Spiked Watermelon Sorbet

One medium watermelon, puréed and strained (food mill works great), about 8c.  of juice

Zest of one lime

Juice of one lime

Small handful mint leaves

One cup sugar

One cup water

2/3 cup citrus vodka

Simple sugar from the water and sugar plus mint and lime zest. Strain and cool.

Lime juice and vodka into melon juice. 

Add syrup to taste (about 1/2c is probably plenty) and chill 2-3 hours. 

Into the ice cream maker, let it freeze, and then portion into smaller cups and into the freezer to firm up completely. 

Makes about eight generous portions. 

Parts mash-up

As anyone who has put together more than one or two ARs knows, there is usually an assortment of cast-off parts floating around. I've got a couple cardboard boxes labeled "AR PARTS". I'm finally starting to piece together a few things and finish out another rifle.

I had a 24" bull-barrel upper that I didn't like. The barrel went off to Wally for shortening and re-profiling, the handguard found a new home, and the receiver sat in a box.

I whistled up a gas block and a gas tube, and found the block is just a hair too small - tolerance stacking defeats me! A brake hone from the parts store should fix that in short order, though.

I trolled classifieds and found a handguard I like, and still need to find a muzzle device and scope. As this is likely to be a long-ish distance AR (I'm hoping to use it on p'dogs this fall), I'm probably going to put a Bushnell 10x on top, and leaning towards a JP Recoil Eliminator brake.

When that's done ... I'm going to have fewer spare parts floating around. I think there's still a 10" .223 barrel in a box, and some miscellaneous other small parts. I'm sure I can turn it into something down the road...

Banging on silver again...

Life has been life, lots to keep me busy away from the keyboard lately.

Silver tanked over the last several months, spending the last week or so well under $15/oz spot price, and it was possible to find generic pieces in the $16/oz range. I don't know if it'll go lower. Hell, two years ago I'd have bet it wasn't going under $20. I keep buying a little bit where and when I can. Most of my recent purchases have been "junk" US coins, mostly in the form of half-dollars. For some reason 90% quarters just don't interest me. Dimes and halves, please.

As to spot price, though...
One of the sites I read had a comment about "and then it goes to $1000/oz next month!"

This would be a Very Bad Thing. Spot moves around every day. A few percentage points up or down is a normal day. Ten percent is a big day. For silver to go to $1000/oz would be about a 6000% increase. Six thousand percent. For that to happen, the US Dollar would have to be massively devalued, otherwise known as hyperinflation.

The stories of wheelbarrows of cash to buy a loaf of bread, always from falling countries behind the Iron Curtain or third-world dictatorships? Yep. That's what we'd be talking about.

I picked up a Zimbabwean ten-trillion-dollar bill a while back for about US$3. In June of this year, they decided to end that currency, basically a hard-reset of the Zimbabwe currency system. The exchange rate?

Z$35,000,000,000,000,000 to Z'$1.

Thirty-five quadrilliion to one. My Z$10T note is worth about a thirthieth of a new Zimbabwe cent (10/35000ths of a dollar).

Fiat currency ... quite literally, not worth the paper it's printed on.