The Ultimate Answer to Kings

…trying to get through a high school algebra test. But he appears to be having more fun.

“What’s the point of this, exactly? Oh, this tunnel thing is cozy, think I’ll stay here for a…what does she want now…I wonder if any of those people have a biscuit?”

h/t to Wendy

It hit sixty degrees today! And no wind, light cloud cover … time to dig out the back ditch.

The drainage ditch from the gully behind the cabin had filled up with silt again thanks to those two big ash deposits. It’s the worst kind of mud I’ve ever encountered, and now I wish I’d given it a few more days because I worked harder than I really needed to. But I got the ditch clear from the 90^o turn at the top of the ditch to the graywater drain, which you can sort of see in the lower left-hand corner of the ditch in the photo. There’s quite a bit left to do downstream from there, but that’s mostly brush-chopping rather than mud-digging. The ow-my-back part is done now.

Also got quite a lot of yard clean-up done, both wind debris and just junk that piles up because “I’ll get to that when it’s not a foot deep in slush.” All in all it really turned into a fairly productive outdoor day. 🙂

Yeah, another post about the weather. Sorry – we’re sort of betwixt and between here and nothing of any real interest is going on. Not great for blogging. But we’re getting out of the crappy weather brought on last weekend – this is the first morning all week I haven’t burned wood, and the inside temp is already up 10 degrees. And I feel pretty good, so started out the day with a nice long walky.

But otherwise I’m really only here to touch base.

I keep forgetting the sink works. Went to boil some water for dish washing this morning, and reached for the water bottle.

It’s been less than a week, and prior to that I went over two months without running water so certain things have gone wanting – like scrubbing porcelain. Much easier when water comes out of the faucet and you don’t have to haul every pint. So I spent some time with the, um, facilities today. Good news: Unlike the last time I lost water for a while, the toilet valve didn’t pack it in this time – though it did give me a most disconcerting rattling moan the first time I pressurized the pipes. Bad news:

A seal must have dried out and shrunk or something, but I’m getting a trickle from the sink faucet. Just a seep, really, but it’s already laying down a layer of calcium on my nice cast iron sink. I need to replace the damned thing or it’ll start forming stalagmites.

Also, and speaking of calcium…

I spent a whole gallon of cleaning vinegar and three hours’ time today trying to clean the scale out of my Real Flush Toilet and this is how far I got. Monday I can get one of those scraping stones, but that’s not going to cut it alone. I’m going to get more vinegar, empty the bowl of water and then see if straight vinegar will do it. Or at least that’s the only thing I can think of…

We’re still up to our collective ass in mud, but if you get out soon enough it’s just nice crunchy ice under your boots.

So I got a nice walkie this morning, for the first time all week. Haven’t decided what I’m going to do with this promised sunny day, which is also supposed to be about ten degrees warmer than yesterday – and no wind!

It’s another coldish, cloudy day – though without all the snow and wind that made yesterday such a perfect day to stay indoors with the curtains shut and the woodstove roaring. Too much mud to consider wanting to go for long walks and embrace the suck, but I’m not going to huddle in a corner and sulk over it. So,

I’m not out of bread yet, strictly speaking, and proper frugality would normally demand that I wait till tomorrow for this. But this is the perfect day: Baking warms the cabin without the need to futz with the woodstove, it’s calming and familiar and produces a pleasant scent.

It took a long time for me to get the hang of this – for years, baking was kind of stressful because the first part was strenuous yet tedious and I could never be sure how the rising was going to go. Somehow or other, though, through repetition over a really long time, it became a happy and pleasant part of my week.

“If I live through this, it’s gonna make a helluva story.”

No, I have no idea what’s going on here. Just thought it was funny.

Looks like I might not be off the hook on paying to get the Jeep fixed…

When I fixed the really major thermostat housing leak on Sunday I filled the cooling system and ran the engine for half an hour or so to check for drips. It appeared fine. But I didn’t use the Jeep at all yesterday, so that wasn’t completely definitive.

This morning I had to go to S&L’s to feed their birds before chicken chores, plus I was racing the weather. So this morning it got more of a workout. And when I parked it next to the Lair and looked underneath…it was dripping again. Grrrr…

I don’t know exactly from where, though I could see no leak at the thermostat. I wasn’t going to lay on the ground because lots of mud from yesterday’s all-day-and-all-night rain, and also…

…basically I already had enough information to put me in a really black mood, and nothing else was required at that time. The wind is blasting and it never got out of the thirties today, so screw everything. So very sick of winter now…

So I guess there’s this big scandal about the rich/n/famous bribing the dumb-as-rocks kids they bought at Versace (or wherever those people get their kids so as not to ruin their figures) into ivy league schools? Even CNN and MSNBC are covering it, which means even DNC donors are at least mildly going under the bus.

Why is this news all of a sudden? It’s certainly not new. It’s at least as old as “how can you tell when a politician is lying?”

I hate everything.

Started raining at 5:30 yesterday. Rained all night. Not raining at present, but that’s clearly up for revision at any moment. It’s basically supposed to rain and/or snow for the next 2/3 days. I just went for my long morning walkie while I could, already in a bad mood because I yelled at Laddie when he misbehaved (rabbit, not really his fault) just as I had blundered us into a bunch of gooey ash mud I should have known enough to avoid. My stump was sore yesterday because I was on it all day, and about 25% into the walkie I figured out I should have given it a miss this morning. Hell, I fixed the Jeep engine yesterday, a good shakedown and check for more dripping could have been an excuse. But the weather is supposed to be miserable for days and I wanted my walkie. And now I’m all sore again.

I’ll take solace in being pleased with myself for not lazying out on finishing the plumbing. I’m an old retired guy: Normally I wouldn’t bother with two projects in a day, but I had the means to finish them both and an incentive in the promised weather change. So now I’m going to clean off the reading chair and check out one of these OffGrid Magazines. Maybe it’ll teach me how to live off grid…

ETA: 8:37 am – aaaand it’s raining.

I found some pipe insulation at the hardware this morning that changed my plans…

This works so well I’m inclined to believe I’m actually using it just the way it was designed to be used. I intended to get some insulation for 3/4″ PVC, then wrap that with batting inside some 8″ stovepipe. But in the box right next to the 3/4″ wrap there was this big stick of pipe wrap into which the 3/4″ wrap would fit neatly with the pipe inside. And it looked as though the whole thing would fit very nicely into 4″ sewer pipe, of which I have quite a bit.

So I dug out the old riser and cut it off, then built another just like it with the insulation and sewer pipe cut to size. Installed it, tested for leaks, made sure the insulation was pushed all the way up to cover the riser to the T-fitting, filled the trench…

…and the Secret Lair has indoor plumbing once more.

I’m an idiot. I broke the first rule of automotive diagnosis. I was a vocational teacher! I must have intoned a hundred times the key to profitable diagnosis:

“Always check the easiest thing first.”

I didn’t do that. I didn’t really check anything – I just jumped to a conclusion. See coolant dripping off the front of the oil pan, your engine must need a water pump. And maybe eight out of ten times that’s even true – but what if you’ve got a real blowout at the thermostat housing? Enough of a leak to cause coolant to pour down the front of the block without evaporating? What then, oh mighty ex dealership mechanic?

It didn’t cost me anything but time, so I shouldn’t bitch. But one day less than a week ago I opened the hood while the engine was good and hot and needing a drink and found steam hissing out of a blown-out thermostat housing gasket. I didn’t know there wasn’t a water pump problem until I fixed the thermostat gasket – but I knew there was a problem with the thermostat gasket or possibly a cracked housing.

So today I replaced the gasket. And since it might be a cracked housing and I wouldn’t be able to get to the auto parts store for another week, I replaced the housing. And the thermostat, since I was there. Turns out it was broken too, so good.

And the front of the engine is not leaking coolant now.

I can’t keep the rules straight. It’s so confusing.

Or maybe since I’m a straight white male I don’t get any victim points for ageism or ableism, which would simplify things a lot. Anyway I’m going to go ahead and preemptively denounce myself: this morning I went into the local drug store to buy a box of ammo, and on my way out I saw a little old lady with a bent back and an industrial strength cane coming in the vestibule. So I exercised my white male privilege and waited to hold the inner door open for her. I recognize that women are awesome and fully capable beings, and that by being so condescending as to non-verbally suggest that she was incapable of handling her own door I sent a message that all women everywhere are subservient and inferior to men.

I acknowledge the severity of my grievous error and publicly express shame for my aggressive and inappropriate white maleness. It’s just … that’s what I was taught to do in all those elementary school film strips…

I love TUAK readers. I complained about blowing out a finger in my favorite work gloves … and found myself with the new first-world problem of where to store all these *&^% work gloves.

Other than that it was mostly canned meat and ways to psychologically torture dogs. 🙂 Continue reading →

I’m playing with something here – Mark M. sent four of these radio-controlled rats in the belief that dogs would find them entertaining. Landlady immediately wanted one, and sent me a video of Dharma’s reaction. I never tried a smartphone video here, and the results were not what I hoped for. I guess you have to click on it.

IMG_6838

Both dogs wish it to be known that, whatever that thing is, it isn’t a rat. And if we think they’re coming close to it, we’re crazy.

Still working on the full care package post, but it’s coming. Connection is in and out.

The weather has turned beautiful again and I’ve been out since 10 digging up the yard valve.

I had this great elaborate plan that required rebuilding that whole bunch of plumbing, I’m now not sure why. At last, having gotten it all cleared of dirt and visible, I said “screw it,” made one cut, and just unscrewed the broken valve. First I used the faucet to drain most of the water from the more than 300′ of pipe coming down the ridge, so the whole trench didn’t fill up. I dug a little pit under the valve both to allow it to rotate and to contain what little water came out of the pipe when I cut it, and it looks as though that part will be no bother at all. Don’t know what all the fuss was about.

The riser should be much more of a bother, since it involves crawling around under the cabin and I really hate that.

ETA:

That part’s done. I need to get more pipe insulation tomorrow, then I’ll rebuild the riser and open the valve. For now I have water in the yard.

I’m writing this from the driver’s seat of the Jeep on my phone up on a ridgetop high enough to be more or less line-of-sight to the town, unable to get any useful signal at the cabin or yard down in my hollow. The wind is blasting and it’s cooler than it’s been for more than a week, though not at all cold. Basically, exactly what was forecast.

The upshot of all this is that I’m effectively unable to blog right now, not that there’s really anything to say except that I’m sitting out the wind. Landlady is due this evening, so there might be a care package post in the near future but not until the signal improves to the point where I can post pictures. So all’s well, but TUAK might remain quiet for a while.

She always said she never did. Guess it’s so, because…

If I’m sitting there watching a video or movie and a dog barks in the recording? Torso Boy, who hates all dogs not himself, wants an immediate explanation. No other sound gets his attention at all. 🙂

Seriously, not a parody.

At the risk of exposing the innate sexism of my white cis male privilege, I’d like to point out that Scarlett Johansson was easily the best thing about Iron Man II. Because nobody does a mediocre superhero movie like Robert Downey Jr.

Warmest day so far this year, and I’m out of excuses…

I’m going to wait until Sunday to tear up the plumbing because the weather is going to get colder and besides it’s virtually certain I’ll be missing something essential I’ll need to get during the Monday morning water run. But I didn’t know how long it would take to dig up the trench, so there was no harm in going ahead and doing that. Even if I don’t replace the pipe, I’ll still need the flexibility of having it above the ground. And it’ll probably be simplest to replace the pipe. I’ll need to rebuild the plumbing around the valve and possibly the faucet, and I intend to tear out and rebuild the riser with more rat-resistant insulation at the same time. With more under-floor insulation, the plan is to stop worrying about my pipes during every damned cold snap.

I expected it to take a while to dig up the trench, but I didn’t expect it to be so damned hard. Yeah, it’s packed clay and needed to be hammered out with a mattock and I hate using my mattock. But it’s only 18 inches at its deepest and less than 10 feet long, and not as though I haven’t done it before, so why was I having to stop every five minutes to catch my breath? Well, there’s building season and sitting season. At the end of building season, I’m typically in pretty good physical shape. At the end of sitting season, I’m a marshmallow. And marshmallows aren’t natural digging machines. So I’m going to go ahead and cut myself some slack over this.