New Hearing Aids

 I had a great life as a pilot but back in the day "real men" didn't wear hearing protection. It was not just ramp noise but airborne with a pair of TIO 540's next to your ears and a incanal ear piece for the radio, I'm now profoundly deaf to high frequencies. I other words I can't hear female voices, the left ear is worse than the right and the right is pretty bad.

I've had hearing aids for 5-6 years but they didn't help much other than making it sound like standing next to Niagara Falls when you pee. Anyway cut to the chase; New hearing aids from Hear.com today. First day so I don't want to be too quick but...these suckers may work. 

Monsoon Season Is Here/ Living In The Desert

 The Tucson Monsoon has arrived. A few years ago they changed Monsoon season to a calendar date but truth is Monsoon season happens when the RH gets to 25% or so and stays there.  For that to happen the desert has to get hot enough to form a low pressure area to draw moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and California. We have had the heat and RH for a couple of weeks and yesterday we had the first storm at the house. It was a good start, hard rain and wind for several hours and this morning outdoors feels like a Houston August morning. It will be the kind of day you are thankful for AC. That's the bad news, the good is it only lasts for a couple or three months and the desert needs the rain.

Being retired in the desert southwest is easy living but you need to adjust your day's schedule. As an example, from mid March thru September I'm usually up by 0300 and take care of work around the house and do my morning walk before 0900 or 1000. By late morning it is time to kick back and enjoy a drink and/or a toke by the pool followed by a nap till near sundown. After the sun goes down the desert (except during Monsoon) cools off very quickly. Early evening outdoors is usually perfect.

Bottom line: Up early, do your work, once it is hot enjoy the pool and/or AC and a nap. Once the sun is setting back outdoors. It is a good life.    

Happy Juneteenth

 Title says it all. 

Juneteenth

 Tomorrow is Juneteenth, our newest and most important yet overlooked holiday. I've been all over the reasons Juneteenth is important, no reason to revisit. 

Raise a glass of whatever to all the folks that have finally made the celebration a national holiday for all.

Happy Juneteenth,

ken and MsBubba   

Bong v Everything Else

 While I haven't tried every means of Cannabis consumption I've tried most of the major ways. I have the equipment and knowledge to extract THC for tinctures or infusions, and then to reduce to FECO. The various stages can be used for under tongue infusions, eatables, Carts, Vapes, Dabs and so on.  Vaping flower from the big Volcano to small single hit devices is another way to consume and do not forget joints.

Of all the ways my favorite is a bong. It is miserly with your weed, cools the smoke a little, and because it is direct smoke the hit is almost immediately making it easy to titrate your dose. Vaping is almost as fast but vaping flower is very wasteful, 30% to 60% of the flower THC is left behind. "Already been vaped" flower can be reused but the product is second rate.

Next to a bong Carts are a close second and have the advantage of being small and discrete. Biggest downsides are they are a PITA to make and you do not know the effects of the carrier oils and distillates in commercial carts.

MsBubba likes Carts and infusions. I prefer under the tongue infusions and tinctures to eatables simply because eatables take so long to hit, can last too long and are hard to titrate. You are either questioning is it working, do I need another hit, or doing the zombie walk for four or five hours. 

One last method is pressing Rosin for dabbing or vaping which I love but it is wasteful and a PITA (easy to have "blowouts") and requires working fresh weed , a lot of work for very little product. 

Last to address are joints, love 'em. It is where most of us started and is the most social of all the methods with maybe the Volcano a close second. Rolling papers are cheap and can give your old fingers a workout, the smoke is good but unless you are with a circle of friends you end up wasting a lot of flower. 

Your mileage may vary,

ken

Happy Days Are Here Again

 Guilty, guilty, guilty. guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.

Damn that felt good only, IIRC, 55 more to go,

I can only hope when this is all over he spends the rest of his life in a orange jumpsuit picking up trash beside the road so folks like me can drive by and mock the asshat. I don't care if fuel is $7 USD a gallon I'd fire up the motorhome and drive to NYC just to see it. 

At A Loss

 We Planned a trip to UK starting a couple of days ago but Ms Bubba developed a lower back problem that made the flight over impossible and the ability to do anything once there also difficult. Because of timing, middle of the month start for the UK trip and camp hosting starting on the first of the month, the trip killed two months of growing time plus the last crop's harvest was the middle of April.  If I'd known the trip was a no-go I could have grown one more crop before leaving for Oregon. Bottom line this has been the longest time I've spent at home without a grow to tend too post retirement and I'm lost.

Having grown up on a dirt farm I know what it is like to farm and it is nothing to romanticize, hard never ending work for little reward but my little garden of Cannabis is oddly centering and rewarding. I miss the day to day routine and even though Cannabis is a weed the amount of knowledge to get the best out of each plant is a challenge. I wouldn't want to run a commercial grow, it would be too much like the dirt farm but my little legal grow (6 plants per adult) of less than twelve plants at a time has enough routine and challenge to make retirement enjoyable, a reason to hop out of bed each day and deal with the Cannabis gods. 

Unless commitments change there will not be another crop start before mid December '24. That's the bad news, the good is there is enough left over product to last at current consumption rate till the first 2025 harvest without visits to the local dispensary.