The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Seriously? Hottest in 120,000 years? Scientists say that? I would be very interested in seeing the evidence behind that uniquely unverifiable assertion.

The data used to track these records goes back to 1940, but many scientists – including those at Copernicus – say it’s almost certain that these temperatures are the warmest the planet has seen in 120,000 years, given what we know from millennia of climate data extracted from tree rings, coral reefs and deep sea sediment cores.

Oh. “Many” scientists say it. Well. I guess I’m convinced.

I’m convinced that I’m being lied to by people who think I’m an idiot. Maybe some of them are scientists. But I have problems with how the data is collected, I have problems with who does the data reporting, and I have a big problem with the way the conclusions drawn from the data always seem to exactly fit the control-freak agenda du jour. If there was one Big Red Button that would just make all these people shut up and leave me alone, I would mash it so hard…

Incidentally, I’ve been keeping temperature data on this particular flyspeck in the SW desert for about ten years – and here at least, this isn’t even the hottest summer in the past ten years.

That centipede I mentioned?

Turns out I killed the little one.

The big one makes me want to nuke Ian’s Cave from orbit, as the only way to be sure.

Okay, I don’t know what unholy stuff is going on in that drain but this means war.

Meanwhile, in the OTHER sink, I lost another battle in the ongoing war against the mice.

After weeks of no rodent evidence at all, something stepped into a glue trap, fell into the sink, and in a fit of rage chewed a serving spoon handle to bits before escaping. That’s one tough desert-bred mouse right there. If they form an alliance with the arthropods I’m gonna be found ripped to shreds in the shower.

I have to get more serious about spreading traps: They’ve been avoiding the conventional mousetraps but the glue traps are just a messy and escapable waste of time that have only bagged me one single mouse.

Trying to do stuff on my laptop this morning after morning chores and while the muffins are in the oven, but the ‘pooter is starting to worry me. I keep getting intervals of white noise and silence, cutting on and off abruptly. To my tinnitus-plagued ears it kind of sounds like a cooling fan or maybe a hard drive* being cycled for no apparent reason.

I do not want to hear this: Is my beautiful trouble-free ‘pooter, less than five years old, going south on me? Did I pick up damaging malware from a, er, righteous Republican news site? Am I doomed to figure out how to use the Plan B tablet again while I scrounge for a repair or replacement? Woe! Despair!

It’s been a while since I rebooted, and things go south if you don’t shut down once in a while. I try a warm reboot: No change. I try a cold reboot: No change.

I sit back and prepare my mind for some heavy-duty worrying. The white noise sound keeps cycling: Thirty seconds on, maybe half a second off. Over and over. Very regular. I even time it: It’s exactly 30 seconds. That’s … weird.

I look over at Tobie: He’s no help at all. I look back at the desk, and notice that the little LED indicator on the DVD player is flashing merrily away. Why is it even on?

I never put away the DVD I was watching last night. I open the window for the DVD: Menu is displayed. Controls: Eject DVD. The player pops open and the noise abruptly stops.

I push the player closed again and wait interminably for the DVD to start playing. The noise starts: Thirty seconds on, half second off.

The noise is coming from the speakers, not the laptop. Because I’m an idiot. Og such a boomer: Og go out and kill something now.

—-
*Rather old-fashioned, I admit: I don’t believe I’ve ever heard the Macbook’s internal drive make a sound but what the hell: I was grasping for an explanation.

I page back through my records to see when I’ve enjoyed a heatwave more than this one. Somehow three days of 100^o+ is more memorable than three weeks of 98^o. Monsoon has been a total bust so far, doing nothing but increasing the evening humidity. Which…

…yeah. Thanks loads.

One nice thing about low humidity in summer is it makes the temperature drop like a rock when the sun goes down. That’s actually the worst thing about low humidity in winter, but that’s not the hill we’re climbing right now. So I’m staying up till eleven waiting in vain for the heat to moderate, then I’m sweating in bed not getting much sleep, then when I get vertical I’m dizzy because no matter how much water I pour down it isn’t enough. Note to self:

At least one more of these down the hatch today. I’ve got two of these little plastic bottles that I cycle through the cooler so most of the time I’m not drinking hot water. Four one-liter bottles allows me to confirm that I’m drinking over a gallon of water a day, but it’s not enough, and this has gone on long enough now that it’s showing. I have plenty of water – we went on a supplemental water run Saturday just to make sure all the bottles were full – but it’s literally a chore pouring down that much water. Just because you’re not thirsty doesn’t mean you’re not dehydrated.

Speaking of distasteful chores…

I went to Ian’s this morning and got the crockpot working for supper, dumped a couple of bloody packages into the sink, which brought this guy out of the drain.

I’ve been playing cat and mouse with this damned centipede for over a week. Not really sure which of us is the mouse. Can’t just flush him down the plumbing, I tried that, he won’t go. They apparently can live indefinitely in the drain. Waiting. These things creep me out, but I sealed the drain and now at least I have him … right where I don’t want him. The sort of situation that makes me wish I had a husband to yell for. “Joel! Come get this icky poisonous arthropod out of the sink!”

D&L had a doctor appointment in the big town about 50 miles away, which meant Tobie and I got to go visit their boys and feed them lunch.

Feeding the boys is simple enough but only part of the process, even after indulging their individual neurotic preferences for presentation. I was fifteen minutes late, in Coal’s opinion, and found his food trough 20 feet from its proper place. Got there just in time for a horse’s version of a tongue-lashing, but he forgave me – or at least ignored me – once he was nose-down in alfalfa pellets.

Then clean up what was left of breakfast and dump it in the tractor bucket for disposal…

…and weigh out supper. I often joke to myself that Coal and Doc come by their Rainman-like behavior honestly given how, um, detail-oriented their human parents are.

Hay and pellets are carefully weighed and the allotted amounts change at irregular intervals depending on whether they want the horses to lose or put on weight.

We came home, had lunch and a walkie, and then I (tried to) vacuum the Lair. A 10-minute chore went on for almost an hour and a half, because…

…a front leg fell right off my reading chair when I moved it, and that took time to repair. And then…

The electric motor that runs the rug-beater on my secondhand vacuum cleaner decided it didn’t want to work. It’s been intermittent for a while and I’ve been waiting for it to just quit one day. This was the day. At that point, removing all the fragile plastic bits to get to the circuitry and try to fix it couldn’t do any further harm. So I did that, and I think I actually managed to fix it. Dirt and dog hair built up around the micro-switch that turns the motor on and off.

As the Secret Lair approached habitability in 2011 I was faced with a logistical problem: I planned to heat with juniper and so I was going to need a good chainsaw.

Got one, too, through one of those instances of synchronicity that used to happen so often around here they made me want to at least get thoughtful about my agnosticism.

See, for my first year and a half in the Gulch I worked at the local chainsaw’n’generator repair shop. The experience left me with a strongly negative opinion of hardware-store-grade chainsaws and generators, so I couldn’t just save my nickels until I could beg a ride to Lowes and buy the cheapest thing on the rack. That way lies snapping twigs off trees to stave off hypothermia. I knew, without ever having depended on one before, that in the position I’d placed myself I needed a chainsaw. One that wouldn’t fail me when I needed it most, as long as I treated it right.

And happily, I got one: A rebuilt vintage Husqvarna left on consignment at the saw shop after I quit. Had to make payments, but it became available a good year before I really needed it so that was fine. I still have it, too: Take care of them and they’ll take care of you. Got me through the first few cold winters in the Lair before I found other ways to gather wood.

The thing is though: Good powerful chainsaws are a pain in the ass. They’re heavy, noisy, dangerous to be near. You need to arrange mix gas all the time. You’re constantly having to stop and adjust the chain. They’re oily and messy: Cleaning them takes as long as cutting with them. They wear out cutting chains with wearying promiscuity, at least on dirt cedar. Even storing them is a hassle because you have to treat diaphragm carburetors with care or they’ll go TU on you during downtime.

Still – gotta have one. No substitutions allowed by reality. Right?

Well, that’s what I thought. I had, until recently, a neighbor who used a pro-grade electric chainsaw and never seemed to complain about his lot in life. I thought he was nuts.

Then several years ago, Big Brother sent me this:

I confess my initial reaction was indifference bordering on contempt. What good was this slow, weak machine ever going to do me? But at least it used the same batteries as all my other cordless tools. Might come in handy for trimming or something.

Turned out it was shockingly useful. And a lot less of a hassle to run than the Husky. Now, more than seven years later, I use it all the time and not just for branch trimming. I dragged it out this morning while it was cool to get a branch out of the way of one of my paths, and that was all I had to do: Get it out of the shed and stick a battery in it. No big dramatic buildup to the act followed by an hour of cleaning and careful mothballing.

Got me to thinking: My neighbor is moving away at the end of the month. I should ask him if he wants to sell his electric.

I wanted to lash a carabiner onto Tobie’s new leash this morning, so I pulled the stuffing out of some old 550 cord I’ve had laying around for – well, decades. And the tiny nylon cords I pulled out seemed wrong to me.

So out of curiosity I cut a little piece off that big spool of 550 MM gave me four years ago, to use as a comparison.

I’m not sure which of these is superior but I’ll make a strong guess that it’s the one on the right. Regularity of construction and a tendency to keep your shape and size when the pressure is removed is generally a sign of material quality.

And I’m reminded of a spool of (what appeared to be) real 550 cord I bought off a hardware store shelf many years ago in a big hurry, to do a job that needed strong cord – and the expensive disaster that resulted therefrom. And I say – make sure of your materials.

Speaking of that…

Here’s Tobie’s new walkie leash. I … may have overreacted. A bit.

I put 24 miles on the ebike before 9:30…

Needed to go to town and very much wanted to get it done before it got too hot. So I left right after morning walkie and chores. Everything went perfectly, no problems at all, but as soon as I got out of the airflow and started storing and charging the bike I broke into an all-over muck sweat that hasn’t stopped yet. It’s an electric bike: It’s not like I was working all that hard. But I was working a little, for two hours straight, plus all the bouncing around and sand steering. And by the home stretch the outside temperature was pushing 90^o with full sun. So, yeah. Well into its second week now, this heat wave is becoming oppressive and so far Monsoon has been an almost total bust.

Somebody sent me a nice gift…

I mentioned that a week ago I had an unexpected flood when a plastic water diverter gave way on the yard spigot: Just fell right off. A Generous Reader – apparently immediately – sent me a fairly expensive replacement that will probably solve that problem permanently. Thanks a lot!

A single phoebe has shown up every year since I built the bedroom addition, early in the summer, built a nest in the eaves, hatched one bunch of eggs, and then bailed for parts unknown. As far as I know it’s always the same bird. This year she hung around after the nestlings had to be grown and gone: Looked like she was going to do a second brood. The books say sometimes they do that.

To the best of my knowledge, she never lost a brood. Before this summer’s second bite of the apple.

This afternoon Tobie discovered two baby birds on the ground under the nest, one partly feathered, one still in down, both very dead. Don’t know what got them but I’m guessing it was the heat. Phoebe seems to be gone: Hope she comes back next spring.

Longtime readers know that Uncle Joel really likes BDU trousers. They are, in my opinion, the most practical pants for desert living. They’re cool, roomy, have lots of pockets, and believe it or not even the blousing ribbons are useful if you’re working around ant nests. (I learned this the proverbial hard way.)

They also used to be really cheap, because surplus. And when I was younger, walking around everywhere in camo was a plus. The older I got the less army cosplay appealed to me, and cheap surplus got harder and harder to find, and so when I found myself actually needing to buy new pants online I could shuck the patterns and just get green like god intended. That was (checks records) about six years ago when I started phasing out the woodland pattern as the pants wore out. I still have some “camo” ACUs I wear in winter because the fabric is heavier – and they were a free reader gift.

Anyway: Last night I happened to be wearing the first summer cargo pants I ever bought new, about six years ago. I hitched at the knee, and…

Aw, crap.

Spent the rest of the evening debating my options. I could toss them – probably not gonna happen. I could patch them, beginning the familiar cycle of laboriously sewing new patches on old fabric. Or, given the time of year, the recent/current heat wave and the fact that I had just been wishing I owned more than one pair of shorts…

Clouds started rolling in around noon. Temperature has dropped 15^o in two hours. Doesn’t look like we’re in for much rain today, but Monsoon has officially begun. We’ll see how wet it decides to be. Maybe soon I can stop whinging about the heat and start grousing about the mud.

This is the bottom of the driveway that feeds Ian’s place and mine, and for the past few years it has been a tumbleweed nursery. I like to get’em out of there before they mature. Cut’em off at the root with a hoe, then rake’em off to the wash and let wind or flood do with them what they will. Hopefully if I kill them early enough, the seeds won’t spread. A couple of years ago we had a real bumper crop, that filled every gully and clogged every fence. You can still see their remnants, and of course those seeds that sprouted only spread the contagion. Happens every decade or so.

We finally scraped three figures.

Just briefly, but this is officially the first 100^o day of the summer.

Naturally…

My knee decided to go south yesterday, which meant I got to spend the hottest day of the year so far with a nice tight hot brace on my leg.

It’s after 9 in the evening and I’m sweating on my keyboard as I type this. Like last night I probably won’t go to bed for another couple of hours, when the bedroom cools off enough to allow it. Assume the frickin’ lotus position, center my frickin’ chakras, or whatever you’re supposed to do with or to them, and recite my frickin’ koan: “I love the desert. I love the desert. I frickin’ love the frickin’ desert.”

Nowhere near a record, but still pretty hot.

It was supposed to go into three figures today but didn’t. Supposed to do the same thing tomorrow. Last week’s Monsoon beginning was an almost total no-show.

But I still got an unexpected flood…

…and from an unexpected source. Tobie and I went out for the evening walkie yesterday to find a stream running across the yard, and it had apparently been doing that for over an hour. Glad I saw it when I did. Seems the diverter I had on the yard faucet had deteriorated in the sun…

…and just fell off the faucet, hoses and all. I keep the faucet open because it feeds my redneck water heater, and the rest was waste and mud. Kind of gave the well pump an unscheduled workout. No serious harm done, but still. I’ve kind of gotten used to DIY infrastructure that doesn’t spontaneously fall apart.

Normally on laundry day Tobie and I swing past Ian’s place, I start the machine going, and then we take our walkie. He really doesn’t like hanging around inside so I normally tie him off outside while I finish washing and hanging out the wet clothes. Tobie finds this boring but acceptable, and it has never caused any problem.

But this morning I came out of the Cave with my hamper of wet clothes, and didn’t find a dog on the end of a rope. I just found…

…a rope. Probably lunging after a rabbit, Tobie had broken his leash.

This is technically my fault: cheap nylon rope isn’t forever and I clearly should have checked it more carefully. Also I wasn’t that worried because: a) it’s hardly the first time he has gotten away from me, though it’s been a long time, b) the leash broke near the collar so he wasn’t trailing a lot of rope he could tie himself up with, c) he’s a nearly-grown Anatolian mix (with a tag with a phone number) and it would take extraordinary bad luck for him to come to actual harm. This isn’t like the case of that unfortunate Sheltie: Tobie’s not listed on the local food chain as anything but a predator. And d) I’ve been thinking of loosening the leash law anyway just to see (under conditions as controlled as possible) what would happen when he crossed paths with a rabbit. Not whether he would chase the rabbit – of course he would chase the rabbit – but whether he would come back when he was done.

Oh, and e) there are no cattlemen around for him to piss off so that danger is off the table at the moment.

So I wasn’t that worried. But I am a bit of a control freak, and I’m really sick and tired of my pets finding new and different ways to die young, and I was a bit pissed with him for breaking his leash and with myself for not allowing for the possibility that he could. And there are ways for a big dog to kill itself out here. So my morning was off to a not-great start.

It was already getting hot. I walked and called and walked and called until I got really thirsty, then I went to the Lair, drank, grabbed my trail canteen and walked and called a whole bunch more. Unless he had made a beeline for the Klondike there was no way he didn’t know I was out there calling for him. But there was no sign of any dog anywhere. Tobie was pointedly ignoring me.

Finally, sore and pissed, I headed back to the Lair intending to call neighbors and ask them to keep their eyes open for him. He would come home when he did, or he wouldn’t. Out of my hands. We walk the Gulch together all the time and he’s not stupid: He knows where he lives.

I was on my way down the ridge with the Lair in sight when I heard a big dog panting behind me: No question who this was. I had already determined that I wasn’t going to show myself mad at him even though I kind of was. And that was wise, because I know him and he wasn’t entirely sure of the reception he was going to get. But at least he didn’t play keep-away.

He was…thirsty.

He drank and flopped…

And then got up and finished off his water bowl, which I had topped off at breakfast…

…and now he’s sacked out, probably for the rest of the morning.

For the record he failed the off-leash test as thoroughly as Little Bear ever did – except that he did eventually come back. And I need to make a better leash.

We’ve spent the past week in a minor-league heat wave, every day peaking at mid-nineties. Nothing like what’s going on in the cities in the valley, I’m told.

This is perfectly normal for July before the start of Monsoon. The weatherman says that’s supposed to start this week, and we got a little taste of it with heavy evening clouds and a bit of overnight rain.

That meant it never really cooled off overnight until near morning, and the sudden humidity wasn’t as welcome as it might have hoped. I didn’t sleep well at all. Turned the ceiling fan off around midnight when the wind from the brief rainstorm promised to cool the room, then turned it right back on an hour later. Basically dozed off and on for eight hours.

Tobie handles the heat better than either of his last two predecessors…

He shows no sign of suffering at all, though by afternoon like everybody else he’s panting for a little breeze.

The height of summer makes baking less attractive than it normally is. I enjoy baking my own bread but the main cabin is only 200 square feet and the oven makes itself felt. Nevertheless, bread must happen and so I try to move the time up as early in the morning as the voltmeter will allow. I seem to go through a cycle of habit, where my dough ball gets dryer and dryer until I get bad results, and then I overcompensate and go to the other extreme with too much wet as with the last loaf…

…and then I end up with this: Overrising, falling in the oven, lacy texture that doesn’t really work for anything. I have to bake again today and I plan to keep this lesson in mind: Moderation in all things.

The immediate forecast calls for afternoon thunderstorms “in spots,” which means exactly nothing in terms of actual rain, but that’s normal for the beginning – and really the middle and the end – of Monsoon. You’ll know if it’s going to rain and how hard when it does it. What’s a little unusual is then the forecast says three days of 100+ with lots of sun. Swell: More hiding in the shade all afternoon. Ah, well: I knew the job was dangerous when I took it. 🙂

Carry on!

I often wake up with a song in my head, usually for no apparent reason. This morning it was Don McLean’s Pride Parade, and I could only remember the chorus – nothing at all of the verses.

You already know where this is going. I genuinely didn’t.

It stuck with me and bugged me all morning. Just a few minutes ago I was washing up the lunch dishes, when I decided to punch the title into a Youtube search window, and…

Sigh. Never happier to be a frickin’ hermit in the frickin’ desert, I can tell you that…

Acute anxiety, that is. You know: When your chest tightens and your breathing rate gets higher and higher and you have a – possibly senseless – desire to be almost anywhere other than where you are. For no apparent reason.

Used to happen to me all the time, for all sorts of reasons, but the one that was practically guaranteed to get me going was…

…crowds.

It’s Senior Day at the Palace of Food, and we got there just behind EVERYBODY ELSE. And I started struggling not to freak right the hell out. Funny: It’s been so long since I felt that, I had a hard time at first figuring out why I was going off the rails.

Happily my shopping list came to my rescue: I got in (apparently) just after the crowd arrived but out just before they all headed for the 2 or 3 open checkout lanes. I practically strolled through the checkout process, and as I decompressed in the parking lot I began to feel … certain characteristic digestive symptoms … which drove me back inside in time to see what I’d have been going through had I shopped another ten minutes or so.

It’s funny: This sort of thing used to happen to me all the time. Frankly you’d have thought that my habit of isolation would have made it so much worse I couldn’t have functioned at all in a crowd, but in fact this was no worse than what I used to go through all the damned time when I lived in cities.

And it’s completely senseless – I can suffer through the pain of injuries and the fear of death, I can hunt and kill animals that would be only too happy to kill me first. I can freeze and burn with no hope of escape, I can seriously wonder where I’ll next lay my head or where my next meal is coming from – and none of that unmans me as much as not being able to find my way out of a crowd that means me no harm at all.

This actually has an upside. It’s the desert: I was aware before I moved here that deserts get hot in the summer. I’m sweating but I still much prefer this to winter. Or living in a city.

Still. It’s hot. This is actually the hottest part, after the Spring wind stops cooling things off at night but before Monsoon starts cooling things off in the afternoon. Bedtime may have to wait till WAY after dark. So what’s the upside?

I’m about to give Tobie his supper and a nice walkie – past Ian’s place where there’s a lovely shower. I used to just have to live with the sweat and grime, maybe splashing myself at the sink or with the yard hose to cool my head. You have no idea what a luxury an evening shower can be till you’ve spent a decade or two without the chance to take one.

Seriously, I’m just sitting here anticipating the pleasure I’m about to experience.