The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I did it again! Left that damned powershed light on all night.

In the days of 2-battery power storage and CFL lighting, this was a serious and possibly even mortal sin. Now it’s rather more venial, probably worth no more than ten Ohm’s Laws and a trip out to throw the switch. But it’s still annoying.

Every morning, first thing before I turn anything on, I check the battery voltage. As I said this is more a vestigial habit now than a necessity, but I still do it and I still write the reading in my daily ledger…

So when I get a lower-than-expected voltage reading, I start wondering why. During the snow and weather of a few days ago I was getting 12.3 volts which is a solid two tenths lower than it should be, and I should have been more proactive about the cause. All was explained when I saw that I’d left that damned powershed light on. Again. For days.

But that was the closest my oversight came to doing any actual damage. This morning I went outside and turned the thing off, then went back to see what effect if any it had on the readout…

And in a few seconds the reading went right back to what it should have been. So two exterior LEDs, left on from dusk to dawn, barely removed the surface charge from two worn deep cycle batteries*.

Which ain’t bad. Non-dimmable LED lightbulbs becoming hermit-affordable is one of the best things to happen to my little power system.

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*The 12-volt lighting is currently on a separate 2-battery bank unconnected to the inverter, just because I didn’t want to throw those batteries away.

…because this would be hilarious.

I got a kick out of this – I do believe the Official TUAK Gamecam came within two bull synapses and a bull neuron of being obliterated. I’ve got like 32 frames of this bull strolling by on the trail they use every day, then stopping and giving the camera a long, apparently thoughtful look.

You can tell a bull from a cow in a flash, because…

…cows have necks.

And he’s just moseying along, until…

“Hey.”

“What is that thing?”

“Should I break it?”

“Naw. I’m thirsty.”

Conservatives love to go on about how liberals/progressives keep beating the same old rhetorical drums, never noticing how worn their own drumheads have become. Case in point…

[#Nevertrump’s] mission is to destroy Trump, reverse the gains made over the past year, and make sure the march to destroy the last vestiges of America as founded starts up again unimpeded – forever. We not only dodged a bullet in 2016 but it was a major shock to the system. 2018 is going to be for all the marbles.

Didn’t voters hand the supposed good guys all the marbles in 2016? What’s been done with them since then? The “good guys” failed to repeal O’care, gave their corporate buddies a huge tax break while apparently failing to notice the existence of whatever ragged remains of the middle class that might still barely hang on, and the current debate is whether to throw gun owners all the way under the bus or only as far as the front wheels. (That’s “compromise,” you know.)

But we’re supposed to believe that the next election will fix everything. The next election will always fix everything, because it’s always the most crucial in history. The bad bums must not be allowed to throw out the good bums, for then the republic will surely fall as they do, er, everything the good bums have been doing all along. But with more enthusiasm!

It doesn’t matter who you vote for, the fix is in before the candidates are chosen. But they’ll keep people clawing at one another, because that’s a game that never seems to get old.

Okay.

When I reach $100 per month, I’ll repair the Jeep’s shock absorbers! Landlady will be very surprised and proud.

I can do that. Can’t honestly say I’ll get right on it, not all at once, since the shocks’ll cost $50 a pop and the driveway currently consists of barely frozen mud.

But I keep my promises. I’ll get on acquiring the parts, anyway. I thank you, LB thanks you, the Jeep’s springs thank you, my kidneys thank you.

TUAK now has 18 patrons, and between you you’ve replaced a long-standing and much-missed paying gig, the loss of which took some adjustment.

What do you think? Should I come up with another goal?

EDIT: TUAK now has 19 patrons. Thanks!

The one specific thing I was a little afraid the wind would do, the wind did. When the wind gets strong across Landlady’s ridgetop, it blows directly against the front door of the Big Chickenhouse. The door is cheap pressboard and is only held closed by a bolt latch. It has blown open before – and it blew open sometime yesterday afternoon.

I wasn’t afraid that the chickens would wander outside – in that sense, they pretty much know what’s good for them. They’re afraid of that door. I was afraid something from outside would come inside, and do bad things.

So imagine my concern when I counted heads and could only find six chickens huddling in the farthest corner. Not good – there should have been nine traumatized hens. Hmm.

Fortunately, they had an alternative. Continue reading →

When I let LB out at 5:30 there was no light – I could tell it had snowed but not how much or whether it was still snowing.

It was still snowing. It is still snowing. Big fluffy bundles of snowflakes.

In fact it’s doing that irritating thing where you sweep off your porch and the snow just fills up the stairs behind you.

The ladies have seen so little snow in their lifetimes they don’t know what to do about it. They’re all in the coop, and they’re never all in the coop. Half of them don’t even sleep in the coop. So they seem to have concluded that Ragnarök has come and it’s just not a good time to be a chicken, dinosaur ancestors or no dinosaur ancestors.

As soon as I’m done here I need to turn the computer off and then go clean off the panels – for all the good that will do. Let them capture what few photons are timidly scurrying about. Otherwise we’re just going to stress-test the batteries until the theoretical sun comes out.

And then I’ll need to clean off the Jeep and go do chicken chores and damage control at Landlady’s, Ian’s and TC’s places. That should be interesting – the Jeep’s transmission has gotten to the point where I can’t use the steep part of the driveway until the transmission fluid warms up the forward clutch seals, which means I have to go through the wash first thing in the mornings – and that means following my tracks in the sand to avoid wandering into the ruts and rocks, and I’ll be pleasantly surprised if I can even see my tracks this morning.

Best get to it! Thanks once again to those who provided that winter gear – it’s not that cold and I’m only gonna make my rounds, but this is the sort of morning where a short simple trip can turn into a long eventful one without warning. So I’ll be bundling up.

So yesterday we were promised low fifties temps and damaging wind. We got low fifties temp and damaging wind, even down in the hollow…

Afternoon saw me out with my brush saw, clearing a big piece of the juniper grove off the porch. That was in addition to the usual chasing-all-the-trashcans entertainment. I went to Landlady’s in the morning before the wind got bad at the Lair, and even then the wind on the ridgetops was becoming quite unpleasant. There’s talk of 70 mph gusts, which is excessive even for the gulch. Glad I screwed the powershed roof back down. I’ll bundle up later and look for damage.

But the nighttime weather, also predicted, may make finding the damage more difficult than I’d like…

Not a lot of snow, I’ll admit. Little Bear effortlessly melted a patch as his first official act of the day. But this is only the second snow of any real accumulation all winter so far, and I’ve grown accustomed to more civilized behavior in my winter. I may be forced to vote to have it expelled from the club.

That’s not my real complaint, though. My real complaint is the final part of the prophecy of doom…

…which says that winter has returned in the form of extended cold – if not exactly apocalyptic, then not really seasonable for late February. I paid my fare in broken pipes in December, thank you very much – not to mention just replacing the lion’s share of my sewer pipe due to breakage probably related to temperature back at the same time.

On the other hand it is winter and I’m not an idiot. The cabin is snug, the woodbox is was full, and yesterday afternoon I swapped propane bottles on the bedroom’s space heater (pbui). So it can go ahead and be cold if it wants to – not like I get a vote. It’s just not what we better sort of folks have come to expect from our weather, is all I’m saying.

Right, I’m just going to turn the Jeep radio right off for the duration, so I don’t need to hear any more admiring paeans to the clueless schoolchildren currently being bussed around to repeat words placed in their little mouths in protest of congress’s inexplicable failure to punish all the people who haven’t shot up a gun-free zone.

This absurd re-iteration of the same old bullshit makes me so crazy I want to go off my meds, rip the AK and bag’o’mags off the wall and march right down to the…(ahem) actually it just makes me wearily change the channel. Because I’m not a crazy kid, and furthermore I refuse to accept punishment for something somebody else did.

But I am so sick of hearing it. So for the record, no. Your move.

I’m so tired of this hectoring “conversation,” in fact, that I can’t even think of any witty arguments for my own side. So instead, go read this…

A stray dog bit me. I demanded that all my neighbors’ dogs should have their teeth pulled.

I set up the game camera next to a well-used cattle trail last week. Turned out to be a mistake in terms of wildlife, but I got hundreds of pictures of cattle placidly strolling back and forth.

Including these from yesterday…

Yesterday actually wasn’t all that bad, but muddy as hell after Thursday and Friday. This afternoon the wind will come up – in fact that’s already started – and it’s supposed to get wet again. Tomorrow is scheduled for cool and epically windy – Tuesday through May is the return of Winter.

So today I dig and smear ABS cement all over everything.

A week or so ago I dug out most of the pipe trench, leaving just enough to stabilize the pipe. So it didn’t take long to finish getting the old pipe out. Back when I built the septic system I scrounged everything I possibly could – here I counted six unions in 26 feet of pipe. Continue reading →

These are the four ladies I currently have at the Secret Lair. There are nine more just like them, from the same batch, at the Big Chickenhouse at Landlady’s place.

Until Autumn these chickens have been exemplary. They don’t fight, they don’t pluck one another. Some are more bold than others but none are neurotically fearful. They’re beautifully formed, beautifully feathered, and all last summer they laid so many eggs it literally became a neighborhood problem. Until winter these were easily the best chickens we ever had.

This coming Spring they’ll turn 2. They spent their first calendar year just gaining maturity, getting fed for free. 2017 was their first productive year, and I fully expected things to taper off from there. This winter they had their first molt, and between that and the short days I was unsurprised when their production fell right off.

I was surprised after the solstice, when they were all fully feathered again and the days started getting longer, and they pretty much stopped laying eggs entirely.

Those four in the picture above? They haven’t laid a single egg since Feb. 1. The nine at Landlady’s place lay one egg every 2-3 days on average. Yeah, I keep records.

I’m starting to wonder if I should plan to slaughter hens – but I don’t understand how or why this happened. They seem in fine health, there’s certainly nothing wrong with their appetite. They’re not acting unusually neurotic. If I can’t think of something to help them get back in action, they’re all going to the freezer. They’re not pets, and chicken feed ain’t free.

Suggestions? I’m open to experimentation.

Really didn’t even want to go to town this weekend. I’ve had all the “town” I want to see for a while, to be honest, and I have enough drinking water for another week.

But it’s bad practice not to top off necessities – like water – whenever possible, and anyway my conscience warned me I really needed to pick up my new eyedrop prescription. If I wait more than a week, they’ll send it back and I’ll no longer be greeted with a smile.

So I went.

As of this morning I had one pair of insulated work gloves, and they’re kind of worn, and Thursday they got soaked and mud-impregnated. This late in the season I didn’t want to break in a new pair, even though 2=1 & 1=0. Finally flipped a mental coin: For some reason the only place to buy decent insulated gloves in the little town nearest where we live is the feed store. I figured that if D&L wanted to stop at the feed store, I’d go shopping for gloves. If not, not.

They did. I really should have looked at the price of the pair I picked, because I was suddenly and to my surprise $30 poorer. Nice gloves, though.

I didn’t even want to go in the dollar store. Really just tagged along to be polite and maybe pick up some cheap munchies.

But they had some flour, and I’m about to fill my flour buckets thus wiping out my reserves. So – seven sacks at $2.50/sack = lots of money I hadn’t planned on spending, but now I won’t be haunted by the sight of my empty reserve shelf.

D asked if I had any other stops, to which I replied “No! Get me out of here before I spend again!”

During the trip I saw…

…that the cattle are starting to calf – one of those tiny babies still trailed an umbilical cord – and they’ve released the bulls for an early start on the next generation. I didn’t realize the cows were that far along, no wonder they released them so early.

Also…

…sometimes it just doesn’t pay to own a white horse. Bud likes to roll, and really seems to prefer mud.

So the morning turned colder, of course. Not real cold, expect it’ll warm up pretty well once the sun comes up. Hopefully the place will dry out enough it’ll make sense to clean the mud off my boots.

But right now, what with all the moisture, everything and its brother is covered in thick frost.

The past couple of days I’ve been cocooning in the Lair and watching the weather be miserable. Timely, really, since after Wednesday’s adventure I’d normally be inclined to do that anyway. But not having been out and about more than absolutely necessary I hadn’t gone into the powershed. So every morning – yes, even in the gloom, which affected my tentative diagnosis – my battery voltage was down a couple of tenths and I had begun to speculate that maybe one of my second-hand batteries was giving up. Didn’t occur to me to check if I’d left the damned powershed light on again. Which I had.

They’re two exterior 12v LEDs, not very bright but quite frugal. Still, if you leave them on for days your overnight battery voltage will notice the load. I thought for years about putting them on a timer, for the many times I’ve left the powershed with some entirely other project on my mind – the powershed also being where I store my tools and parts – and forgot to flip the damned switch off.

So this morning while I was thinking about it, I put one of these in my Amazon cart…

🙂 That’ll fix it.

There were actually cooler and cheaper electronic switches listed, but I’m not sure those will work with 12 volts. Sometimes it’s smarter to just keep things analog.

The mud is worse this morning than yesterday, if that’s possible. Off-and-on light rain. I’m regaining dormant driving skills and haven’t stuck the Jeep anywhere, though it does occasionally proceed sideways.

This morning I broke out a piece of kit I actually considered discarding, back when I moved the winter clothes into the new closet…

I traded for this rain parka several years ago, in the big wet Monsoon of 2013. Since then the powershed rats have made more use of it than I have, and it could use a patch or two. But it’s still waterproof.

Batteries are holding up well, though of course I’m not abusing them. Sky is predicted to lighten later on anyway, might even get some sun, but I’m still waiting to see it. So far today’s as ugly as yesterday, if not quite as wet.

Good day for baking. 🙂

I had this great thought that I could spend the day indoors. I put on my favorite hoody and even broke out this dumb pair of “lounging pants” I brought home from when I cleaned out J&H’s stuff back in 2015 – it’s like thick fluffy pajamas but with no fly. I never actually wear them, but this looked like a good day to try.

Then I came to my senses: I had to get dressed in any case for chicken chores, plus my building materials were taking up approximately all of the floor space in Neighbor D’s workshop, he’s in the middle of a project, and wouldn’t appreciate my blowing off coming to get the stuff just because it was raining. So it was canvas jeans and longjohns, not lounging pants and Earl Grey.

Turns out it was just as well, but I do wish I hadn’t worn my favorite hoody.

That drumming noise had stopped. I looked out the window to see if the rain was gone…

Not exactly. But the thermometer said it was 37^o out, so you know it was just adding to the damp. I bundled up and cleaned off the solar panels, then leashed up Little Bear for my second mistake of the morning…

When there’s a lot of mud, do not take your dog for a walkie on any route involving volcanic ash, okay? Just don’t. And I was shocked at how much mud there was.

Didn’t really realize until I turned around how much rain we’d had…

Yup. Third mistake: Didn’t put the wheelbarrow away.

Anyway, I needed the Jeep trailer for the building materials. Thought at first I’d go to Landlady’s for chicken chores and then come back for the trailer so I didn’t have to tow it through that much mud. But I’d forgotten that the old Jeep seat is still in the trailer. So I brought the trailer to Landlady’s, to put the seat on the pile of stuff waiting to go to the landfill.

Good thing I did that, because otherwise I wouldn’t have taken the road to Neighbor D’s. And then I wouldn’t have seen that impromptu pedestrian.

There’s this older couple, part of the family that bought J&H’s place, and you’d swear at meeting them that they don’t belong here any more than Eva Gabor would. Must be tougher than they look though, because this is their third year and I’ve yet to hear them complain. He gets a lot of work done, too, even though he’s shaped like a basketball and wheezes. And he’s the healthy one. I found him struggling up the hill from where he’d gotten his truck stuck in the terrible mud that forms at this one turn, past the wash crossing. Glad I didn’t try to take the trailer that way.

His wife had a doctor’s appointment they didn’t see fit to reschedule due to weather, and now she was in the truck and he was very slowly and moistly working his way back to his property to get his brother and another 4X4 to pick her up. I offered to help tow the truck, but he just wanted a ride home so he could get his brother. Shooed LB into the back of the Jeep, took my neighbor home, then went to Neighbor D’s through the wash which has much better traction as long as you’re not afraid it’ll flood. It’s been so dry so long that all this water was just dedicating itself to mud-making and nothing was running off yet.

Got the trailer loaded and home without further mishap. The wood and insulation is under the addition now, all safe.

Kind of made a mess, though.

And now I’m going to kick it in my second-favorite hoody, the most favorite being kind of wet and muddy. Looks like it’s going to do this all day, but the chores are done and all’s well as long as the phone doesn’t ring.

I’ve been up since 4:30. Woke up trying to identify that constant rushing noise, that didn’t match anything in my head’s catalog of noises-the-cabin-makes. There was the clock ticking, check. Little Bear grumbling in his sleep, got it. But what’s that constant noise, like an engine or motor? Can the space heater make that noise? Sort of, but no, not that loud.

What is it?

Finally woke up enough to realize – it was raining! Seriously raining, not just a drip. And now it’s quarter to six as I write this para, and it’s still raining. Hasn’t done that in so long I’d never really registered what that sounds like in the insulated and drywalled bedroom.

Coming back over the western hills from the Big Town yesterday evening Neighbor D and I saw a band of really ugly black sky in the eastern distance. “Somebody’s in for rough weather,” said D. I replied, “I hardly ever say this, but I kind of hope it’s us.” It’s been that dry. A week or two ago the cattleman dumped 160 presumably-pregnant cattle on us and I don’t know what he expects to happen – there’s virtually nothing here for them to eat at the moment. Last Monsoon was a bust here locally, and there’s been barely any moisture all winter. Nothing but juniper is green. They lost a bunch of cattle last spring, and local forage wasn’t nearly as bad as it is right now.

I kind of like it green, but to me rain mostly just means mud. If I were the cattleman, I’d be praying to my Satanic Majesty for a month of solid rain.

Nothing went wrong, in fact it was a relatively stress-free trip. Just took forever is all. I had my eye appointment, which ground on and on, and then we had a 45-minute lull which was just enough for a lightning trip to Wal-Mart, which no longer carries my favorite fire starters which were the principal reason I wanted to go. Then we made it to Neighbor D’s knee appointment which lasted almost two hours. A side trip to run an errand for L, then a late lunch, then a ruinously expensive trip to Lowe’s where I scored…

*all the pipe I need to fix the Lair’s sewer
*a new and hopefully more predicable thermostat for the bedroom heater
*hopefully enough lumber to finish the addition’s exterior trim
*four sheets of rigid insulation for the addition’s floor, which I really should have done before winter. Not that it mattered much given how mild the winter has been.

…and not one bit more than that. I had it in mind to buy the interior trim, but learned to my utter shock how much that stuff costs. I don’t know how you guys do it, I really don’t. Interior trim may be a more gradual process than originally planned.

The ophthalmologist visit was neither as scary nor as expensive as planned, I’m happy to say. Interocular pressure is up quite a bit, which I expected given that I stopped taking one of the prescribed meds several months ago. Discussed why I stopped taking it: If it’s raising sores on my eyelids, what’s it doing to my eyes? Got the prescription changed. They didn’t run me through all the rigmarole I expected given that it’s been nearly a year since they could shake out my pockets, so I still had a little jingle when I left. Might even have enough for those new glasses I want to replace the current functional but scratched-up pair. I’ll be trying mail-order again. What’s the name of that on-line glasses place? I can’t remember.

Anyway, Little Bear probably slept through the day but then dinnertime came and went and there was NO DAD!!! And I really expected I’d be paying a price for that, but he was a very very good boy. He just had an extended meltdown when I finally got home.

I ditched the hardware in D’s workshop, and it’s too late and I’m too tired to go back with the trailer right now – and D made it clear he was done for the day as well. So LB will get an enhanced Jeep ride in the morning. I’m gonna have an adult beverage and go read myself to sleep now.

The only bad part about being a hermit? Sometimes you have to step out of the desert, and it’s always a big scary deal.

Once in a great while somebody will throw a compliment about how I’m not really afraid of anything in the boonies but breed bulls, how I can live on next to nothing, “improvise, adapt and overcome,” and all the other good things about the solitary life. That’s nice, but as I’ve said before nobody becomes a hermit in the desert because his life was going so great outside the desert. Outside the desert I’m afraid of pretty much everything – mostly because when something goes wrong in a city you usually can’t just shoot it or hit it with a wrench until it stops bugging you one way or the other. You have to actually deal with it, and I’m no good at that.

Eleven years in the desert haven’t exactly attenuated that effect. So now I’ve absolutely got to go to the eye doctor, and since I haven’t been to the big town about 50 miles away in almost a year I’ve got a helluva shopping list which means Wal-Mart and Lowe’s as well, and I’d almost rather be shot. I’m sure everything will turn out all right, but in the meantime it’ll be five hours of nervous twitches and a cramping gut.

Pray for us sinners, I guess. Here we go…