Hillbilly Living

bottles and trees

2013-03-12T20:26:00.000-07:00

Hey! I'm still alive! All's well, I've been working on my home brew and I decided to share my bottle cleaning experience with the article How to clean bottles for homebrew . I've been away from the web for a while taking care of my baby, cleaning bottles, and cutting down trees. I made a fake Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout that was pretty darn good. I'm planning my kid's first birthday party and WOW I never realized how much goes into a good party. OK that's it for now.

Back into writing a little, also still enjoying eating

2012-08-10T02:11:00.002-07:00

Still doing the same old thing more or less. In the last few days I published 2 Hubpages articles, the Ematic Eglide 4 Android Tablet Review and a Restaurant Style Shrimp Lo Meim Recipe. You should really try the Lo Mein, it's great. The Eglide 4 not so much. I recently finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy and I highly recommend it. I've been playing around with my new tablet a lot in the evenings, which is pretty fun. My baby has started eating solid foods, and that's more fun than the tablet. I bought a new electric weedeater and I find that it's much better than using a gas one, though dragging a cord around is a hassle. I guess that's all for now, ya'll take it easy.

Still alive

2012-07-12T03:05:00.004-07:00

I thought I would post to let anyone reading know that I am still alive. My baby is about 4 months old now and completely awesome. I highly recommend one if you have the time and energy, or a stay at home spouse like I do. I borrowed P90X from my lazy friend and have been doing it for about a month now, it really "works", though doing any kind of exercise for an hour a day would get you into shape. I got an old tire break-down tool a few months ago and I'm getting pretty good at mounting my own tires. Hint: It's easier with beer. My buddy started a Linux news blog, haleysubuntublog , you should check it out if you are into that kind of thing. I made yeast bread for the first time a few weeks ago, it was really good. Don't be afraid to try new things in the kitchen, even if you fail the dog will love it. Between the baby, work, workouts, and clearing trees from my property I haven't been up to too much else, just experimenting in the kitchen and working around the house. Oh, I now have a follower! Thanks for following!

nada

2012-01-31T22:03:00.000-08:00

Not a whole lot to say, but I figured I'd better say it. Uhhh... My back hurts, but I don't know why. My baby is less than 2 months away. I've been pushing my hubpages a little. OH YEAH Came up with a running thing where I'm adding a mile every week. I started at 3 and am working on 7 this week. It should be five but I missed two miles last week and didn't do any the week before... anyway I make up what I miss. Made some muffins. I bottled my ancient orange mead and it tasted ok. Not good but not nasty. It's past time to rack the pear, pom. and punch wines. I'll get to it later. I've been working on home improvement lately.

Pomegranate and Punch wine

2012-01-07T20:49:00.000-08:00

I somehow found myself with a gallon of fruit punch from the mexican christmas party. If you don't know what's in it Google it. It was more fruit than liquid and I didn't drink much after christmas. A few days ago I decided that instead of throwing it away I would try to make a wine out of it. I boiled it for sterilization then added three cups of sugar and more water to fill a 1 1/2 gallon container. The idea is to have a gallon after fermentation and removing the fruit and sediment. After it was cool I added 1tsp of bread yeast then slapped on the airlock.

The same night I decided to eat a pomegranate from the fruit dish. It was good in places and beginning to get old in others, so I picked all of the pulp out of it and crushed and boiled it with one cup of sugar and enough water to reach 1/2 gallon, then put it in a clean milk jug. I let it cool and added 1/2 tsp bread yeast then added the airlock. This is the smallest batch of wine I have made and I think it will be just enough to fill one 750ml bottle for aging.

The two wines are working right along now. I will update on this when applicable.

The beginning of the end, 22

2012-01-07T20:35:00.000-08:00

It's 2012, so I guess I should mention that. Sorry about the delay....well no, no one is reading. I worked new years and got off just in time to haul ass home and open the champagne with one minute to spare. Ate some good food. I bought myself a $18 3-7x scope and stuck it on my old 22 rifle. I cut some limbs on an old logging road at the back of my property in a strategic spot and now have a +/- 100 yard shooting range with a good backstop. I fooled around and got the old pump 22 hitting within a 3in pattern from the prone position at 100 yards with cheapo LR bulk ammo. The gun gets jammed because it needs to be pumped twice to eject the shell, so I have to put the bullets in one at a time. I Googled the problem and it seems likely that it's the cheap ammo causing the problem. I'll buy some better soon and post the results...for myself. If someone does read this and has some insight on my problem please comment and let me know. I feel like it is the ammo, though because I have a heck of a time getting it out of my revolver after it's fired.

REEEEEEEJECTEEEED!

2011-12-26T19:46:00.000-08:00

Wow, In less than a day they replied and let me know my story was crap. Well, that they were going to "pass on it" That's ok though, tonight I submitted it to Ideomancer, another e-zine. This one has a .59% acceptance rate, so I have more than a 99% chance of being rejected! I can't wait to see how they word this rejection, maybe I'll get a "not for us" or a "good, but not good enough." That's all. Time to go watch SPARTICUS

Ho ho ho

2011-12-25T22:19:00.000-08:00

Merry Holidays internet. I just enjoyed the December 25 gifts. I got a small electric fryer, lots of plans are formulating for it. I just polished and sent off my first "serious" short story for publication. It's a fantasy story and I sent it to The Colored Lens, which is a pretty mainstream e zine which Duotrope, a popular online writer's resource, says has a 96% rejection rate. So it's probably going to get rejected, but I had to aim kind of high. If it gets published I only get paid $20, but to me It's more about doing it than the money. But the money is still pretty important. Now, what to fry...

How to take a great family vacation for less than $350

2011-12-20T15:35:00.000-08:00

Hauled off a little over 500lbs of trash today. The guy dumping next to me threw out a perfectly good pallet, so I tossed it in the truck and lowered the weight that would be considered what I dumped to 480lbs. By the way, 500lbs or less is $12, and 500 to 1000lbs is $22, so I basically saved $12 for picking up that +/- 40lb pallet, which has a multitude of uses for a hillbilly like me. Writing: The Dry Spell has Came to an End is still pulling in views, I guess it's predominately positioned. Two more Yahoo! articles were published, one on a brief review of tech industry developments of 2011, which is crap, and How to take a great family vacation for less than $350, which was pretty good and REAL. I got into it and went over the word count, though that doesn't seem to matter. Also cooked some navy bean and kale soup last night, lots of gas today. Thought you(read ME) would like to know that.

2011-12-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

I felt my baby to be kick last night and again today. Fun. She(or maybe he) is supposed to be out in about three months. Ran my 5k in a terrible 30min today, felt like crap the whole time. I think I still haven't recovered from my work weekend, then sleeping 12 hours and not having a real breakfast before I left may have had something to do with it. Did I mention I could't sleep this weekend? From Thursday morning to Sunday night I worked about 40hrs, ran some, and slept LESS THAN 10hrs, don't know why. I only worked 4 hrs Thursday, so I wasn't sleepy, but I don't know why I had trouble sleeping the other nights. I'm caught up now, though. I know this blog is pointless to others, but I enjoy it. Thought I should state that.

Back (to stay?)

2011-12-18T18:16:00.000-08:00

Sleepy.... Sorry about the lapse, I've been lazy...errr busy. I wrote a realish thing called The Modern Economy May Require New Retirement Directions, A thing about Supreme Court Justice Misconduct, Three Ways to Renovate your Kitchen This Winter, which was real, a thing on Orange Bowl Travel Packages, a thing on Basketball Bama Merchandise, which was soulless along with one or two just like it(too tired to figure out which ones) and I got paid a few bucks for each. Yahoo! Associated Content became Yahoo! Voices and I had to change ALL OF MY LINKS here and everywhere else. Crap. I monetized my you tube as well. So tiered. FITNESS I'm back up to 5 mi. running and my current 5k is a weak 29min. I'm good for pull ups 12, 10, 10, 8, 8 or so and two weeks ago I banged out 60 push ups in a row with kind of crappy form. I recently tried my buddies p90x yoga and liked it. My dogs keep rotating. As one leaves another shows up. Right now I have three puppies, one alpha female and two males. Recently fixed my messed up drawer by putting a screw in the rail to keep it from sliding in too far and tearing it apart. I suppose that's all for now. I hope to keep up with my updates better in the future, if only for myself. So sleepy, working lots of doubles and mornings....

Hillbilly Living becomes the King's Journal but just for the Author

2011-11-09T19:00:00.000-08:00

Lots of good exercise today. Did I mention that I work out? Did back and biceps, then abs, then ran. Saw my 20 week baby on ultrasound this morning too. WOW. I'm gonna have a kid. Good thing I have this lucrative writing thing going on, huh? That was a joke. Yahoo! published my "real talk" christmas poem called Christmas is Coming and You Can't Hide. Then they published a half real political piece called Is it Time for America to Have a Third Party Presidential Candidate? Yahoo! is so great. It pays me roughly half of minimum wage to write opinion pieces that almost nobody reads. I can't complain, though, as this blog pays me nothing and I'm the only one who reads it. It's kind of like a having a diary that you can't close or even hide. That sounds kind of sissy like. Let's call it a "Journal" or better yet the "Captain's log".Well, maybe not. I'm not a captain. But I am the master of my domain, so how about the "MASTER'S LOG" no, that sounds kind of....funny. As the only man on the hill I live on I guess that makes me the king of my hill. King's log..no no no.......ah. This blog will here now and ever after be referred to in my mind as the KING'S JOURNAL.

2011-11-09T00:59:00.000-08:00

I've decided to cut back on the Hubpages as the Yahoo! Associated Content seems to be where it's at. I've been writing a bit since the last post. I did a haiku called A Change to Them a Constant, a cinquain called Wide Open Sky, a funny story based on a joke called Williams Decision and an opinion piece on what I thought about Mississippi's proposed Personhood Amendment. Also, I banged out a list of Ice Fishing gear and a list of Ice Fishing lingo just to remind everyone that I don't have a soul and that I sold out before I started. And there's more commercial writing to come, too. BTW the no shave November article has only been holding at about 50 per day.

2011-11-04T23:58:00.000-07:00

Finally managed to post my Garmin 255WT review for free. I also banged out a piece of poetry . Sorry but I'm sleepy now. Later.

desolation

2011-11-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

Wrote a short story, "What Came Was Desolation" for the Hubpages art contest. Thought it needed more polishing, but it was fun to write...until 4am. The wife wasn't too happy, but that's life.

Also wrote, published, and got paid for an article on making homemade wooden snowshoes, a subject I don't really know well, and one on Jim Morrison's poetry, which I know pretty well. My product review on my GPS has been rejected 3 times and now they are telling me that it's not eligible for up-front payment, so I'll just publish it for performance. Oh well. At least my wife likes video games now: I got her hooked on Angry Birds. Life is good.

How long till overpopulation?

2011-11-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Took my wife to the doctor for a prenatal checkup today. With a baby on the way it's a good time to think about the increasing population, which I wrote an article on at Associated Content. It's called "How long will there be enough to go around?" Oh, by the way the Lego Man experiment didn't go so well, but the No Shave November page is pulling in a lot of views. More to come.

2011-10-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

Quickly here. I wrote an overview of No-Shave November last night. I'm thinking about doing it. Not that I have much of a beard. OK, gotta go.

2011-10-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

Wrote even more hubs, one on Monumento a la Revolucion and one on diarrhea. Yeah, I know. I also wrote a product review for my GPS, but it got rejected because I didn't cite my sources...kind of ridiculous as I didn't have any quotes. I redid it and resubmitted it, hopefully it will get accepted this time. I was lined up to start writing reviews and opinions on telenovelas with my wife, I was having correspondence with a REAL person who worked for Yahoo!, and the show we were going to write about suddenly had it's season finale. What crap.

Lego Man experiment

2011-10-26T22:33:00.000-07:00

I decided to write a hub on the Giant Lego Man which was found on a Florida beach. His story went viral, and though it will be cooled down by the time my hub gets indexed on Google, I want to see how many views it pulls in. I tried to write the story in an "Evergreen" manner, though this kind of thing will be out of the public interest pretty soon, so who knows.

2011-10-26T18:27:00.000-07:00

Yummy looking, huh? I stole this recipe for squash blossom quesadillas from my in-laws while in Mexico, and of course made a hub out of it. Then I drank some beer. That's about all I have to say about that.

Lemon in a window, Lemon Tree Song

2011-10-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

Had a lemony day today. Wrote a hub on The Lemon Tree song as an experiment to test the validity of the Google Adwords tool. We'll see. I also wrote a short story based on a writing exercise about the main character looking at a lemon in a window sill called "Lemon in a Window". I need to find better things to do with my time.

Passport

2011-10-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

I remembered how lost and angry I felt when I went through the process of getting a US passport before my trip and decided to write a guide for the other unfortunate souls who want or need to cross one of invisible lines surrounding us, aka leave the country.

Mexico

2011-10-20T21:03:00.000-07:00

I'm baaaaaaack! Been in MEXICO for the last 5 weeks, came back at night and went right back to work the next day. I would say sorry for the delay, but nobody is reading this. Wrote a poem for the hell of it. Here is the link if you are interested. Mexico was great by the way. I recommend learning Spanish and visiting. I'm not going to bother trying to give an account of my trip as it would take all day just to write the highlights, so just visit there yourself if you get the chance.

2011-09-10T11:26:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy. I've been sleeping in a lot lately, but have a ton of stuff to do. I wrote this top ten beer list and a haiku just to see if it got any hits. That's about it.

Pork Ribs and Podcasts

2011-09-08T00:31:00.000-07:00

It finally rained here, for two days. I'ts nice and cool also. I wrote this pork rib recipe and this list of fiction podcasts and worked. Took the wife to the pregnancy place and got a sonogram. WOW there's a little freak with a giant head in my wife's belly and it's half ME! One of the coolest experiences I've ever had..