The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Unlike yesterday, which was quite an unsatisfying slog until we got a rhythm going, this morning’s decking zipped right along and we were done in less than 2 hours of honest work.

Obviously a lot of work left to do, all the edge work plus a fairly major sidewalk/stairway. That falls mainly in Neighbor S’s territory and I don’t know if I’ll even be involved. Compared to yesterday when I was ready to drop by the time we were through, this morning’s work was pretty painless.

And now I believe it’s baking day.

The old man is tired now.

One day later than prophesied, but cold.

Makes me wish I’d checked the stovepipe yesterday like I was supposed to.

But sometimes it makes the most sense.

There are two ways to get over the plateau; the long easy way and the short, steep, rocky way. Normally I choose the long way. The Jeep’s aftermarket tweaks rate it for rock climbing, and when it was young it would have handled a few little bumps like this with a superior sneer. But it’s not young, and lately this road has been its nemesis. But up is easier on the suspension than down, and I’ve done a lot of work on it since last time, and I couldn’t be late.

I went up to get paid for this week’s back-and-forth gig and I thought I had scheduled enough time to do the chickens, drop off my laundry, and also take the long way around to get up the plateau to meet T&S. But I was wrong, and then I had to make a choice between take the long way and be late or take the bumpy way and be a little early. I’m a little neurotic about timeliness, so Torso Boy and I took the shake’n’bake route.

Now it’s Venezuela, Junior Grade.

UPDATE: PG&E Confirms Widespread Power Outage in Santa Clara Co.

…PG&E confirmed Tuesday afternoon that it would turn off the power for nearly 800,000 customers across the state to reduce the risk of sparking wildfires.

…because transmission line maintenance and brush clearing is apparently no longer a thing, and PG&E didn’t enjoy getting sued to its skivvies for burning down Paradise last year, grid power is no longer something customers are entitled to depend upon. Brave new world!

Yeah, me! In the biggish little town about 35 miles away. Not a big town, but big enough to have a woodlot and a Safeway.

And so now I’ve finally scored some more pressure-treated 2X6s, allowing me to finally finish the porch floor before winter. It’s been not-right since I put it in in May, and so I’ve put off completely screwing everything down all summer. Now I can finally get on the other side of that chore.

Stocked up on distilled water for the batteries a bit, since the local store decided my trade wasn’t important.

And…

I admit this feels a little silly. There’s really no reason to stock up on food going into winter; transport might become a problem for a week in very extreme cases but so what? There’s really no greater chance of being caught without meat in winter than there is in summer. But winter is kind of an excuse, and the local store never carries decent meat of any sort. All I get there is cheap cuts of chicken which is the meat I mostly eat, and I know to rush it home and onto the grill or into the freezer because the local store’s quality control is … lacking. I’ve bought chicken from them only to have it stinking by the time I got it home; I’ve seen green meat you could smell 20 feet away in their reefer. And I don’t get to this Safeway as often as once a year, and it just seemed like a good chance to stock up on pork. So I did, and then packaged it up and stashed it in Ian’s freezer.

And I did it all without my usual tension-bordering-on-panic. If I were going to move to a town, which I’m not, I’d look for a town like this one. I put on a t-shirt without holes and a clean hat, threw a shirt on over the .44, and while D was at his doctor’s appointment I walked around looking just like every other guy. People nod and say hey when they pass you; nobody freaks out at the redneck because they’re all rednecks dressed just the same way. Everybody’s polite, nobody’s pushy or afraid. An armed society is a friendly society.

The one station that carries it around here is sited in a city quite a good bit away from here, and it doesn’t come in very well down here in the Lair’s hollow. But up on the plateau you can hear it clearly, and I am reminded again of how much I used to enjoy listening to it.

But ever since the Trump election, everybody there seems to have gone full Rachel Maddow. Just found this comment I made almost exactly two years ago…

And having just finished my back-and-forth gig up the mesa on the other side of the plateau, I can testify that NPR’s Trump Derangement Syndrome has, if anything, become far more acute. No matter who’s talking, the only time anybody shuts the hell up about Trump is when they’re running a 30-minute piece about some poor LGBT school”girl” having a bad day at the pool or something. It’s enough to make me change the channel and find out if I can stomach current-day “country music.”

It’s sad, really. What are these poor people going to do when Trump is finally gone and the world hasn’t been wiped clean of life by (Trump-caused, no doubt) climate change? They’ll have nothing left to talk about at all.

Down on the plateau at the foot of the mesa there’s a horse that needs feeding…

…and a garden that needs watering.

Yeah, that’s pretty much what an unusually successful desert garden looks like. Everything is grown in buckets of imported soil, and don’t ask me how he keeps the rodents away. Maybe they just don’t like peppers and squash.

Up at the house, this is how much water I expended on the courtyard plants…

…and it’s October and the plants didn’t even need that much watering. In high summer this is a chore.

The “Cliffhouse” may not literally be on the edge of a cliff, but the greenhouse and planting house don’t miss it by much. Sorry about the sun angle…

Getting down the slope to water the greenhouse is a little bit harrowing for the one-legged old man.

The boys need petting and playing with – at this point in their people’s absence they’re more interested in that than in food. But just before leaving they get their cookie…

…and they rush off to previously-agreed-upon neutral corners to nosh while I take my leave.

And while I was typing that I got a text that the Monday morning water run has been moved up half an hour, so I must take off again.

…because I never saw one do so, even given good reason. Insufficient evidence for such a sweeping statement.

This one, here pictured surveying his kingdom like Lucky Jack Aubrey at the masthead, swarmed up that limb as sure-footedly as any tree squirrel.

So I have to amend my observation concerning their behavior to “they normally seem to prefer not to climb trees.”

Okay, I can’t seem to import this 12-second gif so you’re going to have to work with me here…

The dog is on a chain. The cat is just outside his effective radius, knows it, and is being a dick about it.

The dog’s name is apparently Jean Claude.

Last January the bypass regulator for the bedroom’s heater propane crapped out – after less than 3 months of service. Of course I had a Plan B which got me through the rest of the winter. But I’ve gotta tell you that it’s nice to have a regulator that, when a propane bottle goes empty, just automatically switches to another bottle. That is one of man’s great accomplishments, almost equal to that of the humble thermostat.

So in gearing up for this year’s winter preps, I really needed to get another bypass regulator. Of course nobody sells them locally, that would be convenient. I had to send away for one, which means it arrived at the Lair weeks later.

But for the very first time ever, I was able to install it and get it fully functional without at least one trip to the hardware store for fittings! It’s all hooked up!

And unlike the old dead one, this one has a red/green indicator for when there’s an empty bottle. Useful for answering the age old question, “Is it empty, or only almost empty?”

And yes, I’ve checked it for leaks. 😉

In response to my complaint a few weeks ago that I’d about run out of 550 cord, Generous Reader MM threatened to end that problem forever. And then he proceeded to do so, and the result arrived this morning.

That’s 400 yards of paracord, or more than I could use up in 30 years at the rate of expenditure set in the past 13. The spool is so pregnant I had to clean up a bit of a tangled mess inside the box after opening it and will probably do a little redistribution to prevent it happening again. “If you ever find yourself needing 550 cord,” I told Landlady, “In the name of God don’t buy any.”

I also got an unexpected Paratus present from Commander Zero…

What’s that? You never heard of Paratus? Honestly neither had I until recently. But there are less sensible holidays.

Commander Zero accompanied the card with a gift – or a gift with the card? Whatever…

A most useful gift! Nowadays Magpul magazines are about all you see on other people’s ARs, but Magpul does make them for AKs and prior to this morning I didn’t own a single one. This is a 20 rather than the traditional – and not outstandingly useful on varmint guns – 30s. A 20 is ever so much more handy unless you’re planning to invade Latvia. Thank you, Commander Zero!

And Big Brother, ever fearful I’m going to starve or run out of Corgi treats, sent a bunch of food from Walmart.com…

If you haven’t tried it, I recommend that Swanson Chicken a la King. Most meal-in-a-can food is edible at best, but this is pretty good.

Thanks very much, guys!

Did four pallets, and quit because I got hungry rather than because my old back was singing to me. Another two sessions like this and I’ll break out the chop saw and make stovewood. I may or may not hit it again this afternoon.

The generator is humming happily along, giving me no trouble at all. It’ll be due for an oil change once I’m done here, and I’ll hopefully drain the fuel and put it away for the season. Hoping that I go through the winter without needing it again, that is.

Wish I could say the same for that Craftsman recip saw. It acts and sounds like it’s giving up the ghost after only two seasons’ hard work. That’s very disappointing. It’s too useful to do without: Before next autumn I may look for an opportunity to upgrade.

Twice a day for the next five, I’ll be going across the plateau and up T&S’s little mesa to tend their dogs and horse.

I really wish I could show you this house – there are other impressive houses here and there in the Gulch, all with much more substantial water and electrical infrastructures, but this is the only one I’d describe as an art house. It’s a real pain to get to, but once you’re there you want to just sit in the courtyard and enjoy.

It’s kind of inside-out like an old-fashioned hacienda, with the whole structure wrapping around a central courtyard that’s cool and watered and filled with a thousand plants you’ll never find anywhere else in the high desert. Even when the sun beats down, it’s completely surrounded by long covered porches – and the whole thing is built of stone or logs that came from who knows where – we don’t have that many big logs here – or rough lumber, with whimsical touches everywhere…

Of course utilitarianism rears its head here and there – You know how dogs always know when you’re getting ready to go away? T told me yesterday they knew the jig was up when he c-clamped this board across the low courtyard gate to keep the little one from launching over it, as he’s easily capable of doing…

The dogs spend their days in the courtyard, and I come up twice a day to let them out for a poop and feed them, check water and cat boxes and generally try to keep entropy under control. On Sunday, unless it rains a lot before then, I’ll spend an hour watering everything. I don’t think the dogs do a lot of pooping during their run because it always turns out there are messes to clean up. And at the last before I leave they each get a biscuit, which at first they’re quiveringly eager for but toward the end they get so love-starved they don’t even want it because that means the human is going away again.

I’m very glad I got the Jeep fixed. You might recall this particular gig has been a problem in the past because if you’re going to do it you really want a reliable 4X4.

I spent a lot of money in July getting long-standing problems with the fuel pump and water pump and front axle/steering looked to, and it’s really nice to be able to shut the engine off with some degree of assurance it’ll start back up. Plus today the Jeep clawed its way uphill with its traditional confidence instead of rather-more-or-less and my heart was never in my throat. This’ll be a much more pleasant gig than the last couple of times if everything continues to go well.

I haven’t been in Landlady’s house for two weeks, since her last visit. My bad – since (if I remember correctly) she’s due this weekend or actually this evening, I let myself in this morning to check for mice in traps.

Unfortunately it seems the mice decided to visit her traps maybe 20 minutes after she left. Even a diminutive 2-week-old corpse makes a noisome disgusting mess.

I couldn’t just dump the traps’ contents off the front porch like usual, I had to scrape them out with my knife. And that left me kind of stuck for a way to clean things up: The water is turned off, and even if I turned it back on I didn’t want to clean rotting mouse out of the traps and off my blade in her kitchen sink. I pondered.

Ah! This is one reason I carry water in the Jeep – the other reason being a fossil of the long period when the cooling system had that chronic leak – and by coincidence there was also an empty jug in the back. Remember I said they’re useful?

In fairness one of those useless 2.5 gallon abominations would have done as well here, I guess…

But anyway, her cabin should smell not nearly so bad by the time she gets here.

But this is my least favorite part of the woodcutting process right here…

It took less than an hour and a half for Uncle Joel to cry halt on cutting pallets apart with a Sawzall. In that time I dismantled only three pallets and some accumulated weathered junk people have called me to haul away in the warm season, and the result is piled right there.

By previous years’ standards that’s not terrible progress but it won’t get me into the Hermit Olympics. Now me and a beer are going to go out for some therapeutic porch time.

Legal Experts Warn Amber Guyger Verdict Could Set Dangerous Precedent Of Police Officers Not Being Allowed To Shoot Anyone They Want

Guyger and her legal counsel relied heavily on the “But I was a cop” argument as well as the “I feared for my life” defense, plus a creative use of the “Did I mention I was a cop?” legal precedent. But shockingly, none of these arguments worked, baffling legal experts and causing many to worry about the future of our justice system.

h/t

I’ve been preparing since yesterday for today’s big trip to the biggish town about 35 miles away, where there would be lumber and ammo and meat and distilled water and assorted other groceries. Showed up at D&L’s right on time this morning, all dressed for town…only to discover that it’s next Wednesday, not today.

And I had to put off a couple of other social things to get it done, too…one of which I was able to go ahead and do, fortunately, but I have to go visit a neighbor tomorrow to discuss a paying gig and that meeting was supposed to be today.

Ah, well. Sick chicken, which I noticed yesterday and Neighbor L said this morning had to be, er, relieved of her misery. So I did that…

…and before anyone asks, because somebody always asks, no. I don’t eat sick chickens. This one was skin and bones under the bloat anyway.

I’ve been getting into winter nesting mode. Yesterday afternoon I fixed some worn-out skateboard tape on the porch steps…

…and this morning I got to thinking about my kindling hatchet, which it turns out I stored in deplorable condition…

Yeah, that’s a downside of heating with cut-up pallets. You just cut the nails with a sawzall, which means when you’re splitting planks for kindling you are occasionally going to find a nail. I like a good hatchet but a fancy one is not only unneeded but actually a disadvantage.

Anyway, I shouldn’t have stored it in that condition. But by Spring it is with a sense of profound relief that I put away the stove stuff, and the thought of fixing the edge then never crossed my mind.

So, since I had a few hours before (I thought) I needed to go meet neighbors, I brought out the edge tools.

I already took care of my full-size axe in July, in celebration of coming home. So that part of firewood prep is done.

Now it’s time to actually set up the saws and cut firewood, but I’m not going to make a big production of it this autumn. I still have half a woodshed full, and it’s nothing but a head-high rat nest and needs to be used up. So I’m going to cut a reserve supply just in case, but leave it under a tarp at the woodlot so I can spend the winter cleaning out the woodshed. Probably a lot of what’s in there is spoiled with rat byproducts but I won’t know how much till I start hauling it out.

The first of the month is Battery Day, in which I go around and top off all the battery cells at Landlady’s, Ian’s and my places.

Since the big chickenhouse is attached to Landlady’s powershed, I was also able to bring back the ladies’ water bottles, all topped off.

Here’s a bit of irony related to the unintended consequences of moving your ass so far out in the sticks the coyotes need road maps: The most basic necessities can become locally unattainable without notice. For some reason, despite a significant minority of the county’s residents generating their own electrical power and storing it in lead-acid batteries, the crappy little market in the crappy little town nearest where I live has decided to no longer stock distilled water in gallon jugs.

Instead you can only get it in these useless things, and only sporadically…

Tomorrow I’m taking advantage of an opportunity to take a rare trip to the little town about 35 miles away, which has much better services including a Safeway, the incredible food palace, in which I hope to stock up on distilled water as well as a bunch of decent meat for winter.