Getting ready for the next blow…

That’s Cruise Control the miniature horse, crappy picture courtesy of my phone. I get a kick out of him in his shaggy winter coat, he looks more like a yak than a horse. In all these years I’ve still never gotten used to the idea of taking photographs with a telephone, so I guess it’s appropriate that they still don’t put decent ones in the bubble-pack phones I get from the dollar store. 🙂

It’s been sunny and warmish the past couple of afternoons – it’s almost 45 out now at noon – but windy as hell. I hauled a trailerload of manure out of J&H’s with several left to go and wanted to get it done before the wind got completely cranked up. Yesterday evening it never did get very cold so I never lit a fire, for which I was rewarded this morning after the temperature crashed overnight with indoor temp in the mid-thirties.

I was hoping the cold would drive my packrat tormentor back into the Jeep’s engine compartment, currently paved with traps. But for the second straight night, no joy. I guess he’s either staying away or he doesn’t care for peanut butter so tonight we’re switching to chicken scratch which is basically bird seed. I’m gonna get that little SOB one way or another, even if I have to spread poison on the intake manifold. But that’s a last resort. There’s no sign he’s been in there at all.

Sun is bright right now but supposed to go away this afternoon as the next line of snowstorms comes through. I gather from the news that some of you guys already know all about that. It’s only new year’s eve and I’ve already blown through roughly half a cord of firewood which is almost half my stored supply, so during this pleasant interval I’ve been cutting a bunch more. I confess it’s nice to be able to heat the cabin to a civilized temperature, even though part of me says it’s all sinful and decadent and stuff.

Taking into account what people said about the generic nature of a lot of old stove parts, I took a crack at scrounging the part(s) I need to fix my oven. Down the road a ways there’s an abandoned Toyota RV that’s been completely taken over by the local rodents. Some of you have gotten on my case for being too laid-back about mice and rats – well, this thing even creeps me out. So much so that I’ve never been tempted to loot it. But in hopes that there might still be a stove in there I pried open the door and peeked inside, and sure enough there was. I went in gloved and masked, and sweartagod halfway through the job of tearing out the stove I wished I’d left the paper mask at home and brought my gas mask out of its bag. This place is foul. But I did get the stove out, in the process encountering two live deermice and several dead ones…I’m in the market for an RV stove for the summer kitchen I hope to put up next year, but it definitely wasn’t going to be this stove. I had to clean nests out of the Lair’s stove before I installed it, but they hadn’t befouled it the way they did to this awful thing. So I dismantled it with a prybar until I could get to the valves and thermocouple…None of which turned out to be interchangeable with what I need. So that didn’t work, and this morning it all went into the trailer for a ride to J&H’s Dumpster. Interesting experience, though.

Hope you guys are riding out the weather well, talk at you later.