy or construct a high-quality telescope like a Stellarvue refractor or a homebrew Dobsonian. My poor wife... my strange, completely nerdy hobbies just never end. Did I mention we tilled in some compost and planted some winter rye in one of our poorer soil beds this morning at the request of my 5-year old? :)

Note: Images via easthampshire.org & knapton.net

The Toys I Always Wanted

The kids each got an iPod Touch AND a Nintendo DS Lite for Christmas. They also racked up with tons of Lego Ninjago stuff and this new game called Beyblade (marketed on Cartoon network with its own cartoon). Awesome aunt Jen, aka Papucha kicked in with a new refractor telescope from Tasco, which comes with a microscope kit, too! Santa even added a Playstation 3, but my oldest immediately said Mr. C brought it for me.

Now I am not a huge gamer nor do I have a TON of time to just play. But I have to say that the shift from toddler-type toys to "big kid" toys is very welcome. My wife & I both enjoy playing Beyblade enough that we sat down for about 10 minutes and did it while the kids were on a day trip with their grandparents. My oldest son can now put the complex Lego sets together, so he takes off and occasionally yells down that he needs help putting 2 difficult sections together. Bottom line, it's like being a kid again and I'm game. Quality time is no longer tickling Elmo, but building Lego jets and submarines, shooting Nerf guns or their new BB guns, launching rockets... the list of awesome goes on.

Here are some links to the cool stuff the kids got. If you want it and buy it through these links, I'd appreciate it.

Santa is following me

I am almost positive Santa has begun following is today. It must be that Elf on the Shelf, Thomas, passing intelligence to the Central Present Fulfillment Agency (90.0N 0-180E/W)