What are you smoking? - November 2021

I'm glad y'all have your generators ready. I'll be looking to do the whole house backup thing in our forever house. I needed the portable in New England, then moved to Kentucky and haven't needed it since. There'll be plenty of extreme weather in the future.

Anyway, CD HB in a Legend. I've been on a burley kick. I usually have burley in the morning and Virginia later in the day. It may be that I want a quicker smoke in cold weather. I don't know. I have some good blends in stock that haven't gotten much love.

You can count on that to happen.  I've had a portable generator for several years...it seems that as soon as you have one, you don't need it....with one exception when we had a hurricane take out the power for 9 days...glad I had one then as the heat was terrible for old people.

Earlier it was butternut burley and trout stream in an LHS Sterncrest that I got from Josh...then it was candy corn in a small Rhodesian by Ron..now it is B.B. Alamo in a bent Dublin by BSP.

Back to work full time and it seriously cut into the extra smoking time I had over the last few weeks. I missed my pipes!!!

Ennerdale on the way in, Marlin Flake on the way home.

Marlin Flake is one of my favorites so far on my journey through the pipe tobacco world.

Back to work full time and it seriously cut into the extra smoking time I had over the last few weeks. I missed my pipes!!!

Ennerdale on the way in, Marlin Flake on the way home.

Something better. That's not saying much considering my old boss was a p.o.s. This guy is only a couple years older than me. He does remodeling and new construction. The guy that runs his jobs is actually the guy that I started out with in this line of work and he knows my skillset... I was trained by him and his dad (RIP) for about 10 years. They've both been trying to hire me for the last 3 years, I just wasn't ready to make the jump. I called him yesterday, he asked when I could start, I said "tomorrow," and he said "see you in the morning." This is one of the few contracting jobs in the area where quality is more important than anything. "Close enough" doesn't exist. This is how I was trained and how I like to work.

Just had one of those installed in August, Ron.  In 2020 Sally passed just south of me moving at a snails pace, and beat up the trees pretty good.  I was 5 days without power.  Later that season one of the Greek named storms (Zeta?) passed just to my west after moving over coastal Mississippi.  It brought down the trees that Sally spared.  Another 5 days without power.  Luckily it was cooler after the second storm so it was a bit less miserable. 

I decided no more worrying about storing gasoline for the portable generator (which was only big enough to power a 110 window air conditioner and small refrigerator anyway).

The whole house generators were almost impossible to get after that.  Big demand.  But I got on a list and got one the next shipment that came through.  I would tell you that pouring a slab, burying a gas line, and having electricians install the transfer switch cost almost as much as the generator itself.  But it is comforting to hear it run weekly for a few minutes, and being able to look out a window and seeing a green indicator light (meaning it is ready to go).  

I now extend my middle digit to hurricane season.   

Seen a number of you smoking Rattray's recently. I find them to be often underrated. They have some very fine tobaccos and deserve more attention.