Author Archives: Joel

I do feel bad about wasting resources on it, but I guess it’s my unnecessary new toy for the year. I have a perfectly good Plan B knife, but quickly decided I didn’t like it nearly as well as my … Continue reading →

You can never have too much ammo or paracord. 🙂 I’m off for the Monday morning water run, and since I emptied a propane bottle yesterday baking bread I figured I may as well take it to town while I’m … Continue reading →

It rained off and on all yesterday morning and never fully cleared all day though we got some intermittent afternoon sun. That’s the first rainy day in weeks, and maybe the last. This morning dawned clear and dewy and almost … Continue reading →

I use #40 propane bottles because they’re a lot easier for the old man to manipulate than more traditional #100 bottles. I just keep more bottles around, which has the added benefit of redundancy. But while you can tell a … Continue reading →

The problem with raising chickens in the desert is the same for most lifestock; you can’t let them forage for themselves because there’s not much to forage for and anyway they’re pretty close to the bottom of the food chain. … Continue reading →

Autumn has come early to the high desert. I went for a lovely cool walk this morning, checked on the chickens and Landlady’s late water leak (fixed, to my great surprise) and generally screwed around for an hour and a … Continue reading →

Yesterday afternoon I was vegging out at the laptop, binge-watching old Star Trek episodes. It was somewhere around 3 in the PM and I happened to look up and notice the system voltage was almost a full volt lower than … Continue reading →

Helped D&L load garbage in their pickup for a dump run*, and while waiting around it occurred to me it’s been two years since I put this ammo can on the Jeep trailer for tie-down storage. I should probably do … Continue reading →

Lovely cool morning – I got up and it was 55o outside; inside was mid-sixties. Woke up only one time in the night, and that was to fight Torso Boy for the blanket. So naturally it was walkie time for … Continue reading →

🙂 …and New Yorkers are so very law abiding… h/t

… in terms of the tools and fasteners you’ll need to finish a job? It’s when you’re rehanging the door of your powershed, which contains all your tools and fasteners. If you accomplish the task without needing to dismount the … Continue reading →

I had given up. I’ve been walking around with my eyes on the ground for days hoping to find it. Yesterday I rode all the way up to the hump, six miles each way, just to be thorough. Just now … Continue reading →

I keep getting emails from marketers who want me to advertise their products (for free), and base their pitch on some long-ago post of mine… …in which I mocked the product in question. The word mock appears in the title, … Continue reading →

Ladies and gentlemen, the website of Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee… …whose website manager needs a course in title composition – or at least proofreading. I noticed this while reading about “H.R. 4081: Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act,” one … Continue reading →

How do you lose a knife? Just happened to notice yesterday afternoon that the sheath was empty. I hadn’t been rolling around on the ground under anything yesterday, I’d remember that. I can only hope I absently laid it down … Continue reading →

How many American cities are legitimate tourist destinations in themselves? Approximately none, now, but I remember when there was one – right on the Pacific with this big pretty bay. Safe and pleasant year round, with lots of cool things … Continue reading →

(EDITORIAL NOTE: The staff and management of TUAK wish to interject that Joel is not suggesting that hurricane winds are no big deal. True hurricane winds are a very big deal. Also stunning and brave. But “sustained wind of 31 … Continue reading →

Sometimes I have paying gigs on the other side of the big plateau to the east of the Gulch. I’ve been interested for some time to know how much hassle it would be to go there on the new ebike. … Continue reading →