Author Archives: Ronald D. Drobeck

About Ronald D. Drobeck

I've read, learned, been discriminated against, patronized, lied to, laughed at, laughed with, and ignored. I'm not a minority, not tall, not good looking, not skinny, not hairy, and can see 10 miles, but not two feet. I've been a paperboy, college student, licensed nursing home administrator, professional musician (country swing drummer), duck and goose hunter, fisherman, conservationist, Eagle scout, camp counselor, canoeing instructor, lifeguard, comedian, restaurant owner, licensed exterminator, insurance agent, warehouse manager, carpenter, conservative, father of 4, baseball coach, husband, worrier, writer, embryo gardener, photographer, and nice guy.
Sep2

Ron’s World Famous Hockey Puck Brownies

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Ron’s World Famous Hockey Puck Brownies

 

Preheat oven to 325 degrees (depending on your oven strength)

One pouch of Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate mix.

1/3 cup water

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1 egg

Mix with a strong whip or spoon.

Spoon evenly in 12 cup silicone muffin pan on cookie cooling rack for support. That way when you take them out of the oven, they are already on a cooling rack

Mine are the shallow ones. With the full cups, fill 2/3 full.

The recipe calls for 35 to 40 minutes and with the silicone pan

does use that much time. Begin to test with a toothpick at around 30 minutes until you establish the baking time in your oven.

When done, slide the silicone pan on to a cookie rack to cool completely.

Remove each puck when you feel that the chocolate chunks inside have set up a bit.

Enjoy! Each puck will be as chewy as the corner piece from a cake pan if it’s baked just right. rdd

Of course you can use your favorite chewy brownie mix. If you do, adjustments may have to be made in bake time. Sneak up on the finish! rdd

 

Jul19

Solace

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……………………………… SOLACE ……………………………….

Wow.
No insult intended to anybody else, but I did not realize I was on my last nerve. They were just being themselves and I tried to get some time in my ‘man sanctuary’, but with the heat and everything here ….
Anyway, I just took the most peaceful nap in my chair, golf with my earbuds in, dogs not startling me awake.
I think I’m healing from many directions at this moment.
Lots to do, but I’m not putting any pressure on myself today, except for a little headache in my eyes from allergy stuff.
I can fix that.
In my dozing, I can hear the water noises on the golf course. Good earbuds pick up those noises.
No planes droning overhead today.
Just quiet golf shots, no cheering except from across the fence, commentators speaking in normal voice. Rahm a nice lead, quietly working.
I dreamt I put one line in the water at a friends cabin, then found an inner tube and slowly drifted around a small island.
I realized I was getting a little far out, even on a glass lake, and slowly worked my way back passed the tip of the island to shore.
I couldn’t find the cabin or my rod, but did discover a rickety garage holding the bones of a Rambler (two tone blue).
I realized I had turned the wrong way on the beach and headed back.
Watched myself walking away.
At this moment, I have no stretched nerve and remark to myself, “I’ll bet the others noticed that I was wound pretty tight.
I also realize that way out there, as quiet as the stream noises, was the world, noisily destroying itself.
A column of smoke marks the distance … ….
Solace knowing that they won’t come here.
Too much quiet for them, and nothing to gain. rdd
hmmmmm

Jun26

06/26/2020

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Good Morning.
Well, the I.C.U.’s in the area are 80% full as this pandemic numbers continue to climb.
So, don’t wear your mask anymore …. the cost of all this care and the deaths are going to happen anyway since we can’t get the ‘No Mask Asses’ off the street and out of our stores.
I’m seeing more now, but our stores, mayor and governor are demanding it.
Still, some just stare as if you can’t see them.
Texas is having the same problem.
You can’t fix stupid, and I’ll bet the ‘no mask assess got other success problems and troubles because there is a whole parts of their thinking process not working.
So like the surprise birthday party that infected 8 people who then infected 10 more and now the grandfather is barely hanging on in the hospital …. go ahead, let’s lessen our medical costs by getting our Covid 19 sensitive people dead more sooner than later.
To the ‘no mask asses’, I’m being facetious (oops, I mean I’m kidding about the no mask)
We here might be negative or have anti-bodies already, but we still wear the masks in public to protect you, ourselves from other things you are sneezing out, and protecting your children and elderly.
I wear a different mask in my yard when I’m raking because the dust here is full of nasties. I wear another kind of mask in my shop where I finish wood, sand, and when I spray insecticide around the yard.
I worked for a spray pilot as his spotter, and have been an exterminator, and I’m still standing!
I wash my hands after my dogs rolled in the dirt and poop, and this morning all of my keyboards and stuff got the ultra violet treatment.
I had a yearly exam of my vascular system at the VA this week, and Jaime goes in for her first colon exam because of her age and she’s trying to take care of herself, so we have to be careful that she doesn’t carry anything into our out of that building this morning.
We happen to love life and want to be around longer.
And Kathy is a nurse exposed to everything in a nursing home.
We are NOT in the ICU so far.
Enough for this morning.
I do not intend to insult or talk over anybody’s head.
Jan8

Last of the Peppermint Stick

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Last of the Peppermint Stick

 

Good Morning,

I can’t remember if there was an occasion that brought out this childhood joy, but I think more often than not, it happened on Lawrence Welk night!
You could see the Admiral from the small dining room table when it had the leaf on the room side flipped up and you put the back down on the first lazy boy in the small living room on 1st St.
Grandma Anna would come out of the kitchen with a cold box, presented on a tray. I don’t know why!
I think, for a grin and the drama.
I’d lean so close to watch that I had to be told to “get off the table!”
It was Neapolitan Ice Cream in a box.
A crazy time for me. These people never adventured!!!!
She’d lay that box open to the pink/chocolate/white (what my mind at that age saw)
Then, so we could bear witness, she slice it so we all get some of each color, down the middle and begin to divide it in perfectly equal portions for all of us, with always the slightly larger mistake end to the grandpa.
Didn’t care!
Seems a little strange that I should ask you if you remember Lawrence Welk night, as I sit here this morning satisfying my craving for Peppermint Stick ice cream this January 8th morning.
All of this is to remind you that Peppermint Stick ice cream is quickly disappearing with the season!
We’re on our last box, so get out there and check the shelves at your grocery!
A smart grocer would use it as a loss leader and advertise, “Last load of Peppermint Stick ice cream folks!”
And then add as a postscript.
First load of Chocolate Mint is arriving, January 14th!”
Make room! rdd

Sep30

The School of Hard Puckers

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I went to take an ‘after trip’ nap and found I needed to finish putting away the basketed clothes from the dryer still on my bed.
The dryer had created static which is a nothing to me. I’m in the bedroom next to a bathroom you see.
This reminded me of a day a year or so ago when Kathy was complaining about the static in the dress she was putting on in the same bedroom and I told her to slap it up against the bathroom faucet. With questioning eyes, she did do it, and the static went to ground, and the dress hung freely.
Of course you can put it on first and then touch the faucet with your tongue if you want (or finger) and get the spark orrrrrrrrrr, just touch the garment before you put it on! lol
So, on that day she asked me how long I knew about that trick, and I said “Probably all my life!”
Then she puckered up and scolded “You mean we’ve been married all of these years, and I’ve had this same problem and you just got around to telling me?” !!!!!!!
So, now you know the story, and for all of you people that I’m married to somehow (there is more than one way to be married to women…. it’s a possession thing I think), I’m telling you now!
Touch the friggin’ garment full of static to some grounded plumbing close by before you put it on.
You have now been told.
And, if it generates it’s own static while you’re swishing, spray the dress with the magical anti-static atomized spray that is made from old plumbing parts (I guess)! LOLOLOLOL rdd

Aug30

08/30/2019 Time to Harvest some thoughts.

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Good Morning.
Read the posts, read the news.
FOX stuck on the same few people again. Round and round we go.
Today, I’m thinking about American farmers.                            
I think it was triggered by the empty shelves in Florida where the hurricane preparations are taking place.
The food chain is a dynamic thing and we must be smart enough to support the farmers closest to our own. Especially when it’s under attack by ignorant politicians connected to big money and politics, and a world taught to grow things better, with our help.
I’m not there nor am I a farmer, but I drove the roads, saw the cycle of growing food supplies, met the people and went to school with the kids that were agriculturally oriented.
Each farm is a manufacturing ‘plant’ with individual style.
They maintain their own equipment with well worn hand me down tools and assimilated hand me down skills, taken for granted and carried for a lifetime no matter where they go.
The educated ones improve their land, don’t waste, don’t pollute, and think ahead constantly. From farm to farm, you can see management differences and skill, failures and successes.
I don’t live there at the moment, but I do go back to visit and am forced to re-absorb.
A little slower pace, a familiar palette for my eyes and ears, the roots that grow steeples, corn, silos, green everything that has a purposeful life circle.
I miss that!
I have to consciously downshift from my protective city attitude to recalibrate so, in a few days, I can become comfortable and enjoy a dose of real earth time, surrounded by dirt instead of concrete.
I have to say … it’s good for the heart. rdd