So Over These Career Politicians

The full Hillary Clinton story, not the fairy tale glossed over version Bill Clinton delivered in his speech the other night.

HERE

As with everything, take it with a grain of salt but there are large nuggets of truth in this rebuttal.

Why is this country so concerned with voting a POTUS with "darker than white" skin, or this year, a vagina?

Why are we not asking the REAL questions, examining candidates policy stances on real issues such as mass surveillance, fiscal policy or transparency in campaign finance, congressional reform?
You know, the stuff that actually affects us, the people's lives directly?

At least one person, other than the politicians, is making money off our country's horror show......

Vivienne Westwood's new t-shirt speaks the truth, though I'd never pay $180 for the honor on owning this rag.
But if someone gifted me one I'd wear it fiercely! ;-)

Sluggy

More Rite-Aid from My Trip to VA Last Week

Since nobody can copy the deals I did I'll not go into massive detail here.
I still had 2 Mentos BOGOF Qs and a $1/2 Colgate toothpaste to get free stuff so we stopped at a Rite-Aid in Delaware, along the way to Virginia and I got this.......

This particular store only had the spearmint flavor mints so I didn't get them(seeing as a detest spearmint anything).
But I did pick up 2 tubes of toothpaste and with the sale, coupon, points earned they were free.
I gave them to brother and his wife when we got to Virginia.

Then the morning we waited 3 hours for them to return from grocery shopping I went up to a nearby Rite-Aid to see if I could track down an acceptable flavor of Mentos........

They had the Wintergreen variety which I had wanted all along!
I had to add the candy bar to the transaction because of the order in which this cashier did things.

Usually they scan your card, then the register asks if you are using points(I say yes)and then cashier rings up your items and lastly your coupons.
Total after coupons should have been(for just the mentos)$3 + tax and I would have earned $4 back in points(2 x $2 on the Mentos).
Not this time!

The cashier scanned my card, the register asked if I wanted to use points, and then the cashier scanned in my coupons, the both of which rang up as $2.29 off-the regular retail on the Mentos.
She lastly rang in the mints which scanned in on sale at $1.50 each.
So $6-$4.58=$1.52 + tax.
Huh?

Seeing as you can't use Plenti points if the purchase is UNDER $2 I now had to add that candy bar.
If things had been rung up correctly, in the correct order my transaction would have been $6-$3=$3 + tax, and no extra items would have been needed

So I paid .92¢ for the candy bar(20% wellness discount)and my grand total for all was $2.34 + .17 tax=$2.51
Instead of using $3 in Plenti points I used $2.51 but still earned $4 back in PPs.
So this transaction gave me .49¢ more back in points and a free candy bar to boot.  ;-)

I ended up giving the candy bar to my son for his birthday, because I am generous that way.......lolz

Sluggy

In Other News......

Hubs picked the first zucchini of the season 2 days ago........

It went from 5 inches long to 12+ inches in 2 days!
I forgot how fast these babies grow with the optimum weather.

If I am feeling up to it mr. zuke will be starring in a Blueberry Zuke Cake very soon.  8-)

Sluggy

Happenings at Chez Sluggy the Last Month or So

A few not-so boring things happened around here the last month or so.
Grab a cold one and have a sit-down, this may take awhile. ;-)

* Let's start with some crime drama stuff.  At the end of June the Daughter and the BF came into the house after being out shopping or something and said there were two police cars with lights flashing in our cul-de-sac, having pulled over two people in a car.
So we went out to the front porch to "observe".....you know, in case the cops decided to pull some tazer shenanigans or something.
Seems some of our neighbors on the cul de sac also wanted to watch from their porches. ;-)

From what we could hear and see from the porch the car got pulled over for a moving vehicle violation.  The woman driver appeared intoxicated so they did a field sobriety test on her.  While that was being done the other officer saw drug paraphernalia in the car.  At that point they cuffed her and put her into the back of one of the police cars.  They then took the male passenger out and sobriety checked him while the cuffed driver kept screaming from the cruiser, "Stop lying!  Tell them it's your shit!!".
Evidently the passenger was not going to fess up to being the owner of the "shit".
After cuffing the passenger and lots of yadda yadda between the cops and driver, the tow truck arrived to haul the car away and the police took the two to booking(I am assuming.).

Darn it!  I had my camera ready but there was to be no disturbing video to go viral on FB.
This sort of thing has never happened in our neighborhood.  I hope this isn't a portent of things to come around here.

I have been perusing the local newspaper's police blotter and nothing ever showed up on this arrest. But let me tell you, if you need a good laugh, go look at your local paper's crime blotter.  Some of the things people do and get into trouble for are pretty weird and/or stupid.  It's a good thing many of the criminal element in this country are not too bright.....lolz

* Daughter and I decided one day to use one of my restaurant gift cards to go to lunch at Longhorn Steakhouse.
We ordered an appetizer of Fried Green Tomatoes to share.
The photo from their website........

"Hand breaded and topped with goat cheese and red chili ranch."

Here is what we were served..........

Even before I cut into them you could see through the breading that these were RED TOMATOES!
Ok, to be fair 1 of the 5 slices were from a green tomato......

We called the waitress over and told her this dish was not correct and to send it back.  When I explained that the tomatoes were red not green she tried to give me a line about how cooking the tomatoes makes them turn red.
WTF?!?

That's total bullshit as anybody with half a brain knows, even a Yankee up here in PA.

If you have an idiot prepping in your kitchen or you don't have enough green tomatoes just take that dish off the menu.....geez!

The "chef" came out to apologize and offer to remake the dish but I declined.

Then our steaks arrived..........

You can tell from the scale of the knife behind it that I got a micro-steak.  No way that baby was 6 oz unless it was some super dense beef.
But the bigger problem is the broccoli behind the knife.
It was RAW!
The kitchen help had at the most dunked my broccoli into boiling water for 10 seconds(but I am guessing it was even less than that).
Totally raw and crunchy.

The waitress was taking orders at a large talk of Senior Citizens next to us.
I may have proclaimed in a rather loud voice, "What the F**k!  My Broccoli is raw!!!"
Though the elderly guests next to us didn't hear me(8 of them were wearing hearing aids)the waitress sure did.
She gave me a look that said, "I hear you and I can't believe the kitchen screwed up again.".
A few minutes later the chef brought me out some cooked broccoli(which was still on the crunchy side but at least you could tell it had seen some cooking action)with another apology and a card good for a free appetizer on our next visit.
Yah, I don't think there will be a next visit as we have another steak place here that doesn't screw up the basics.

* Daughter has a new job.  She got hired the same day she applied at her first job she got here working at a franchised sub shop.  The pay was crap but it was convenient and something she could do in her sleep basically.
But the manager there was a disaster.  I believe she was just a worker and the manager left so they made her the manager without any experience, training or the skill set for the position.  The owner has 2 other stores south of here and this shop for some reason can't keep employees so they are constantly having assistant managers from those store come to the local one here to cover shifts.  These employees aren't happy with the arrangement(having to drive 1 hour+ one way), the manager can't manage and employees keep leaving.
As my Daughter described it, "It's a Shit Storm.".
Procedures aren't followed, other employees talk trash and ignore customers and refuse to clean the dining area and lots of other problems but here is the kicker.......

Twice in the span of a week she reported to work on time(and she is ALWAYS on time)and there was no manager there to open the door.  She sat in her car for half an hour the first time it happened waiting to clock in and work.
The second time it happened she was in her car(had waited 15 minutes at this point)and saw the substitute manager go into the store.  When Daughter went up to the door and banged on it to be let in nobody came.  She banged on the door for 10 minutes and the manager never opened the door.

So she got in her car and came home.
6 hours or so later she gets a text asking if she is coming to work today, to which she said, "I came to work.  Nobody let me in so I left.  My shift ends in 1 hour and I am not driving all the way back for that."

What followed was lots of texting between Daughter, substitute manager-of-the-day and her boss(who was on vacation)for the rest of the day.
The owner's wive got involved texting Daughter to call her but neglected to provide a phone number so she couldn't call her.
Daughter texted the boss to ask for owner's wife's cell number and her boss ignored her request and started talking crap to her.
The boss texted her 5 days later before Daughter's next shift asking if she was coming in to work.
They weren't going to fire her for "not coming in" that day they wouldn't open the door but write her up instead.
Daughter said no, this store is a disaster and I won't be returning.
She had already gone out and gotten another job at that point that paid $2 more an hour.

I guess we taught her well to find a new position before you quit the shit storm job. 8-)
She is now a line cook at Cracker Barrel.  A company with some organization and they seem to know what they are doing.  Daughter is happy as a clam there.

* Our July 4th cook-out went well.  Just us and the brother in-law and nephew.  Basic cook-out foods....burgers, dogs, macaroni salad, corn on the cob and an apple pie.

* I smoked those 3 small pork roasts I got on a Buy 1/Get 2 Free Deal the day before the cook-out....

I smoked them 6 hours and threw them into the fridge to rest until later that week.  I finished cooking them off in the crockpot, adding a homemade sauce near the end.  That was some good bbq that we ate off of for 3 days.
I'll probably smoke another bigger pork shoulder in August.

* We took advantage of having Daughter's BF here earlier this month.  We finally bought a new ceiling fan/light and had BF help Hubs install it a couple of weeks ago.....well, really BF installed it and Hubs held the ladder and such.

Ta-Da!

After a mere 5 months I finally have light over the kitchen table again.
Now we need to change the other kitchen light to match this one. lolz

* While Daughter and I were in Virginia last week I noticed I was developing a sore on my breast.  By Sunday it had turned into an abscess.  Three days of hot compresses didn't help(and it was getting red and hot and spreading)so I was off to the doctor.
When I called to make the appointment the person on the phone asked what the problem was, ti which I replied, "It's an abscess on my left breast.".
She responded, "So it's a lump?".

Did she think I couldn't tell the difference between a lump and an abscess?
Lump hard......abscess soft.
I almost responded to that comment with, "It's not a Tumor", done in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. ;-)

As suspected it was a full blown abscess and needed to be drained.  This is something that can happen if you have HS though I've never gotten one there before.
My boob got cut open, drained and packed.  Luckily for you my camera is dead so you don't get to see any gory photos.
It hurts like a son of a bitch but I have nice painkillers for a few days while this thing heals. ;-)
And hopefully it wouldn't keep us from going to Maine soon.

I guess that's about all the highlights from here.  I'll blog about the trip to Virginia at another time.
I need to go take an antibiotic now with a pain pill chaser.

Sluggy

Those Mysterious Kirks.....A Pain in My Genealogical Butt

In the 1900 Census my 3 x Great Grandparents, Robert Spencer Bowman and Sarah Redfern Bowman are quite elderly, 74 and 71 respectively, and still living in Orange County, New York.
In their household also resided 1 daughter, Ellen "Ella" Bowman, who is listed as single, and a 13 year old boy, listed as a grandson, named John Kirk.  Ellen is also listed as John's mother in this census either due to the enumerators assumption or they were told John was Ellen's son on the visit to the Bowman household.

And thus, until recently, this is how the family trees with this line listed in them showed the familial relation of John Kirk to the robert Spencer Bowmans of Orange County, NY.

But earlier this year NY State released online many Wills and Probate papers, and I found Robert Spencer Bowman's will contents.

Wills can be a treasure trove of information, especially on ancestors who are difficult to trace by other paper trail means.
And Robert's will contents did NOT disappoint in this regard!

Not only did it yield up a list of family; sons, daughters and grandchildren of Robert and Sarah Redfern Bowman who were alive in 1901, the year Robert died and his estate was probated.....

But it also gave us a precious page that told the real story of who was John Kirk's mother.

"John Kirk is a son of Sarah J Kirk, deceased, who was a daughter of Robert Bowman, deceased."

One little sentence written over 100 years ago in a will corrects my Bowman family tree information.

So John Kirk is living with his grandparents and his aunt because his mother, Sarah Jane Bowman Kirk, is dead by 1900.

Now the question still unanswered is Who is John Bowman Kirk's father?

I have yet to locate a marriage document for Sarah Jane Bowman and this Unknown Kirk husband.
The only Kirk of the correct age and gender I've uncovered in Orange County NY is this one.......

a John Kirk.

In 1880 John Kirk is living with the James Dayley family in New Windsor NY, the same town Sarah J Bowman was living in with her parents in that census.  John Kirk was born about 1862 and is working as a servant in the Dayley household.
In 1880 John Kirk was 18 and Sara Jane Bowman was 16.

In 1887 Sarah Jane Bowman Kirk gave birth to a son, John Bowman Kirk.
There is no direct mention of Sarah Jane in records after 1880 but we do know from indirect records for her son that she had to have lived to 1887 as that is when her son was born.

I suspect she died in childbirth or shortly thereafter but short of a headstone in a cemetery in Orange County, NY or finding a death certificate we have no way of knowing when she passed.

The only other record I can find that I can link to John Kirk is an admittance record on 22 March 1916 for the Orange County NY Almhouse.  He gives his parents names as James Kirk and Margaret Grimble Kirk, both born in Ireland.  He is 58, a carpenter and can not work due to sickness thus needing to be supported by the county in the poorhouse.

The next record we have for their son, John Bowman Kirk is that 1900 Census where he is living with his grandparents and aunt.

By 1908 John is found married to Margaret "Peg" Doyle and in 1909 their first child is born, Richard Henry Kirk.

In the 1910 census the John Kirk Family is living with his wife's family.
Another child is born in 1911, Dorothy "Minnie" and a second daughter, Lydia S. in 1913.
Lydia dies the following year in 1914.

There is a NY state census in 1915 and Margaret and the 2 surviving children, Richard and Dorothy, are living with Margaret's parents.  No sign of husband John Bowman Kirk living in NY let alone with his wife and kids in 1915.

By 1917 when the WW1 Draft registrations happen, John Bowman Kirk is living in Gary Indiana working as a foreman in a sintering plant.  He says he is married.
If you suspect something is amiss in the John Kirk family at this point, you would be correct. ;-)

In 1920 census John is lodging in a house in East Chicago Indiana.  He says he is divorced now and working as a salesman in cigar store.  Either the sintering plant wasn't to his liking or he lost that job.

Later that year, on 4 March 1920 John married Elizabeth Talmadge in Chicago, Illinois. There were no children from this union.

Meanwhile in the 1930 census Margaret Kirk and the 2 kids are living on their own in Orange County NY.  Margaret is working as a practical nurse and records her status as married.  This is probably to save face as John remarried 10 years before.  I can't find a divorce decree as of yet due to NY's not granting online access to that sort of information.

John and Elizabeth resurface in the 1940 census, now living in Hammond, Indiana and John is working as a flagman for the highway department.  A good steady government job for a man in his 50's.

In the 1942 WW11 draft registrations John is living in Hamilton, Indiana.

The last record for John Bowman Kirk is his death certificate from 5 June 1944.  He died of chronic myocarditis at St. Catherine's Hospital in East Chicago, Indiana.  At the time of his death was 57 years old and working as a machinist for Fruit Growers Express Co.
John was buried in Elmwood Cemetery in Hammond Indiana.

On 26 April 1946 wife Elizabeth joined John in Elmwood Cemetery.

Anybody out there want to go to Hammond Indiana and take some photographs of headstones for me?   It's right next to Purdue University.  8-)

While I've unraveled some of the mysteries of John Bowman Kirk and his parents, there are more to sort out.

Sluggy