• Adventures and Travel,  Shooting,  Virginia

    Firing Revolutionary War Flintlock Muskets

    We love going to Colonial Williamsburg. Whenever we go there we step back in time and any worries or stress just fade as we wander the streets and gaze at the buildings or visit the shops. They have the standard ghost tours and carriage rides which are great… But you can find those at most places. What you can’t normally find is the option to fire an actual flintlock musket! I’ve been eyeing this excursion for quite some time. I’ve shot most guns in my life, even black powder guns, but never one with an actual flint. https://www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/events/fire-a-flintlock-musket/ Not sure why, but I just assumed it would be near the…

  • Blog,  Food Prep,  Food Preservation

    Making Cider using Vintage Cider Press

    After taking a year off in 2022, we decided that we were going to make cider again this year. Three crates of apples were ordered which allows us to make roughly 150 gallons of cider. We invite a few friends and neighbors over and get to work. In four to five hours we will have 200+ jugs of cider pressed and filled with plenty left over for making hard cider. The press is vintage, but we have upgraded it to be hydraulic. That makes pressing the apples so much more efficient. We drop a bushel of apples into the hopper to grind them up, that then falls down onto our…

  • Blog,  Money

    Good Bye to my Directv Streaming Service

    It was good knowing you but it is time for us to part ways. I was an early cord cutter adopter. Did it back when it was unthinkable to most. My only pre-requisite was that I needed Nickelodeon since my daughter was still young. I came across something called directvnow. It was $30 or $35 a month back then. Since I was what they called an early adopter or beta tested they even gave me an extra $5 off a month for some time. It was great. Then it changed names a few times, AT&T bought them and they changed the name a couple times: AT&T Stream, AT&T TV… Now…

  • Investing

    Buying T-Bills

    Trying to change it up on my financial side for a bit by purchasing T-Bills from both my Fidelity Investments account and at Treasury Direct. Both methods were honestly quite simple. Through the Fidelity account, I was buying them on the secondary market. Treasury Direct is an auction and when you sign up the return is not known. You have a good idea, but you won’t know until it is purchased. Well, that’s at least how I have gathered it works. The Fidelity Money Markets are doing quite well right now: 4.65% as I write this today. (Symbol: SPRXX) The T-Bills are paying at bit more at 5.2%, not a…