The Ultimate Answer to Kings

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On February 4.

I went around the yard collecting windblown trash, did the laundry, ran the burn barrel, serviced the Jeep (that new inflator won’t top off all four tires on one charge), serviced all the batteries, practiced with my pistol, took Tobie on like four walkies…

In a t-shirt.

On February 4.

It’s supposed to stay this way for the rest of the week.

That’s kind of weird, not that I’m complaining. But I’m going to predict right now that March is going to be a wintry nightmare from start to finish, just to get it out of the way.

There, I said it.

I’ve never been to SHOT Show. Even if I were welcome there, which as a non-press hoi polloi I certainly would not be, you couldn’t drag me screaming to a crowded convention in Las Vegas. It’s one reason I’m armed, to prevent anyone from trying. Some people have zombies, I have convention venues. I didn’t say it was a major reason.

So if I’ve never been and I’ll never be, why do I bother hating on SHOT Show? It’s because I’m a retired boomer with too much time on his hands in winter. I admit I spend a lot of it watching Youtube, and I’m a gun guy so I’m familiar with most of the gun channels though I ignore most of them. But SHOT Show is a guaranteed font of content for guntubers, so…

…during and after that stupid convention, all I see are images of two things: a) Faked-together vaporware that will never actually be sold, and b) Another exciting! plastic striker-fired 9mm!! Now with extra bumpy bits!!!

Just saying, I annually look forward to SHOT Show going away. It’s a personal peeve, your mileage may vary.

And the freeze apparently didn’t damage any pipes, which with PVC is never the way to bet.

The temperature has gone back to freakishly warm: It’s actually supposed to be in the seventies for the next four days. So there was a chance my drain pipe might thaw. I wasn’t sure about that because of course no matter what the sun’s doing it’s always going to stay cold under the cabin. But yeah, I checked and the drainage was back. I was actually reluctant to open the valve to let water back into the cabin, being pretty much sure the result would be a gush of water where it’s not supposed to be. But so far so good. No drips, and the big goofy-looking gauge at the sink says the pipes are holding pressure.

Of course there was the usual brown water and sediment that needed to be flushed out…

…but I’m used to that. Even remembered to take the aerator off the faucet before opening the valve. Now I can put away all the Plan B infrastructure the Lair has been cluttered with for the last two weeks. Till next time.

My brand new kitchen bypass regulator decided no gas for me.

First thing in the frigid morning – which is exactly the same way the one it replaced failed.

Before coffee I had to go out in the cold to rummage around for my filthy campstove…

…and by the afternoon when I went out to replace the misbehaving regulator with Plan B – AGAIN…

…it was apparently working fine. Which tells me it somehow ingested some water – this comes right after the only even slightly substantial snowfall since November, so go figure – which then froze. HOW it could possibly have done such a thing is beyond me: I only installed it in the autumn so the seals should be fine, and it’s covered from drips. But there it is.

On the good news front…

…Neighbor L got her pickup back repaired from the Big Town about 50 miles away, right after I connected my last full propane bottle to the bedroom regulator. So I was able to fill the majority of my empties, which makes Uncle Joel happy.

Less unhappy, anyway. That running sore on my stump appears to be healing, though it hurt like a bitch all day yesterday. Having now finished my morning chores and rarely getting any emergencies on Sunday, I now plan to spend the bulk of the day one-legged in the seated position while reading a book to hopefully let the healing continue.

From several years ago and not really topical, but I only saw it for the first time this morning.

Who just got out of the hospital – again – without anything in his condition improved or even justified. He has a bad infection from his hip replacement, which I suppose no doctor – especially the one(s) responsible – wants to call malpractice. They hold onto him till his white count gets down below “shocking” and then send him home – till next time. Meanwhile he can barely move without pain, let alone walk.

Which, while I won’t say it makes me feel better, at least puts my own situation into perspective. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks barely able to walk, though the past two days have been better as the sore my ill-fitting prosthesis rubbed on my stump* shows some sign of wanting to heal. I’ve mostly been sitting or lying around dreading the next inescapable walk with Tobie, which is not the way I prefer to spend my time. Sorry for the extended no-blog, I just haven’t been feeling it lately.

Winter has re-visited the Gulch, with way-below-freezing temperatures and driving wind. It finally warmed up enough to snow yesterday…

…and overnight, but it didn’t amount to anything.

This has so far been an extremely dry winter, this morning being the first time any snow at all was on the ground since early November. January has tried mightily to make up for the freakishly-warm December, and may I say it has done a damned fine job. First I lost my well water, and then…

…for the first time in several years, my grey-water drain froze up. Which would be a problem, except that I can use the buckets of sink drainage to keep my toilet somewhat functional. I always have one pitcher on the counter for drinking water: Now I have two, the other one filled with well water from the five-gallon jugs I (painfully) drag over from Ian’s for washing and such. And it might stay that way for a while: The next warm spell is due any day and I’ll see what if any damage has been done to my plumbing when I turn the water back on but once the drainpipe freezes it might not entirely thaw again till April. So that’s been the cherry on top of what otherwise wouldn’t have been a premier month in any case.

Needless to say nothing very exciting is happening around the Lair just lately. But I’m keeping up with necessaries…

They say nothing drives innovation like giving the job to a lazy man. Since the prospect of carrying the generator back and forth to the powershed on my bleeding stump has made me re-think this whole “I need electricity” thing, I got a little more creative and ran a long cord from the battery charger to the front porch. The generator has to stay in the cabin when not in use or it won’t start in the cold, but bringing it out to the porch is a lot less stressful than carrying it all the way to the powershed. Probably wouldn’t have bothered working that out in other circumstances, so there’s that.

Anyway, that’s what’s going on. Sorry for the no-blog thing, but when there’s nothing to say you don’t say anything.

—-
*And speaking of that, I have an appointment with the prosthetics shop on the tenth of February in hope of making that problem go away.

I have about 30 gallons of drinking water hauled in from town and stored in cool darkness at Ian’s place, and when I lose water at the Lair I end up spending some of it on utility measures other than drinking. It never made a lot of sense to me but I never got around to fixing the deficiency before today. Those blue food-grade bottles are expensive and a little fragile.

I’m going to label these two 5-gallon jugs “not for drinking.” I can fill them at any neighbor’s, rather than having to haul them all the way to town and spend a buck filling each. And they’re stout enough that even bashing around in the back of the Jeep they’ll probably outlast me.

I’d rather talk about winter preps, and how after all this time I still find ways to fail at them.

So. Yesterday afternoon.

This wasn’t all that unexpected, I’ve been living in fear of it since the cold snap started. Could have been far worse, as far as I know no pipes broke, it’s just an internal freeze. But it got and stayed damned cold yesterday so I just closed the supply valve and opened every inside valve to hopefully drain the pipes as much as possible. Then later Tobie and I went to Ian’s to get some water bottles for washing and such.

I really thought I had two 5-gallon bottles stored. Could only find one, so I grabbed two 3-gallon bottles of drinking water instead of the second 5-gallon, including one that’s gotten really old and no longer fit for the drinking water back-and-forth.

As I climbed a hill in my driveway, the bottles fell over, which is normal. But instead of the usual boinging sound, I got a crack and the rush of water.

“[Bad word]! [Bad word]!”

If you leave these things in the sun, they will go a wonky color and get brittle. I don’t leave them in the sun – having learned that lesson – but over time they still go a wonky color and get brittle. I knew this one was, but…

…I didn’t know it was quite that brittle. Well, it died an honorable death.

So this latest freeze caught me with my pants down. My Plan B utility water stocks were not what they needed to be. Next time I go to town I’m going to stop at the local auto parts store: They used to sell square 5-gallon jugs, and I’ll bet they still do.

—-
*No, seriously there are people on the internet arguing about Melania’s hat right now. Apparently it’s a very serious matter.

That is officially the coldest recorded temperature outside the Secret Lair since 2019. Naturally on the morning I had to leave early to do something I don’t often do: Drive Neighbor L’s Jeep right through town.

For the third time, her fancy pickup truck needed to be flatbedded to the Dodge dealership in the big town about 50 miles away, which in this case meant she needed to meet the driver in the little town nearest where we live and was going to need a ride back. Also she wasn’t 100% confident the truck would get her to town without trouble so she also needed somebody watching her six. No problem, really: I don’t drive on pavement because I haven’t had a DL for over 20 years. Doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten how, but it has gotten so rare that I’m not really comfortable doing it.

Tobie cooperated with a much shorter than standard morning walkie once he realized how frickin’ cold it was outside: He has a full winter coat but when his tender toesies hit the ice he just about vetoed the whole idea. Bending to necessity he did his chores immediately and we got the hell back indoors but I still had to stuff myself into both Jeeps bundled up to the max. It’s after 10 ayem now and the sun has been up for two hours in a cloudless sky and it’s still not 20 degrees out.

Water system’s holding pressure and the woodstove has the cabin’s inside nice and toasty, though. So now I’m kicking back, thinking about those five frigid winters in the Interim Lair, and counting my blessings.

Last time I did that was in 2020, and I did it again today for the same reason. I can’t take this prosthesis any more.

I’ve only had it five years but it fits so badly I’m basically confined to the house for not being able to walk with it. Two weeks ago I bought a cane. It’s enough to drive me to … well, go out and get another one.

Having come back from the local clinic with a promise from the doctor that he’d send an order to the prosthetist I’m pretty much stuck with, I came home and tried to make an appointment. Only to find the office is closed, presumably for the same reason the post office was. Stupid holidays…

And why does she seem so worried?

For the record Biden left office and didn’t give me a pardon either. But I never gave him any money so my sense of betrayal is limited.

Okay, so my current carry pistol came with a Swampfox red dot…

It’s one of the less expensive brands and it worked adequately. It stopped holding zero but that wasn’t the optic’s fault. Slamming back and forth destroyed the adapter plate’s cheap plastic zeroing lugs and an optic hand carved from solid platinum and personally blessed by GOD wouldn’t have held zero. My new adapter plate machined from an actual metallic substance will probably permanently fix that problem. BUT – over time the Swampfox did the same thing the Vortex Venom I put on the M69 did: the reflection (refraction? Don’t know) of the laser against the glass gradually became indistinct and fuzzy. It was okay in most light conditions but it was very fuzzy against a dark background and aiming up a hill toward the sun it wasn’t usable at all.

I wanted to try a closed-emitter optic, and bought a Holosun that, despite the manual’s promises, didn’t fit. So I sent that back and moped. That was also when I noticed the problem with the old adapter plate so it wasn’t a completely useless exercise. Remember that I’m a old hermit: This stuff is after my time and I’m learning as I go here.

Anyway: I got the new plate, learned that it would fit a Trijicon RMR and that they’re well spoken of. They’re stupid expensive, but I really wanted this to work. So…I girded my financial loins and did something ridiculous…

How’s that for presentation? Makes you think you’re getting something for your money, no? But when I opened the case, hopefully with an air of proper respect…

Well, that’s disappointing. You could at least put it on a little throne or something. Or display it upright? I wasn’t even sure it was a complete unit.

Turns out it was…

Took it out with a screwdriver to zero it. First shot at seven yards just to get it on paper, and…

Okay, that was encouraging. Turned out it didn’t need any tweaking at all.

So that seems to have worked. Let’s see if it wears any better than my other two much cheaper optics.

I went to town this morning with Neighbor L to get propane. Everything was fine when I left but when I got back I saw water running across the yard in front of the Lair. “[bad word]! [bad word]! [bad word]!” The most likely source of the break was right where I needed to go anyway to shut off the water…

…and happily I could stop the flow with my new-last-spring shut-off valve. Even more happily…

…once I cut away the insulation the break wasn’t hard to find. I had to dig anyway, because the surest way of keeping this from happening again was to cut off the upright underground and cap it. Which I was able to easily do…

I might never have the right gas fitting on hand but if it’s a 1/2″ white PVC fitting, I’ve got it. In multiples. So I think I set a record this afternoon for time spent repairing a plumbing leak.

But it wouldn’t have happened in the first place if I’d obeyed the angel on my shoulder this past Spring and installed one of those expensive freeze-“proof” hydrants instead of another PVC upright. I’m not as broke now as I was this time last year, so in Spring I’ll fix this right. In the meantime that upright isn’t of any use anyway – except in case of a hard-to-fix leak under the cabin where having a yard spigot is handy.

D has nearly spent as much time traveling by air in the past year as I did back in my globetrotting period. All by getting rushed to hospitals in the Big City.

His hip infection got bad again, and the hospital in the big town about 50 miles away wanted no part of him. So into the plane he went. Is this common? I’m kind of confused about it.

I got a phone call from Neighbor L this afternoon, saying that he was going to be in the City for a couple of weeks while they try to get it under control. We’ve heard that before. I genuinely don’t understand what’s going on with his condition. He can’t walk at all for constant pain, which has only gotten worse in the past months but nobody seems to know why. It has become a serious financial problem for this elder couple who thought they had plenty of money for a comfortable retirement when they moved out here and built their dream house in the desert together going on 20 years ago. He fell off his horse nearly fifteen months ago and it’s ruining both their lives.

I love this guy. He was one of the two capable men I met when I first moved here, always around when there were building projects to be done and he taught me a lot. He was there for my two Lair framing projects, always ready to help. I built the kitchen part of the Lair in his woodshop under his instruction. When I had my kidney stone emergency that left me practically writhing on the ground in pain he dropped what he was doing and (literally at one point) carried me to the local clinic. He’s like a foot taller than me, was far stronger than I ever was, and I was honored on the few occasions when he asked me to pitch in on some aspect of his big building project. To see him reduced to this is kind of painful. He deserves better.

Last post I mentioned the freakishly mild December just past, which was of course the cue for the forecast (and weather) to abruptly change to seasonal…

…which, while not surprising, is also not an improvement and I should have just quietly enjoyed what I had without bringing it up.

Today had to be bread day, and I knew that the moment I started the sky would close right up. The view from the porch…

…was not what the forecast called for – in fact we were supposed to have an inch of snow by now. Just because the overcast didn’t show up on time didn’t mean it wasn’t coming and I need full sun to run my oven. Unless I cheat…

…by taking the generator out of the cabin and into the powershed to substitute for the solar panels in charging the batteries. Which I’m increasingly prone to do in case of any doubt: The batteries turned five years old last August and, though still working fine for the depth of winter, are on borrowed time and I’d rather spend an hour’s worth of gasoline than abuse them.

I feel like I really ought to do something more permanent-looking, less obviously improvised, than just parking the Honda in the doorway but hey, it works.

At first it seemed like the right call…

…but then later the sky mostly cleared again so I could have gotten away with not bothering with the generator. What I should have done was heat up the cabin before letting the dough rise, because…

…this is what happens whenever I don’t get a good rise before baking the bread. And the only reason I can think of for why it didn’t rise well is that I didn’t bother lighting the woodstove and heating up the cabin first. It’s not the yeast, which is new and proved good before I made the dough. I should remember that next time: Heat up the room, then make the dough.

I had to go to D&L’s this afternoon to unload yet another ton of wood pellets, the third of the season so far. Tobie and I got in the Jeep and I was literally reaching for the start button when the phone rang.

Texts aren’t uncommon; phone calls almost always mean some immediate issue/emergency so I fumbled for the phone, tried to remember how to answer it, and learned that Neighbor L wanted to make sure that I brought my portable tire inflator. Which is always in the Jeep, so no extra effort needed.

Now, last time I helped unload and stack their wood pellets I noticed that I was having a very hard time hauling the little metal wagon back and forth. I attributed this to getting old and decrepit, it never occurred to me to wonder about the state of the wagon. But L had recently used the same wagon to pull a bunch of (very light) garbage bags to the barrels at the far side of the driveway and she had the same observation. Apparently being smarter than me, this caused her to wonder about the air pressure in the wagon’s tires – all of which were just barely inflated enough to avoid appearing actively flat when unloaded. So we spent a very few minutes filling all four tires from an indicated 0 psi, and the wagon suddenly rolled a great deal more easily. Technology: Is there no problem it can’t solve?

Speaking of heaters…

I have a hard time understanding why D&L are going through so many wood pellets this winter because so far it has been ridiculously mild. Seriously, all through December I think we had one 3-day stretch where the afternoons only went into the forties. Some nights wander vaguely into the high teens. It hasn’t snowed since early November. I have lit my woodstove exactly twice, briefly, so far all season.

I gaze fearfully about and emphasize loudly that I AM NOT COMPLAINING ABOUT THIS.

It will certainly change for the colder at some point. Probably with a great dramatic flourish. But the forecast so far only predicts more of the same. It’s kind of eerie.

Okay, so after a fairly rocky start that took a lot of breaking-in to get my Arex reliable with all sorts of ammo, the pistol and I have become friends. Except for one thing…

If, like me, you’re a boomer who hasn’t really kept up with changing trends in commercial firearms, you may be aware that micro red dot optics are now a thing you can put on the slide of a Browning-action handgun but not really up on the … details. And since these things cost the world the details can stress you out. Remember VHS vs. Betamax? Yeah, it’s like that.

One of the selling points of the second-gen Arex Delta is that it comes from the factory with an optic cut, which I imagine one day every handgun will have unless it’s sold as retro, if they don’t already. But the problem is that the optic manufacturers haven’t come to any agreement as to what the optic footprint will be: The size and bolt pattern and such are all over the place. So my Arex came equipped with five adapter plates to presumably cover all the likely bases.

Okay, I guess. I wasn’t crazy about needing to put a plate between the optic and the slide, but there it is. Come back in ten years and maybe all this will have been sorted out. But what really made me unhappy was the quality of these plates: You’d expect something other than cheap plastic. And the one I used, which has seen something over a thousand rounds now, wasn’t up to the task.

Happily, for every commercial problem a commercial solution will appear. And there’s a company called Calculated Kinetics which sells a machined plate specifically made to replace this particular plastic one, presumably because my Arex problem is not unique.

It was expensive, like $60 delivered. But I was really happy with how johnny-on-the-spot they were with delivery, and having now installed it I can testify that it precisely fits the pistol and the optic and is likely to be a whole lot more durable.

Buoyed by my recent success with roast meat, I decided to do something truly decadent…

Other than hamburger – and not a lot of that – I don’t remember the last time I tasted beef. Lots of chicken and pork, but this is literally the first chunk of cow I’ve bought in this century. Turned out to be kind of gristly inside, but whatever…

I didn’t turn it into shoeleather.

Did I have Tobie’s attention?

Yeah, I think I had Tobie’s attention. 🙂

It turned cloudy yesterday afternoon for the first in a long time, so to pull this off I really did have to lug the generator out to the powershed so as not to kill the batteries. Worth it.

I went to town yesterday, not expecting anything at the post office. But there were two separate packages!

This is a Michael Malice book I’ve wanted for several years but wouldn’t buy for myself because the chances of my working all the way through it were slim and when it first came out I didn’t have money for luxuries like that. It’s mostly a series of lectures, pamphlets and the like from late 19^th and early 20^th century anarchists, explaining their reasoning for what turned out to be very wrongheaded ideas. I’ve always been interested in the anarchists of that era because in my heart I’m an anarchist but in my head I’m anything but: My idea of the ideal society would have no overarching government at all but unfortunately it would have to be populated by ideal people and I haven’t met many of those. It’s not exactly a new observation – James Madison famously said, “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary.” Since he didn’t know any angels, he was largely responsible for arranging the Constitution that the current government busies itself pissing all over.

But the fin de siècle anarchists lived in a sort of intellectual bubble in which they thought that if you could remove the shackles of traditional government from them, people everywhere would just naturally sort themselves into a sort of benevolent mutual-aid society. Curiously, virtually all of them seem to have assumed that that society would be communist – and that communism would be a good thing. They at least had the excuse that communism hadn’t ever been tried at that point on any scale bigger than a voluntary commune, and some of them lived long enough to get their errors smeared on their faces: Michael Malice likes to tell the story of how Emma Goldman, “Red Emma,” happily took a trip to newly-Bolshevik Russia for meetings with Lenin, came away horribly disabused of her naive assumptions, and then got called a traitor by British commies when she tried to tell the story of what she’d seen in the first actual communist state.

Anyway, that book has languished for years on my Amazon wish list and I probably never would have gotten around to buying it, But Big Brother saw it there and got it for me! Thanks, BB!

Also…

These are two water conditioners that a Generous Reader sent me, in hope that one of them might help me with the rather extreme calcium build-ups I get from the very hard well water. It will be a while before one of them gets installed, like not till Spring, but I know I’ll do it because I want to retrofit a ball valve in the line between the well and the tank anyway so it won’t take a special project. It’s supposed to cause the dissolved calcium in the water to “remain in aragonite talc form, passing through unnoticed.” I’m looking forward to seeing if it really works. Won’t do any harm even if it doesn’t, though it will probably serve to confuse the next generation of people to work on that water line. 🙂

Thanks, guys!