The Ultimate Answer to Kings

This seems awfully elementary and I don’t want to insult anyone so if you already know this or have your own system just ignore this. But on the other hand I’ve seen neighbors I thought would know better start brush fires by disposing of hot stove ashes outside.

So in case you don’t already know, the first rule of disposing of ashes is make damned sure they’re cold first. Charcoal can hold hot coals for hours after the fire goes out so it doesn’t pay to assume. There might be a lot of good ways to deal with it but this is mine…

I’ve got a cheap little aluminum bucket that sits by the woodstove for when I want to clean it out. For a much better ash shovel than you’ll find in any fireplace set, look here. Outside, there’s an ashcan – sort of a half-size garbage can – with a tight-fitting lid. The ashes go into the can and sit there with the lid on for a couple of days. That way I know without having to hope that the ashes are cold. When it’s about half full and before I pour a fresh bucketload into it, I carry it out to the ash pit – which itself is dug in a place unlikely to start any fires in case I somehow did everything else wrong.

And a brush fire is one oopsie I’ve never had to deal with, so I must be doing something right. 🙂

A few days ago I had a scary problem with my prosthetic leg that turned out to be nothing but that caused a major change in how something close to me – hell, it’s attached to me – looked.

Here’s how it looks now…
M
…because all the weird wavy carbon fiber “this doesn’t look anything remotely like an ankle” shit is exposed. It used to be covered by this…

…a hightech covering made of pipe insulation and electrical tape. No, I didn’t put it there – the prosthetist did ten years ago when the leg was modified to accept the new and vastly, almost hilariously superior foot. It was put there, basically, to fill out the inside of a sock.

But I had already grown tired of the way my fake foot wore through unnecessary left socks, so I covered the covering with an old gray sock the foot portion of which was actually inside the foot-shaped part of the foot and just left it there for years. In addition to the unnecessary sock attrition, it’s easier to get a boot on and off without the sock.

Then a few days ago I cut the whole thing off to get to the setscrews, intending to tape it back together later. In hindsight I’ve decided to leave it be.

You know, for many years I was at least a little self-conscious about the prosthesis. Oh, there were always exceptions: openly wearing one on a dive boat, for example, is a direct path to being treated as much cooler than you really are. But in general I tried for decades to keep it to myself. Not that I hid the fact that it was there, that wouldn’t have been practical since at a minimum the limp needed to be explained, but I hid the thing itself because…let’s face it, it’s a rather gross disfigurement. I went quite a long time between getting out of the hospital and acquiring my first prosthesis, and believe me people do stare.

But that was a long time ago and now in addition to the fact that there’s nobody around to look at it, I’m not that insecure anymore. So let it be what it is, and screw’em if they can’t take a joke.

Yesterday it never got above freezing outside and it likely won’t today. But the sky did clear, which gave the batteries their first good charge in three or four days. And this morning it really showed…

It’s really frigid outside, it showed 3^o when I got up. Probably today won’t be any warmer than yesterday but tomorrow’s supposed to moderate a little.

I don’t remember this ever happening before.

The roof-mounted panels never completely cleared yesterday. Solar panels are generally pretty good at clearing themselves of snow, given time. They’re black and smooth so you get a liquid layer that then makes the snow layer just slide off. Given time, that is: I’m not suggesting that cleaning your panels isn’t a good idea. In fact I noticed this while cleaning off the ground-mount rack even though at present there’s no hint that the sun will ever shine again.

If things don’t improve by the time I return from the morning water run I’ll have to break out the scary aluminum ladder.

Temperature bottomed out at 5^o F. but was rapidly rising when I got out of bed. That’s unusual behavior, it’s usually coldest as the sun starts to rise, and I was confused until it started to snow. Again.

Still, no complaints. I promised I was going to be tedious in my praise of the Lair’s newfound winter chops and I intend to make good on that promise. A 30^o indoor/outdoor (ratio? coefficient? difference.) is magnificent for a handbuilt house on a night like this. I’ll take it.

Wish I could say the same for the batteries. Between the cold and the extended gloom – I never saw my shadow at all yesterday – I’m starting to take comfort in the presence of that generator and wishing I had indulged in the 12-volt charging cable Honda sells for it. Don’t need it because I have a Battery Minder, but it would be more elegant. Never really expected to be contemplating the need for a generator to keep the batteries charged, but the batteries are definitely starting to notice the gloom. And the cold doesn’t help of course, lead/acid batteries aren’t at their best when it’s cold.

Cold enough this time that it’s all loose powder, easy to clean up. No hurry with the solar panels since we’re completely socked in here. I’ll clean them off and it’ll help a little, but not a lot.

I measured 2.5 inches on the porch floor, which isn’t very scientific and means at least seven inches in the past three days. That’s a lot for here. The mud is going to be epic, but I’m not going to worry about that now. The only thing besides chicken chores I have on my plate is a nooner over at D&L’s to feed and clean up after their horses while they’re in the big town about 50 miles away for a doctor appointment – assuming it doesn’t get cancelled on account of weather. The road to that town can get scary.

Also, it almost goes without saying that Landlady’s usual visit is off. The weather is supposed to go nowhere but worse from here and not lighten up until something like Wednesday. I’m almost glad the water tank is empty because that takes busted pipe worries off the plate.

Meanwhile…

I’m planning to comfortably ride this one out, as opposed to the tradition of shivering in my heavy coat for half a week. I like this brave new world of walls that decently hold heat and woodsheds with a winter’s worth of wood all neatly stacked. Got so warm in the main room I had to shuck my hoodie. Shirtsleeve temps in a mid-winter storm! The distant dream is reality!

All yesterday morning’s lovely sunshine was hidden behind thick overcast by ten. The batteries got a little help but not the nice deep charge I like to see. Still it was a nice quiet day, no unexpected visitors, no emergency chores. I roasted some of the pork stored in Ian’s freezer for lunch, Torso Boy and I feasted, and then I very domestically prepared to wash dishes… Continue reading →

Yesterday was forecast to be warmer than today, but I think today’s going to end up warmer than yesterday no matter how cool it stays. Yesterday was actually kind of pleasant in an “only the greenhouse effect is keeping us from freezing” kind of way. This morning dawns bright and frigid but I suspect we’re going to lose a lot of this snow before noon. Then days are supposed to get cold and nights are supposed to get really cold until like the middle of next week. Not record-breaking Abandon All Hope Ye Who Dwell Within cold, but cold.

That was the most heavily overcast day we’ve had since I don’t remember when. A little wan sunlight right at the end of the day but not enough to bring the charge controllers to float, and of course it happened on one of the shortest days of the year so double hit. Mornings like this are why I wanted battery voltage readouts inside my nice warmish cabin…

Not real bad under the circumstances. It’s about 0.3 volts lower than normal for a winter morning, or about what the two Interstates would have read at the same time of year had everything gone perfectly the day before and I hadn’t spent the evening watching videos on the laptop, which I did*, and which in older times would have been verboten on such a night after such a day. Color me pleased.

It’s not as cold this morning as I was led to expect, looks like the sky was cloudy for most of the night. But things are clearing as we approach daybreak (the outside temperature dropped almost ten degrees in the two hours since I rise as the sky cleared) and I’m pretty sure the batteries will make good yesterday’s losses in short order today.

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*Oh, and in so doing I broke one of Torso Boy’s little rules. He insisted on going to bed before six, because of course it was getting dark, and when it’s dark you get into bed. Everybody knows that. So I turned down the covers and said he could get on the bed, and then I tumbled him over and rubbed his belly and fussed over him for a while, which he always acts like that alarms him but he won’t leave me alone till I do it so there’s some passive-aggressive mixed messages going on there much like a marriage. And then I decided I wanted to play on the laptop, so I left the bedroom. Watched a movie and then was reading on the Internet when around 9:30 he decided that was quite enough of that and he came and got me and would not leave me alone until I turned that stupid computer off and came to bed. So, yeah. Much like marriage but with no sex and I get to express my opinion when I disagree. I don’t get my way, let’s not get crazy. But I can state an opinion if I like.

I wonder how much more of this the chickens’ top cover could have taken?

They absolutely freaked out when I started flailing about with a shovel, BTW. Chickens is stoopid.

On a completely different subject…

Private to whomever sent me this (and I apologize that I don’t remember who) This is damned good coffee! DAZBOG? Lots of Cyrillic on the packaging, it either has or is pretending to have some connection to Russia for some reason. Pretty sure they don’t grow much coffee in Russia, but whatever. This is damned good coffee, easily the equal of my gone and lamented TJ House Blend. Thank you!

Four inches of snow in a night! I know that’s not a lot to some of you – but this is the southwest desert and it’s a lot.

It’s really kind of pleasant – not at all cold, there was an honest 3.5 measured inches of snow on the solar panels…

…and it’s wet and eminently packable – perfect snowman weather. I was having nostalgic thoughts until just a few minutes ago when I cleaned off the Jeep and remembered that the problem with Michigan mornings like this was the endless drive to work on roads packed with other idiots just like me and the sharply-reduced chance of completing it without an expensive, disruptive and possibly very painful collision – or series of collisions. Then I decided I wasn’t so nostalgic after all.

I’ve only cleaned off the lower panels, for all the good it will do…

I can clean off the roof-mounted panels but there’s some hazard involved with the iced-up aluminum ladder, which is why I decided right off that the new rack would be nearer ground level. Not that it matters a lot at the moment because there’s nothing remotely like direct sunlight at present and the big panels will probably become snow-covered soon again anyway. But my system is so overpowered for the size of the battery bank that I don’t need direct sun to charge the batteries. Right now of course my power input will be sharply diminished if there’s any at all – but it doesn’t matter because my battery bank is more than adequate to my actual power usage. Win/win. And if all hell breaks loose and the batteries do begin to suffer, I can pour some gas in the Honda and – gasp – run the generator. Which all the neighbors are probably already doing and thinking nothing of it. Heh: Sometimes going to extremes can be fun.

And now I must go out on the rock-strewn but traffic-free wash to feed chickens. Just occurred to me that I won’t be able to see the path, but there’s no way I can climb the driveway so the wash is the only available road. Oh well – I may end up high-centered on a rock but I won’t collide with some poor schlub’s shiny SUV.

…Much thick wet snow. Could be worse: Last time I saw the sky the stars were very sharp and clear, promising a very cold night. Apparently the clouds arrived right after that. Now suddenly there’s inches of snow but it’s not very cold at all.

I cleaned off the stairs and a path to them with the solar panel squeegee, but the rest of the porch is a job for a snow shovel. Since I so seldom need a snow shovel I never bought one, but I do have a square one in the powershed. I’ll get it and finish the porch when I go out to clean the panels. Right now I’ve got the fire working, and I’m going back to my already nice and cozy propane-heated bedroom. I don’t care what Barbara Tuchman says, the twentieth century rules! 😀

Yeah, Christmas is not really a big thing here at the Secret Lair but it is awfully close to the change of the year and that’s traditionally when we get a huge cold snap. Not every year, but it’s worth watching out for. I checked the forecast and indeed things are supposed to go very cold starting, basically, this very evening. And you know what I never got around to doing? That’s right! I never did crawl under the Lair to make sure rats hadn’t made condos out of my pipe insulation or something. So far December has been pretty mild but that’s about to change big time and it makes a lot more sense to crawl around on dry dirt on a mild day futzing with insulation than it does crawling around in half-frozen mud repairing pipes when the afternoon peaks in the twenties.

And sure enough, I should have been paying more attention to my insulation. Took me a couple of hours to finish fixing the damage, in fact. A couple of sheets of rigid insulation had fallen, one piece of pipe wrap was god knows where, but the best part was what I saw when I looked at the riser.

The riser, of course, is the pipe between the ground and the floor. It hangs out in the wind in all weather, with no earth or floor to keep it warmish, and so is by far the most likely to freeze first. I’m from Michigan, busted pipes are not new to me, but I’m also no builder and have never figured out how to make a cabin skirt tight enough to keep rats out. My one attempt at skirting the cabin resulted in such a huge mess that I decided I was better off without. That means I need to keep the riser insulated beyond all reason. I wrap the pipe in pool noodle, the noodle in fiberglass batting, and the batting in plastic. Of course I looked at it in autumn but never climbed under and gave it a real inspection. Looked fine from the outside, but under the cabin we were pretty much down to the noodle. Somebody had stolen the bulk of my batting.

So I got that replaced (never throw old insulation away) and all the other inadequacies made as adequate as possible. Nighttime temperatures are headed for the wrong side of zero and days are supposed to stay below freezing, so if the plumbing is going to freeze it’ll be this week or next. At least while I’m crawling through freezing mud fixing it – again – I’ll have something to grumble about besides my own negligence.

As we await the arrival of our new dystopian overlords, those of us not in touch with governmental doings worry endlessly about the fate of family and loved ones caught behind the lines of devastation undoubtedly caused by the federal government’s heartless indifference to the teeming masses dependent upon its control over their every thought, breath and bite of food. Undoubtedly by now the major cities are piles of smoking rubble, driving even more hordes of the newly homeless to seek shelter with the enlightened Seattle city council. The roads must be choked with refugees.

Look! Christmas Kitty can’t afford fur. Good thing she has that winter coat, no doubt liberated from a fat, um, cat billionaire that didn’t make it to its luxury bunker in time.

Alas, there’s little a poor desert hermit can do to alleviate the suffering other than, you know, to shoot starving looters on sight feed the few stumbling survivors who make it this far. But here’s a cheery Christmas song to keep you going, chosen as appropriate to the events I’ve heard from the increasingly panicked newreaders…

I collected the card from the game camera this morning after more than a week, and there was nothing on it worth mentioning. But my connection speed has improved enough that I could put together some older elk pics I’ve had lying about.

You want to see sexism? This is sexism. Here’s a bunch of cows…

They came, they drank, they cleared out. The apparent reason they cleared out appeared on the very next file on the card…

And he didn’t even stick around.

Still always somebody in the bunch that objects to the camera…

The manager of the shop where I bought the trailer’s new tires agreed readily enough that they are supposed to hold air longer than a month, and gave me no trouble about replacing the rotted-out valve stem while D&L and I finished our business in town.

For some reason there’s no longer a water vending machine in the local food store, I guess they found that too useful for their customers, so for the past several weeks we’ve had to drive right through town and a few miles beyond to the ice plant, which has one in its wall. Takes quarters, though, so you have to remember change.

I got paid for watching T&S’s animals, and that’s found money and I’m already in good shape for fuel. So I spent most of it on my most abiding hobby which is making my pantry bulge more than it already does. Bunch of canned goods, dog biscuits of course, pasta, sundries and ammo. Rotated my stock of Hydrolyte, because lately I’ve found it useful for times other than when I’m deathly sick. It’s kind of expensive the way I’ve been getting it, so I’m thinking of buying it in bulk online instead. Also bought a hoe, which I’ve wanted for some time to help break up the washed-in ash deposits that have clogged the drainage ditch behind the cabin. December has been so mild, with a few brief exceptions, that I’m getting tired of sitting around. The rest of the money will melt away next week when it’s time to fill gas cans and propane bottles again.

On the way out of town we detoured back to the shop, which had the wheel repaired and ready to go. Got back to D&L’s, transferred all this stuff to the Jeep, unloaded groceries at the cabin, placated Laddie, then went straight back out to fix the trailer…

So now that’s back, in time for next weekend’s planned dump run. Between now and then I have to pick up some pallets people have waiting for me, and also haul firewood to Landlady’s – and also Ian’s place! I keep forgetting, last weekend Landlady and I finished piping in a woodstove there as well. That’s going to take a big chunk out of my supply, but I’m still in really good shape. This streak of mild weather is supposed to last till around Wednesday, if the forecast means anything, so I have a few days to get that done before Winter socks in again.

All in all a very successful trip. Now I have chicken in the oven for lunch and dinner, and I’m going back to my book for a while.

He goes out, he does his chores without trying to elope to Mexico with one of the yard rabbits, he comes in, he gets a cookie. That’s the routine, and Torso Boy likes his routine. And he let me know in no uncertain terms this morning that cookie means cookie, not a cut-rate rawhide stick.

Yeah! I got this big bag of cheap rawhide sticks because he really likes the ones Big Brother sent – of which he gets one before bedtime, because routine. I figured that, just to be nice, I’d deal him one of these instead of the usual biscuit. And he took it, half-turned toward the bedroom where he usually runs to enjoy his biscuit – and then he turned back toward me, dropped the stick on the floor, and stared up at me as if to say, “You’ve made a mistake in my order.”

What could I do? I just said, “so sorry, sir!” and got him a cookie. And he grabbed it like always and ran to the bedroom, order having been restored to his universe.

I’d better never run out of biscuits if I want to keep my job, I guess…

It’s the shortest sunny period, the earliest evening, and so the recharging capacity will be at its lowest at the same time your usage is likely to be highest. If you’re going to have problems with battery capacity, they are most likely to appear or become a real hassle around the solstice.

This has been a very good year for the Lair’s power system. In fact it’s been nearly two years since I lucked into those four discharged but providentially not ruined Trojan T-105s which proved such an unexpectedly major system improvement. Prior to that, in case you haven’t been tuned in for the whole show, I used two six-volt deep cycle batteries of approximately equivalent capacity, in the neighborhood of 230 a/h each, and prided myself on how virtuously frugal I was being. Someone offered to finance a larger bank one time, shortly after the solar panel expansion, and I turned it down with thanks because replacing a conventionally-large bank would be beyond my financial reach, and therefore I should avoid having one because my usage would inevitably expand to fit my capacity. That wasn’t completely bad reasoning and in principle I stand by it but as is often the case I took it too far. (Sidebar: you ever notice that all the more demented philosophies of human history tend to take one arguably-good idea and then try to stretch it to fit every possible situation? Purges and pograms tend to ensue.) Anyway, while it is true that I don’t practically need and prudently should not have an 8- or 16- or 24-battery bank, an unnecessarily small 2-battery bank was under frequent stress and I spent too much time and mental effort working around its limitations. You can get by with a minimal bank, I did for years, but it’s not the sweet center course.

You live and you learn. It’s good to take a few minutes now and then to reflect on what works well and what could be improved.

In, you know – a bad way.

They replaced the tire but not the valve stem. So guess what blew out?

It’s not all bad news – a shop with a tire-mounting machine can replace this in a few minutes, which means I can conceivably get it fixed Saturday and not miss the following weekend’s dump run. I really need a dump run.