The Ultimate Answer to Kings

But it’s probably too late to worry now.

Merry Christmas, y’all.

My distant neighbors T&S went visiting for the holiday, which meant I started going across the plateau and up their mesa twice a day to take care of their dogs…

…and for once – so far – there are none of the adverse conditions that so often conspire to make this an unpleasant gig. Maybe I shouldn’t list the possibilities; maybe Murphy isn’t listening. Let’s just say this has traditionally been a bad-luck gig for the Jeep.

This morning I had to hurry, though, because D&L wanted to go to town on a non-water run, which made it a perfect time to fill propane bottles. In the interest of hurrying, I brought along Tobie’s long leash so we could stop on the way back and give him his morning walkie on ground we haven’t trod a thousand times.

He seemed to enjoy it. He especially enjoyed the dead goat “somebody” dumped, which just happened to be right in our walkie path. Tobie wanted to take it home. We argued. I won.

We headed back, and just as we got in sight of the Jeep a big old Suburban happened by and stopped right next to it. This was not in the plan. I sped up. The driver got out and disappeared between the vehicles. I could think of no reason for that that wasn’t bad. I sped up more. We were still maybe three hundred yards away. I’m a one-legged guy: I can’t actually run.

Then the guy comes out from between the vehicles and starts yelling: “Hello!” I thought he saw me. He didn’t.

“Hello!” I replied.

“Where are you?”

“Over here!” I waved, and he finally saw us.

“You okay?” Apparently he couldn’t think of a reason for an abandoned Jeep on the side of the dirt road that wasn’t bad, and was just trying to be nice.

I assured him I was fine, just walking my dog – which admittedly was a strange thing to do in this strange place. Even by the Gulch’s standards we were pretty far away from anything, which was why I’d chosen that spot. Wasn’t expecting anybody else to drive by. He waved, got back in his truck and drove away.

Then it was time for one of the more painful monthly chores of the winter…

For the record, still $3.80/gallon. And this time I had to fill one of the big kitchen bottles. Winter sucks.

…has been an undependable pain in my ass all winter long, and night before last it stopped working entirely.

It’s been temperamental since the beginning of the season – not always lighting right away when the thermostat cued it, occasionally not lighting at all and sending me down diagnostic blind alleys only to irrationally start working fine again for no apparent reason. One other time I thought there was a bubble in the line, which has happened before, bled the line and got the heater to immediately start working again – so I tried that yesterday after the woodstove fire went out even though there was no logical reason for a line bubble. Didn’t help.

Needless to say I won’t die without the bedroom heater…

…it’s not the main source of cabin heat. But it sure is nice: So nice that after it came online in the winter of 2017-2018 I immediately abandoned my pledge to only use it during emergency cold nights. It was nice having every morning NOT be a test of character until the woodstove got effective.

Plus, the timing really sucked. My daughter and granddaughter are scheduled to come visit at the end of next week, and it’s just not a great time for one of the Lair’s principal comfort features to go on strike.

But this is the world I live in. Uncle Murphy always gets a vote, and since I have no idea how I’d get an HVAC technician out here the bedroom heater had apparently declared itself a wall ornament.

This morning I woke up with a thought. It wasn’t a very logical thought…

As far as I can tell, the thermostat has been working perfectly through all this. But what if it wasn’t? I do have a spare.

After breakfast and the long morning walkie I took it off the wall, checked the wires to the heater – fine – and put it back on. The batteries – AAA, of course – are newly replaced and anyway you know when they fail. I put it back on its bracket – lined up the connectors – it seemed to be fully in place but I gave it one last push just to be sure – and it clicked into place with an air of finality.

Is it possible I just didn’t seat the thing right when I changed the batteries in the autumn? That all this time I’ve been dealing with an intermittent connection? Because that would be dumb. And also great.

I switched the thermostat to heat. Nothing happened – of course not, Joel, it’s set to 55 and now reads 59. I reset it to above 60 … and the heater immediately lit with no slightest drama or hesitation.

Are. You. F’ing. KIDDING me.

It’s still flowing quietly away. Hasn’t slowed down in the slightest.

When I lived in the land of grass and trees I was used to this sort of thing. But open water where none belongs seems like a failure mode to me now: Something I’m supposed to fix somehow. Meanwhile this thing is developing its own little ecosystem on the sand. Before I came along this morning a bunch of small birds were cheerfully drinking and bathing, the cold be damned. I only see sign of cattle and goats, but the cattle sign is so disruptive that the spring could be attracting all sorts of wildlife and I wouldn’t know from looking for tracks.

Funny thing…

The water flows on the surface for a little under a hundred yards, then disappears in the sand only to re-emerge further downstream, still flowing, for another 25 or 30 yards until it runs out of steam or sinks back under the sand. I don’t know how that works at all.

But once I get this new game camera figured out I’ll put it on my poor battered cottonwood tree. At least then I should see what if any wildlife is being attracted to the water.

So a couple of days ago I moaned that I had suddenly gone through a major percentage of my remaining AAA batteries in a single dark morning. Haven’t gotten around to procuring a new package but that’s all right – the crisis was averted and I still have some, right?

So this morning I’m trying to figure out this new game camera, which turns out to need eight AA batteries. Nooo problem – of AA batteries I have a great many, some of which have been around so long I WISH some need would come around to help me use the old ones up.

Can’t get the damned thing to work. Decide to see if the battery tray is doing anything. Reach into my drawer for my favorite multimeter…

A gift from Neighbor S many years ago when he got a better one. I don’t actually use it very often because normally I just check battery connections and the cheap meter permanently in the powershed is fine for that. So guess whose display is getting dim. Again, nooo problem! Because these meters always use 9-volt batteries. I have more than enough 9-volt batteries in stock because as far as I recall, since the death of the calculator only meters still use them and rarely use them up.

I open up my favorite meter, which – as mentioned – I don’t actually use all that often, to replace the single 9-volt battery. I have the replacement right here. And…

It’s a plot. That’s what it is. My tools are conspiring against me.

He’s seen the horses many times, of course – but always from safely way up on the shotgun seat of the Jeep. Yesterday … well, let’s just say he noticed a significant height disadvantage.

After lunch we went to D&L’s to help them unload a ton of horse pellets. There’s 40 50-pound sacks, so with the three of us working it only takes 20 minutes or so. Tobie watched from the Jeep, happy to get greetings and scritches from two nice strangers. But when we were done, L (for whatever reason) asked me to bring him out of the Jeep on his leash to visit Coaltrain.

Tobie entered the barn and was immediately overwhelmed by all the wonderful smells which must be investigated at detailed length. At first he didn’t even notice the big black horse right there at the grating. But when he did … he looked waaaaay up … and informed me that he’d be waiting at the Jeep for my return.

I brought him over to the barrier, where D&L were waiting. He was delighted to greet them, but shied away every time he got a side-eye glimpse of that absurdly tall, strong-looking animal. Coal likes dogs, hasn’t had one since Butch died, and was really trying to be welcoming. Tobie wanted to touch noses, he kept timorously slinking closer, but then lost his nerve every time.

I suspect they’d be great friends within a few days of regular contact. This is after all the same puppy who was once, briefly, lay-down-and-piss-yourself terrified of Jeep rides. But this was the first time Tobie had ever actually met a horse on equal terms, and he never realized how big the damned things are. We got a chuckle out of it.

Haven’t done this in a while. 🙂 Can’t really solicit reader contributions since I lost my remote maildrop, but happily a 14-year-old blog does have a bunch of longtime Generous Readers I don’t mind giving my local address. Anyway, I went to the post office expecting two boxes and found five!

Got this for myself: The cable for getting 12 volts out of a Honda generator. I doubt it’ll work better on my battery bank than the Battery Minder did, but we’re going to find out before spending bux on a big charger. If nothing else it’ll work great on the Jeep.

But also, gifts!

A bunch of bullets and brass for the .44!

A new trail camera to replace the one that got stolen last year – won’t be leaving it at the watering station anymore – and a hard drive with literally thousands of old movies! All from the forties through the early sixties, looks like, mostly titles I never heard of but there’s a bunch of old war movies and a whole folder of the cheezy fifties sci fi flicks I’ve always loved. So much for my reading festival.

And from Big Brother, who’s always concerned I’m going to starve…

…his monthly care package of canned meat, and a bonus…

…a bunch of Spam from his hurricane stash! And just when I’d started eating it for breakfast again, too. Timing!

Thanks, guys. You rock.

With propane nearly $4/gal, there’s another good reason to get right on looking for and fixing gas leaks.

In this case, I caught a whiff of gas at the bedroom regulator, brought out a bowl of soapy water, and quickly spotted a bad pigtail hose.

Easily but not cheaply fixed…

Happily, one thing the crappy little town nearest where I live does have is a decent shop for propane and propane accessories.

Speaking of high prices and that crappy little town, I picked the wrong time to get out of the chicken business.

That’s more than $25 worth of eggs, at local prices. They normally go between one and three dollars/dozen: Now they’re pushing seven. Sheesh.

Okay, technically it’s not possible for all my flashlights to die at once because there’s like six or eight of them scattered around the Lair. But there are still the ones you always reach for, right? The one on your belt, the one on the nightstand, the headlamp you use every morning for Tobie’s first pee break. Even if you pride yourself on battery maintenance, it can sneak up on you.

And that’s when you realize something that had only been at the back of your mind before then…

People keep sending me AA batteries – I’ve got a million AA batteries – but the three lights I’ve fallen into the habit of using most often use AAA – and this morning when they all went dim simultaneously I wasn’t sure I even had any. Turns out I had one nearly-full package still in the powershed but it’s the sort of thing I should have checked long before now. It’s like unexpectedly running out of flour, or anything else I use all the time: How do you let that happen?

Weather broke yesterday, and just in time as far as the batteries are concerned. Yesterday was nice and clear, still and cold. With clear skies all night you can bet it was plenty cold this morning. Forecast says it’ll stay below freezing until Saturday and not really warm up till Monday.

The cold has driven everybody indoors, so it’s been a quiet week with few texts that might send me running for the Jeep. I’m having a Larry Correia reading festival. 🙂

Ten million bushes in the high desert and they have to come chew on mine.

Not to mention shitting all over my yard.

…I’ve lit the woodstove twice in a morning.

The only problem with a stove like this, in a very small cabin, is that it’s either too much or nothing. Keep it stoked and it’ll drive you right out of the cabin. Let it smolder and it’ll go right out. Yeah, some say stoke it high and open a window but that’s a silly waste of hard-bought firewood.

My plan, to the extent that I had a plan, has been to replace it with a blueflame heater when I go on social security and actually have money for fuel. But I’m really not sure that’ll work out in terms of hauling propane bottles plus I’ve lost faith in blueflame heaters from watching the experiences of neighbors. Probably there’s a vented furnace that would make use of the stovepipe but I haven’t done any research. I just know that as I get older, keeping the stove in wood seems to be helping me get older quicker.

Tobie’s having a nice morning…

…lounging around while dispensing justice to one of his leather bones.

Mostly overnight, because I found 2 inches of light powder on the solar panels. But it started up again just in time for morning walkie.

Just flurries, and without yesterday’s nasty cold wind so we could continue on a proper walkie.

Tobie was digging it, and also trying to be a good boy, so at one point…

I put my back to the corner of the pumphouse and let him work out his zoomies to the full extent of the long lead. This is normally forbidden: One of Uncle Joel’s little rules is that big boys learn to control their zoomie impulses. But I sort of declared it a snow day. And then of course had trouble getting him to behave for the whole rest of the walkie, but whatever. Hopefully he’ll get a proper nap and let me have my book for a couple of hours. The batteries are already feeling all this gloom and cold, so I need to take my entertainment low-tech.

So when the snow stopped I went out to clean the solar panels. And as I put the squeegee away in the ratproof shed where I store seasonal stuff I remembered to retrieve this cool pair of insulated pants a Generous Reader sent me last year…

They were of course freezing so I set them on top of the bedroom heater. Did the Tobie stuff, sat down at the computer, and after a while my lizard brain tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Something smells like…burning.”

Happily they were not nearly ready to combust. But still uncomfortable to the touch.

…at about quarter past eleven. Just in time for Tobie’s lunch and a quick walkie, where he was all “OMGTHISISSOCOOL!!!11” and completely forgot all rules of leash decorum, for which I couldn’t really blame him because this is the first snow that was more than a dusting and he did the same thing this time last year. I mean, c’mon, Uncle Joel. Cut the boy some slack. There’s a reason kids get snow days, and it’s not just traction under bus tires.

Hard to say exactly how much we got, because of all the wind. I’d estimate maybe as much as two inches, obviously not impressive to readers in actual snow country. But add in the wind and I’m glad us doddering oldsters weren’t out in it trying to fill water bottles. D&L made the right call.

Right on schedule, too! The forecasters said it was coming: After a week of unseasonably mild and pleasant weather, expect days of below-freezing temps beginning with a snowstorm. In fact D&L took the forecast so seriously that they rescheduled the Monday morning water run for last Friday. I finished up a bunch of chores last week that could have straggled into this week specifically to clear up some indoor time.

Except, of course, for Tobie-related activities. So this morning Tobie and I got to the top of the ridge and into the teeth of staggering wind, spitting supersonic sleet right into my face. End of truncated morning walkie. Tobie was displeased but knows not to argue too strenuously when Uncle Joel is getting (really) grumpy. Less than an hour later…

…and coming down hard.

Old man day. Mocha. Book. Bedroom heater.

It’s possible there’ll be guests before the end of the month. For their comfort I will probably give up the Lair for a few nights and sleep in Ian’s Cave. But Ian’s Cave is, how you say, not heated. With its massive thermal mass it never goes below freezing in there but that doesn’t mean it’s a comfortable living space in winter. So I dug out my old faithful Mr. Heater…

…which…

…has spent the past 11 years in a dirt-floor barn that’s not exactly hermetically sealed.

And it seems that either the thermocouple or the electromagnet inside the gas valve that is run by the thermocouple has given up the ghost. I can light the pilot, but after a few seconds the flame dies with an audible click.

I spent some quality time with it this afternoon, and I’ll be damned if I can figure out how they ever expect you to replace the thermocouple on this thing. Maybe they don’t. There is a way to bypass it: In fact now that I’ve done all the hard stuff it’s a rather simple way. But thermocouples are good. I live with Uncle Murphy’s antics but I don’t give him the keys to the place. So…

I dug out Plan B, my not all that faithful L’il Buddy Heater…

…and wouldn’t you know it seems to work just fine. Not convinced it has the horsepower for the job, but we’re going to find out. If not, no big deal. Like I said, it never gets all that cold in Ian’s Cave and it’ll only be for a few nights.

But still. I was a bit disappointed.

I got an early chuckle from this goof on a recent change in the venerable 4473…

Sorry, you may need to click for legibility…

Via Codrea

I was poking around in the dim recesses of Ian’s Cave yesterday morning while the washing machine did its thing and came upon this old Italian .25acp vestpocket in a box of junk. Ian certainly didn’t buy it for its value, he probably had in mind a video but moved on to bigger things before he got around to it.

I can’t stand to see a complete gun just rusting sadly away, even if it is a misbegotten piece of junk. So I brought it home to the Lair…

…and found to my delight that I didn’t even know how to field strip it. Which was great, because I love learning things like that. Who knows? Someday in the dystopian future my life or at least my next meal may rely on my being the only person in a random gang of misfits who knows how to get the slide on and off a Brescia.

Yeah, I watch too many old movies. Anyway…

It can go back to being forgotten in a box now, without fear of further rust. I certainly don’t want it.

For the record the price of flour has exactly doubled.

As I said last month, I’m giving up my practice of bulk-storing flour in the pantry in the original bags, and going to food buckets. Due to a shortage of empty buckets I’m having to do this kind of gradually, but that’s okay: 30 pounds was all I could afford to pay for anyway.