If some of these balusters seem to be kind of leaning one way or another they are. The inserts are complete, but not yet screwed to the railings.
I don’t want them attached yet because tomorrow starts the painting phase, and since they’re different colors they’ll be easier to paint separately.
As I’ve said before I’m not a carpenter, but I’m learning. I do believe this might be the nicest job I’ve done, and I did it with scrounged lumber.
This is kind of cheating, because normally I do chicken chores near the first thing, like sevenish in the morning. This morning I wanted to get right on the porch railing and put the chickens off till noonish. They’ve got two waterers now; they don’t need me there first thing because somebody took a dump in the water.
So part of this would normally be counted in tomorrow’s take, but still…
…eleven eggs from eleven over-the-hill hens ain’t a bad day’s work. Gold star, ladies. Sunflower seeds for everybody.
I’m outside working on the porch railing this morning. Kind of wanting some tunes I hadn’t heard a million times before I rummaged around on Youtube with the smartphone – didn’t know I could do that until recently – and found a Led Zeppelin playlist. Okay.
Nothing’s free, of course. There’s a quicky commercial inserted every tune or two. And I wouldn’t mind that, advertisements are one of the prices we pay for cheap plentiful goods, but for god’s sake…
The ads are age-appropriate, it seems. So I’m listening to Whole Lotta Love and Immigrant Song and Dazed and Confused in between ads for Metamucil and AARP and diabetes meds.
T’ain’t fair. Hey, maybe those guys got old. Me, I’m still in my twenties. All these sore joints and this swollen prostate and these glaucoma-dimmed eyes, I don’t know where they came from…
Florida state employee failed to review federal background check profiles on “tens of thousands” of applications for concealed weapons permits over the course of more than a year because he couldn’t remember his login information for the National Instant Criminal Background Check system, the Tampa Bay Times reports.
According to an inspector general’s report, a single employee in the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services simply stopped looking at federal background check information when he forgot how to access the system, which alerts authorities if a concealed carry applicant has disqualifying non-criminal issues, like a history of drug abuse treatment, or a history of inpatient treatment for mental illness.
The article is quick to note that the permits in question were for concealed carry, not for purchase. But still – tens of thousands of permission slips unblessed by the Holy Fed! Surely blood must have run in the streets, or something. The anguished shrieks of the legions of horrified victims should have been audible all the way out to the desert.
Yet I heard nothing. Huh.
Ah, the good ol’ days, huh, Bill?
😀 And then the very next comment goes all “Okay, yeah, but at least he wasn’t Trump.”
And people really do occasionally wonder out loud why I can’t take politics or politicians seriously.
I’m so glad I don’t Twit. I’d have killed myself by now.
The Gospel of Browning. From the Book of Armaments, Chapter 3, verses 9 to 21:
Has this ever happened to you, Mr. and Mrs. America?
Well, be bothered no more! Yes, whenever your chicken does some unspeakable thing no self-respecting dog or cat would ever consider…
just remember these four words that will make it all go away. Ready? Repeat after us: “I’m Doing It Wrong!”
That’s right, Mr. and Mrs. Backyard Chicken farmer! It’s not the chicken’s fault! You’ve been doing it wrong all along! Our years of research and study have conclusively proven that Chickens Are Not Household Pets!
Absolutely! In fact, modern science has shown that chickens are actually barnyard fowl: Large omnivorous semi-flightless birds which properly live in flocks outdoors!
I know, it’s difficult to believe. These people found it to be so, as well. But once they had attended the patented TUAK three-day Chicken Deprogramming Classtm available at limited locations for a short time only for the low low introductory price of $50,000/day offer void wherever common sense is sold see package insert for details, they were able to correct all their misconceptions about the proper human/chicken relationship and resume happy, healthy, relatively normal lives.
No thanks needed, Citizen. That’s why we’re here.
My morning was off to a grouchy start – nothing at all important…
And then I found this and it cheered me right up.
Many many years ago while explaining his intention to move to more tropical climes than our native Michigan, Big Brother said, “Intelligent life can’t exist below the freezing point of water.” I’ve never entirely agreed: I personally believe it can, but perhaps it would rationally choose not to.
But this morning while randomly surfing around waiting for the coffee to kick in, I came upon a picture that reminded me of something suggesting that maybe the presence of liquid water isn’t the only criterion for Intelligent Life habitat…
I spent my youth on or east of I-75, so I was used to having trees and water around. It might be frozen water and leafless trees sometimes, but still. Trees and water.
When I was a young man, circumstance drove me west. I went to trade school in Oklahoma, which seemed to me to be pretty darned West: There were cattle ranches and Indians and bowlegged illiterate guys with Skoal cans and goat-roper hats. Little did I know.
For my sins, a post-school employment opportunity landed me in the Texas panhandle. Imagine pulling back a motel room curtain one bright Sunday morning and finding yourself on the set of High Plains Drifter.
I used to joke that the only good thing about it was that you could tell what next week’s weather would be just by looking out at the horizon. With time I grew to love it – it turns out I’m just that kind of guy – but even after all these years I do recall what a shock it was at first.
And it turns out that the people who lived there, among all their other – many – traits that would twist a SJW’s knickers, were absolutely addicted to fireworks, and the sparkier the better. Since the entire landscape consisted of dry grass and tumbleweed, a less appropriate pastime cannot be imagined. And on the evening of my first July 4 in the Panhandle…
I looked out the back window of my trailer (yes) and to my untrained eye it appeared that some idiot had set the whole rodeo ground on fire.
It turns out that July 4 is always a big night for the local fire departments of the Texas panhandle. It’s just sort of a … thing there.
Funny, what memories a simple random picture can bring back. 🙂 I kind of got into bottle rockets myself, back then. And yes, I’ve stomped out my share of infant grassfires.
Since I built the porch, of course nothing’s entirely square or entirely straight. On the insert I built this morning, every single piece had to be a slightly different size. I anticipated that and just made everything too big. And that’s what I’ve done here: I measured all the apertures to be filled, then cut all the balusters a standard size that’s just a little too big for the biggest of those apertures. That’ll make assembling these things more time-consuming than it would be for a real carpenter, since every single part gets custom fitted. But since the mistakes are small and everything will fit, it won’t look comically bad. At least the first one doesn’t.
And I’ve got a heckuva start on next winter’s tinder.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to sit out on the porch, drink tea and sand balusters while watching a video on a tablet computer. 🙂 Do I know how to live, or what?
Okay: I farted around yesterday and finally just declared it baking day, which it really needed to be anyway. But this morning I hopped out of bed and immediately got the heavy stuff out of storage, because today I was going to work on “cute.”
The first thing I needed was some fairly regular and not-too-unsightly balusters, with nothing to work with but a whole bunch of 2X4 scraps. The original plan was to get some factory-turned railings for this – that plan lasted exactly as long as it took to look up the price of factory-turned railings.
Anyway, I ripped a couple of 2X4s to slightly less than 1.5 inches wide, then turned the blade angle and ripped angles in the resulting pieces. Then I sort of rounded the squared-off point with a sanding block.
The revised original plan was to make them long enough to just screw them to the front of the top and bottom horizontal railing. Unfortunately the top railings didn’t come out of the saw with enough vertical square surface for that to work, and that’s when things got a little complicated. The revised revised plan is to make inserts for each of those open spaces, screwing and gluing the balusters to strips of plywood…
…and then screwing the plywood to the top and bottom railings.
And thar ’tis, and that right there took two solid hours. Of course that included some fiddling and experimentation, so the next five pieces won’t take as long each but I’m still not even going to try to finish them in one day. Today I’m just going to make the remaining 20 balusters required.
They’re not perfectly regular, of course. I’m no finish carpenter, much less a cabinetmaker, and you don’t have to look close to see some glaring imperfections. But I kind of like it. The current plan is to paint everything but the balusters the reddish trim color, and paint the balusters house-green.
Cute?
Every morning I wake up with a song in my head, sometimes clearly based on something I’d heard the day before and sometimes (usually) apropos of nothing I can imagine. Makes me wonder about what a rich dream life I must have. I hope it’s fun.
This morning, almost exactly at 5:30, I woke up smiling to this delightful phrase I don’t believe I’d thought of in years – “One long staircase just going up and one even longer coming down, and one more going nowhere just for show…”
It’s really the only thing I remember from that depressing movie…
This is hilarious…
Rob Reiner made a couple of really good movies 30-40 years ago. If he’d stuck to that I’d be kind of fond of him. But as a lefty gasbag he’s comically over the top. Here he’s got the Morning Joe cast bewailing the way Trump’s mastery over the “state-run media” like Breitbart and Alex Jones have made their job of getting the truth out so very much harder. They’re eating it up!
Apparently Reiner’s been making the rounds with this shtick.
The police do not exist to protect you. It isn’t their job. That “protect and serve”? That’s the state, society as a whole, the system.
—
And that is why we remain adamant on the right to keep and bear arms.The police do not protect you; they protect the state. An officer might choose to help, but are you willing to bet your life on that? Even assuming an officer happened to be there in your time of need.
There’s only one person always present where you are, who happens to have a vested interest in your life.
You.
No creature on this planet is, or should be, without the right of self-defense. The most successful species are the ones that possess effective means. No more perverted or anti-life sentiment was ever spoken than “You don’t need weapons, you should depend on others to defend you.”
No one who has your best interest at heart would ever demand that you remain helpless.
Finished what I originally wanted to do around one this afternoon and put all the tools away. That means dragging a lot of things, light and heavy, to the powershed.
One of these days – not this year, that’s for damned sure – I’m going to find myself wanting to replace or at least sincerely upgrade the powershed. I built it in 2012 out of the pieces of a much older shed some neighbors had used for a pantry, just because that was the year I first got a proper power system and I needed a roof over the charge controller, inverter and batteries. At first it was my pantry – what with the rodents that was always problematic – and just sort of fit my tools and a little seasonal clothing storage around that. Last autumn I was able to move the pantry and all the clothing out, which freed up a lot of room for tools and spares. The powershed works great for that, and I gave it a new floor last autumn, but to be honest the Lair is looking so much better that now I’m starting to think the powershed is a little shabby for the neighborhood. 🙂
But I digress. There’s room in there for all the tools, which I do try to keep out of the weather.
Anyway, I thought I was done working until I’d had a cup, wrote a blog post, ate a late lunch and had a walk around. Then I saw some tweaks that needed doing, and decided I didn’t feel like quitting after all.
Amusingly, just a few minutes after I set that piece of 4X4 under the middle of that one railing, I came inside to an email from a longtime faithful reader who said, “Dude, that one side railing is too long. You need a support there.” Yeah, I saw that.
Anyway, that meant dragging all the tools back out in the sun. I worked while I barbecued some pork for supper and breakfast, which helped me keep track of time – a pound of pork roast take 45 minutes in 15-minute segments, turning it each time the kitchen timer dings*. Keeps me honest.
Just fiddling, mostly, but it used up the last of my want-to. And then I was faced with that most terrible of decisions…
“Carry it inside, or cover it and shove it under the addition?” I’m just going to want it again tomorrow, or in a day or two. Big Brother even sent me a custom cover for the thing, because it’s just so nice. And it does weigh about 60 pounds, which is a value of “portable” that seems more portable at the beginning of the day than at the end.
But it is indeed so nice. It’s apparently not set up for high altitude – as we discussed not long ago – so I don’t get the full benefit of all that built-in niceness but it’s still one damned fine little generator, and this is coming from a guy who learned to hate small generators in my first few years here. And I know enough about small engines to know how to keep it nice. Step one: Don’t leave them out in the weather.
I used that nice custom cover to keep it from getting dusty while it spent most of the winter emptied and carefully mothballed – indoors.
—
*Try it with crack sauce for marinade, which I guarantee would convert a vegan.
I kind of pulled something in my back on Monday morning, couldn’t even say when or how but it started hurting a bit while I loaded water bottles into the back of D&L’s truck. Figured I’d give it a day to go away.
Didn’t go away. Got worse. Last couple of nights I could barely sleep. Grumped through my chicken chores and other unavoidables, but otherwise wasn’t getting any work done.
Finally came Friday, and I’m like “F*ck this.” So I went to work. Didn’t work hard, didn’t set any records, but there was a thing I wanted to get done and I wasn’t going to stop till it got done.
And all the time I was doing it, my shoulder and arm didn’t bother me at all. Forgot all about it, in fact, till I came inside and sat back down half an hour ago. Now it’s kind of hurting. A little, not half as bad as it hurt when I got up this morning.
Cut the tops of the posts off even and attached the bottom parts of the railings, that’s prosaic enough. The posts will get top caps, which I already have, and the end one on the corner of the porch stays tall for a light and/or hummingbird feeder.
The top railings are where things get a little more fancy than joel-normal…
I borrowed Neighbor S’s table saw, and I’m using it and a sanding block to round off the tops of the 2X4s. I’ve tried it on a piece of scrap, and it works fine.
Once I’ve got those done, I’ll see if I can rip some shorter lengths of 2X4 for balusters. Turned posts would cost way too much since I’m gonna need like 25 of them. If I can rip straight pieces I can taper them top and bottom and sand them round on the front, but I’ll just screw them to the fronts of the top and bottom railings. Time-consuming but not complicated, and I’ve got time.
Unfortunately in cutting the corners off that first (longest) top railing I managed to ram a big splinter into the pad of my left index finger, of course breaking off the end inside. I had to come inside to cut it out – it looks like I’ve got it all but it sure doesn’t feel that way. Figures.
That’s why I prefer wearing gloves when dealing with old lumber, which is mostly the only kind I get. But gloves and power saws are bad medicine.
I have reached the point in my current painful dilemma where 5:30 rolled around and only LB’s bladder problems got me out of bed at all. Somehow got my shoulder blade out of whack on Monday, it is now Friday and if anything it’s worse. My arm is weak and tingly, my back spasms every time the Jeep jounces, and I have accomplished next to nothing all week. I am a grouchy old man.
Today I am going to get something done on the porch railing, I swear it. Might not be a lot.
Here’s a video with an allegedly funny chicken.
Yeah, I know. But that’s as funny as chickens get. Don’t blame me, Youtube said it was funny. Far as I can tell it’s just standing there.
…that David Hogg swatted his own house.
Yeah, I know. It’s mean and unmutual and I totally can’t back it up. But really – que bono? Who swats an empty house?
I’ve got nothing to actually blog about this morning and need to go out and do something at least a little useful while it’s still fairly cool. Later, I think.
I saw this at Wendy McElroy’s place and had to laugh…
…Because LB thinks leather bones are the best things on earth. Give him one and he’ll just sit there and have it for a few minutes before crouching to the wall and consuming every little bit in a single session.
Those seem rather overpriced, though. Maybe they’re Artisanal Organic leather bones.
Little Bear 2009-2018
Laddie the Amazing Torso Boy 2011-2020
John Moses Browning - The most badass Mormon who ever lived.
