The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Today was the day! I finally got to play with my toys outside. No more construction, no more painting and caulking and fussing with furniture, now I get to do something much more in line with my intellectual gifts and accomplishments: I get to cut up old wood into stove lengths.

I’ve actually been looking forward to it, especially since thanks to an unnamed Generous Reader I now possess the one element that will allow me to do it without having to haul heavy pallets back and forth…

Of course you know there has to be a learning curve, right? Turns out I got this far into it…

…when the generator died and did not want to restart. Even before that I knew I had trouble, since the machine clearly did not like the start-up surge of the saw.

Turns out the Honda wanted two things of me: Gasoline in the tank, and to turn off the “eco-throttle” setting. The other day when I filled the crankcase and played with a scroll saw I had actually put very little gasoline in the Honda’s tank, because I am very devoted to “don’t put it away with gas in the tank” and I also don’t like to waste expensive gas. So there wasn’t enough in there and I had to go back to the Lair for more. Also if I dig out the manual I’ll bet there’s an instruction that you shouldn’t run it on the “eco-throttle” setting when you’re using a full-power saw – because the generator doesn’t do well in that mode. But having gassed it up and adjusted the idle setting higher, things went much better.

So much better that I was still having fun when I ran out of loose lumber to cut up. I did this much in a little more than an hour…

But I hadn’t brought the Sawzall for cutting up more pallets, and anyway my stomach was telling me that an early lunch would not go amiss.

So now after lunch we’ll see how much of a dent that makes in the empty space at the front of my woodshed.

This’ll actually be the hard part. Since I can now cut my stovelengths at the site where I store my pallets and trash lumber, it takes almost all the heavy lifting out of the process. Much quicker, much less stress on my decrepit old back. Me like.

It’s that time of year. Also what with all the construction/deconstruction during the warm season I had a hell of a lot of old wooden junk lying around the yard, so this morning’s task was to pick it all up and haul it where it belongs. I don’t really have a good place for all the flat scrap, but at least I can haul it off to someplace that won’t look messier for its arrival. I got seven pallets and a bunch of old loose lumber out of the yard; filled the trailer right up.

And now I really ought to start cutting it into stove lengths. That’s this week’s job, and the weather promises to be perfect for it. But I’m going to take it easy; there’s really no pressing need for a big firewood push – the woodshed is already well over half filled – and I’m still nursing a sore back just from emptying, repairing and refilling the powershed.

But this is the week, though. I’m not going to go crazy with it, but I want to play with my new toys. One full trailer minimum before the end of the week, that’s the goal.

h/t

News flash: Dogs manipulate us with body language!

Because apparently scientists didn’t know this.

They increased the frequency of certain expressions as a way of communicating.

This included puppy dog eyes, unromantically described as movement AU101, which was used more when being watched by a person.

This was because dogs know it can bring them what they want, study lead Professor Juliana Kaminski and her colleagues concluded.

As does everybody who ever owns a dog, for crying out loud. Movement AU101 wasn’t a big secret before scientists discovered it. Dogs communicate with body language: who knew?

Some do it better than others…

…that we have more room now – in actual floorspace, almost twice as much – and yet Little Bear is now contriving to be underfoot at all times?

As you can imagine, living in such a small cabin with such a large dog does not consist entirely of upsides. But when the Lair was a single room LB kept to his wall. Ever since I knocked a big hole in his wall – quite some time ago now – he doesn’t seem to know where he wants to lie except it should be directly in the path of wherever Daddy wants to go next.

I assume he uses his Dog Telepathy to determine where his next ambush should, er, lie.

Also, he has finally figured out that it is no longer necessary to wait for Daddy to actually get out of bed before demanding his morning tribute. At least he hasn’t tried climbing in with me. Yet.

Except he’s black, so not the least bit racist.

Also: I never know how Little Bear will behave around a stranger. If it’s a large man, probably he’ll react with fear and hostility. If it’s a woman, probably he’ll greet her with tentative acceptance. Prior to this weekend there has only been one person he instantly accepted with love and devotion, and that’s Landlady. Ever since puppyhood he has loved Auntie Lady. Can’t get enough of her.

She was the only one prior to this past weekend, that is. This weekend we added another person to the exclusive list. Landlady brought a guest to visit the Lair Saturday, someone LB could never have met, and he greeted her like a long-lost favorite sister. Wouldn’t leave her alone. Found every particle, every theoretical concept of her entirely delightful.

The guest was Landlady’s mother.

A pheromone thing, maybe? Something in the genes?

So I started the afternoon just planning to get that Honda generator up and running. Works fine.

Then I thought, well, I do have this one little application requiring a power saw…

In fairness, the Secret Lair can run a scroll saw. It can’t run a circular saw, which would be better for cutting plywood, but my circular saw is still at Landlady’s barn and I didn’t feel like driving all the way over there to get it.

So I cut the plywood with a scroll saw, powered by the new generator. Because I could. And as previously stated, it works fine. 🙂 The powershed has a new floor now.

I got the food buckets back in, but by then my back was singing to me.

So there’s still a big pile’o’stuff in the yard. Fortunately the forecast says I’ve got a few more dry days.

There are some changes I want to make on the interior walls before I drag all that stuff back inside anyway. This is going well. 🙂

I do confess this was a care package dump I anticipated to an unusual degree. It’s not every time somebody sends me something likely to revolutionize a lengthy and sometimes painful annual chore. Big Brother sent me some cordless tools once, and that fit in that category of gift. But nothing else would have come to mind before this morning…

Oh, I’ve been waiting for this. Can you believe somebody would just donate such a thing? I put off starting on woodcutting, in anticipation…

And sonuvagun, this thing looks like it’s never been out of the box. I know what I’m doing this afternoon – I’m reading the manual and figuring out how to put oil in it…

Not to be outdone, Big Brother – who also owns one – sent me a decoration I might actually slap on the Jeep just to be a dick… Continue reading →

I know what men want. Men want to be really, really close to someone who will leave them alone. -Elayne Boozler

I don’t know who the hell Elayne Boozler is, but she has identified something very important.

…except I got all the rest of my vulnerable food up into the loft. Cleared out the powershed of a couple of plastic shelves I needed for the loft (scrubbed much rat piss) moved them into the loft, then stacked cans and sacks. Still haven’t decided if I’m moving the buckets. Not that big an issue, they’re okay where they are so I guess we’ll see.

Having gotten those shelves out of the way and before I can put my other stuff back on the powershed I should have rebuilt the rear part of the floor, which it has needed for a long time. Did the front half of the shed in winter, when I revamped the batteries. But never got around to doing the rear half because who wanted to tear out all that stuff on the shelves? But now the stuff and the shelves are out of the building, and I should have cut to size the sheet of plywood I’ve had for the purpose for nearly a year.

Then I decided to take a bath and take the rest of the day off. Maybe mañana.

Kit Perez has a blog called Montana Homesteading. There’s not a lot on it at present but I hope she stays with it. She has recently had some success raising chicks from eggs – something I haven’t even tried yet – and put up a really good article a few days ago on how to get and hatch the eggs.

That’s something I want to try sometime, if I ever get a line on an incubator. “Where are my next chickens coming from” is a question I have to deal with every couple of years.

Yes, Spam! The official canned meat of TUAK!

Thanks to Big Brother, I’ve been slowly stocking back up on the wonder meat. And today it all got moved to the sleeping storage loft.

Along with many other canned goods. The exercise helped me sort through what was depleted and what was outdated* and what simply never gets used in my canned food, and there will be some stocking back up at the dollar store in the matter of canned veggies and fruit.

Just finished up with the cans (many trips up and down the ladder) when damned if it didn’t start to rain a bit. I think I’ll still be able to do the flour and the bulk food today, but that did remind me that I’m supposed to be baking bread with my other hand. So we’re taking a lunch-and-baking break from the back-and forth drudgery.

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*Yeah, I take “best by” dates with a hefty dose of salt but I’ve also pushed that practice to the point of bulging cans. I consider the date more a guideline than a rule, but not completely irrelevant. We generally practice stock rotation here at the Secret Lair but things do get pushed inadvertently to the back of the shelf.

Here’s a look at the prototypes for the wall that will keep you safely penned on safe from your southern border.

Yup. Once this 30-foot-high wall is complete, Mexicans will stop tunneling under it. Then we’ll all be safe and happy.

Then our loving masters will at last have the true power they need to protect and care for us all! For as long as we’re useful to the State, we need fear nothing! And when we’re too old or sick to serve, we can quietly drift away in the happy knowledge that we’ve done our part!

Imagine!

[T]he new rules, drawn up by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in Hertfordshire, say that obese patients “will not get non-urgent surgery until they reduce their weight” at all, unless the circumstances are exceptional.

The criteria also mean smokers will only be referred for operations if they have stopped smoking for at least eight weeks, with such patients breathalysed before referral.
…
The CCGs already delay surgery for up to nine months for those with a high BMI, telling them to lose at least 10 per cent of their weight.

The new rules increase the amount of weight the heaviest patients must lose – and crucially, they mean those who fail to lose weight or give up smoking could wait indefinitely.

Imagine all the people/Dying on command/You-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo/You may say I’m a dreamer/But I’m not the only one…

The Monarch butterflies appear to be migrating. They come right through here, which is pretty cool.

I’ve heard that Monarchs need milkweed to continue on their way. I don’t know what these bushes are, but the bugs seem to find them adequate. You probably can’t see them in this photo, but there are a good dozen butterflies in it.

So we’re doing our part to preserve the environment, or something.

Speaking of doing our part, before this morning I was more than two weeks late servicing Landlady’s batteries.

In my own defense I hadn’t actually neglected them; I’ve been very interested in how much water they were boiling off since being applied to a circuit with any load at all. Kept forgetting to bring my filler jug and actually do my job, but I was paying attention to the level of … er, is “droppage” a word? Consumption is maybe what I’m going for. Anyway, they haven’t been using much water. But I did get around remembering the filler jug and topping them off this morning.

L has returned from her journeys for the moment and hopefully Ghost is happier for it. I’m going over there probably this afternoon, and when I go I’m bringing back their scaffold for the season.

I am by no means done painting the cabin – never even got started on the trim – but I’m done for the season. I’m frankly so sick of looking at paint cans just typing this sentence may make me throw up in my mouth a little. Concentrating on the interior for now; I’ll borrow the scaffold again in the Spring.

…which, when occupied by two dressers, a twin bed, a chair, a laundry hamper and a big hole in the floor, feels more like zero square feet.

I thought about that this afternoon after finally getting the big dresser down (intact!) from the loft. And then I thought, wow, there’s a lot of space up here now.

No, you can’t see it. It is pretty much all my architectural sins remembered. Think Bart Simpson’s treehouse, but lots dustier than that. Anyway it’ll make a dandy storage area.

Of course emptying it pretty much filled the floor of the main cabin. Continue reading →

How Hillary Clinton Still Can, and Should, Become President After the Trump-Russia Investigation

Okay, before we get to the actual method by which Hillary will become president (snicker) please allow me to editorialize for just a moment…

People, this is Donald Trump we’re talking about here. A very famous, very famously unpleasant individual with a massive negative publicity trail going back longer even than Hillary’s. You’ve been trying to get him on Russian collusion all year and only succeed in beclowning yourselves over and over. Surely by now Trump must be the most investigated individual in human history, and that’s the best you’ve got? Mythical Russians and one p*ssy-grabbing remark? My only possible conclusion is that Trump must have been a closet saint all those decades, and was only pretending to be a vulgar immoral oaf like unto a particularly uncivilized baboon. Maybe I should start supporting him?

Be that as it may. Sit down, remove all spewable liquids from your vicinity and get a load of this.

Here’s how constitutional law expert Lessig lays [the impending Hillary Clinton presidency] out:

If number 1: If Trump is definitively found to have colluded directly with Russia, he would be forced to resign or be impeached.

If number 2: If Trump is removed, Vice President Mike Pence would become president.

If number 3: If Pence becomes president, he should resign too, given that he benefited from the same help from Mother Russia.

If number 4: If Pence resigns before appointing a vice president, Ryan would become president.

If number 5: If Ryan becomes president, he should do the right thing and choose Clinton for vice president. Then he should resign.

“The answer seems unavoidable: He should nominate the person defeated by the treason of his own party, and then step aside and let her become the president,” Lessig writes. “Without doubt, if Ryan did the right thing, that would be the most extraordinary event in the history of America since the Confederate Army fired on Fort Sumter. But unlike that, this event would build the union, not divide it.”

Yup. That’ll work.

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*Okay. I can actually think of a couple other, even more sincere belly laughs. But those were due to intensely personal experiences not shared on a frickin’ blog. Get off my lawn.

Neighbor D offered to come over and help me get my mattress down from the loft.

For occasions just like this, I made the loft railing easy to remove. It’s so close to the ceiling, otherwise it would be impossible to shift furniture.
Continue reading →

I used to make fun of people who froze a lot of meat and called it “preps.” But in my case these are just luxuries, to keep me from going insane with depression if I’m stuck through the winter with nothing but six buckets of beans and rice.

Actually I’m a lot more likely to be stuck at the cabin during Monsoon than winter, and Monsoon doesn’t worry me at all. So go figure: I got burned, and now Winter is the time for prepping like it’s 1999. On a more practical note, paying gigs drop off to nothing during the winter and I tend to burn a lot more propane, which costs money. So stocking up on meat isn’t just feeding my neurosis. Last winter Landlady brought me a whole bunch of pork, and I assure you it all got eaten.

Anyway I got paid last week for a paying gig, and for once it wasn’t all instantly spent on building materials. So I brought home some more cheap cuts of chicken to squirrel away in Ian’s freezer. I’ve been doing this every chance I got, when I had a few extra bucks and the market’s meat reefer wasn’t broken.

Also a big package of “smoked sausage,” which is more like slightly spicier than usual hot dogs. It’s good to store some snack food, rather than nothing but ingredients.

And today, before Ghost goes home, we feast on hot chicken!

Before somebody says it, no. They don’t get the bones.

S&L are traveling again, just for a few days. L and I tried something different with Ghost this time, barricading off the rear patio and leaving him outside during the day. That way I’m only visiting 2-3 times a day rather than 5. I liked it and I expected Ghost to as well. Guess not.

Look who just showed up at the cabin, barely able to take another step?

He is currently engaged in an effort to drink ALL THE WATER. Then I’m going to have to help him safely down the cabin stairs – which he could barely climb – to piss it all back out again. Wouldn’t really be a problem except I still have to go to town.

To put up a closet rod in the new closet, I needed a closet rod and brackets. Alas the only ones I owned that were even close to the right length were already holding up a bunch of seasonal clothes. So I tore it all down and scavenged the hardware. Then I did something I keep meaning to do…

I sorted through all the shit that had been hanging in the powershed.

A little backstory, long-time readers already know this: I was comically unprepared for the winter of 2008-2009, which I spent almost completely alone and without reliable transport. Occasionally thought I’d freeze and/or starve, and the experience left me a bit (more) neurotic about being prepared next time. Among other quirks I couldn’t turn down a free coat or sweater, no matter how inappropriate, worn-out or hyper-redundant. Came the time I had so many coats and sweaters there wasn’t room to store them all. I’m still getting rid of them. And now of course I a) have a really nice winter work coat and don’t need to scrounge or improvise, and b) am completely revamping my seasonal storage arrangement, moving essentials indoors and away from the rats for the first time. It’s time to finish paring down the third-hand winter coats.

By “paring down,” I mean haul them to town and dump them in the donation bin behind the local thrift store. Quite to my surprise I’ve ended up donating more than I buy there, because neighbors tend to give me first refusal on their cast-offs and TUAK readers are incredible.

So anyway I was getting ready to load stuff into the Jeep for the Monday morning water run and I wanted this stuff out of my yard. But on the top of one pile was my old shooting jacket, from when I used to compete with a rifle…

…and I thought, “What’s the thrift store going to do with that?” And it occurred to me, belatedly, that I knew somebody who did know what to do with it, assuming he didn’t already own a dozen better. So I texted Ian with a picture, asking if he wanted it. He replied sure, and so I told him the circumstances. And he wrote back,

“Taking stuff TO the thrift store, eh? How bourgeoisie of you! 🙂 ”

And that gave me my first good laugh of the morning, is all. You could apply many adjectives to me, several of them truthfully negative. But “bourgeois” would not be among them.