The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Being true to your ideals really sucks sometimes. It’s been four days short of a month – yes, I looked it up – since I discovered a can of Plan B coffee was four years out of date and decided it must be used even if I must choke it down.

At the time the pantry was down to its last can of decent coffee, and I chose to take a hit for the team. Because I’m a putz. The team is me. LB doesn’t even drink coffee. So who is being served by this?

It has done some good for the pantry supply, since it currently sports 3 cans of the good stuff instead of the 2 that would otherwise be up there…

…and I guess that’s a good thing. Since I’m really reaching for good things.

To up the torture factor of this exercise in philosophical purity, I even saved the last handful of beans in the old can of the good stuff…

…so I’d have something decent to serve my only occasional houseguest. Landlady sometimes comes over for coffee on her last day in the gulch, and I was hardly going to ask her to suffer through six-year-old house-brand floor sweepings if I had better. Particularly since she supplies the better.

Funny thing is that I expected to just get used to it by now. Coffee is coffee, after all, and you usually like whatever you get used to. But it has been four days short of a month – yes, still counting – and my first thought upon my first sip of what’s probably the only cup I’ll have today was “Gah, this shit is horrible.” At last I understand: No wonder people burden their caffeine infusions with cream and sugar.

Yeah, of course I tried sweetening it. That at least cuts the toxic aftertaste, but I still don’t like sweetened bad coffee any more than I like sweetened good coffee.

The good news is I stocked a lot of tea in late autumn. The bad news is that’s only stretching the supply of bad coffee. I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end of this exercise.

Twice a day for five days I’ve made my way across the eastern plateau and up a mesa to the really cool house of my distant neighbors T&S, to take care of their dogs and horses. One nice thing about that gig, it pays promptly. I was $100 ahead before the Monday morning water run to town, where I blew most of it on peace of mind.

Years ago I scrounged as many of these 30# propane bottles as I possibly could, maxing out at six. But the valves aren’t forever and the cost of valve replacement closely rivals the cost of a new bottle. I entered the winter with four. Four was fine when I only used them for the cookstove, but of course this winter’s big news is the new bedroom space heater. This basically leaves me with two bottles at the back of the cabin and two at the front, which presented the problem that any time I empty one I’m in a big rush to get it filled again. I don’t like big rushes, I don’t always have money for propane on any given week, and so I wanted at least one uncommitted spare. So I knew exactly where the lion’s share of that found money was going.

Blew all the rest on new plumbing spares. Do I know how to show myself a good time, or what?

New Details Emerge From Bizarre Police Shooting

This is not a new incident but the article is only a couple of weeks old and too funny to ignore. I have edited but added nothing, and will only comment that if police can say they think you mean them harm, in spite of all evidence to the contrary they have legal carte blanche to kill you. If they can hit you.

After about 15 minutes, believing Johnson had pointed a gun at them, officers unleashed a volley of shots into her car.

When nothing happened after the first round of shots, officers continued shouting commands at Johnson to get out of the car.

When they again thought they saw a gun, more shots were fired into her car.

“Those deputies and troopers showed a lot of restraint in not causing a further confrontation,” said [Arapahoe County Sheriff Dave] Walcher.

In about 30 minutes, from approximately 75 feet away, deputies and troopers fired 55 rounds at Johnson’s car from AR-15 rifles, .40 caliber pistols, and a shotgun. Not a single round hit her.

“I am surprised,” said Walcher.

After about two hours, law enforcement brought in an armored vehicle to approach her car. They spotted her apparently asleep in the front seat.
—
Although no weapons were found in her car, a Colorado State Patrol spokesperson apparently told multiple media outlets the next morning that officers only fired at Johnson after she shot at them. CSP Chief Scott Hernandez now acknowledges that was not true. “Unfortunately sometimes things are said that’s not specifically accurate”, said Hernandez.

Photos of the crime scene obtained by CBS4 also show that in the bursts of gunfire, an Arapahoe County deputy accidentally shot up a state patrol cruiser. Reports suggest the patrol vehicle was struck 28 times.

A legal review of what happened concluded officers were justified in their actions since they believed Johnson had a gun and intended to kill or hurt them.

Johnson was charged with numerous felonies stemming from that standoff, but court records show most charges were dismissed when Johnson pleaded guilty to one count of misdemeanor menacing. She was sentenced to three years probation.

I replaced the Lair’s toilet with its very first brand-new one in February of last year, so not quite two years ago. You’d think that qualifies as practically brand-new, but that’s because you don’t have to deal with our water. I keep replacements for the flapper, the (old fashioned, as it turns out) float, and the valve because I know that each of those parts absolutely will fail, at the worst possible time in the worst possible way, and so there’s no excuse for not having replacements.

No excuse at all.

When I plumbed in this new toilet it didn’t escape my notice that the valve used a float design with which I’m not familiar. But no problem – I figured – when J&H moved away and left a whole big building full of stuff they paid me to dispose of, I inherited 3 toilet valves of perplexing design. I tossed them into a box in the powershed, assuming – there’s that word – that at least one would fit when I needed it.

Let it be said in my defense that I wasn’t entirely wrong about that. One of these valves does at least go in the hole and allow the toilet to function. But all three spare valves are clearly made for a shallower tank. The one I installed, even with the float level cranked up as far as it will go, leaves me with a tank level an inch lower than what I want. So this will get me through till I can replace it, and that’s about the best I can say.

(Grumble) I knew it was coming, and should have been better prepared. It’s not like I haven’t had toilet failures before.

The amusing thing about the Lair’s indoor plumbing is that everything about the drainage and the septic tank and the leach field is home-made and scrounged and improvised, and I assumed going in that it would cause me big trouble if it worked at all. Instead it has worked perfectly since summer 2011. But the Lair’s multiple factory-made toilets need constant maintenance, punctuated by occasional total failure. Does that seem right to you?

Not that this is nearly as cold as one of those Michigan plumbing repairs would have been in the second week of December. In fact when I was working on the sunny side of the house it was quite comfortably warm. But under the house was finger-numbing cold – just barely not cold enough to freeze the damned mud.

D&L wanted a run to town and I wanted some just-in-case hardware so I didn’t get started until noonish. Probably wouldn’t have started much before then anyway because things did warm into the low 50’s today. Finding and fixing the leak was simple enough, there really isn’t that much pipe under the Lair. I ended up replacing more than half of the run to the toilet, just because that was the simplest way to do it. But then came the scary part.

Yesterday the gate valve that shuts off all the cabin water seized up and I had to put a wrench on the handle nut to get it closed. That left me with the exciting question of whether I’d ever be able to open it again. And for about an hour it looked like the answer was no. I have a replacement valve – I have replacements for nearly everything – but I’d have to go up to the water tank and dig out the big shut-off valve, then dig a deep trench from the cabin shut-off all the way to the riser. I’d have to deal with a whole mountain’s worth of ice water draining into the trench in which I was trying to repair plumbing. I could do all that, but really didn’t want to.

So I got creative.

I took the handle off the valve and determined that an 11/16 socket would fit neatly into the handle’s inner hollow. If that socket had 3 lobes, it could let me connect a ratchet handle to the valve handle and give me leverage.

🙂 I haven’t fabricated a tool like that since I was a dealership wrench. A hacksaw wouldn’t touch the job but thanks to Big Brother I have a cordless recip saw – and I have found that it pays to keep quite a variety of blades for it. Making that thing took a while, but not nearly as long as it would have taken to replace the valve.

So then I could get the valve open. I’ll probably end up digging everything up and replacing it in summer just so I don’t have this particular problem again in winter, but that’s a summer job – much easier to contemplate.

I ran around looking for further leaks and found none – no surprise since I’d replaced a major percentage of the Lair’s underfloor piping. Went inside to check that everything was working well – and found that for some reason the toilet’s valve now wanted to run continuously.

WTF!?!? That toilet isn’t two years old. Why would it choose this moment to fail? I have some replacement toilet valves – I try to keep replacements for everything – but I won’t know till tomorrow if one of them fits. That really made me mad, it’s like Uncle Murphy pissed in my stew just to be a dick.

Anyway, I shut off the water to the toilet, then went out to replace the pipe insulation as best I could. Here’s something funny: I didn’t buy any pipe wrap this morning because last weekend Big Brother sent me a care package containing four pool noodles. I do use pool noodles for pipe insulation – they’re cheaper and thicker than normal pipe wraps – but didn’t think I needed any and Landlady mentioned a use she had for some. Giving them all to her seemed too much like hubris so we split them – and in a single week I regretted not keeping them all. I had enough to fix what I had torn out, but only just enough – not an inch too much.

I was also glad I didn’t get rid of my old cotton chore coat, because…

…it would have made me very unhappy to do this to my good work coat.

So now if you’ll excuse me, I have two days worth of dishes to wash and then I need a sink bath that involves actual water.

If only Al Franken had left a woman to die in an air pocket in his submerged Oldsmobile instead of striking a grope-pose for laughs on a sleeping woman protected by a flak jacket, then his fellow Democrats might have called him “the lion of the Senate” instead of called on him to resign.

At the time that I discovered the big water leak under the cabin, I was already committed to making a loaf of bread and a chicken pie. The bread came out well, and that was more or less the last good news of the day.

WAAAYYY too much bread on the meatpie. It’s basically chicken and fixin’s under a loaf of bread.

Tastes good, but yeah. Should have used like 1/4 the dough. I’ll try again another time.

I ate while the bread was baking, and then as soon as the loaf came out of the oven I went outside to fix my water leak.

By unfortunate coincidence most of the cabin’s plumbing is under the part where the crawlspace is shallowest. Getting to it is a colossal pain in the ass. Finally ended up just digging out under the side, and that simplified everything.

Found the break right where I expected it, lay in the cold mud and fixed it. Congratulated myself while loading LB into the Jeep still covered with mud so I could go feed dogs and horses and still have some light for the clean-up.

Came home, fed LB, went outside to open the valve and confirm that the leak was fixed. Good news: That fitting no longer leaks. Bad news: Water started pouring out of a pipe or fitting further downstream toward the bathroom.

Terrible news: The shut-off valve decided it didn’t want to shut off.

Finally got it at least mostly shut by putting a wrench on the valve shaft. Whether I’ll ever be able to open it again is a very interesting question. I have a terrible premonition involving me digging that whole thing up from the faucet to the cabin.

(Sigh) At least I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to clean off with some wet wipes and have a drink. Or two.

Even while I was writing my boast about how it won’t freeze, and if it does freeze it won’t break, I knew I was tempting Uncle Murphy with my hubris. Nemesis followed promptly.

It’s baking day. I filled the mixing bowl with water after kneading the dough, and the water pressure worked fine. Tried to fill the rising bowl after the first rise, and had barely any water at the tap at all.

I’ve been here. Knew just what I was going to see when I went outside…

And so now I know what the afternoon task will be. Yay! Good thing I didn’t have anything else planned at all.

Actually it’s a good thing it’s not 20^o and screaming sleeting wind. It’s a little cool, in the high 30’s, and will be quite cool down under the cabin. But I have everything I need to make repairs, I’m not quite that stupid…

…but stay in the mid-teens at night.

I’ve retired the chickens’ waterers for now, because when they freeze getting them unfrozen is a complicated and usually messy chore.

I have some cheap stainless steel bowls I only use for chickens and -until recently – for Ghost when he visited. They’re easy to clear when they freeze solid, though that’s not a problem with Landlady’s hens because they keep knocking it over.

I have to come up with something different for T&S’s dog water bowls, which have now frozen completely solid and can’t be knocked clear without fear of shattering plastic. Hopefully things will get into the forties this afternoon and soften the ice so I can empty them.

All told, including checking on S&L’s place since they’re also traveling, I was gone about an hour and a half this time. Came back to find the Lair nice and warm, and about to become toasty because it’s baking day! I also brought the Jeep trailer back with me because Landlady’s firewood bin seems to have gone almost empty. Then I’ll leave again for afternoon rounds around 3 or 3:30. Busy day, by my standards.

I haven’t been following the story of the special prosecutor who’s apparently planning to keep looking for Russian collusion with the Trump campaign until Trump confesses just to get it over or the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first. Don’t know, don’t care. I’m not a Trump fan but I can’t work up a lot of enthusiasm for roasting him over a slow fire for crimes Hillary Clinton would barely notice she’d committed.

Be that as it may, lately there do seem to be more and more stories like this…

DOJ Demotes Official Over Trump Dossier Contacts

Bruce G. Ohr was removed from his position as associate deputy attorney general on Wednesday. Ohr, who worked in close proximity to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, had contacts last year with dossier author Christopher Steele as well as with Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS.

According to Fox News, Ohr met Steele at some point during the presidential campaign. He met Simpson around Thanksgiving 2016. During that coffee meeting, Simpson and Ohr reportedly discussed the dossier, the Trump investigation and Simpson’s frustration with Trump’s electoral victory.

Is this the third? Maybe the fourth? DOJ and FBI suits seem to be falling like flies, when the objective was to bring Trump down. At this rate I wouldn’t be surprised if we get video of Robert Mueller doing the perp walk before the turn of the year.

Aren’t these supposed to be the smart people? Because it’s beginning to look as though some people faked up a bunch of anti-Trump agitprop, and then the same people attached themselves to the “investigation” and ended up hanging themselves by the very fake evidence that was supposed to hang Trump.

Am I getting this wrong? Or are our beloved civil servants really this dumb?

When I was Mr. Suburban Man I really couldn’t justify the expense. The house and wife and kid and 2.5 shiny cars are expensive. When I chucked it all and became a cedar rat I could have justified the expense but I just flat didn’t have the money. This was last year’s Christmas present from a generous reader and I must say, having just come back from an hour on a freezing, windswept mountaintop with my fingers numb and my nose tingling but my torso warm as toast, I Love This Coat.

In fact – speaking of Mr. Suburban Man – the only thing I don’t like about it is that it’s black and shows all the barnyard dust. And if that’s the worst problem I have today, I am a man without significant problems. 🙂

Eleven degrees out this morning, and that’s as cold as it’s gotten so far this season. There’s some heat leakage past the bedroom curtain; normally the cabin stays about 20^o above ambient when I’m in it but not actively heating, but this morning when I got up the indoor temp was 30^o above. Still I was shivering and bustling about, getting coffee and the woodstove working, …

…because of course I was in a hurry to get back to my nice warm bedroom.

Kept waking up in the middle of the night in spite of the delicious warmth, because I knew the furnace is going to suck its propane bottle dry and flame out any minute now. Of course I expect it to happen in the middle of the coldest night so far, because you can’t give Uncle Murphy an opening like that and expect him to just kindly pass it by. I considered swapping out the bottles day before yesterday but refrained. Made that mistake with the last bottle, thinking by estimated weight that it was about dry and then it turned out there was still plenty. I’m terrible at that. Anyway, I need to know how long a propane bottle lasts in actual use, and unfortunately that requires letting the bottle run dry in cold weather when you’d much rather it was full. This is the first real cold snap we’ve had so far this winter, and it’s giving me data.

I have to go out early to feed horses and dogs and break up ice. T&S have three dogs, and I’m worried about the oldest one. The two younger ones are safe and warm indoors, waiting for me to come let them out. But the oldest, Bubba, hates and fears me and refuses to do anything but lay under the deck and bark when I approach. There was no way to lure him indoors, and there’s no way I’m going under there after him because his idea of hatred and fear has a bitey element that’s just not in my contract. I check to see if he’s still barking and leave offerings of dog biscuits, and otherwise don’t bug him. But I do worry about him in the cold.

ETA, an hour later: And in a shout-out to the 19^th century, may I just say how much I also love my faithful little woodstove…

The bad thing about keeping livestock is that you can’t go away and leave them to die horribly if you feel like it. Well you can, but it’ll get you on the evening news.

Enter Joel’s Rent-a-hermit! For a low, low daily fee (or other consideration) a smelly recluse will show up in your yard, throw them some hay, and break the ice on their waterers! Joel’s Rent-a-hermit! Call today!

It’s been pretty much a tradition since moving into the Lair in November 2011: Watching when and at what angle the sun arrives over the ridge…

…because with the Lair’s free sample of a battery bank, the early evenings and late mornings really made a difference in what voltage got recorded first thing.

But last February I more than doubled the bank’s size, and now there’s a lot more wiggle room.

In summer it really doesn’t matter, but it’s a comfort during the dark months.

Add that to the more winter-friendly angle of the second solar panel rack that went up in October ’16, and the Lair’s electrical supply is less precarious and sensitive to weather changes than it used to be.

Between all that and the rather, er, normal-looking addition, I may need to start dressing more carefully and getting regular haircuts. Night-time temps are down in the teens and promise to remain so at least through the weekend and I don’t even care: I woke to a bedroom in the mid-fifties this morning and took my sweet time firing up the woodstove and brewing the first cup, not having to rush around shivering in my heaviest coat because propane heat! Swear my little corner of the gulch is getting more suburban by the month.

Feels kind of sinful, almost.

Not for me, fortunately. The Lair’s water delivery system started simple and got simpler to the point where there’s little to freeze and little of that is prone to break if it should freeze. Today, though, I have special reason to be happy that the Lair requires no pressure pump or tank. I visited D&L’s place this morning at 10 to be greeted with the news that their pressure plumbing has sprung leaks everywhere in the pressure side where there’s iron to rust.

People who build country homes in hilly country usually want to build on top of the hills, presumably for the lovely views. That’s nice and all, but off-grid there are practical reasons not to do it. If you build down in a hollow and your well and water tank are up on a hilltop say fifty feet or more above the cabin, you get gravity-fed water pressure for free. If your home is on the hilltop you’ll need expensive and elaborate and power-hungry and fragile equipment to provide your water pressure, and your life will be ever so much more complicated than mine. Just saying.

That wasn’t the end of D&L’s troubles this morning. I was over there to help them load all the hay we just unloaded last week. Turns out the bales are so full of rocks and clay that the horses don’t even want to eat from them. So back to the feed store it all goes, no doubt to the delight of the guy who runs the store. D&L are supposed to come back with another load this afternoon, so I’ll be back to help do it all again later today.

Meanwhile in neighborhoodland, I’ve gotten yet another report of a crazy neighbor doing break-ins. Swear somebody’s going to get killed around here one of these days – again, since it won’t be the first time. So I’m back to locking things up, and unfortunately the report came just when I retired the padlock on the shed of the one place I get paid money to watch…

I took the padlock home to lube it, but couldn’t get it working. There’s nothing to steal in that shed except the solar power gear, and while that’s valuable it’s not really smash-and-grab stuff. I figured I’d get another padlock next time I’m in town – and then came lurid tales of this not-quite-right kid on a burgling spree. Great.

Fortunately D has a drawer-full of old padlocks, and gave me this one.

Yeah, of course I know you could get past that hasp with a tire iron or a big screwdriver. But if that shed gets burgled some night this week while the padlock is on the Jeep’s dashboard instead of on the door where it belongs, whose fault is it? I’m supposed to discourage theft, not facilitate it by taking the damned locks home. If I go an extra few feet to make sure it’s locked, at least the damage won’t be my fault.

Courtesy of BB we learn of the latest impediment to law enforcement officers’ efforts to get home safely at the end of their shift…

Feds Issue 4,000 Orders to Seize Guns from People who Failed Background Checks

Which news shouldn’t be as alarming as it’s probably supposed to sound. Buried deep, deep in the article we learn that that “4000 guns” figure – actually 4,170 – is for 2016, and is only a little higher than the 2015 figure. But still, you should panic! Call your congressvermin and yell real loud!

“These are people who shouldn’t have weapons in the first place, and it just takes one to do something that could have tragic consequences,” said David Chipman, a former ATF official who helped oversee the firearm retrieval program…

…and who, we only learn later, is now a “senior policy adviser” for the Gifford Law Center for Enhanced Victim Disarmament. Be afraid!

Okay, I have to concede in fairness that if I were – in some bizarro world – a bottom-rung ATF agent and that if I received an order to go retrieve a firearm from some smelly desert hermit because the FBI screwed up the background check on an otherwise legal purchase from a FFL, it’s very possible the mission would conclude with a report that I was unable to locate said hermit, or that we did meet and that he had already sold the firearm forward.

I swear I don’t know these guys.

The article mentions that such reports do occur. Overall the ATF declines to say just how many of those thousands of “retrieval requests” result in “retrieved” firearms. My guess is not many, but I’m often wrong about such things.

…and the obvious joke popped out of my mouth while LB and I were in the Jeep listening to the radio… “And hardly for the first time, the Silverdome hosts a disappointed audience…”

Turns out I was too late. Far too late.

The Detroit Lions called the poor thing home for most of its existence. Failure has been absorbed into its very structure.

Being from Detroit is pretty much one thing like this after another.

Yesterday I managed to dribble gasoline all over the back of Landlady’s Prius, as 2 of 3 retrofitted Jerry can vents decided to leak precious juice.

I assumed the same thing happened as before, that the sealant held but the cans’ paint gave way. In fact, not so much.

The plan called for sanding down the area around the vent hole, so I did that despite the lack of any serious evidence of flaking paint.

This one clearly shows that the sealant just got hard and cracky, and broke free of the vent without ever pulling the paint off the can. I’m confused by this, since the cans are not left out in the sun. I put a cover on the trashcan corral specifically to get them out of the sun. So now I’m starting to think I need to find a better sealant, though in every other way this stuff has always worked fine for me.

Anyway, they’re all fixed again. So we’ll give it another try. So far I’d have to say that if you want metal rather than plastic fuel cans, you’ll have to spend the money for milspec. These are full of trouble.

Next time – and there’s sure to be a next time – I’m going to take somebody’s advice and replace the current vent with a tire valve just to see if that’ll seal better.