The Ultimate Answer to Kings

Hello, my name is Birch. I belong to James Lileks, who has the day off. I decided to write his column. On behalf of all of us in the dog community, I beg you to listen: Terror Boom Bomb Time is coming up and we dogs are begging you to stop it.

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Look at it from our point of view. It’s a nice night. We’re all outside, guests are over, the grill’s working overtime and we all are having a good time. Then, all of a sudden, there’s a sound we can’t explain. Something really big just made a huge boom so loud that we can feel it in our guts. Or, worse, a whoosh and a shriek. Or a lot of short, buzzing sounds like when your mouth is full of bees.

And none of you humans seem at all bothered. By any of it.

I’m, like, “Hello? Did you not hear that? Do you not smell that? I know you have bad ears and you couldn’t smell a dead deer if it was a mile in front of you, but I’ve got thick flaps of skin and fur hanging over my ears and I heard it. Every bang, boom and hiss. I’m convinced we’re all in terrible danger. It could be that the world is ending. Let’s find shelter! Now!”

But you humans just laugh and look at the sky.

RTWT

The fireworks at the fairground in the crappy little town nearest where I live are more than five miles from the Lair as the crow flies, maybe closer to ten. I can barely hear them, but I never had a dog that didn’t get upset about them. Can’t imagine how most dogs would react to actually attending a fireworks show.

Drinking water costs .25/gal and isn’t that hard to transport in the quantities I use. But Monday morning before the weekly water run…

…if there’s a gallon or less left in the water bottle I’m using, I’ll go around and top off every other container in the Lair and then agonize over whether to pour the remainder down the drain and bring that bottle along. I like them topped off, but I can hardly stand to just throw water away. Someday I’ll find an affordable stillsuit…

Poor Tobie…

A dog doesn’t need to be a brain surgeon to know when his person is leaving the house, and Tobie is smarter than most. In almost every case he’s right there, locking eyes, tail wagging. But Monday morning when Uncle Joel starts fiddling with water bottles, he knows he’s going to be stuck at home and it’s not worth the wasted effort. So he just rather pointedly goes to his bed and aims sulk rays at me instead.

My poor old holster…

I got it in late 2015 and have worn it nearly every day since, and it shows.

That’s what it used to look like on the front. But it’s not just aesthetics that bug me: It was never very good about staying put on my belt when it was new, and now the loop is so stretched out that it slides around in a most irritating manner. Also the thumb break has gotten floppy enough that I can’t reholster one-handed. Definitely time to replace the poor old thing but I resist spending the money because I’m hoping to replace the .44 with something smaller and lighter in the near future. And of course since I put a red dot on the .44 last summer I can’t just get a holster off a shelf unless I’m prepared to take a razor knife to brand-new leather. I don’t even want to know what a custom holster would cost.

I woke up this morning and my first chore while the coffee was brewing was to refill all the various water-bearing vessels scattered around the Lair… Continue reading →

Hey, remember two years ago when Tobie joined us, and he was lay-down-and-piss-himself afraid of Jeep rides? Well…

That was then. This is the now, in which the four most sacred words in Tobie’s vocabulary are “go for a ride,” in that exact order.

Yeah, we’ve been going to S&L’s every morning and evening to take care of their cat and chickens while they’re on a trip. Still a puppy, Tobie is enormously distractible and the current plague of rabbits tests his ability to obey several times daily. But rabbits are no match for the lure of the open Jeep door, after he hears the Sacred Words.

Seriously. I don’t care if it’s birds nesting in the porch rafters or APCs full of feds, I’m thinking of getting up and kicking him in the nads.

…I really like electronic gadgets. Especially simple specialized ones – and here in the 21^st century they show up in the damndest places, like…

…bicycle tire pumps. Seriously? Is this necessary? I’m reminded of a line from an Asimov story, paraphrased: “Robots everywhere! If somebody needs a doorstop, they get a robot with a big foot.” And yet this one solved a knotty problem for me. With the ebike’s big wheels and fat tires, a little portable handpump just didn’t get it. Seriously, until this year the only way I could inflate a new tube was with the electric pump I keep in the back of the Jeep. Which is no help for bike-only emergency inflation at the side of a remote dirt road. But here’s a fairly powerful handheld electric pump with serious battery power that fits neatly in the bike’s cargo bag. I began to worry that it was quietly discharging back there in the dark and wouldn’t be ready for actual use, so I dragged it out after this morning’s ride. Works great! The designers maybe surrendered a bit more than I’d have liked to the temptation of adding features/complications unneeded for such a simple function, but it will nicely air up a tire without a lot of fuss.

Yeah, I went to town this morning before it got too hot and/or windy…

…to pick up a package Big Brother sent me. Stopped at the convenience store on my way out to have a drink and a snack, and saw the swallows cavorting around the parking lot with every sign of merriment…

They nest under the front eave of the store every year, and right now the chicks are big enough to keep their parents very busy indeed. Not that they really seem to mind.

…How seriously you take the request depends on what it’s carrying on its tail. Speciesist? I think not!

It was eight in the morning and I was already sweating. It’s gonna be another heat wave day: I visited D&L’s strawbale-and-earthbag extravaganza yesterday where it was 71^o inside and I said, “I hate you guys so much.” Seriously thinking of taking a book to Ian’s place and spending the afternoon there.

(ahem) Anyway. I’m walking along one of my beaten paths to collect my trail camera to move it to another site that’s been getting some interesting scat. I typically try to locate the camera along trails but this spot has been a bust. And I’m minding my own business when I come upon a little snake that has stretched itself across the trail to warm up from the cool night. Its tail is quite small and kind of in shade and I don’t have my middle-distance glasses (Yes, I’m old. Bite me. Or rather, please don’t bite me little snake) so I can’t tell if that’s pattern or rattles on the end. The question being important to whether I step over the snake or give it the path and go around*.

I didn’t notice until I brought the camera home and looked at the mem card that I was playing this out on digital media…

In the end I walked around anyway because why not, rendering the whole examination kind of moot. But it’s likely to be one of those days where this was the most interesting thing to happen anyway so whatever. I’ve got nothing against baby snakes doing baby snake things, as long as they’re not doing it on my porch.

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*In hindsight the shape of the head pretty clearly labeled the snake non-poisonous but I was fixated on the tail as usual.

Summer has arrived! Temps over 90^o, cloudless sky with sun beating down like a weapon. We’ve been hanging around indoors – nice to have a couple of ceiling fans now that can stir the hot air around – but I could no longer put off an outdoor chore. I’d normally have done it this morning but I had to bake bread this morning before it got too hot.

I got up and was obviously going outside, and Tobie agitated to come with. Seeing no reason not, I brought him along but we had to turn back to the cabin because as soon as his tender pawsies hit loose sand he started practically hopping up and down for pain. I can’t feel it unless I kneel down, then it burns me through my thin pants. So the poor guy didn’t get his unscheduled afternoon walkie – but he really didn’t complain when I brought him back home.

Little Bear was the same way. I suspect it’s just because they spend so much time indoors, like why people who wear shoes all the time don’t get calluses on their feet. Or maybe coyotes just shade up and sleep through the afternoons when it gets hot.

The Spring wind hasn’t backed off at all, filling my game camera with thousands of pics of waving junipers…

…and filling my sinuses with dust and pollen. I’ve spent most of my days emptying tissue boxes. With a few forays out of the cabin for quotidian tasks…

And sumptuous meals.

Yeah – that elk steak came out pretty well. There’s still plenty left, currently warming up in the Crockpot for this evening’s supper. Tobie keeps telling me it’s too much for one man but he’ll help me carry the load if I’ll only take the stick out of my ass and ask for help.

It appears I have some new neighbors. Longtime readers might remember me talking about the Claire Cabins. They were falling apart when I wrote about them four years ago and they’re not in better shape now but they have new owners who seem intent on repairing them and living there. I rode my bike to town a few days ago and on my way back I noticed a couple of trucks surrounded by a buttload of tools and new material. Another older couple, possibly deluded possibly not but given the frequency with which people move here and then move away when they get a load of reality I know which way to bet, plan on living fulltime in that tiny cabin and doing god knows what with the greenhouse.

They have already run into a big roadblock concerning what used to be the well – I guess we’ll see how it goes from there. For the record they’re the third owners of that parcel I know of since I’ve lived here.

Also I just finished binging a great British show on DVD…

If you’re a Terry Pratchett and/or Neil Gaiman fan and you haven’t already seen it, you need to treat yourself to this. It’s a hoot.

Sorry about the downtime, really nothing very interesting going on just now but I’ll keep my eyes open.

Summer solstice today. Of course the official start of each season never made any sense to me: I’ve always noticed that if you haven’t roasted to death by the official start of summer or frozen to death by the official start of winter, you’re doing something right. The seasons are as they do, not as they are declared to be.

Winter used to bug me so much that one time I caught myself getting depressed at the summer solstice, since from now on the days start getting shorter. I hated winter so much I couldn’t take any pleasure in summer. Happily those days are past.

But I notice, quite by accident, that as of today (if my arithmetic is correct) ALL days are past. Today’s the day humanity comes to an end, from our fatal failure to give up fossil fuels and turn all our decisions over to our betters.

It’s been nice knowing you, I guess…

I mentioned being excited about getting meat in the Crockpot right, and it was not just because I have all that frozen pork to deal with and I’m tired of eating shoe leather. There was also…

This.

Elk sirloin. A gift from Ian’s latest Field to Table trip.

I don’t remember the last time I had steak. I’ve never had elk. I was extremely anxious not to ruin it through ineptitude, so that frozen hunk of meat became one of those gifts too nice to use. It’s been in the freezer two months.

But now, with a couple of successful pork slow-cooks behind me, I’m going to give it a shot. Yum. I hope.

Or, “It’s your hoe, don’t be afraid to take a file to it.”

So this morning after our walkie but before it got too hot I went out to hoe some weeds from the driveway and the drainage ditch that has cut itself into what used to be the driveway…

…and I finished what I had wanted to get done but it seemed as though I was working too hard. These particular weeds spread out from a central root that’s usually pretty easy to sever once you get to it, but I was really having to pound some of these things into submission. Finally it occurred to me to have a look at my hoe…

…and yeah. It’s just a cheap hardware store hoe, I’ve had it around for several years, and have gradually pounded it sharp as a pipe. So – once the job was done, of course, because why do these things in logical order – I locked it in the vice and rooted around in the tool chest for a file.

I must say: After so many years of improvising and making due and muddling through, it’s very nice to finally have accumulated the tools I need to actually do a job properly when I have to.

Saturday evening I was invited to supper with S&L.

Tobie had such a good time. He loves to meet new people but because he so seldom has the opportunity he gets … rather excited. Big puppy hurling himself about can kind of ruin a party, so I worried. But he only jumped on one person, right at first, happily a fullgrown man who could take the hit. Then he listened and settled down, something I don’t think he’d have done six months ago. They have a walled patio in back, where we ate, so he was able to come off the leash and he really didn’t make a pest of himself. Won’t say he never begged at all, but mostly he just hung out digging being with more than one person. Good boy.

But anyway: L made porkchops, and they were so very tender I had to ask how she accomplished that. Mine are always like shoe leather. She said what I should have guessed: “Crockpot.”

I decided I had to try that. Brought home some freshish veggies from the Monday morning water run.

Somebody gave me a Crockpot quite some time ago but I doubt my electrical system is up to leaving it on for six or seven hours at a throw. Maybe, on a sunny day, but whatever: I know Ian’s can. So I had my supper over there today.

Tobie liked it too, and I even remembered to bring my strainer so I could get the onions out of the broth.

For the first time in almost a year.

One of my two kitchen bottles sucked dry on Saturday, and a single big bottle isn’t too much of a disruption on the Monday water run.

I paid $3.80ish/gal all winter: Now it’s summer and we’re down to $3.35. Not a huge drop, but a palpable drop. Maybe somebody out there had decided they’ve done enough damage for the moment?

On Monday I was in the crappy little food market in the crappy little desert town nearest where I live, and I saw a package that I thought was funny and also perplexing…

“What,” I wondered, “could popcorn possibly be based on other than plants?” I took the picture intending to mock the simpleminded word salad, but then I wondered if maybe it means something after all and I’m the clueless one here.

When I make popcorn, I pop it in butter. It’s the only way, other than salting the living hell out of it like I did when I ran the popper in a movie theater I worked at in high school, to give popcorn any taste. And I’d never serve my popcorn to a vegan, because butter isn’t “plant-based.” It would be like serving porkchops to a rabbi. So maybe the package labeling that was silly to me makes perfect sense to a vegan? I’m not sure but that’s my hypothesis.

This time in conspiracy with my boots, oddly enough. I was coming home from town and working my way through this one sandy patch with a lot of washboarding when I felt the pedal tug on the top of my boot. And while I knew at once what was going on…

…my bootlace had become untied and was wrapping itself industriously around the pedal crank…this was a hilariously bad place for it to happen. If you’ve ever tried to ride a bicycle through sand, you know the bike quickly loses its sense of directional responsibility. A skinny-tire bike is – IMO, of course, your mileage may vary but I doubt it – simply not rideable through sand. I, through the generous auspices of Big Brother, have a fat-tired RadRover…

Which tires are not only fat but also large, meaning Rad is a quite stable-in-sand but also quite tall bike. Not quite Penny Farthing tall…

…but tall enough that a not-very-tall person like myself must handle the manner in which the bike tilts upon stopping because you can’t just put down both feet. In sand, the bike is going to do pretty much whatever it wants as it loses speed. Naturally, since I had reason to believe that my right foot was at the moment literally tied to the pedal, it tilted right. I uttered a heartfelt “Oh Shit” and congratulated myself for wearing the damned helmet for once while – not exactly for the first time – waiting to see what gravity had in store for the old man. Happily no damage ensued, but it wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of my bike and my footwear. I think I may have discovered another reason why real bicyclists wear specialized shoes.

In town, I acquired a new pair of earplugs. If you’re an inveterate shooter this will have more meaning for you than if you’re not. Last summer I splurged on my first-ever set of electronic earplugs…

…and while I’ve carried them every day since, they proved a great disappointment. They are neither particularly effective earplugs nor (at all) effective noise-cancelling earplugs. About the only thing they do well is work as bluetooth earbuds, which was never supposed to be their primary purpose. I figured a year was long enough to suffer along with them, so I went back to just plain earplugs – but the kind you put in hot water and mold to your particular ear.

Once upon a time you could only get these at big gunshows, of the sort I never attend. Ian once had a set he liked a lot, to the point where he actually mourned the loss of one of them. So when I saw they’d become common enough you could buy them online, I got a pair.

Of course the whole molding thing is kind of a project, involving leaving them in boiling water and then sticking them in your ear while still hot. I had qualms about that part but it worked out. Then of course I had to test them, right? Tobie did not appreciate that part, since the corner of the porch is right next to his window. It turned out, the S&W’s extractor wasn’t particularly pleased with me either, because…

…one of my older reloads had corroded in the box and then split in the cylinder. Another dead soldier: Some of my reloading brass has been with me since the earliest days of the Model 431.

Speaking of Tobie…

If you need a couple minutes’ peace while fiddling with boiling water and things you plan to stick in your ears, a Kong tire (courtesy of Landlady) and a couple of MaroSnacks will always do the trick. He’s smart, but easy.

You can see the Lair in the middle ground, just beyond the wash.

Tobie and I mix it up in different directions on any given morning so as not to be always walking over the same tracks. Depending on how sore I am and/or how well I’ve slept he doesn’t always get all the walkie he thinks is quite right, but lately we’ve been giving him reasons for a nice post-walkie nap.

Got back from the Monday morning water run. Headed for the Jeep with my water and groceries, and…

…had to chase a bullsnake out of the shade. I had no doubt this was the very snake L had told me about, that had been hanging around their workshop. L likes them and would not smile upon me for running this one over, even accidentally.

So I chased it out, but it was about noon and as soon as the front end of the snake hit the sun it tried to nope right back under.

And then, since it was being harassed by this inconvenient humie, it reared up and began to slither into the Jeep’s undercarriage. Which probably would have killed it, plus I didn’t want a creepy snake sharing the insides with me should it make it that far. So I did something I don’t remember ever doing before in my whole life…

I grabbed it around the middle, probably about 2/3 down from the front, and pulled it out of the Jeep. It actually doubled up and tried to bite me, for which I do not blame it, but by this point centrifugal force was not on its side. I gently flung it…

…out onto D&L’s plaza. It took the hint and boogied for shade in the vicinity of the workshop.

And it was no sooner out of sight than L came out of the garage so I could tell her the tale of how I went to some trouble and a tiny bit of risk to avoid harming her yard pet.

“Check the simplest possibility first.”

Instead, when I hooked the solar heater to water and it wouldn’t flow…

…I jumped to the conclusion that something was kinked or gummed up in the rooftop box. Continue reading →

I showed up at their place yesterday for the monthly trip to the Palace of Food, only to find him nearly unable to get out of his chair. He’s been having trouble with his right knee, which had a joint replacement several years ago that’s never been right. Now – and not for the first time this year – his knee was filling up with blood.

By the time we got to the town he couldn’t get out of the truck unaided so we ended up going to the local small hospital instead. In the ER they drained a whole bunch of blood out of the joint and immediately released him. I questioned the wisdom of that last thing but nobody wants to hear my opinions on medical matters and probably wisely so.

A few hours after we got home I got a call from Neighbor L: “Can you feed horses this afternoon? We need to go back to the hospital.”

I got the lowdown that evening: He had a raging infection, really high white count, and when they drained the knee – again – they got a lot of unpleasant stuff besides blood. He’s still in the hospital as of this writing and we don’t know what’s going to happen next.

On a personal note: I am having increasing troubles with my own right knee, not at all unusual for old men, and it has not escaped my notice that joint replacement surgery has become quite a common thing since I last got my legs sculpted more than 50 years ago. But I only personally know one person who has had it done, and that has always been a cautionary tale…