The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Looks like it’ll be headed back to the shop in town, in the fullness of time.

I was so pleased with myself. I got the radiator replaced without much delay. New hoses, everything sorted out, no parts left over. With a new radiator cap, for the first time since I started driving it 11 years ago, the cooling system held pressure! Actual pressure!

Then this afternoon I went out to drive it to D&L’s place. And on the dirt under the front…

rrrrrr…

Going so far as to actually fix the coolant leaks may have been a mistake. Now the damned thing needs a water pump.

I am reminded, to my disgust, of oil leaks in Oldsmobile 5.7L “diesel” engines. Customers would ask “can you fix that?” I would say, “Sure I can. Where would you like it to leak next?”

I hated doing water pumps even when I was used to wrenching on engines. That was over 30 years ago. I’m going to need to pay somebody else for this one.

Regular readers know that Uncle Joel is an inveterate food hoarder. Canned meat in particular, with the exception of Spam which is a weekly staple, tends to get hoarded. Know what bad times feel like and you’ll likely hoard against bad times.

But I got an email from Big Brother saying he was rotating some older canned meat my way. Yesterday I decided to celebrate that news with a rare treat…

Now, I have to tell you that right out of the can this stuff isn’t a gourmet delight. It’s not Banner Canned Sausage by any means, but you can’t just slice and fry it like Spam. For one thing it’s not as sliceable as Spam; it’s basically pressed ham bits. And it’s salty as hell. But it’s also not ‘pork products’ – in fact the ingredients basically list ham and lots of salt. And I like ham a lot. Still my first experiment with opening one of these cans was disappointing. Uncle Joel is not a great chef.

But two things go well with canned ham bits: Brown sugar and – yes – pineapple.

Cover it with brown sugar and give it fifteen minutes at 350^o, and the gag-inducing saltiness is tempered with the gag-inducing sweetness to make a lovely lunch along with fried potatoes. And there’s a whole pound of it so it’ll last for a couple of days’ snacking.

My last laptop, on which I ran Linux, gradually became a paperweight because of my neurotic reluctance to update software. I say “I ran Linux” as if to suggest that I’m a spongy but proud computer expert capable of calmly doing such things – that is far from true. I’m a (somewhat-spongy at this time of year) gimp with an aversion to math problems and look-how-smart-I-am puzzles and updating computer software. My last laptop was configured by a friend to whom I didn’t have regular access, and it worked great at first and then gradually less great until it simply became too outdated to be compatible with anything. Someone sent me thumb drives with updated software and detailed instructions, and I could never quite bring myself to give it a try since there was no effective Plan B.

Over the past year everything has transitioned to Apple products, not really through any decision of mine, and the matter of software updates has also been taken out of my hands. At irregular intervals the MacBook just refuses to play anymore until it has its way. And I might actually relax and consider that a good thing if it weren’t for the factor that Apple’s totalitarian little policy completely fails to take into account: I live in the boonies, where there is not a cell tower on every corner. On good days my connection is slow but relatively reliable. On bad days – like any randomly-chosen day in winter, for example – there may or may not be a connection from one moment to the next. If you happen to be trying to upload or download or synch or whatever modern software does when it updates itself, tough toenails. And what are you supposed to do after the update fails and gives up retrying? Your theoretical connection will eventually return, if possibly at a low quality. But your software does what it will, if it remains capable of doing anything at all. Talk about being at the mercy of merciless machines.

So yesterday my laptop abruptly informed me that it was incapable of working online until something in the iPhone was updated, and would I like to do that now or just read a book or work on a jigsaw puzzle or something? I said go ahead and update – seconds later it said “No can do.” And that was that. The afternoon wind picked up, which is almost always a sign that weather is blowing in, and when weather blows in my cell signal goes completely to crap.

This picture took forever to load.

…have a friend with a backhoe/loader.

Neighbor D expressed a desire to come over this afternoon and help me with a new driveway apron onto the wash.

Last summer’s flash flood exposed two big rocks in bad places. One wasn’t really much of a problem, but while waiting for D I poked around with a shovel and determined that it would be pretty easy to move. Without anything better to do, I went ahead and did that before D and the tractor arrived.

But the other is the tip of an iceberg-sized boulder and directly in the path of the old driveway apron. It might conceivably be possible to dig it out but it would be more practical to knock the top off with an explosive or jackhammer – and more practical yet just to dig the new ramp off to the other side of it. Which is what D did.

Within a week or two it’ll be packed down nice and tight. Already my driveway is in better shape than it’s been in half a year.

This is arguably in poor taste given that I’ve vaguely heard of a winterpocalype devastating basically all of the midwest. But I think of winter proper being composed of the months of December through February, even though it’s not practically true and March always ends up acting like it was seduced by the dark side. Therefore the first day of February is kind of an excuse to celebrate, since it means that official winter, of which I am thoroughly sick, is officially 2/3 over.

So let it be written, so let it be imagined. And now I’m going to town to hopefully get the right plumbing parts I need, since it turns out I pretty comically screwed that up last week and have wasted a couple of pretty nice days in the meantime.

All the time we were having that weather, all the deer and elk disappeared. Don’t know where they go to ride it out. But these game camera pics are dated eight days ago, and here’s a big gang of mule deer. I haven’t seen a lot of new sign, but apparently they have been around…

It’s common for some mail-order chicken breeders to throw a thirteenth chick in with every dozen order, and it tends to be something a bit oddball. In this case it was that one there, and for once it’s a hen. She is by far the most shy of the bunch, to the point where sometimes even the leghorns pick on her. She mostly hangs out in the corner; for several months I even fed her separately from time to time though I never saw her driven away from the feeder.

I was told to watch for blue eggs, and sure enough today we got a blue egg.

Neighbor L cares about that, so it looks like Oddball Girl just started paying her way.

Maybe a week ago one of the Leghorns snuck out of the chicken house behind my back and got chased by Laddie. Yesterday it happened again, less dramatically. She ran around being annoying for a few minutes and then just walked through the gate I held open for her.

This morning she – I’m pretty sure it was the same bird – nearly got decapitated trying to dash through the door before I could close it.

Why does a chicken whose only wish once free is to rejoin the flock become obsessed with escape?

Scratch that – if raising chickens has taught me anything, it’s that asking “why are you doing that” is always a waste of time.

Neighbor D traded his single action for a semiauto, and wouldn’t you know he just had to buy a cheap 1911. But it was an excuse to go shooting, and I think that problem it had with not wanting to lock up was just the fact that he didn’t actually know anything about semis and it was totally dry. I would not have suggested that particular gun if he had asked, but at least I do have a lot of experience with POS 1911’s and so could show him how to take it apart and clean and lube it. Sigh – does anybody make a good 1911 for less than four figures? No wonder everybody just carries Glocks.

And as previously mentioned, it was an excuse to go shooting at this perfectly good shooting range I’ve been too bummed out to do more than wave at on my way to chicken chores ever since the weather went to hell over a month ago. And at last, what a lovely day! Cloudless, calm, and it even scraped the low fifties! I had a nice morning walk, then did some shooting with D, then fiddled with his pistol which remarkably works much better with a little lubricant, then did afternoon chicken chores early so I could come back and clean guns, then had a nice sink bath while it’s still warm inside. Now I’m wearing clean everything and don’t feel like a crabby old man who’s been stuck inside all day. What a nice day it was.

This is the wash end of my driveway, as re-sculpted by last August’s flash flood…

I should say the new wash end of the driveway, since the original wash end is now too steep and high for anything but a monster truck, plus there’s a big jagged rock right in the middle that was once buried in the sand. It was kind of a pain for a while, but erosion and traffic is gradually beating it into a sort of ramp-like angle. Until next time.

The biggest issue with exiting the driveway by this route is that I have a very narrow road between the new erosion gully on the left, which is gradually wearing down to a more manageable angle, and the drop-off to the right. As the Jeep approaches the wash I can no longer see the approach, so I kind of bias toward the right. The drop-off is just a little bouncy, while until recently the gully would high-center or conceivably even roll the Jeep.

Yesterday on my way to afternoon chicken chores I got a bit – a lot – too far to the right…

…and the right side of the Jeep took a rather more precipitous trip down than the left side did. My mind on other matters, this came as a surprise. The one nice thing about the Jeep’s aftermarket suspension bits, which regular readers know have been much on my mind lately as so many have chosen to leave my employ, is the additional clearance. A couple of months ago I borrowed Neighbor D’s essentially identical but unmodified Wrangler, and it has a much (much) nicer ride – but will just flat bump into obstacles I’m used to being able to blithely drive over. Anyway, the sudden bumpsy-daisy wouldn’t normally cause any concern since that’s exactly the sort of thing the Jeep’s mods are supposed to help it shrug off. But those mods are eighteen years old and for something like fifteen of those years the Jeep has rarely seen pavement at all, so it’s all just a bit worn. So normally I’m more careful than that.

A while ago when I complained that the Leghorns don’t seem to understand what nesting boxes are for, commenter feralfae suggested leaving eggs in the boxes to give them the idea.

A good idea in concept, but in practice the girls are still working on product quality and the shells are too thin. I’m still losing some even without leaving them around to be walked on. But Neighbor L thought it was a good enough idea that she decided to improvise some fake eggs…

…golf balls, to be specific. I remember this working when I was a kid, but for several days the girls continued ignoring the boxes. Still, yesterday we did at last get a couple of white eggs in with the balls so maybe they’re taking the hint.

Check out the noble brow on my stunted ginger sidekick. “I’m a botanist! In your face, Neil Armstrong!”

I never actually decided to take a weekend away from the internet, it just sort of worked out that way. Truth is I’ve been mostly sitting around looking out the window, wishing it wasn’t winter anymore. I’m going through a spate of not caring enough to get off my duff, and you can imagine the vast reservoirs of deep, profound mental activity.

Basically, I’ve been getting out for chicken chores out of a doomed sort of sense of obligation, and otherwise just sitting around reading.

The ladies are doing well, though…

Another personal best this morning, 14, with 11 coming from our 12 leghorns. Kind of cheating a bit, since I got there late this morning and one of the eggs in that basket was laid while I was picking up other eggs elsewhere. So tomorrow will not be a personal record.

Today’s shaping up to be a lovely day, and I really need to drag myself outdoors to shake off my blahs. Sorry about the lack of communication, there just hasn’t been anything worth blathering about. In fact I never even opened the laptop all weekend.

Hilarity conspicuously fails to ensue.

Beautiful morning here in Joel’s Gulch. Crystalline blue sky, hardly a breeze, a little cool but all in all a great day to get the hell out of the cabin and take your Corgi for a long walk.

Everything was fine, Torso Boy had a nice sniff of, well, everything, peed on what little he could, seemed to enjoy himself and get a little exercise for once. All would have been well if I hadn’t taken him past Landlady’s for morning chicken chores.

Sometimes when you’re not paying enough attention, a hen will let her curiosity get the better of her and send her out the door for a shot at freedom. Normally she takes one look at horrible, horrible freedom and wants right back in. Normally she’s not jumped by a delighted Corgi.

Sigh: Laddie has no concept of protecting useful livestock or poultry. He may or may not comprehend the fine line between “herding” and “chasing,” but in practice they do seem the same to him and it’s certain that the chicken recognized no such difference. See the dog, freak right the hell out and run away. And so in an instant, with the help of my trusty stunted little hound, a minor hassle became a big frickin’ deal. Because there was no way this chicken was letting me get within ten feet of her. Oh, by this time she wanted back into the chicken yard in the very worst way so she wouldn’t go far – but accepting my help was not on the table.

I have noticed before, when this happened, that invariably the chicken really really wants back in the chicken yard oh just in the very worst way. It has also occasionally occurred to me that I perhaps went to extremes in sealing those perfectly good gates shut. They need to be tight against predators, of course, and gaps need to be wired shut against pullets wandering away. But they’re hens now, not pullets, and not all that extra hardware cloth is strictly required.

So rather than fruitlessly chase her around, I spent a couple of minutes unsewing the chicken wire and hardware cloth from the big gate, pulled it open just a little, then went and chased her past the opening. As hoped, she popped right inside as if she’d really pulled one over on me. Crisis dealt with, and Laddie got yelled at and splashed with water and generally made to feel like the cause of the problem which he surely was.

By the time I finally rounded up the chicken and secured the gate, of course he had completely forgotten the incident and was ready for the rest of his walky.

I know a woman who got her hand mauled just handing a chicken carcass to an overeager Siberian tiger. I wouldn’t even have wanted to be holding the camera near this guy. He’s got a lot of faith in his relationship with that tiger, that’s all.

…not to do what I have done.

Of all the plumbing mistakes I have built into my infrastructure, this is the one I wish I could turn back time and fix. Because I can’t fix it any other way.

What’s wrong with this picture, boys and girls?

If you said, “Wow, you idiot, you put all the plumbing on the shady side of the tank! You’ll never live long enough for all that to thaw if it freezes!” you win.

So when my very simple valve-removal process went (immediately) wrong and forced me to chop out otherwise perfectly good portions of the manifold I’d much rather have left alone, I was digging out big ice chunks that would have been loose dry dirt weeks ago if I’d only set the tank so the manifold was on the sunny side.

Granted that there was a reason for doing it that way, in long bitter repeated hindsight it wasn’t nearly as good as the reason to not do it that way. But what the hell, here we are.

And why did I have to cut out the portion of the manifold containing the (yes, it really is) broken valve? Well…

This is a smaller boo-boo of the “live and learn” variety. I’ll never do this again, but this time there was no way to spin the valve off the pipe without cutting up the manifold. So when I rebuild it – which will only take a few minutes – I’ll leave more room between the valves. It just looked neater this way, I guess.

The leghorns are already laying enough eggs to be becoming a bit of a problem, and the size and shell quality are improving daily.

I’m hoping to get out and around a bit more today…

All that snow from 3 weeks ago is long gone and most of the mud has dried. That’s the one single good thing about heavy wind in winter: It does seem to suck up moisture that otherwise doesn’t have anywhere else to go but mud and frost and back to mud.

I dug up the water tank manifold a few days ago and today I hope to get that busted valve off without damage – or at least without unrepairable damage – to the manifold. If that goes well I should be able to get a replacement sometime between tomorrow and Monday, depending on when I can catch a ride to town. Normally I do not look forward to a chance to do plumbing repair, as it is not on any list of my favorite things no matter how inclusive the list. But I also don’t recall cabin fever being a real problem the way it has in the past month. And the weather has not been very cooperative. I mean I can lay on frozen dirt in a gale to fix a serious plumbing issue, but I can also die alone of pneumonia. The past couple of years have been busy teaching me my new limitations and it hasn’t been a cheerful lesson. On the other hand, when I was young and strong I could always find excuses to put off fixing busted plumbing so maybe it’s just me. But today the temp is supposed to get up near 50 and the wind is supposed to stay calm, and as you can see it’s a lovely sunny morning so not much excuse for getting out and fixing some damage.

Anyway, posting has been light lately because I’m either sitting around not doing anything and not feeling like writing about it, or out doing stuff during brief windows of good weather and so unavailable for writing. I hope this afternoon will be one of those second things.

This is the sort of thing that would normally put me on defcon 1, but there are considerations: There have been no dog complaints from neighbors, one of those dogs is wearing a collar and none look or act like desperate strays, it happened on Saturday and on no other day. They look like a tourist’s dogs out for a happy romp. And that’s probably what they were.

But for the record, if you go out to the boonies with an unleashed dog you should collar and tag it with its name and a contact number. I’ve hunted them, I’ve buried them, and I’ve rescued them and returned them to their owners. It’s situational – but if I see an uncollared dog around neighbors or poultry I’m probably going to just go ahead and assume the worst.