Busy, muddy day.

Landlady and I made a trip out to the county dump today since every garbage can in three households was jammed full. I had left the trailer at Ian’s since he’s got this big wheeled thing I knew had to go first – but the dump run has been delayed multiple times over the course of a couple of months now, the trailer had filled with snow, and all the random stuff I’d dumped in it was now frozen fast to the floor. I had to chip all that away before I could load Ian’s bin. Then I slipped/slid down the steep Lair driveway to load my three cans and some more random garbage. BTW…Still early, still cold, and glare ice required more traction while moving heavy things than I had available. So I got an immediate opportunity to try these things out…

…and they are a huge help! Easy to get on and off, provide a genuine improvement in traction, very useful. Time will tell how durable they are, but I was very happy to have them this morning.

Unfortunately as the morning wore on, the mud thawed and everything got more and more gooey. By the time I got home…

…it was really out of control. Goo was everywhere. This is the ammo can I bolted to the side of the trailer for tie-downs…

I guess you’ll have to take my word for it. I managed to get a big dripping glop of it all over the side of my good winter coat, and scrubbing that out will be a chore for this afternoon.

We got home without mishap, though. Quick lunch, then we met at Ian’s to do some interior stuff. Among other things, Ian’s Cave is now officially wood heated – after being enclosed for nine years. You can tell what an urgent issue that was.

Then I went home to see if I could sort out the bedroom heater. I repeated everything I did last night and got nowhere. Tried cracking the line to see if I could bleed out any air bubbles: Didn’t help. So I heaved a sigh and rummaged around in the powershed for the old regulator…

…and – sigh – that fixed it. The pilot lit in seconds, and the heater appears to be back in service. I’m going to leave it the way it is for now and fiddle a bit later before spending more money on replacements. I distrust easy answers like the one I found – though I was aware of what a couple of commenters said, that you can accidentally trigger a high-flow shut-off valve inside the regulator, and I did try resetting it last night. Didn’t make any difference.

So it looks as though I’ve found the problem with the heater, but I’m going to leave the jury out on that for a while to make sure.

Now I have a lot of clean-up to do, I still have food that needs transferring to the pantry, and then I’m going to sit down and read my book.