Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I got to play with my toys today...

Waiting for the water pump repair guy to come back today, not knowing when or whether he'd actually show up, I locked the boys in Gitmo. I usually only do that on shit-shoveling day, and they were displeased. Then I oiled and fueled up my chainsaw, which I haven't had an excuse to seriously use even though I bought it all the way back last summer.

The location of every dead juniper within easy reach of the Jeep trailer for miles around is, of course, well known to me. Most is on other peoples' property and off-limits, but much isn't. Whatever its other failings, juniper is a sweet-smelling firewood. But I think wood cut on government land smells far sweeter still. Don't you?

Of course I couldn't go far today, because I had to watch out for water pump repair guy. But less than a half hour's work still gave me more than four wheelbarrows' worth of wood already cut to size, and that's more than I can store in the cabin anyway. I need a couple more chains (and to learn how to manually sharpen a chain, yuck) so I've been husbanding the one I have but today was the day to start getting it dull.

I hung around some more, until Landlady got hold of WPRG and he called me, so I was sure he definitely wasn't coming today. Then I did something completely sinful - I loaded my laptop, tobacco and a book into a ruck, left the boys in Gitmo, trailered the wood to the Secret Lair, and unloaded the wood. I started a fire inside, rolled a ciggy, booted up my pooter and read a book for two hours to the tunes of Leonard Cohen and the sweet smell of taxeater cedar burning in my brand-new (really old, cast-off) woodstove.

A wonderful time was had by all. Except the dogs, but I'm now off to make it up to them. 8^)

1 comment:

GunRights4US said...

Taking something - ANYTHING - back from the gubmint is indeed very sweet!