The Ultimate Answer to Kings

…of letting you know that, in that dog’s opinion, you’ve been motionless in that chair quite long enough.

Funny how often it involves just staring, with zero consideration for personal space.

I was going to blow him off and go back to my book when it occurred to me that in light of his earlier mild gastric distress he might be trying to tell me something important, so I suited up and we went for a brief unscheduled walkie. But no, apparently he was just bored.

It’s the second very cloudy day in a row at the darkest part of the year, the batteries are all but flat so I have everything turned off – I’m actually thinking of turning the inverter off, I’d still have essential lights – there’s nothing to do but sit here and read this book and that’s just what I’m going to do with the rest of the afternoon whether he likes it or not. Because Tobie is not the boss of me.

Presented to him by a neighbor, who even gift-wrapped it.

Verily, doth he like it a lot.

But I remember the digestive cataclysm I brought upon us both by giving him a leather bone shortly after bringing him home, and I don’t want a repeat. So I cut off a third of one for him. It didn’t last long at all and so far we’re not paying any terrible price. He is older now, and hasn’t left me any horrible gelatinous presents in months. If all remains cool after his morning dump I’ll let him party a little heartier tomorrow.

MORNING ETA:Yup, he got a minor case of the squirts. No Christmas present for Tobie. 🙁

And Tobie wants to know when I’m planning to get off my ass and take him on his long morning walkie.

I finished with my obligation to go to D&L’s at least once a day sometime last week, just in time to start going to S&T’s twice a day. That second thing ended yesterday, and I celebrated by going to bed whenever I damn well pleased last night and getting up whenever I damn well pleased this morning. Tobie actively disapproved of this juvenile and irresponsible behavior, but Tobie is not the boss of me. And now I am lingering over an unrushed breakfast with a large and visibly confused dog just behind my heels. He likes what he’s used to, and he’s used to me sticking more strictly to a schedule. He’s probably wondering how one goes about arranging an intervention, but we’re going for a nice long walkie as soon as I’m done here and that will probably get him off my ass.

It’s the solstice, officially winter, and the tumbleweeds are getting aggressive…

…from T&S’s mesa…

Actually just trying to get past them, though the abandoned camper truck is a good mile away from their home.

…and briefly made it to single digits, just before sunrise for the first time this season. Coldest morning of the season so far.

And – except for the fact that I’m about to head out into it for the third time this early morning on animal-related errands – I don’t care, because the cabin is already up into the sixties where I like it, and I went without a warm place in winter for so long I swear it’s never getting old.

Coldest day of the year so far, and I was up on T&S’s mesa at first light to let the dogs out – blessing gifts of warm winter clothes from generous readers for my relative comfort.

The boys say hi…

…then down off the plateau and the long way around to Landlady’s to swap out chicken waterers. The batteries in the powershed always keep the temp in there above freezing, so that’s where the spare waterers go.

The frozen one goes against the wall where the high-altitude sun will melt it no matter whether the ambient temperature gets above freezing today or not.

And now…mocha. Me so decadent.

Had a chance to take a couple of empties to town this afternoon…

Only brought one of them back, because the other was older and the valve had failed. I was able to drop it off at the propane shop for a new valve. The price of that was not on any budget but happily somebody hit the tip jar yesterday with almost exactly what it was scooping out of my wallet, so I was a happy man.

Until…I came home to be reminded that I had closed the bedroom door, and the desk lid, and emptied the trash can, and cleared off the kitchen counter, but…

…I had neglected to put the chair cushion in the bedroom. Which of course obligated Tobie to try to use it as a chew toy.

Happily, it survived without damage which is either a tribute to its construction or his distractibility. Either way, it was my fault and not a cause for yelling.

…twice a day for the next few days – they’re off on a trip.

And I’m taking this chance to play with my new camera(s) and lenses in terms of capabilities, in particular depth of field.

…I’m going to decree that storage buckets and bulk packages have to contain the same volumes.

I never used to need to hide the food sack from Little Bear, or Ghost, or Torso Boy. But I would never dream of leaving one within reach of Tobie, the chewing machine that walks like a puppy. So…

…I armor it in a food storage bucket. Yes he probably could chew it open, given enough time. But it hasn’t (yet) occurred to him to do so. Unfortunately…

…the bucket’s volume is short by about two pounds of kibble. So I always have to wrap up the sack and leave it out on the porch, blessing the fact that we don’t seem to have raccoons.

I’ve spent the past fifteen years in a world of old trucks and 4X4s, invariably gas-powered, essentially unchanged from the things I used to lean over and curse when I was wrenching in the late 70’s/early 80’s. I still think of electric and hybrid cars as this class of promising but quasi-experimental vehicles not ready for prime time, like pre-WWI airplanes.

And then I’m filling water bottles at the laundromat in the crappy little (very) rural town nearest where I live, and I see…

…a sun-faded, beat-up, worn-out, Bondo-bespackled Prius that looks like it’s been around since the invention of the assembly line.

Yup. Way to make me feel old, Toyota…

I’m not surprised at all, actually I called it. But hoped I was wrong. The Jeep is still sitting in the yard of the shop where I delivered it on November frickin’ 27, untouched by man or tool.

The manager made a(nother) insincere promise, which I’m reasonably sure will still be unkept when I visit next Monday. The contractor situation is the one thing I genuinely hate about living ‘way out in the boonies.

Having said that, there’s good news: I got another big hit to the tip jar this weekend which definitely puts me over the top for paying for, if not actually getting, all the repairs I was hoping to do. So that’s good, and thanks very much to those responsible.

Winter is as winter does. If you haven’t frozen to death long before the solstice that marks the official beginning of winter, you’re doing something right. But so far this has been an extremely mild one. Today’s the first morning in the teens.

And the batteries are at their lowest point since last winter…

Horse water is frozen, of course. D&L have evolved a system for dealing with that, and I’m amused to see that it still involves tools they got from me.

The worn-out crappy hatchet came from a clean-up job I did (mumblemumble) years ago: I was going to send it to the dump with the rest of the trash but by coincidence D had told me he was looking for a too-crappy-for-anything-else hatchet for chopping horse trough ice.

I bought that heavy shitfork in the big town about 50 miles away for a job hauling away an enormous and inconveniently-located pile of horse shit in 2014. When the job was finished I would have no further use for the fork, which isn’t really ideal for day-to-day shitshoveling, and planned to sell it to D&L. But then just when I was about done with the job I cracked the handle, bouncing it around in the long-tool pipe of the Jeep trailer. We had some discussion here about repairing it. I ended up just giving it to D&L, and I’m happy to report that…

…the long-term review of that repair is favorable. 🙂 The fork is still too heavy and clumsy to be ideal for day-to-day shitshoveling but it turns out just right for skimming broken ice off a horse trough.

I’m not convinced he’d be smart enough to learn that he has to reset it himself, but also not sure he wouldn’t. He picks up on new tricks quickly when treats are involved. And he absolutely would play fetch relentlessly if I were ever stupid enough to allow a tennis ball to enter the Lair.

H/T to Wendy McElroy.

We had a storm cell pass overhead overnight, really just enough to keep the temperature high, give us a cold wind to negate that effect, and drop just enough rain…

…to put us over seventeen inches for the year! Which makes this – not a record, in 2013 we crossed 17 inches in August – but a very wet year indeed.

You can’t tell by the look of the grass, which is all dead as disco, though very high still. And the tumbleweeds, god, did we have a bumper crop of tumbleweeds.

Once your solar power system’s charge controller hits Float it’s easy to imagine that means your batteries are fully charged, which is not entirely accurate. For a full charge the batteries still need a long sunny afternoon’s soak in a relatively high-voltage/low amperage charge – which is to say, basically, that they need it to be summer. And sunny*. This is why solar power is probably never going to be a big industry in, say, Finland. Or the PNW. Unless, of course, it’s subsidized by a stupid, massive grift of an “infrastructure” spending b…(I’ve got his mouth! Get the cuffs on quick, he’s biting me!)

(ahem) Ranting Joel having been stuffed back into the closet, my point is that solar power systems need certain environmental conditions to work well, and those conditions don’t always prevail even in the most otherwise amiable locations, such as the SW desert. Which is why, headed toward the winter solstice after two VERY cloudy days, I wake to be greeted by sights like…

Happily, deep cycle batteries are constructed to forgive a level of misuse, which is why nobody with a choice just powers their cabin with a couple of old car batteries, which are not. My relatively new golfcart batteries can withstand considerably lower levels of charge without too much concern over damage – though I tend to be a worrier anyway, which is why I have that readout on a prominent wall in the first place…

—
*…and oh by the way warm, because the third thing lead/acid batteries need is for it not to be below freezing, where they don’t work so well chemically anyway.

…at my expense, but to their credit it was a big one. Hope they enjoyed.

I couldn’t move the chickenfeed can into the building because the last time I tried that I injured my shoulder real good and it has never been the same. So I put a big cinderblock on top of the lid in hopes that would dissuade them from further theft – and you see how well that worked.

The good news is…

They stole so much – maybe $40 or $50 worth – that I had no trouble moving the cans indoors and now the free food lamp is no longer lit.

Really tired of the goats now.

I can’t yet report any progress on actually fixing the actual Jeep, since as far as I know there has been none: Never assume the one functioning auto repair shop within scores of miles is going to jump right on your case.

But I can report that thanks to several generous readers, including a few very generous readers but mostly a gratifying large number of people who kicked in $10-$25, we went over the top and there’s no question of having the Jeep fixed and then being unable to get it out of hock.

Thanks very much, you guys! You rock.