Skåldy
New Member
What is good everyone? I am Skåldy, a rather dumb guy who lucked out pretty hard in life all things considered. I am 31 yrs old and currently live just outside a little German themed vacation town called Helen Ga. I enlisted in my senior year of High School. Went on to do that for about 4 years with a single deployment as a Cavalry Scout. But by the time I got back from the one, it was all surgeries and therapy for a long time. Over a decade now since I got hurt and "went crazy." I was lucky enough to leave with all my fingers and toes and without any majorly visible scaring. Since then I have been medically retired 100% P&T/IU. But honestly, I found a better way than the gangs of therapists and mountains of meds. And that is with hobbies! An active mind can actively work out it's problems, but a stuck body is a stuck mind, at least in my opinion and experience.
I am married with 2 kids, and like to consider myself a southern man who values Respect, Country, Family, and the things my Pagan heart finds attractive. I am rather the homebody since I tend to be rather pernicious when I feel confronted, which for me is a much lower bar than a healthier person's. The way the VA puts it to me is that my fight or flight is broken, and I have no flight. So basically, I WILL throw myself in front of even certain death to attempt to stop what my brain has deemed a threat, even if the "threat" is a walmart greeter, I respond to it all the same.... The VA has basically advised me to stay home, and to only venture out when I am escorted by "a handler" (typically my wife, or other family members who are also vets). Even still, I may leave my land once or twice a month unescorted, typically to ride my motorcycle, and I NEVER talk or interact with others when alone like this. Hence why my hobbies tend to start at raw material (that I usually source directly from my land or through my donation boxes) and evolve into a finished item, otherwise I would run into materials problems on almost all my hobbies. This is also how I control the cost of projects, after acquiring the tools, each board foot and pound of metal gets cheaper and cheaper to produce. Some days I am unable to sit down, and some days I can't stand up thanks to my mind... But I try and make this "defect" work for me and I attempt to turn it into my super power. I refuse to be beaten by my own mind, if it won't let me stand, I do stuff on my computer, and if it won't let me sit, I produce anything I can think up with my atrocious amount of tools. I used to be big into keeping reptiles, but the worse my head got, the less I was able to effectively care for them. War made me a killer, but I still put an animal's health and well being over my desire to keep them as a pet. I mean, I am crazy, not an animal abusing psychopath! I was eventually lead to relinquishing all pets and live stock aside from the dogs. The kids couldn't handle the dogs leaving, and again, not a psychopath, so I am not gonna torture my kids like that. They are simply to young to understand my problems, nor do I want to bother the kids with literal war, I did it so they don't have to. Luckily, dogs are easy enough to take care of. And a good source of "calm" for my mind...
My recent obsession is brewing, but from one end of my house to the other, out to our two sheds and a 15x30 pole barn that is filled, to randomly placed every where on my land there is evidence of full "set-ups" or "stations" for a multitude of various hobbies and the weather and my mood basically determine what I do from day to day. Mostly recently we started acquiring materials for a traditional pizza oven, the Wife is an amazing cook who does traditional from scratch food almost every meal and she recently asked for a pizza oven, so we build it. My son and I are even building a "Viking village" out in the woods, a permanent off grid bushcraft area where we plan to process our hunts and tan leathers and potentially a root cellar. We currently process hunts next to the garage, and it makes the area rather nasty and the wife wants it moved. Everything from a saw mill (although it is broken ATM), to a full suite of wood power & hand tools down to whittling/hand carving and power carving. Trying to convince the wife to let be build a watermelon trebuchet, but she says I gotta talk to the neighbors first and make sure no one is gonna sue if I accidentally hit their car or something during a misfire or other failure... Leather working and costume making has a large room in the basement... Then there is my station for gold reclamation from computer parts (<-- this hobby is a money pit and is hyper dangerous, I do not recommend). Blacksmithing, general metallurgy, smelting, and casting personally my 4 favorite tasks, I get to hit things and not get into trouble, and melted metal is prolly the prettiest thing I have ever seen... it's like water, but its not like it all lol and IDK how to explain it better than that. I have a neighborhood metal drop off for a recycling effort. Basically I'll do anything on YouTube that catches my interest and is reasonably affordable and buildable, to a scale of actually recouping my costs on it, mostly with the recycling. People drop off bags off bags of soda/beer cans and I melt them into bars of fairly pure aluminum and get a pretty penny for it. Basically, I work around here without having a job just to keep myself busy. Although, this hobby is obviously for me and whomever I freely share it with. Not tryna piss off the law, plus to sell stuff like this, I would assume one needs a coterie of nefarious friends but alas, all my friends get government checks and have security clearances. So no one even thinks too heavily about messing with the law.
Tomorrow (Monday 9 Jan 2023) the last of my brewing supplies are supposed to arrive, and I will be starting my first batch of mead! The current plan is 6 gallons, 20lbs of local honey, d47 + nutrients and energizer. Initially, EC-1118 came with one of my other orders, and I opted to not use it because of the chance of making a "rocket fuel." I plan to stop fermentation around 13%. Measurements are based on an old family "blue mead?" recipe, that I translated and scaled to size. But is basically reduced to a traditional mead for simplicity and learning the skill and until I figure out how to recreate several aspects of it including a specific "mushroom yeast?" mix they used that I have so far failed to translate to English partially due to their penmanship and fading ink... I really don't understand their recipe and THIS is a rough basic first attempt to familiarize myself with brewing before I even attempt whatever wild variants my ancestors were doing.
Thanks for reading about me, I am looking forward to extracting every ounce of knowledge I can from you all!
NOTE: if a word is in -"?"- it means I am not certain I am using the right term or even talking about the right thing...
I am married with 2 kids, and like to consider myself a southern man who values Respect, Country, Family, and the things my Pagan heart finds attractive. I am rather the homebody since I tend to be rather pernicious when I feel confronted, which for me is a much lower bar than a healthier person's. The way the VA puts it to me is that my fight or flight is broken, and I have no flight. So basically, I WILL throw myself in front of even certain death to attempt to stop what my brain has deemed a threat, even if the "threat" is a walmart greeter, I respond to it all the same.... The VA has basically advised me to stay home, and to only venture out when I am escorted by "a handler" (typically my wife, or other family members who are also vets). Even still, I may leave my land once or twice a month unescorted, typically to ride my motorcycle, and I NEVER talk or interact with others when alone like this. Hence why my hobbies tend to start at raw material (that I usually source directly from my land or through my donation boxes) and evolve into a finished item, otherwise I would run into materials problems on almost all my hobbies. This is also how I control the cost of projects, after acquiring the tools, each board foot and pound of metal gets cheaper and cheaper to produce. Some days I am unable to sit down, and some days I can't stand up thanks to my mind... But I try and make this "defect" work for me and I attempt to turn it into my super power. I refuse to be beaten by my own mind, if it won't let me stand, I do stuff on my computer, and if it won't let me sit, I produce anything I can think up with my atrocious amount of tools. I used to be big into keeping reptiles, but the worse my head got, the less I was able to effectively care for them. War made me a killer, but I still put an animal's health and well being over my desire to keep them as a pet. I mean, I am crazy, not an animal abusing psychopath! I was eventually lead to relinquishing all pets and live stock aside from the dogs. The kids couldn't handle the dogs leaving, and again, not a psychopath, so I am not gonna torture my kids like that. They are simply to young to understand my problems, nor do I want to bother the kids with literal war, I did it so they don't have to. Luckily, dogs are easy enough to take care of. And a good source of "calm" for my mind...
My recent obsession is brewing, but from one end of my house to the other, out to our two sheds and a 15x30 pole barn that is filled, to randomly placed every where on my land there is evidence of full "set-ups" or "stations" for a multitude of various hobbies and the weather and my mood basically determine what I do from day to day. Mostly recently we started acquiring materials for a traditional pizza oven, the Wife is an amazing cook who does traditional from scratch food almost every meal and she recently asked for a pizza oven, so we build it. My son and I are even building a "Viking village" out in the woods, a permanent off grid bushcraft area where we plan to process our hunts and tan leathers and potentially a root cellar. We currently process hunts next to the garage, and it makes the area rather nasty and the wife wants it moved. Everything from a saw mill (although it is broken ATM), to a full suite of wood power & hand tools down to whittling/hand carving and power carving. Trying to convince the wife to let be build a watermelon trebuchet, but she says I gotta talk to the neighbors first and make sure no one is gonna sue if I accidentally hit their car or something during a misfire or other failure... Leather working and costume making has a large room in the basement... Then there is my station for gold reclamation from computer parts (<-- this hobby is a money pit and is hyper dangerous, I do not recommend). Blacksmithing, general metallurgy, smelting, and casting personally my 4 favorite tasks, I get to hit things and not get into trouble, and melted metal is prolly the prettiest thing I have ever seen... it's like water, but its not like it all lol and IDK how to explain it better than that. I have a neighborhood metal drop off for a recycling effort. Basically I'll do anything on YouTube that catches my interest and is reasonably affordable and buildable, to a scale of actually recouping my costs on it, mostly with the recycling. People drop off bags off bags of soda/beer cans and I melt them into bars of fairly pure aluminum and get a pretty penny for it. Basically, I work around here without having a job just to keep myself busy. Although, this hobby is obviously for me and whomever I freely share it with. Not tryna piss off the law, plus to sell stuff like this, I would assume one needs a coterie of nefarious friends but alas, all my friends get government checks and have security clearances. So no one even thinks too heavily about messing with the law.
Tomorrow (Monday 9 Jan 2023) the last of my brewing supplies are supposed to arrive, and I will be starting my first batch of mead! The current plan is 6 gallons, 20lbs of local honey, d47 + nutrients and energizer. Initially, EC-1118 came with one of my other orders, and I opted to not use it because of the chance of making a "rocket fuel." I plan to stop fermentation around 13%. Measurements are based on an old family "blue mead?" recipe, that I translated and scaled to size. But is basically reduced to a traditional mead for simplicity and learning the skill and until I figure out how to recreate several aspects of it including a specific "mushroom yeast?" mix they used that I have so far failed to translate to English partially due to their penmanship and fading ink... I really don't understand their recipe and THIS is a rough basic first attempt to familiarize myself with brewing before I even attempt whatever wild variants my ancestors were doing.
Thanks for reading about me, I am looking forward to extracting every ounce of knowledge I can from you all!
NOTE: if a word is in -"?"- it means I am not certain I am using the right term or even talking about the right thing...
