The Ultimate Answer to Kings

It snowed all afternoon and evening without stop. Started at one, and when I lost the light at 6:30 it was still snowing just as hard. Can’t say for sure how much because we lost a lot to slumping but digging out the woodshed bridge this morning I’d guess in the neighborhood of five inches, maybe more. That’s not new for March – it’s not new for April – but it’s not very common. Probably the biggest single snowfall we had all winter, and for a wonder it came straight down. Normally it blows in sideways and I wonder why I bothered to roof the porch.

First light this morning…

Yeah, we got a lot of wet stuff and then it cleared in the middle of the night and got cold. All that wet snow froze and the ground had this nice Michigan crunchy crust. Takes effort to slog through but at least there’s good traction. Temperature bottomed out at 23^o, not quite January weather but pretty nippy for March.

I took a bunch of pictures during the morning walkie but since I was wearing snowmobile gloves and was not wearing my reading glasses most of them just show a fuzzy close-up of my thumb. But – since we recently had a portrait of Tobie’s resting bitch face – here’s Uncle Joel’s.

Comes in handy sometimes, dealing with tourists.

And here we’re homeward bound, walkin’ in a winter wonderland.

Here’s something funny: Yesterday the yard spigot started leaking really bad – to the point where the bailing bucket overfilled overnight. I’m not ready to empty the tank at the top of the hill and replace the cracked spigot so I cut another piece of Flex-tape, put it inside my shirt till it was nice and flexible, then took off the old tape – the crack had opened to the point where water actually squirted out the side of the spigot, I’ve never seen that before – then slapped on the new patch and overwrapped it with long thin slices of Gorilla Tape. Which didn’t fix the leak, but it did slow it back down.

By the time we got home from morning walkie the Lair was nice and toasty but before I took off all the layers I brought the generator out of the bathroom shower tub…

…because we got exactly zero sun yesterday and right now the snow is frozen to the solar panels. Also it’s supposed to cloud up and “rain” more this afternoon. So I’ll try to clear the panels later after the sun’s had a chance to soften the coating but I’m not counting on a lot of help from the solar power system today and the batteries were pretty damned low when I got up this morning.

Instead it’s 32^o and…

It’s not normally this cold on a January afternoon, though it wouldn’t be that unusual. And I, like an idiot, was thinking of taking up the mudboards just the other day. The older and wiser voices thought otherwise, so I’ll be able to go back and forth to the woodshed without too much squishing when it all goes to mud.

Makes me wonder what the next few days will bring. We’re forecast for sloppy weather through the weekend, and it has started with a very unSpringlike bang.

I’ve had several problems with the Lair’s gas plumbing in the past few months and more than one involved leaks I didn’t detect with my Mk I nostrils. Since at the moment both the kitchen and bedroom are running on Plan B regulators I have work to do bringing things back up to snuff once the weather settles down, and I got to wondering – “Is there a cheap electronic gadget for detecting gas leaks, so I can stop depending on soapy water and guesswork?”

It turns out the answer is yes. Yes there is, and I should have asked that question years ago.

Got it home today, stuck batteries in it and played with it over the stovetop, and it appears to have no problem unambiguously telling the world about gas leaks. So maybe the desire to play with a new toy will get me off my ass and get things working on bypass regulators again soon. Not that it matters a great deal in the matter of the bedroom regulator since I’m no closer to fixing the heater than ever – but it used to be nice not to have to go out and swap kitchen bottles in the middle of a bake.

Just ’cause I think he’s handsome…

He’s something over three years old now, maturing fast and therefore a lot easier to live with, and I like him.

It’s officially Spring! Which is always nice, though I always thought assigning the season changes to the equinoxes and solstices was kind of silly in practice. I know control freaks gonna freak over control, and I suppose you have to assign the changes somewhere, but in practice the seasons are as they do and for most of the country winter is rarely over in mid-March. Especially the solstices: I mean, if you haven’t frozen to death by late December or died of dehydration by late June you’re doing something right. Right?

Ironically, this is the day our week-long winterlike weather chose to break and after a frosty start we’re looking at a really nice morning. So Tobie and I needed to be at Ian’s Cave right at daybreak for a marathon laundry session.

I very rarely have to run the washing machine twice at a time but between heating up the shower for use and getting stove soot smeared all over my best hoodie I managed to pile up quite a lot of dirty linen just in time for a protracted spell of nastyish weather where use of the clothesline and powerhungry large appliances was not advisable. With DIY infrastructure it is often necessary to compromise with the weather. Tobie, bless him, seems to recall that he rather enjoys lengthy periods of just hanging out alone in Ian’s yard above the wash, surveying his kingdom at leisure. So it’s still a nice relaxing chore even when it does take twice as long as usual.

I know nothing about what goes on outside my little Gulch and therefore am not qualified to opine on any of it. But virtually nothing is going on here at the Secret Lair except multiple walkies per day, daily emptying the bail bucket from that yard leak, and longing for a warmer Ian’s Cave so I can have another shower. I’m stuck for things to write about.

I got up this morning and my news feed was full of somebody named – here, I wrote it down – Hannah Gutierrez-Reed – who I gather is the nepobaby who posed as the armorer on the now-long-abandoned TV show or whatever it was where Alec Baldwin accidentally shot a couple of people with one bullet a few years ago, which caused every trained shooter in America to simultaneously concuss themselves with face palms. The big question oft repeated on the gunternet for weeks afterward: “How does one sapient being make that many mistakes at the same time? Especially one paid to know what she’s doing?” Because God knows nobody expects Alec Baldwin to know what he’s doing with anything but a script and maybe a crack pipe*.

Anyway – since then I’ve paid very little attention to the various legal troubles of all the survivors of that tragedy. But here was the first criminal conviction finally come down, and in one worth-a-thousand-words photo I saw the explanation for how the person who’s supposed to be the professional gun-handler on the set could possibly have allowed such an avoidable thing to happen.

Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all genders, I give you Hannah Gutierrez-Reed circa 2021:

Private to the unknown but undoubtedly large percentage of TUAK readers who know how to handle firearms: Tell me that if this person handed you a revolver claiming it was safe to fire at people and/or things, you wouldn’t immediately check every chamber in the cylinder yourself before doing anything with it other than gingerly putting it down and backing away.

I gather she made herself look a lot more normal before appearing in court, and that may be the first smart thing she’s done since grammar school.

—-
*Insert obligatory dig at the hypocrisy of a loud gun ban enthusiast who makes his living playing with guns…

😀

I just ate a pot of chili with chicken in front of Tobie, then got up and washed the pot without giving him any, all in the light of his expectant and then unbelieving gaze. Because…

…he didn’t eat his breakfast kibble and so didn’t even get any kibble for lunch. But he sure had an eye on my chicken.

I tend to be overindulgent, a risk that I suppose is faced by all old people who live alone with a dog. He gets the notion that kibble isn’t good enough for him when Uncle Joel is consuming food ever so much more tasty and sweet-smelling. Well, tough – he can have a taste of my food but when he gets so spoiled by it that he’s not eating his own food – which has happened before and no doubt will happen again – he’s always going to find that it’s suddenly St. Famine’s Day at the Secret Lair.

Yesterday evening marked a great day here at the Gulch…

As the Real Townie Shower came temporarily into service for the first time since late November.

Ian’s Cave never gets very cold in winter, being made of lots of concrete and buried under lots of sand. But it isn’t actively heated and I’m a wuss about getting naked and wet in the cold, so as the interior temperature gradually drops in early winter my desire to use the shower gradually diminishes to nothing. Then in late winter/early spring the temperature equally gradually increases, usually to the point where I start eyeing the shower in late March or early April. But in this case…

…since the bedroom heater is out of action I have an embarrassment of propane with no other assigned purpose. Nothing stopped me from bringing one of those bottles to the Cave and expending most of it into the bathroom with the door closed. And in the fullness of time…

…the shower was on the cool side of useable. So last thing yesterday I resumed my summertime habit of running Tobie’s evening walkie past Ian’s Cave and having a nice shower, the first of the year.

Oh goodness you have no idea what a luxury a Real Townie Shower is until you’ve gone most of two decades without one.

Of course it can’t last unless I’m willing to blow all my propane on the project. There is one hell of a lot of thermal mass in the Cave to syphon off the heat from the room, and the bathroom temperature was already down more than ten degrees this morning. I don’t begin to have the wherewithal to artificially heat the whole place up. But still. I got a nice shower, and I’ll probably do it again while waiting for real spring.

The rabies vaccination was available from 9 to 1. We got there about 9:30 and the line…

…had already doubled up on itself.

We were there for well over 3 hours, the line of vehicles ever so slowly creeping forward at very irregular but always widely-spaced intervals. Whatever was going on up there, nobody was in a hurry.

Tobie couldn’t decide whether this was distressing or the most exciting thing that had ever happened in his young life.

But finally he just decided, hours after L and I had, that this was boring and lame and whoever had come up with this idea deserved to die.

Turns out that Neighbor L knows the dog rescue lady who organized the affair. Apparently response to an event is highly variable: Last time they only got five takers. This time there were hundreds.

Finally – finally – we got near the head of the line. It was just us and a Honda Pilot. We weren’t sure which of us was first. Turned out it was the Pilot. Turned out the people in the Pilot were some sort of backyard breeders with SEVEN GOLDEN RETRIEVERS.

I hate Uncle Murphy so bad.

At last Tobie and I were called into the little building where the shots were actually administered. The paperwork took longer than the shot. Tobie was a VERY good boy. But not even very good boys enjoy the sight of a veterinarian with a hypodermic in his hand.

We’ve been home 2 hours and he seems to have dedicated the rest of the afternoon to napping. I’m thinking of joining him.

Oh boy, Tobie is in for an adventure this morning. During yesterday’s water run to town Neighbor L saw a notice at the post office for a rabies clinic at the fairgrounds this very morning. Which is weird because on the way to town we talked about how Tobie is overdue on his rabies vaccination and that’s not ideal for a big dog that either runs loose or has been known to break rope. Which Tobie has. It doesn’t need to be anything dramatic like a fight to the death with a rabid wolverine, eating an infected prairie dog will do nicely.

The local livestock vet runs vaccination clinics from time to time though of course I rarely hear about them. The older dogs have been there for shots but Tobie never has. The problem with Tobie is that he’s very friendly – he really loves meeting new people and new dogs but it happens so seldom that he doesn’t know how to behave. He loses his manners and things can go pearshaped when other smaller dogs take offense. So he’s getting his handle collar this morning and we’ll see how it goes.

It’s a beautiful frosty morning…

Ironically the coldest we’ve had in over a week, first time I’ve lit the fire in several days. Ironic because I usually like to imagine March as the end of winter and beginning of spring: The reason I always end up calling March the month that breaks your heart. But in fact February was (overall) so mild that I firmly expect March to be a real ballbuster just because that’s what has to happen.

And now Neighbor L wants to go to town for a water run, so I need to get ready for that. I miss the days before D fell off his horse, when we mostly had a solid schedule for going to town. Now it’s just sort of whenever.

It’s no secret to regular readers that I am in some ways a rather … I believe the term used to be “dysfunctional” … individual. There are certain things I’ll do almost anything to avoid. Even to the extent of moving as far into the desert as I find practical and building a cabin there with scrounged materials. Those things were problems for me when I lived in the city. They haven’t become any less problematic after seventeen years of hermitude.

The list is extensive, and filling out government forms is high on it. My older brother, one of those people willing enough to put up with me as to hold my hand on certain matters, recently informed me that the time had come to go online and fill out the social security application. People, this is something I’ve been actively dreading for years. I’ve said it before: I sometimes preen around like I’m this great freedom outlaw, but I’m really just a gimp who can’t keep his papers in order.

There’s this familiar procrastination loop I get into with dreaded necessary chores, where I go “mañana” indefinitely until I’ve forgotten about it entirely. With BB looking over my shoulder I was pretty much motivated not to let myself enter that loop, but I do admit closing the tab and going for a walk every time I hit a little snag – and there were bound to be numerous snags. Finally yesterday I applied the seat of my pants to the seat of my chair and determined to bull through to the end if at all possible.

And I seem to have succeeded! It wasn’t trouble-free, at one point Tobie got unfairly yelled at for bringing me his toy precisely at a particularly vexing moment, but I did manage to punt the procrastination ball to the government’s end of the field. And now I can feel all virtuous until the arrival of the inevitable problem.

Okay, we were down for over two weeks but we’re back, though it might take me a while to get back into the habit of keeping awake to blog fodder. There are still some updates going on in the background but the blog has been tweaked back into life.

I must admit this went on longer than it really needed to. Cause of the difficulties: Old age – both mine and the software’s. And that distinct, exquisite flavor of weirdness that can only occur when providers decide to improve things that were working fine before they entered the picture. Without notice. Even after somebody got the comments visible again – and I never did learn exactly what that was all about – I couldn’t post because the editor was arbitrarily “improved” to a form that on my ‘pooter showed up as a featureless white page. Yesterday afternoon I was informed of an add-on patch that set things back the way they belong, and it was simple enough that even I could do it. And that was the last thing I needed before I could actually use the blog.

Several people offered to help but I demurred because I had access to actual paid professional help through my (unnamed benefactor’s) web service provider. Said professional happened at that moment to be on a skiing trip to Colorado. Because Uncle Murphy is and has always been a personal ‘friend’ of mine, perverse sense of humor and all. But we seem to be back in the saddle again at last.

So much for the blog. As for the Gulch…

(Getting back to the blog for a moment) Ah! I’ve had an annoying issue with placing photos for a week or two before the crash, and it’s gone now. Happy.

Anyway – It’s winter at the Gulch and I keep winters as uneventful as possible so I’ve basically been vegetating indoors reading and watching old movies. I missed the blog for the first week or so and then kind of didn’t. Happily it’s been a very mild February because after I tried everything I could think of to figure out what the hell is wrong with the bedroom heater I gave up and yesterday I just turned it off. I tried replacing the thermostat with no effect. I bypassed the thermostat wire to see if maybe I had a break in my scrounged wire, no effect. I checked the gas pressure by replacing the regulator with Plan B, no effect. That weird situation I reported on the eleventh gradually stopped working – I’ll never know what that was all about. I’m supposed to be going on SS this year, which will greatly increase my monthly income, and maybe I can bribe a professional out here to look at it before next winter. Till then I’m tired of wasting propane on the pilot flame.

Tobie is fine…

Situation essentially unchanged. It’s nice to have my blog back.

ETA: Oh! By the way, one of the updates I need to make is to the theme, a change I’ve been very loathe to make because I’m afraid (in fact I’m convinced) it will totally screw up the formatting and appearance and it will take forever to fix things. So if everything suddenly gets to looking weird, that’s why.

Hello, my name is Joel and I run a damn-near-defunct blog called TUAK.

And as of this moment I just might possibly be BACK! At least I have an editor block I can type words into. We’ll see how well it works when I push this “Publish” button…

Claire Wolfe here. The good news: Joel is okay. The bad news: Boy, is his WordPress software screwed up.

I volunteered & I’m in the WP interface poking around to see what I can see, but if I can’t figure what the problem is (and that’s likely, as I’m no techie) and how to remedy it, I’ll beg help from somebody who actually knows what they’re doing.

If any trusty WP mavens out there would like to offer assistance, please leave a comment. Comments aren’t showing up to the public, but they’re visible to TUAK admins.

ETA: Help MAY already be on the way. So hang in there, please.

Thanks,

CW

Replacing the thermostat with a new one did nothing to fix my problems with the bedroom heater. If anything, things got worse.

Yesterday I woke to bedroom temps in the low forties. After breakfast and walkie I took the new thermostat off the wall, checked the wire connections – fine – cleaned the male and female contacts between the two parts of the thermostat – almost certainly unnecessary – put it back together and that did me no good at all. Really flailing for an explanation, I pulled off the heater’s front grill and opened the sightglass cover.

That’s all I did. And at that moment, the burner lit – without the slightest drama or sign of any problem at all. And left like that, the heater kept running fine all day. Turned on and off just as it was supposed to.

I went to bed last night, first closing the cover on the sightglass. Woke up this morning to temps in the low forties. The heater hadn’t functioned at all, all night long. I hopped to the heater, flipped open the sightglass cover, and…

…the burner immediately lit. And it’s running fine as I type this.

This makes exactly zero sense to me. The only … possible hint?

When the cover is open it rests against the pilot thermocouple fitting. Now, what bearing that could have on the situation, I have no clue. The thermocouple controls the pilot, not the main flame. And anyway the cover appears to be resting against an insulator so that’s another way it couldn’t have any effect.

And yet – sweartogod it’s like throwing an on/off switch. I am utterly confused.

True fact: The original prop spinner from the Spirit of St. Louis is displayed in the National Air and Space Museum, or it was a long time ago. I saw it when I was a kid, and found it very confusing…

Propeller / Spinner Nose Cone, Spirit of St. Louis, C.A. Lindbergh, NY-Paris (A19890217000).

Also pretty common this time of year, just sitting out winter. Except for walkie time, of course…

Story of a once-in-a-lifetime miracle: I actually correctly predicted the short-term weather for once. We got wind all day yesterday, big wind after dark, and I was not surprised to have to sweep off the porch and stairs before anything could get done this morning. Not much more than a dusting of snow, but snow.

Colder than it’s been for a couple of weeks, actually – the clouds cleared away again and it got down to the mid-teens by rising.

Back down in the Lair’s hollow I thought I was just going to easily sweep off the light dry snow from the solar panels but it seems we had a little freezing rain before the snow. So I’ll wait for the sun to clear the ice before I start expecting the batteries to recharge. After yesterday’s nice sunny day they’re in good shape anyway.

And inside…

I admit I mostly haven’t even been bothering with a morning fire lately. It’s late in the winter, hasn’t been very cold, and I’m acclimatized and mostly just walk around in layers all day. But this morning deserved a nice hot fire to get the day started.