The Ultimate Answer to Kings

I’ve needed to bake bread for the past couple of days, but to do that you really need a few more-or-less guaranteed uninterrupted hours, preferably with the sky at full-sun, and yesterday and Wednesday that wasn’t going to happen so I planned all week for this to be baking day. Alas, it really looked like the sun was going to let me down.

Why does the sun matter? Lemme ‘splain. No, there is too much. Lemme sum up. (and DAMN IT I needed the clip but Youtube let me down…)

I once had an (antique, I think, certainly ‘vintage’) gas oven that had the virtue of not needing any house current to operate. I didn’t realize until I replaced it how much it was holding me back as a baker, but there it was. Anyway, a little over a year ago the gas valve’s thermocouple failed and there was no replacement. Big Brother subsidized the purchase of a new oven: I did what I thought was sufficient research to make sure it would fit the space and my needs but I didn’t realize that in the well over 20 years since I last bought a kitchen appliance, oven pilot lights had gone the way of the Bill Cosby album.

In terms of gas wastage this is a good thing: I buy my kitchen propane ten gallons at a time. In terms of how well the new one was going to get along with a very small off-grid solar power system it … required behavioral adjustment on my part. The pilot light has been replaced with a big honkin’ electric heating unit that pulls juice out of lead/acid batteries at an appalling rate and really only doesn’t get scary on a sunny mid-day.

Damn howdy, though, does that thing bake a pretty loaf of bread.

Alas, the day was not shaping up to be very sunny.

Still, I’ve seen worse. (cue another Princess Bride clip: I may have to sit down and watch that movie when I’m done here.) So at about 10am I set to work. And happily, the day ignored the weather forecast: By the time the dough had risen, the clouds were all gone.

I’ve baked on very overcast days when the indicated battery voltage fell to 11.8_something (the inverter shuts right off at 11.7) but this morning was never very overcast and with the clouds gone the batteries behaved themselves nicely indeed for mid-winter.

And you gotta love the results…

My uncertainty derives from the first one not being a confirmed kill – these things are important in the life of a young gangsta – when he was still very young he disappeared for a while and came back with a bedraggled rat in his jaws which he considered to be still in an edible condition, but I’ve never been entirely sure if he killed the rat or just found it.

But this morning he definitely killed a sparrow…

It got inside yesterday afternoon, nothing unusual about that. Normally I can catch them in the woodstove or when they fly to the front window, but that window now happens to be right above his bed and he scared it away. He and the sparrow spent the rest of the evening annoying me, and I hoped to be able to catch and release it sometime today.

I heard Tobie crashing around in the main cabin around four this morning, and I thought I heard an unusual squeak before he settled back down. Guess I was right. An hour later I suited up to take him for his early walkie, and in the light from my headlamp I saw some odd debris on his bed. Turned out to be feathers, so I guess I can forget worrying about how I’m going to catch the bird; Tobie took care of that.

By happy coincidence, Tobie just finished destroying his last dollar store chew rope a couple of days ago. So while I was at the big town about 50 miles away I stopped at the Tractor Supply store and bought him a nice new one.

It didn’t smell right and he wasn’t entirely sure he thought it was a good idea, but he’ll get over that quick. I forgot it in the back seat of Neighbor L’s truck yesterday and picked it up this afternoon after chicken chores, which gave me just enough time to cut the tag off and give it to Tobie before I had to go to today’s Big Chore…

…stacking yet another pallet of wood pellets for D&L’s very hungry and expensive pellet stove. And this time I had to do all the back-and-forth solo, because D is so banged up even he had to admit he needed to sit this one out. So instead he hovered on the boundaries grumbling, same as I would have.

Got’er done, too…

50 40-pound sacks, a chore that would have given me a hard time when I was a tech writer in my 40’s. As it is, it wasn’t really any serious trouble at all.

I went to the big town about 50 miles away with the address of a place that claimed they would take my phone in and replace the glass and clean its various orifi inside one hour, for $80. I made contact, turned over my phone, then waited for Murphy to have his merciless way with me.

Instead they replaced the glass, cleaned its various orifi and updated its software for exactly $80, and had it ready for me well before I returned from Wally World. The trip took all day, but that’s not their fault.

Now I’m fearfully waiting for something to fall on my head from the sky.

Sometimes, in my capacity as Entertainment Director here at the Secret Lair, I fall down on the job. Or at least sit down.

For some reason, over the past three days the end of my stump has gotten all swollen and sore. It’s surprising because usually when that happens I’ve done something to deserve it, but it’s mid-winter and I really haven’t. Still, there’s only one known remedy: Dust off the crutches, take off the leg and apply the seat of your pants to the seat of a chair for a couple of days. Or even (gasp) just take a nap.

Guess who doesn’t like that at all?

He really wants to know why Uncle Joel is in bed at 2 in the afternoon.

I sit on the ridge over the wash, looking back over my home…

…thinking about this and that. I sometimes wonder if it shouldn’t seem odd to me that I’m so happy to live here – really it’s the only place I remember ever being happy. Ever at home.

But it doesn’t seem odd at all. For various reasons, some perfectly obvious in hindsight and some maybe not so much, I’ve never been a part of any society I found myself thrust into. Always on the edges: Looking in with envy and frustration when I was a boy, later just kind of wishing all these people would go away. Oh, the mistakes I made, all the embarrassing faux pas, the clueless improvisations, the memory of which will still sometimes make me cringe at an unguarded moment. I never understood what those people were doing – how they seemed to fit in so effortlessly, so thoughtlessly. You could be a real asshole and still get invited to parties, so what was so obviously wrong with me? It was clearly apparent to everybody else, but I didn’t understand it at all at the time.

One time I tried to make a list of all the common things I’ve never done, and never wanted to do. I’ve never watched a Fast and Furious movie, or seen cocaine, or had a birthday party, or owned a video game, or lied to a girlfriend about some other girlfriend – and what a mess I’d have made of that. I’ve never understood fashion: I once joked that the surest sign a fad had run its course would be me trying to get involved with it. Never got what was so great about Nike shoes. Never had a cool car. Never played team sports – when I was a teenager the closest thing I ever had to a longtime passion was archery, and there’s probably no more solitary sport.

Later I got good at scuba diving, and I think that was as close to ‘cool’ as I ever got, because the one-legged guy on a dive boat is just automatically the coolest guy there. But it never got me a date. Actually I rarely dared think in terms of ‘getting a date,’ because it was clear early and always that women were at the apex of the pyramid of things I was never going to understand. So I generally went for ‘cool and distant.’ But even then fashion interfered: That veneer of coolness required the latest and greatest gear and I was always too broke for that.

Didn’t help that I’m not exactly Henry Cavill. But I’ve known popular ugly guys. So it wasn’t that.

I did eventually get married, basically to the first person who ever agreed to have sex with me. And what a mess I made of it. I worked my way to a white-collar career – which I made a mess of. I could do the technical stuff just fine, but when you go from the shop to the office the people skills are paramount – I didn’t consider that till it was far too late to back out and my life became hell. ‘Professional’ people have ways of taking advantage of you that would get them beaten to a pulp in a shop, and I was just cannon fodder. Career counselors should mention that. But you know: When you’re in a trade where there’s a literal rule saying “don’t bleed on the customer’s car,” you look into an office and they all seem so comfortable. So clean. How could they possibly be unhappy? Well, there are ways.

The one thing that still seems odd to me about living here is that I was invited. By people who didn’t seem to find my oddness – odd. Maybe they grew up odd too. Except most of them seem perfectly normal, and had (and have) successful lives in the world, with families and careers.

Anyway, through desperation and luck (and freezing and burning and broken bones and quite a lot of hard work, but those things never dismayed me) I’ve found myself in a place I really love among a few people I really kind of like.

Somebody said to me once, “Joel, some guys are just born bachelors and you are the classic case.” At the time I took it as a challenging insult. If I’d treated it as wise life advice, I wonder how much more happy so much of my life would have been. The thing is, in hindsight I didn’t move toward happiness and contentment until, forsaking everything I had been told and really believed I was supposed to be doing for everyone else, I set out to do the one thing I had ever really wanted in my heart to do for myself. And to my utter shock, that brought success.

It’s not cold out, looks like it’ll break 50 which isn’t cold at all for early January, but heavy clouds and in every other way not at all like yesterday which was scandalously nice.

Heavy clouds are why …

If you want to go solar and also keep a family happy, your choices are to budget for a big reliable backup generator or change your plans entirely.

Happily this old cedar rat is done with the “family” thing. I’ve done my bit for the species and for the economy, now if there’s no ‘tricity to power the … um … whatever people need a lot of electricity for, I can just play some other way. And since I’ve been in a shooting posture for the past few days…

…I’ve spent my morning on Joel’s equivalent of meditation: Unnecessary gun cleaning. After lunch and the mid-day walkie I’m going to head over to Ian’s to work on finding new storage alternatives for his fancy metallic targets, those that are left here, so they’ll be in better shape when he decides he wants them again.

First week in January, and it’s in the sixties. I’m walking around outside in a longsleeve t-shirt. It’s almost obscene. Clear sky, warm breeze. Any nicer and we’ll have to arm up to keep the tourists away.

This morning I brought the first of Ian’s fancy targets out of Landlady’s barn – where the dirt and accumulated humidity are not being kind to them – in an effort to make room for them in his powershed. I thought I was going to need more work cleaning and lubing this mini-Mozambique than it really needed. But these things are really floppy on their lumber, and even this little one doesn’t work well.

Came back later , turned it to face away from the wash so bullet frags wouldn’t be an issue on windows or solar panels, and couldn’t get it to reset reliably until I braced it forward from the rear. That seemed to do the trick – but I have to say I’m not real impressed with how these things sit on their 2X4 props. Flopping around the way they do, it’s hard for bullets to make them do their trick.

Around half past one I got a call from Neighbor L…

She went to town for a doctor’s appointment and came back with a few hay bales. Neither of them are really up to schlepping bales yet, so I came over and stacked them in the hay room.

And now, after a snack, I’m going back outside in this nice weather and putting my chainsaw to bed for the season. This far in, it doesn’t look likely that any weather emergency is going to empty the woodshed this season.

Yesterday’s post was really just a quicky to make up for the long pause in posting, it was never intended to be a bleg. But a bunch of people came out of the woodwork to deal with Joel’s tragic looming bullet shortage, and I can’t say how much I appreciate it.

I woke up this morning thinking that some of these guys need to get together: On the one hand there’s a person who enjoys bullet casting and wants to expand his operation into .44, and on the other hand there’s a guy with a lot of casting metal he wants rid of that he can’t afford to ship. You guys need to talk, and I’d be happy to facilitate it if you want. I don’t have the indoor space or the interest to effectively get into casting*. My casting experience goes no further than balls for muzzleloaders on a stovetop when I was a boy. But tastes and opinions differ, which is what makes the world interesting.

Anyway, I do appreciate all the information about availability on yesterday’s comment thread, as well as the offers of direct contributions (which I took people up on.) For a while there my email app showed more activity than it has in months.
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*I knew a shooter in the Texas panhandle who spent more time casting bullets than he did loading or shooting them – this was in the early IPSC days and local shooters weren’t in danger of S&W sponsorships – and it always struck me as the most dreary part of the craft by far, to say nothing of what he was probably doing to his lungs in his little loading shack. But he seemed to enjoy it.

…and I expend every round of commercial .44 Special with a pained grimace that would look good on Ebenezer Scrooge. For the first time in my career as a cedar rat I’m asking myself why oh why did I decide that that was the EDC caliber for me? Here at the tail end of the ammo supply chain no amount of money will conjure a box into being and I’m down to anemic ‘cowboy action’ ammo that, even when they appeared on shelves at all, cost as if they were cast from pure plutonium.

But I can still do some judicious practice with reloads…

I indulged in a solo Jeep ride to chicken chores right after feeding Tobie lunch, then took the wash back home past Ian’s range. I stopped at the 100 yard line just long enough to check the zero on my rifle, then set up at 25 yards to burn some pistol powder.

Not a lot: I’m okay for powder but I’ve cracked my last big box of bullets and can’t afford to waste them. I went on Midwayusa and Wideners yesterday and neither is selling cast .44 bullets. On primers I’m down to a couple of thousand-unit boxes so old they’re actually good for malfunction drills because they don’t always go bang the first time around in double action.

Fortunately I’m okay for .22, thanks to a gradual buying program after the last ammo drought and also a massive and very timely gift from Ian just before the ‘rona and riots turned everything upside down. So most of my practice shooting is recoil-free, which isn’t the greatest way to practice but one does one’s best.

And may I say something about old .22 cartridges…

I found this baggie with the very last of some scrounged .22lr cartridges I had to break loose from a lump formed inside a submerged brick of them in the cargo bed of an ATV in 2008. And every one of them went bang this morning, though there was one hangfire. That drowned brick got me through the Great Ammo Drought of 2013, when I got caught with my pants down, and it really has made me wonder about all the stories I’ve heard about .22 unreliability. Been shooting .22lr, sometimes quite old .22lr, since I measured my age in single digits and I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any big problem.

I’ve been so careful with this thing for years…

…then yesterday morning it fell out of my hoodie pocket and must have landed on that corner just right.

The phone is the key to basically everything online here at the Lair. When I had a battery problem year before last I sent it to the big city with Landlady and was without it for weeks, but fortunately I believe I’ll be able to get this problem fixed closer to home. I gather there’s nothing very rare about iPhone screens needing replacement and nothing very technical about replacing them.

Still, very annoying. My only trip to the big town about 50 miles away in all of 2021 was when I went to the dog shelter in May. Now I need to plan one ASAP.

Rain last night, then wind in the wee hours and I woke up to driving snow – not a lot, probably less than an inch, but still the first real snowfall of this heretofore very mild winter.

I took Tobie out for his long morning walkie…

…which was cancelled after a few hundred yards because Tobie has clearly never seen snow before. He got so excited about the whole thing that he went from acting the fool as normal to becoming a complete dangerous-to-be-near asshole. Now he’s back inside and wondering why I’m so mad at him, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to break a knee because Tobie decides to hit the afterburners in a random direction while I’m trying to get down a rocky grade that’s now all slippery with snow.

The bad news is that Soylent Green was set in 2022.

I have this irrational urge to go check my food and ammo stocks…

I recently heard a one-liner from a movie I never saw, and now I can’t wait to work it into a conversation: “Don’t call me ‘sir,’ that’s like putting an elevator in an outhouse.” Townie strangers who run into me kind of recoil – you can see them consciously trying to decide if they’ve fallen into a Deliverance remake and if maybe they should be running.

But that’s just appearances, some of which I used to deliberately cultivate. Now I’ve been here 15 peaceful years and I carry a key to nearly every weekender home within a 2-mile radius, because entropy must be battled and I can be trusted to do that.

Not sure you can say the same thing about Tobie…

On this morning’s walkie I stopped in at the getaway of an occasional visitor, who has a friend that Tobie regards as the most wonderful, intriguing, ethereal creature he has ever encountered. Tobie disappeared inside with suspicious speed, and I found him worshipping at a particular altar…

And he wasn’t all that happy about leaving. I think he just planned to wait right there for his goddess’s return.

Laddie was the same way: He acted as if he had never encountered a female dog in his life. Tobie would probably have a better shot at the prize, but it’s a shame about that little operation he got in the shelter…

…expect something uncompromising.

Evidence suggests that the deer in Texas take a more proactive approach to collisions with automobiles…

…and only just over this night did we get our first official snowfall…

…and it’s barely more than a dusting that will be gone in an hour if we get any sun at all.

Walking along the wash I saw something I thought was kind of interesting…

That bank only formed in late July during a big flood that cut a whole new channel in the wash: It started out completely vertical and has been eroded by wind ever since, so the sand on the ramp is really soft: So soft that even a layer of snow on top caused it to slide in places all along the line.

It’s December 27, and so it has been exactly one month to the day since a neighbor towed me in the Jeep to the single auto repair shop in the crappy little town nearest where I live.

That shop hasn’t been answering phone calls, and I hoped that only meant they had dealt themselves a long holiday. But this afternoon during the slightly delayed Monday morning water run I showed up there in person, to find that the Jeep had not moved a millimeter from where they had originally dragged it.

I’m “on the list,” the manager said.

When I asked if the list was really and truly more than a month long, he answered with a look of surprise, “well, yeah.”

I’m a (possibly) extreme introvert. I detest confrontation, and very rarely raise my voice at another human being. But this was quite a bit too much. I had and rejected at the start of this adventure a chance to trailer the Jeep to another, better manned and equipped shop in the big town about 50 miles away, and now I have leisure to regret my decision. Close associates would not have recognized me in the volume and profanity of my rather vociferous reply. It now seems important to motivate these people, and that’s not my best thing.

D&L are making noises about their poor Jeep (which I’ve been borrowing for more than a month) stuck out in the weather as it currently is…

…and it’s still kind of windy out but the clouds have cleared away – I’m hoping for long enough to get the batteries back up to snuff.

I woke up sometime before three with the wind blasting the cabin, which isn’t very common down here in the hollow. Big wind is much more common on the ridgetops but not unknown here, the weather does enjoy its drama. Sometimes wind gets funneled down the walls of the wash and seems to aim right at the Lair.

I remember quite a lot of anxiety during stormy weather when I first moved into the cabin ten years ago, not because I knew of any particular defect in the cabin but because I designed and built it, very aware that I’m not exactly trained or experienced or qualified – in any way – for a career in housebuilding. To my surprise the frame barely creaked in a windstorm, the roof didn’t leak, the whole thing didn’t just fall down on its own unprompted – in fact it worked just fine. Even that slight creaking is gone since the addition in 2017, which is on the windward side and seems to have finished tightening the structure. A good wind actually whistled through the walls until I got the thing wrapped and sided in 2015, and since then heating it stopped being such a chore. When my brother helped me roof the porch almost three years ago I didn’t like that the wind would be able to get under it and possibly do bad things: Fortunately my brother, who has spent most of his life in hurricane country, shared my concern and we spent quite a lot of time anchoring it down in ways that I’m pretty sure would exceed code. It took years but now I’m confident that my funny-looking little home is proof against most ‘weather events’ it’s likely to encounter. Still a little concerned about lightning, but there wasn’t any of that last night.

So I lay awake for a while listening to the wind, not at all worried about damage because everything was in its place and adequately protected, actually enjoying the sensation of feeling safe from the weather – unlike when I used to lay awake as the little RV I called the Interim Lair stood on its ridgetop shaking in the wind. And then I rolled over and went peacefully back to sleep.