Mongolia Ho!

Saving as much money as possible as been theme for the Honko family for the last 3 years.  TH has wanted to hunt stone sheep in Canada ever since he was about 8.  And so a chunk of our money was sent to a guide in Canada, months went by without a contract, finally getting the guide on the phone, it took him awhile to remember someone that had sent him $10,000!  It's been quite a while since I've seen TH that furious.  After a shouting match he finally got his point across that he wanted his money returned to him ASAP!  Now to say TH was let down, would be putting it mildly, he was super depressed, he had already begun dreaming about scrambling over the mountains in British Columbia, tenting out and seeing stone sheep and if he shot one thats good, and if not, thats ok too.  Its the experience he loves not the killing per say.

After talking it over, I pushed him to call an outfitter and see what would be possible to hunt for the same-ish price.  That's how Mongolian ibex became a household word and main topic of conversation. 

The best part about this hunt was that it was nearly 1/3 the price!  Score!  Somewhere the decision was made to invite 3rd son to hunt and youngest to go along, but not to hunt. 

The airport at Ulan Bator

 Then a flight on a prop plane to Hovd

Where the outfitters did a quick run thru a store that TH said was like a Costco.

And then off in a Jeep for a 7 hour ride to get to the mountains and hunt.

Check out the sharp drop off from the newly paved portion and the "shoulder"!!  This is the interpreter out for a smoke break.   The Russians are building a road from Russia to China through Mongolia.  While the Mongolian's despise the Russians their hatred for the Chinese is all encompassing.  China was never EVER mentioned with the word fucking in front of it. 

The bactrian camel used to be fairly plentiful, but with the advent of cars and trucks they are no longer needed, and their numbers are dwindling. 

A lovely yet barren landscape.  The pile of rocks on the mountain is a dry stone coral for yaks and sheep where they spend the nights surrounded by dogs to keep the wolves at bay.

The ger is still a popular housing choice for nomads and can actually been seen in Ulan Bator sitting quietly next to an apartment building.  TH and the boys were asked if they know the reason for the doors of the ger to face south, they guessed as something to do with weather.  No, that's where our enemies come from, fucking Chinese!  

As you can see, wood is in short supply, so the bits of wood are just to get the fire started, but its fueled primarily with yak dung and coal.

A yak getting milked by one of the ladies who live in the area.

Back to Ulan Bator.  If you look close, next to the concrete ger is an actual ger, complete with fence and outhouse.  Tis off to the right, just on the edge of the photo.

The buildings look rather ramshackle to our western eyes, but with limited equipment and a population wanting to leave the small towns and far flung nomad areas, buildings are being tossed up higgledy piggledy.   And after posing for a photo, the fellow with his arms crossed demanded money..

The traffic is completely out of control, often gridlocked for hours.  Capturing the police and ambulances, the interpreter told Th that quite often people die in ambulances stuck in traffic.  Ulan Bator is growing quickly but doesn't yet have the infrastructure to handle the current population.

The Mongolian Parliament building.  That's Genghis Khan sitting, and his two guards on horse.

Not sure of this fellow's name, but he freed the Mongols from the oppression of Chinese rule in 1912.
Gives a whole new outlook to the Disney film Mulan, yeah?

The piece of the wall is whats left of the summer palace.  The colorful buildings are the museum, where no photos are allowed to be taken, nor do they sell postcards, a photo book, etc. 

   The Blue Sky Hotel.  Lovely isn't it?  They are trying to attract tourism by offering luxury accommodations.  Mongolia is trying ever so hard to wrench themselves out of 3rd world status, but it is an uneven effort.  When TH and the boys would order something from the menu what they heard mostly was, "No!" with a sharp finger wag, that meant they were out of that.  Most of the items from many of the menus around Ulan Bator seemed to be out of many menu items.

Funnily enough, the most popular chain restaurant in Mongolia, is an American company!  Wild yeah?

Mongolian .money.  The fella in the odd hat is the guy who freed them from the Chinese.  Tis Genghis on the bottom bill, and that hole isnt a hole but has some sort of plastic imbedded with a faint printing.  The 20,000 Togrog is worth $11.78 USD.

The Sock Post

I didn't realize that knitting socks was such an curious thing to do, until I went out in public (gasp!) with my knitting recently.  So, I thought I'd document the building of a pair of socks, the way I do it.  Not the way most, or some do it, but me.  I tend to do things a bit different, which I'll cover when I get to that point. 

Items for sock building:
 Circular and double pointed knitting needles
 a stitch marker
 measure tape
my trusty pattern
and yeah yarn

After snapping a few photos of the knitting in progress, I realized that scale is nearly impossible to decipher from a photo.  I tried taking several photos to get a good scale, but in the end, tis the same thickness of a piece of spaghetti.

I knit my socks toe up for several reasons, all of them being its easier.  Yeah, I trend towards easy peasy rather than tricky and involved at least in sock world.  Cause really, they are SOCKS!  I stuff em in my shoes, I could care less what people think of my socks!  So, the cast on is super cool, and EP (easy peasy) however, it really doesnt do well on DPN (double pointed needles) as their isnt any give to DPN'S made of wood or aluminum and its quite tricky getting another needle in that wee space. 

And as you can see from this next photo, the cable connecting the two points on a circular needle is quite flexible.

I continue on this way with the circulars due to having to increase one stitch at the beginning and end of both needles every other row, and on DPN's I kept getting lost.... where the fuck am I?  shit......rip rip rip, begin again.  The wee jewel thingy is a stitch marker showing me where the beginning is so I know when I've made a round.  The sock is a circle, more or less, and smarter knitters I'm sure could just look and keep track.  Thats way to much work for this lazy knitter, no guessing or close looking for me!

Whew!  Finally done with the increasing portion of the sock and can use DPN's just one circular needle left!  I dont enjoy knitting with the circulars due to the amount of pulling that cable thru to get the point where you want it!  GRRR......

So, I'm all happy knitting along to my latest Korean TV show, yeah I've learned to knit to foreign movies/tv!  Anyway, some stitches kept getting stuck on one of the needles, and as there are 4 in permanent play with one doing the escorting of old stitches into new ones, I never knew which one it was.  Then I heard a fatal sound, crack and the needle broke!  Weep!  Wail!  I LOVED this set of needles! 

I caught the stitches on one of the circulars and knitting had to wait until the next day when new needles could be bought.  Well.  I thought I'd caught all the stitches, turns out nope I didn't.  To make matters worse, I didnt notice it for several rows, and by that time the stitches had been quite happily unraveling.  The two markers are holding the stitches from unraveling any further until I could knit around to that section of the sock for a fix.  A quick repair and I continued on.

All done with the foot, it measures 6 inches, so ready for the gusset and the heel turn.  Which is a bit of knitting magic and makes a cool cup thingy!  Now, this is one area where I'm really a weird sock knitter.  The front of the sock isnt knitted during the entire heel turn and heel, the stitches just hang out and wait until the heel is finished, beginning the gusset I move to the circulars for the same reason I do on the toe, its easier to keep track of where I'm at.  I knit the first pass of the heel turn onto a DPN leaving the edge stitches on their circular.  Why?  That way when I do all my decreases I dont have to keep count, I just knit until there is one stitch on the needle and turn, and repeat.  I have two circular needles and 2 DPN's.  It's sorta kinda crowded, but it works for me, the anti-counter!

This is the heel all finished.  The row of stitches running away from the heel is the gusset, this is where extra stitches are added to make room for your heel.  The heel is double layer to keep from wearing out so quickly on the back of ones shoes, and is a decrease area to bring the stitch count back to the same as the foot.  Now, there are complicated maths to build socks for any foot or ankle issue.  Luckily for math lacking me, I have normal feet/ankles.

I use a ribbing that unstretched looks not like ribbing.  Knit 2, Purl has I think superior stretch and rebound ability over many other combos.  Unstretched

 Stretched!

Finished!

The Precipice :

How Racism, Self-Indulgence and the Right's Culture War is Driving the World to the Brink

Congress hasn't passed a full budget since President Obama was elected in 2009.  It has been a cobbled together mish-mash of various bills to keep the lights on.  Even after massive gerrymandering, writing voting laws that disenfranchise primarily Democrats the Republicans still couldn't manage to wrestle control of the White House out of the hands of the Democrats, but out of a black man hands at that. 

The "birther" noise was nothing more than racism, plain and simple.  The racial divide in our country is shrinking, I think at this point more Americans are color blind than those that aren't.  Yes, there is still a huge swath of the south that is mired in racism, hatred of Blacks, Asians, Latinos and Arabs and Native Americans.  That is the correlation point of why those states are the poorest, rate lowest in education and highest in underage mothers, at least that's my opinion.  While white southerns sit and blame the lack of financial resources on the "War Between the States", it's hatred of all things not white that holds them back both financially and socially.

 While 88% of Romney's votes were from whites, 56% of the President's votes were from whites, showing that a great proportion of white voters didn't see a black man, but a man who had great leadership possibilities.  Shocked that a black man won, the right-wing lost no time in attempting to smear the President with the label of Muslim, as somehow that makes a difference?  The time is coming when we will elect a person into the Oval Office who isn't a Christian, and its none to soon for me.  

Nothing is more mean spirited than a cheater who doesn't win.  Yelling loudly that President Obama doesn't have a popular mandate, hoping that most American's won't realize that 51% of the vote is a mandate, and a two time mandate winner at that.  After the election, Republican's gathered for a post mortem in shock and dismay.  How could their whiter than white candidate have lost?  He is the poster boy for all things right wing!  No abortions!  No equal marriage!  No health care, unless you deserve it!  No safety net!  The list of things that most civilized countries believe aren't hand outs, but plain and simple human rights. 

Since they couldn't cheat their way to a win, they have done nothing since the election for the country's well being.  Unless you count trying different ways to vote down the ACA, and restrict abortion rights as being good for our country.  They haven't passed a single solitary job bill, even after listening to voters at Town Hall meetings decry the lack of jobs that offer a livable wage.  I grew up poor and minimum wage was unlivable on then, its even more so now.   All they have done is whine and cry and attempt to thwart the President at each and every turn, which has awarded Congress with a 10% approval rating!  Go Republicans, You Rock!

In attempting to keep the extreme far right happy,  Republicans have embarked on a massive culture war against GLBT'S,  women's rights, and any religion that isn't Christian, and in doing so are painting themselves into a corner with no viable way out.  The culture warriors rail against GLBT folk, loudly as the rest of America is drifting into the belief that marriage is a civil right, not a gift bestowed only upon certain citizens.  While Americans as a whole are not long term attentive  listeners to political rhetoric, we seem to be tuning them out more and more often as they make less and less sense.  I've read remarks about Hinduism and Buddhism being called new age religions.  Wow guys, have you ever read a history book?  Attacking science because it doesn't line up with recent religious doctrine, has led to an extreme dumbing down of our students.  Only 15% of Americans believe in "Godless" evolution!  A full 46% of Americans believe in Creationism, how one earth did we sink to this level of not understanding basic science? 

While their posturing to the right wing press, and pandering to the tea party only affected our country is indefensible enough, now fear of America's shut down is leaching around the world, leaving the door wide open for our favorite foes to fill the power gap, Russia and China.  These uncertainty quakes are beginning to open small fissures in both the financial markets and from a defense stand point for countries we defend, Japan, South Korea and Israel, among others.  Is that what this current crop of Republicans want is for Russia and China to become world powerhouses without any brake to hold them back?  If the Republican party doesn't pull their head out of their collected asses soon, we could see a world wide depression that could spark yet another world war.   Rumblings in Greece are remarkably similar to Germany in the 1930's  both due to extreme financial hardship.  Golden Dawn is hampering the government of Greece and at the last report I read, have possibly infiltrated the military.

Instead of using the elephant to represent the GOP, I'm thinking this is more realistic....

Robot Comics Has it Right!

Robot Comics

Dinner Plates of Delight

Dinner Plate One

For whatever crazy reason, I've been CRAVING hot wings.  I've tried dipping pork into the hot wing sauce, and while its tongue tingling exciting, it's not hot wings, if ya know what I mean.....  So, I began a quest of re-inventing hot wings without any food cheats.

Up first was to pull out the chicken....ok now this was a stumper.  Pork would fill in for the protein aspect, but what about that crispy skin holding the sauce, and providing a secondary flavor and texture profile. 

A few weeks ago, I found a vegetarian making "fried chicken" on youtube.  She took fakey chicken pieces coated it in egg and then dredged in a flour and fried it.  It was crispy!  It clung to the meat!  But she used egg and wheat flour, and if you minus those and substitute other items it all goes south quickly.  And tis battered, not what I'm after at all.  But it did get my brain working......

Saturday was "Operation Hot Wing".  I took pork, cut them into finger sized pieces, flavored them with salt, pepper and onion powder and let sit for a bit.  Then I placed corn starch on a plate, filled a plate with hot water and dipped a rice paper wrapper, let soak then rolled a piece of pork into it, dredged it with the corn starch, and fried it.  After coating it with wing sauce, I was ecstatic! The coating started out crispy and the sauce clung to it wonderfully, and after it sat a bit it turned chewy, just like actual chicken skin!

 w00t!!!!!

FTW!

A few changes will occur the next time I make them, and there WILL be a next time!  Next time I'll bake the pork until nearly done, that way I dont have to fry them quite so long to ensure the pork being fully cooked.  I'll do it ahead of time, let them cool, and dry and then coat and fry.  Also, will make the cornstarch coating lighter so that it doesnt build up such a mucky mess in the bottom of the fryer leading to burnt oil.  May try using potato starch for a few to see if that produces a superior chew.  Potato starch makes a chewier coating on fish, and I don't enjoy that on fish, but maybe on hot wings it will shine!

Dinner Plate Two

Left to my own devices, I trend towards not eating much meat, nor fat.  Yes, yes I know the previous bit of this post was about fried pork, but I only ate a few and was satisfied.  A small steak usually lasts me 3 - 4 meals.  When I don't eat meat, I dont miss it, and rarely think about meat, except for the love of my life, Bacon!

As the weather got became colder and darker, I began to wind down, until I was again marooned onto the island of our sofa again.  Last weekend, TH took one look at me and decided I needed a shot of protein, and then stopped and said, "I don't think it's protein you need, I think its the fat, I'm buying you a fatty steak and you're going to eat some of that fat!"  And so he did, and I ate some of both, and within a few hours I had energy again....Weird as hellz, yeah?   I don't get it either, all I know is it works.  The next day I ate it for breakfast and lunch and felt well enough to go for a 1 1/2 mile walk!  Now I'm trying to make sure I consume a certain amount of protein and fat each day, and am feeling better even as the weather chills further. 

Dinner Plate Three

While reading an milk allergy blog recently the author talked about being able to eat all sheep milk items without any physical issues.  On my weekly trip to the natural grocery store, I scoured their chill chest for anything made from sheep milk.....looking, "no that's cow,......goat.......goat....raw milk...SHEEP!!!  I bought a single container of sheep milk yogurt.  Brought it home, and worried about eating it, but maned up and stirred the fruit up from the bottom and hesitantly took a bite,  and it's YUMMY!  It didnt hurt my tummy!  Didn't make my ears ring, or stuff up my sinuses!  A few days later found some sheep milk feta and came home and whipped up a greek salad, oh my gawd was it fabulously fabulous! 

As you can see, our snow melted away, only to return a few days later, and melt off later that day as well.  But with highs in the low 40's and night time temps in the low 20's, a lasting snowfall isnt far away.

The Door Slams Shut

on fall.

Hello winter!

Gender/Sex/Sexuality 2.0

The comments on my last post rather confused me.  I know that gender lies in the brain and sex is a physical expression of genetic coding.  Believe me when I tell you that I am all the other trans folk are walking expressions of that definition.  Our meat suits don't fit our gender, a gender which we know to be truer than true.  My gender is male, no question about it.  However....

What I was asking, what is it that makes a male, a Man.  Is it solely the having of a male body?  Can one be a man while living inside of a female body?   This might be a tricky concept for gender/sex matching humans to understand, due to the fact you've never had the need to question where you lie within the male/female continuum.   A time before your memories, you KNEW yourself to be male/female.  Just like myself and other trans folk knew, the only difference is the entire world, including their bodies told them otherwise.

No, what I'm asking is more basic.  If I were to show up in my girl suit to a gay men's group would/should I be accepted?  What are societies rules about claiming to be a man, but not looking nor sounding a thing like a man? 

Sexuality is yet another question.  Merriam Webster defines homosexual thusly:

1

: of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward another of the same sex

2

: of, relating to, or involving sexual intercourse between persons of the same sex

Technically, I'm straight as my sex is most definitely unarguably female.  Wikipedia mentions gender with sex in its description of homosexuality.  I'm going with the wiki definition, as it fits my world view. 

I KNOW who and what I am, male and gay, what I'm asking is about validation and acceptance in society.  There is a still a wide swath of GLB that hate up on all transgender humans.  If I've read it once, I've read it thousands of times from both sides of the gender aisle about why the T is even included in GLB because they aren't a sexual minority.  Honestly, from my side of the fence, the T's ARE a sexual minority, folk born within the wrong sex, and an even tinier minority than GBL's are.  One thing that really hurts T's  within GLBT groups, is that many of them categorically refuse to define their sexuality, straight, gay, bi, lesbian or asexual.  What's the major malfunction in labeling who excites you sexually?

At the core of my questionings is what is it that defines the state of being male, or female?  What makes a male a man?

Sex/Gender/Sexuality Existential Thoughts

While over leaving a comment at Jay's blog, I realized that there is a subject I've yet to discuss here with y'all.  Does having a male gender truly make someone (ie me) a man? 

Does owning this

make someone a man?

Or can one be male/man without it?  


Because men who have lost their penis due to injury or disease are still considered MEN.  But what if one isn't born with one?  Is it something more than physical characteristics, or is sense of self enough to be counted as male?

Trans folk have to come out twice to everyone.  Once as trans, and then as to what sex you're attracted to.  I've been asked by GLBT'ers before if I'm gay or straight and usually my answer is "yes".  

"Yes?"

"Yes.  Meat suit girl is straight, cause she likes dudes.  Gendered male me is gay, because I like dudes.  So, yes."

But does having a male gender enough to be able to walk about calling oneself "gay"?  What does being gay actually mean?  Feeling romantic and sexual feelings towards one own sex.  But my sex is female, only the gender half is male........ 

Round and round like a carousel,

but never quite closing the question loop.

                               One of the major malfunctions of modern society is the strict adherence of two sexes and genders.   While there seems to be only two sexes, genders like sexuality come in a wide arc.

Kinsey helped the masses decide where they fall on the sexuality scale.  I feel that a gender scale is needed as well.  Boiling down feelings and expression would be far harder than what Kinsey invented, but classifications of gender is just as important.

Kinsey's scale helped rank and file Mary and Bob understand that homosexuality is common human condition, not an abnormal one.   It helped parents and families to come to grip with a gay kid, knowing that they were "normal", not a deviant or recruited by a pervert, but normal.

Gender scales would not only help trans folks be more easily accepted, but would slacken the chains on people who are straight but perceived as being not, our gender expression brethren.  Butchy girls, femme boys.  Boys who don't like sports, roughhousing but dream nightly about pussy, pussy pussy.  Girls who hate the kitchen but love the garage, the woodshop, and lust after guys.  Those femme boys and butchy girls could now be considered "normal", not freak shows like now.

If humans were allowed to freely express both their true genders and sexualities, what changes would occur?  I would imagine bullying incidents would drop dramatically, when one counts gender expression and sexuality only.  Sadly we still have acres to go in reducing racial bullying, I'm looking at you GOP......  Would society stop stifling males emotions, allowing our boys and men to cry and express nurturing, allowing a disinterest in all things considered typically male without being labeled "a nancy boy"?  Could girls finally stop equating their physical beings with their inner selves, and know that they are more than a pretty shell to look at, would that reduce women's unhappiness?

Which brings me back to what makes men, men and females, female?  Is it more than our meat suit?  Does what lies inside trumps the outer?  Society lags behind on this conundrum, and I've yet to find a way off the carousel of what it means to be a man and a gay man at that.