The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Went into S&L’s place to feed their cat. There was something in her bowl. Looked more closely, and…

…she had deposited this well-chewed mouse in her bowl, presumably so it would be impossible for her meal tickets to miss. Wise choice, if I do say so.

I sent the picture to L, who responded that she had been hunting something in the house for the past couple of days.

This is one of the few bits of evidence I’ve ever seen for a housecat to make itself useful. All my cats brought mice indoors.

Tobie is a happy boy. In two weeks’ time he’ll be a spoiled boy, because…

S&L are off on an extended road trip. For personal reasons they’ve been tied to the house for years, and now they’re doing what they had intended to do with their retirement. And leaving a cat and a bunch of chickens needing periodic care, which is kind of what my former career as Gulch caretaker has devolved to. I spend more time sitting around the Lair or doing boring yard work than either Tobie or I consider quite right, and now at least we’ll be briefly getting away daily.

On the subject of bypass propane regulators…

I have three of them working at present, in settings that (since I believe they were originally intended only for house trailers and RVs but could well be wrong) they weren’t really designed for but serve in quite well. Given the relative mortality rate of bypass versus single regulators, though, I’d say the average user is better off using a single regulator if it’s not going to be a big deal when a propane bottle sucks dry…

…but it’s definitely worth the additional complexity when it’s important that the gas keep flowing. This particular regulator, with its tiny BBQ bottles, is at Ian’s propane station. If one of those bottles sucks dry it’s probably going to be while I’m taking a shower and though that would be annoying rather than disastrous, re-pressurizing the 300-odd feet of pipe to get the tankless water heater working again is a time-consuming hassle I never want to repeat. So whenever I go by I pay close attention to whether the indicator is green or red, telling me there’s an empty bottle. I use those little bottles because the station is in a fairly remote location involving a rocky slope and that’s all the bottle the old one-legged guy wants to schlep back and forth.

This doesn’t happen very often…During yesterday’s water run I noticed that an oldish water bottle was leaking from its top rather more than was quite right.

Upon investigation, the whole top of the cap broke off in my hand. I don’t think that’s happened more than one other time in many years of lugging water back and forth. Happily I never throw anything useful away and I was able to scare up a spare cap. The bottle is just fine.

And finally…

Welcome to the Town that Runs Out of Eggs. This is the second bloody week. Except for those little cartons of brown eggs, nobody in town has any eggs. The lady at the dollar store said they haven’t had a shipment since early September.

Happily I’ll be watching over S&L’s chickens for the next few weeks so I can probably skate by but my stored supply is almost depleted – I do go through a lot of eggs – and I may actually have to break open my single #10 can of egg powder for the first time ever. Those damned things are up to $60 a crack and I’d really rather not. WTF?

Anyway, that’s all that’s been going on here at the Secret Lair. I really need to start cutting up that big pile of juniper branches in my yard. Winter is coming and the empty space in my woodshed keeps glaring at me accusingly.

First pallet of fuel for D&L’s extremely hungry pellet stove.

Used to be there were three of us to do this. Used to be we were all ten years younger. L is thinking about replacing their main stove with a propane-burner. I did not try to talk her out of it.

So the tankless water heater in Ian’s Cave went operational in late 2020 or early 2021, can’t remember which. Neighbor D, who’s been running one for a long time, said “You have to flush them with strong vinegar regularly or they’ll get clogged with crap and not work. I’ll show you how.” Then he started having all sorts of health problems and injuries and we never got around to having that meeting. I didn’t forget about it, exactly, but did what I always do when I’m supposed to do something I don’t know how to do – I procrastinated.

So years pass, right? And this is starting to prey on my mind. When – inevitably – something vital breaks in Ian’s complex and unbelievably expensive water system, leading to the loss of that wonderful shower, I really don’t want it to be my fault.

By coincidence, since this had been on my mind, I got an email from Big Brother saying, in effect, “Hey, you know that tankless water heater? You know you’re supposed to flush that from time to time, right?” And I metaphorically glared up at heaven and said, “Fine. I’ll get off my thumb.”

Turns out it’s really easy. The kit I bought for it would have been painfully expensive before I went on social security, but now it isn’t and it’s a one-time purchase.

A small amount of Youtube research showed me how it’s done, and I was happy to see that – to my surprise – the heater really does have the needed fittings. So this morning Tobie and I went to do the deed.

I hung around long enough to ensure that nothing would leak or fly around the room or burst into flame while the pump was running, and I intended to stay for the whole session. But Tobie has decided he really doesn’t like Ian’s Cave for some reason and becomes intrusively agitated when he sees me sitting down and making myself comfortable. So I took him home and came back a few minutes later, ensuring that – since the water heater had been in service for something like four years without flushing – it got the whole 45-minute treatment.

And to my surprise…

…nothing visible was flushed out of the heater. Wow. I mean I knew that little water softener is doing its job – if it weren’t, I’d need to clean or change the shower head several times annually. But I guess it’s really working.

So anyway, I have the kit and I’ll stock back up on strong cleaning vinegar, and flushing the water heater will henceforth become part of my annual Bidding Tearful Goodbye to the Shower for the Winter ritual.

Neighbor L wants to use her tractor, which hasn’t been touched since D’s accident almost a full year ago. Wait, that’s not true: She got rid of the horses in early December so it hasn’t been used since then. Anyway: It was going to need some work before she could use it.

So yesterday I went over and pulled out the battery, put it on their charger then came back this morning to see if it was any good. That meant I got to play with this toy…

…which mostly hangs on a hook in the powershed because even when I have reason to test an old battery I usually forget I own a load tester*. But this time I remembered. Anyway the battery tested good, to my surprise, and so I put it back in this morning. Then she worried about tire pressure, which meant I got to play with another toy that’s always in the Jeep…

Boy, portable power tools have entered a new generation since small lithium batteries became affordable. I’ve kept a tire inflator in the Jeep for over ten years but it was always kind of a pain to set up and take down. This one is entirely handheld – and programmable! Set and forget.

The tractor started right up, then Tobie and I came home and I got to work on what I was supposed to be doing this morning…

…rebuilding my old sawbuck, which in the years since I last used it had pretty much fallen to pieces. I had to completely replace half of it.

And when you’re 2-by lumber in Joel’s yard at woodcutting season, and you’re not part of a tool or a structure…

…you’re going to find yourself cut to stove lengths and consigned to the woodshed.

When that was done, and since I already had the generator out…

May as well do the annual maintenance. Which in this case only consists of changing the oil, cleaning the air filter, and looking to see how the spark plug is getting along. Used to be I’d do this in early December or whenever I was definitely done cutting wood, then drain the fuel and put it to bed for the winter. But now that I have a good system-sized battery charger the generator won’t get mothballed – in fact it’ll move into the cabin once it gets cold. So may as well do the maintenance while it was on my mind.

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*The reason for my usual Freudian slip is that battery testers used to be terrifying desk-sized things with big carbon resistors that hummed menacingly in use and I half expected the one in the dealership I worked at to be the cause of my demise. This one doesn’t do anything more scary than move a meter needle so I really ought to get over it.

Last month I bitched about having to patch yet another pair of everyday pants. Shortly afterward I got an email from a regular reader, bragging that his wife had an uncanny ability to find like-new pants at the local thrift store and that she had just brought home more than he would ever wear, and would I like some?

This morning I was overwhelmed with a huge box filled with cargo pants, some of which look like they’ll fit as-is. I’ll have to throw a fashion show for Tobie this evening to see what fits and what will need to be hemmed up, but it does look like there are some winners in that stack.

There was a bunch of other stuff in the huge box, odds and ends many of which will be of use in the fullness of time. I appreciate the gift!

It’s that time of year: Do you close the windows at bedtime or leave them open? Pajamas or commando? Place your bets. This morning I bet wrong and woke up cold. Yeah, the temps would be back into the eighties before noon but at five ayem it’s a bit chilly in here. I looked up at the thermostat and saw the temperature was only a couple of degrees above triggering the bedroom heater, and I took that opportunity to reassure myself – I cranked up the temperature to 60^o just so I could enjoy listening to the quiet “foop” of the heater lighting up. Yup, still works. Hoorah! But it’s going to be a while before I really trust it again.

Yeah, I turned the pilot off after repairing the heater early last month. Then a mouse tried to build a nest inside the firebox – again – and I was faced with the choice of covering the outside vent with plastic and duct tape for a short time or just keeping the pilot lit till winter, and I went for the simplicity of that second thing.

Man these things are small…

It’s a testimony to the efficiency of disc brake design that you can stop well over 200 pounds of ebike and rider with tiny little brake pads you could hide in your fist. I got these in the mail today, and though I was supposed to be working on something else I really wanted to play with the bike because I’ve never actually had – or maintained – a bicycle with disc brakes. So I went ahead and replaced the front pads, those being the easy ones, and considering how much adjustment I’ve had to do to keep the front brakes working I was surprised to see that there was still a fair bit of pad material left on the old ones.

I’ll replace the rear ones at the same time I replace the worn rear tire, which will of course be a rather more involved process. But at least now I’m confident I know what I’m doing.

Finally – look what else I got this week…

That’s Neighbor L’s old dryer. Yeah, I know, the gas doesn’t work. That’s okay, I never planned to connect it to gas. The important thing is that the air fluff setting still works. So when I take my rough board-like towels down off the clothesline I can toss them into this gadget, and half an hour later my towels are all soft and fluffy like a normal person’s. Works nice! Life gets more luxurious by the month here at the Secret Lair.

…and the only remaining question I had about the new chainsaw, involving battery charge duration, has been answered…

…it lasts longer than I do.

We got this much wood into the yard this morning…

…and the battery still shows two bars.

One serious limitation on the amount of time I can work with it, though…

The charger can’t even start working on the battery until it’s cool – which after a morning in the sun plus whatever heat the discharge built up, it definitely isn’t.

It’s a delusional bush.

With very few virtues as firewood, except that it lives for centuries by dying in sections, so that it isn’t necessary to cut and stack green wood for seasoning, and it’s free. But getting relatively straight and girthy wood is a matter of hunting for it and slashing away a lot of twigs and wood too twisted to split. Kindling is easy; firewood is hard.

So Tobie and I have scouted our little corner of the Gulch and found five or six sites that will score wood worth cutting and dragging home to be chopped into stove lengths. And in the next several days we’ll work on developing a pile of it in the yard.

An electric chainsaw works SO much better for this than a gas saw. It’s lighter, and it only runs when you press the switch so you don’t spend half your time starting and stopping the engine. Wish I’d had one of these a decade ago.

Several years ago Big Brother gave me a gift of an electric chainsaw…

…and at first I responded with distain, because such a weak little thing couldn’t possibly be of any use. I was, as is my custom, completely wrong: I have gotten a lot of use out of it. It’s the bee’s knees for brush cutting, but it definitely isn’t up to real wood cutting. I think it has a thermal sensor that drops to its fainting couch if I even lean it toward any real wood. So not that much use during firewood-cutting season.

But it did point out something I already knew: I really hate working with real chainsaws. I didn’t ten-fifteen years ago but I sure do now. They’re heavy, loud, filthy, finicky, loud, maintenance-intensive, dangerous to be near, and really loud. One of the reasons I was happy to switch to burning old lumber and pallets for winter heat was I could leave the Husky in the shed.

And this little electric chainsaw wasn’t any of those things. Which endeared it to me, I must admit. For the past couple of years, as I ran out of old lumber and pallets, I started thinking, “I want one of these, but more.”

Yesterday, instead of going to the Palace of Food in the biggish town about 35 miles away, Neighbor L and I went to the one in the big town about 50 miles away in another direction. We did this because we had to go to Lowes to pick up her new dryer. Since there’s a Safeway there too, it didn’t make sense to make two trips. I tagged along for the Safeway, and also because I wanted to see if Lowes sold a more substantial cordless electric chainsaw than the one I already had.

And they did… Continue reading →

Tobie doesn’t make any fuss on Water Day, but that doesn’t mean he likes being abandoned and he has taken to expressing that in a funny/sad form of passive aggressive behavior.

Lately I found a flavored leather bone that he likes. He doesn’t get them often enough to burn out on them, I bring a bag home every other month or so from the Palace of Food. And up till now I’ve been giving him one just before leaving him alone for hours, which happens at least once a week. But I noticed last time and this time that he has taken to refusing the gift…

…until I come back home. Then after the festivities are over, he goes to his bed and deals with the leather bone.

I guess it’s a happy treat, not a sad treat.

I got my signal back yesterday, as abruptly as it disappeared, so it must have been a local repair thing. I checked around and wasn’t the only one so I knew it wasn’t me. Curiously it’s not the first or the fifth time in my experience that the little town nearest where I live has lost its internet and nothing ever seems to get done about it even though everything in that town seems to need the internet. ATMs don’t work. Debit cards don’t work. EBT cards don’t work – and in this county that means a substantial percentage of the population doesn’t buy food. Seems like it’d be a bigger deal, but the problem persists so I guess not.

Anyway, speaking of repairs…

This may come as a shock to regular readers but it’s just barely possible that I’m not the world’s greatest engineer. I have persistent problems with my solar panel ground mount’s front supports. This time it involves the screws that hold the 4X4s to the cemented-in clamps…

…and the way they were no longer holding the 4X4s to the cemented-in clamps very damned well.

I have temporarily remedied the issue by drilling through the clamps and 4X4s and much more securely connecting them with 3/8″ bolts and washers but having done that I noticed that the second support is coming loose from the ground…

…the first one having already done so three years ago. More like four, actually, since it took me a while to get around to fixing it. It’s not a hugely important problem but it is kind of embarrassing and I’m starting to think I need to re-engineer those front legs. Maybe to something that slants, to accommodate the sideways force the weight is apparently putting on them? The rear legs don’t seem to have any problem at all, and with six-foot 4X4s you’d think they’d have more leverage acting against them but I’m guessing the weight is pushing them straight down.

Something is wrong with the local cell system. Started mid-day yesterday. I’m standing on a hilltop more or less in line of sight and my phone has two bars which is just enough for text. Last time there was trouble the outage was total and went on for days, which is my way of saying I might be quiet for a while. Now let’s see if I can send this…

I sent away for some winter stuff, and it all came in at once. It’s such a beautiful morning: If it weren’t for impending winter I do believe late September/early October would be my favorite part of the year. Mild weather, not much wind, not much pollen. But alas, there’s that winter thing…

Still, I will take my blessings where I find them, and this beautiful morning called for not just shooting from the Jeep to the post office and back. I took time and enjoyed some of the rather peculiar architectural choices of the fine people of the crappy little desert town nearest where I live.

Once I got back to the Jeep I took the opportunity of having the bike up on its rack to check/measure a few things that need parts. The bike turned five years old last month and though it only has less than 1500 miles on the clock a lot of that is up and down hills: The brake pads are worn quite thin and it has long needed a better kickstand than the one I bought for it after wrecking 2-3 years ago. Those parts are now ordered, and along with a new rear tire that I already have will go toward some needed general maintenance. I don’t use the bike as much as I could, since the only time I think “I should do this more” is when I’m actually doing it. But it has definitely been a real benefit to me and I don’t want it falling apart.

Anyway…

Once I had a nice lined overshirt, which is often the only thing I need over my indoor layers on a winter afternoon. Got it from the local thrift store, I think, and it was already pretty ragged but I wore it till it fell apart and have missed it since. So I bought what I hope will be a good replacement. Out of the package it seems rather thin for the purpose but I hope it’ll fluff up a bit with a washing. Also…

…a second longsleeve everyday shirt, can’t go wrong with these.

A couple of driveway signs to replace the current ones that have gotten quite faded. Nothing sets the right mood for visitors like bright new signs that say “go away.”

Finally…

This may turn out to be silly and not work out at all, but it was cheap. I like hoods in winter but don’t always want to wear a hoodie, and I’ve always been curious about those medieval hoods people wore separately. The idea bounced around in my head all last winter and I figured I’d give it a try this time.

That’s about it. Now I have chores in multiple places, and Tobie is about to be thrilled with his extended Jeep ride.

Got a call from Neighbor L today at about quarter past noon, just as Tobie and I were finishing lunch. Pretty good timing, because I planned to head out as soon as we were done. I had laundry on the line, bread to bake, batteries to top off and I had sort of blown the morning watching an old TV show.

She said she was trying to fix her dryer and needed another pair of hands. And when Tobie and I arrived…

…it was difficult to tell whether she was trying to fix it or tearing it down for easier transport to the landfill. She was stumped on how to release the drive belt that was the only thing holding the drum on at that point.

She had mentioned that her dryer wasn’t heating up, and that she had bought a part supposed to fix it. She had also said that it was a very simple part to replace: Two screws and it swaps right out. She hadn’t mentioned that the simple part was inaccessibly at the bottom of the machine.

I brought Tobie along because he’s always up for a Jeep ride but the weather has turned hot again; fifteen minutes into the project and it was clear we were going to be there for a while so I went and got him out of the Jeep. Happily once he got the excited introductions out of the way he was on his very best behavior and I didn’t have to drop what I was doing and take him home.

MORE THAN THREE HOURS LATER Neighbor L and I finally replaced her simple two-screw part and laboriously reassembled the dryer. The good news is that my part of it – getting the drum and its belt unconnected and reconnected – went well. The bad news is that when we were all done and she plugged the dryer back in and fired it up, the gas still wouldn’t light. The whole thing was a sweaty waste of time. But I guess I got some neighbor points, burned off a few of the many many obs they have on me.

Every morning – seriously, every single morning – I wake up humming or whistling a tune. It’s usually bafflingly random – I mean once in a while I can identify it as something I heard the night before but normally the song has nothing to do with anything that’s going on around me. But when I wake up in the morning it’s the first thing on my mind.

And sometimes it’s a real head-scratcher. As an example of that, this morning’s musical accompaniment is a masterpiece.

Why? I like the Beatles as much as any boomer but I seriously don’t believe I’ve ever given Piggies a single thought – or even a serious listen. I like the harpsichord track, it’s quite whistleable. That’s about it.

Oh frabjous day, delayed but not cancelled…

Things can get weird when you don’t have a physical mailing address. For years I couldn’t use the local mail at all, I just had things sent to a friend’s house in a city several hours away and waited for Care Package Day when she came to visit. Then I got a post office box, through a cutout because I still couldn’t prove I was a local resident, and that simplified a lot of things. But there are vendors who won’t ship to a post office box. Since they still use USPS, that gets weird. There’s a UPS store that worked for a while, whether the shipper was UPS or USPS, but recently and without any notice (and for whatever reason, don’t ask me) USPS got pissy about that. Gave notice to the people working at the local post office that they were to automatically return any packages sent to that address.

One of the advantages of living near a small town, I guess – the counter people threw a quiet mutiny. When it was regular customers they knew, they put the packages off to the side instead. I found out about it a couple of weeks ago, concerning a package I didn’t really care about. That was okay, but unfortunately I had already ordered those five gel socks. Those things are expensive, and I figured they were off to Limbo.

This afternoon I went to town, stopped at the post office where Big Brother had sent me a bag of dog food and a monthly care package. The nice lady at the counter brought them out, then told me to wait a minute. She went off to the side, rooted around, and brought out another package that had my name scrawled on it. “Bless your heart,” I said, “I figured you had sent that back.”

She leaned over the counter and said, real quiet, “We were supposed to.”

Apologies for the light posting, there hasn’t been much going on. Weather has been rather autumn-like…

Unusually cool mornings, never getting very hot in the afternoon. Past two days have been fair but we had surprising morning rain before that…

…postponing certain winter preps like taking down the awning over the porch stairs and front bedroom window. I made that sunshade to block the late afternoon sun when I’m porch-sitting in mid-summer and it does that – but it also breaks up rain beating into that window, which tends to leak. I doubt it would take any snow load, though, so it goes up in May and usually comes down in September.

People have asked about how the Goat People are doing – Truth is one of them died and the other is on hospice care. Nothing happened, it was just very bad health. The goats are gone and their dogs are in a new enclosure. The other morning during morning walkie their Pyrenees Bridget was barking at something, which drew Tobie’s attention… Continue reading →

Commander Zero continues to promote his admirable holiday…

Every year he sends me a nice card and gift, though I’ve never given him anything. This year, today, actually, I got a substantial box containing several things… Continue reading →

Caught on the game camera this morning.

Ticking two items off my winter prep to-do list…

The kitchen bypass regulator died during last winter’s first freeze and I’ve been using the Plan B regulator ever since. Never got around to getting a new one till today, when I also had to go to town and procure a replacement for the leaking pigtail hose on the bedroom regulator.

With ad hoc propane plumbing stuck onto the cabin as the need arose, it’s always one thing or another. At least I’m no longer scrounging parts of dubious age and provenance like in ze old days.