Oh, My Aching... Pt. 2

I have now acquired nearly everything I need for the foundation of Joel's Secret Lair, Final Edition. Yes I know it's taking a long time. In previous posts I may have given the impression that I am merely a lazy, feckless so-and-so. This is not true. I am most sincerely a lazy, feckless so-and-so.

Right at the moment I am a lazy, feckless so-and-so with a really sore back and knees, and that's before I've mixed a single bit of concrete.

Twenty. Eighty. Pound. Bags. I'm too old for this.

AtH The Assassin

Saturday morning I welcomed my daughter and Ari the Husband to my little patch of paradise. This was indeed a joyful visit, as I haven't seen either of them since their wedding over two years ago. Daughter hasn't changed a bit; she's still the same sassy, self-motivated little $#@! that used to drive her mother and me (especially her mother) crazy when she was a little girl. Gad, I love her.

Anyway, AtH decided that while he was in The Great Outdoors, he wanted to fulfill a previously-unsuspected lifelong ambition of coldbloodedly murdering a cute fuzzy little bunny. I represented all the world's voices of moderation and sensitivity by lending him a rifle and showing him where he was most likely to flush rabbits. Saturday the weather was not really conducive to rabbit flushing, but he persisted and on his third outing he did indeed come back with a cruelly-slaughtered innocent.

At this point I have to give a serious shout-out to my one-and-only son-in-law, AtH. A city boy, raised by stereotypical Southern California upper-middle-class liberals, I expected that if he actually succeeded in shooting a rabbit the "yuck factor" would end the experiment right there. Instead he borrowed a book on game butchering and a couple of sharp knives and proceeded to skin, clean, butcher and cook little Thumper as if he'd been doing it all his life.

Tasted pretty damned good, too. Way to go, AtH!

Of course if I really liked him, I'd have warned him that not all rabbits are quite so easily taken...

I'm a HERMIT, ok?

Actually got an email this morning, asking if I was still alive. Er...if I wasn't alive, I wouldn't be able to send a reply attesting to my death. Right?

It has been a crazy, crazy week. One of The Stakeholders was here at the beginning of last week, and stayed a couple of days. Very cool - hadn't seen him in quite a while. Then my daughter and Ari the Husband came for a three-day stay. Very, very cool - haven't seen my daughter in over two years. Waved them on their way this morning - just a few minutes ago, in fact - and now must get things ready because my friend The Stakeholder is coming back here this afternoon with a whole bunch of things that need doing, all of which involve heavy objects.

All much beloved people, all a delight to see, not complaining in the slightest. Don't get me wrong.

I'm exhausted. I'm frazzled. This is more people than I've seen in months, let alone entertained as guests. As soon as daughter and AtH's car disappeared over the rise, even the dogs collapsed in a collective, rather relieved heap.

I have stories to tell: Got the materials for The Secret Lair's foundation, AtH killed/butchered/cooked and shared his very first rabbit, more on the mystery rocks. But I just don't have time right now. I'm behind on my chores and The Stakeholder is due in a few hours. Also, a third of a rabbit is not a complete breakfast and I'm starving.

More later. Possibly a couple of days later. But yes, I'm alive.

Oh, My Aching...

Yeah, I hauled out my ALICE pack like an idiot and headed back for the plateau. Figured I'd cheat and take the Jeep over the ridge and far enough in that I could get around the worst of the little canyon between me and that impressive pile of rocks. The boys were delighted, neither knowing nor caring that Uncle Joel was setting himself up for physical trauma. To my delight I actually located the pile of rocks (a worry since everything looks just like everything else and it wouldn't be the first time I couldn't find a particular spot on unfamiliar ground, especially coming at it from a different direction) and then like a complete idiot I took off the pack and filled ... it ... with ... rocks.

And then like a totally self-destructive fool I lifted the pack ("Oh, my god!), slung it on my ("What the hell are you doing to me?") back, adjusted the straps and began to ("Uh! Ow! I'll talk, I'll talk!) walk.

I wish I owned some sort of scale. Probably that sucker didn't weigh a lot more than seventy or eighty pounds. I don't have any trouble schlepping 50-pound dog food sacks, so it was more than that. And I must say that for a mid-fifties, one-legged smoker I could be in worse shape. But it was down to the wash, over the rocks, down into the gorge, up out of the gorge, who the hell put that second gorge there, I don't remember that one, please god let the Jeep be where I think it is for maybe half a mile, with every other step trying to drive my whole body into the socket of my plastic leg. There's a reason I don't carry heavy objects for a living, there really is.

Still, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my back and my wind held out nicely. It's just my legs that found the matter insulting. I went to bed last night wondering what new price I'd be paying in the morning, but seem to have escaped without consequence. No new aches and pains. Even so the pack didn't hold even a major fraction of the rocks that need to be moved. I'm waiting for the rest till I get some younger, stronger assistance.

I'm having some battery-related problems with my camera, so no pics. I'm hoping it's a problem with the battery charger and not with the camera. It's a very nice little camera, a wonderfully generous gift from an old friend, and I've only had it a few months and have treated it gently. Really hoping it's the charger, but I won't know till I get to town for some new batteries. Really, really hoping it's the charger.

Only five more days!

Do you know where your calculator is?

Yowza, what a morning!

Our morning walky turned into a marathon, as it sometimes does. We worked our way through a "which way do you want to go, boys?" course that ended up on one of the peaks of the big ridge. On the far side of the ridge is a huge plateau that covers I dunno how many square miles, so you don't have to go down anywhere near as far as you just climbed up. A friend has been wanting some good examples of a particular kind of rock, often used for decorative purposes, which while not uncommon around here is usually found in tiny weathered shards. I'd promised to keep an eye out for some good examples, so since we were already there we headed out onto the plateau where the terrain looked promising.

To my pleased surprise, within minutes I'd discovered a couple of really fine pocket-sized specimen. I was feeling pretty good about myself, and we were actually on our way back to the ridge when I saw another...and then another...and then a really big one...and I realized we were standing in a field of the stuff! And not just the tiny scraps you find so commonly on the slopes, this was a mother lode! It was beautiful, it was mind-blowing, it was...impossible to carry home. The nearest navigable road was on the other side of an impressive canyon. What...I going...to do?

Oh, my aching plastic leg. I've got some backpacking in my future. Well, I can always use the exercise.

I also got an email from my daughter, with some excellent news. I've been trying to get her and Ari the Husband to come visit me for two years, but scheduling conflicts always interfere. It seems they've found themselves with some freed-up mutual time during a period when they're not completely broke, so they're coming to visit! Superior! I'm very excited.

Progress!

At long last, after many fits and many starts, the workshop/scriptorium furnace is complete and ready to be piped up for propane.

This propane furnace, slightly overspeced (100,000 BTUs to heat a space of maybe 400 sq. feet) was one of those really expensive freebies you encounter from time to time. The furnace, we got free. The custom ducting and plumbing, the cutting and trying to get it to fit in its place, the pricey special tools I'll never use again, the pain and anguish of trying to figure the whole thing out, the tumult, the trials, the travail... Oh, what the hell. The damned thing's done. Now I move on to the next step, tearing out some perfectly good wallboard so that I can plumb for the free water heater that sits next to the expensive free heater. (The propane guy said to me, "Uh...Why'd you sheetrock the walls if you were going to put in plumbing?" Because, okay? Just because.)

Also, I heard from the lady with the puppies this morning. We're down to two candidates, both from the Akita dad. Yes, I'm going with a male so folks! Please stop emailing me about how wrong I am, okay? Of course I'm wrong! It's a momentous decision and I always get those wrong! D'ye think I became a desert hermit because my previous life was so placid and wonderfully well-ordered? Geez, give me a...

*ahem* Excuse me. I'm okay now. Yeah...no, really, I'm all right. Put down the net.

Heh - seriously, I don't think I've ever gotten so many comments on one post, both here, in email and in person, unanimously telling me how wrong I was to specify a male dog. The hubris I'm showing in ignoring all these messages will almost certainly carry a heavy price. But anyway, as I said we're down to two candidates, either a black one or a (GORGEOUS!) brown-and-black one. I wrote back that my preference was based on temperament; if one is markedly calmer, I want that one.

One more month, and we'll hear the pitter-patter of little paws in the gulch!

The Free And The Unashamed

With a hat tip to Wendy McElroy's blog, this:

= A Declaration of Separation =

==== To The Governments & People of Earth: ====
We claim the right to exist, and we will defend it. We do not seek to overthrow anything. We do not seek to control anything. We merely wish to be left alone. All we ever wanted was to live in peace with our friends and neighbors. For a long, long time we bore insults to our liberty; we took blows, we did what we could to avoid injury and we worked through the system to get the offenses to stop. That has now changed.We no longer see any benefit in working through the world’s systems. At some point, working within a system becomes cowardly and immoral; for us, that point has arrived. Regardless of the parties in power, their governments have continued to restrict, restrain and punish us. We hereby reject them all. We hereby withdraw from them all. We hold the ruling states of this world and all that appertains to them to be self-serving and opposed to humanity. We now withdraw our obedience and reclaim the right to strike back when struck. We will not initiate force, but we do reserve the right to answer it. We did not choose this – it was forced upon us.

It goes on at substantial length; I read it all, which in itself is unusual because there are many such things floating around the tubz and I almost always hit some philosophical roadblock or the writer just exceeds my boredom threshold. But I did read this one through, and then again more carefully, and can't honestly say I found anything much to quibble with...except.

Except, well, what's the point exactly? I don't do manifestos. I really don't know what they're for. If an established group were seceding from a larger group, then a statement ala the Declaration of Independence makes sense. But an anonymous declaration, in the name of an amorphous "we" - I'm not sure I get it.

Still, as I said, I found little in the actual content with which to quibble. You might want to give it a read. Some people I know to be good folks are commenting.

Nuke the Fence, Boys!

Magnus has busted out of Gitmo before. Given time, he could dig a trench and wriggle his enormous bulk under the fence; we knew that when we built it. After eighteen months or so, piles of rocks and other heavy objects here and there along the fenceline attest to his various Steve McQueen impersonations. But the motivation had to be pretty strong. Even when he escaped he generally just found a tree to snooze under, and Fritz and Ghost stayed inside.

It used to be that a sojourn of a few hours or even most of a day in Gitmo was no big deal: It's big, it has sun and shade and food and water and is always preceded by a Snacky, and they were used to it because it happened fairly often. Leave the boys alone for a day, whether you're there or not, and mostly they just lay down and take a long nap anyway. The presence of a fence is irrelevant to the location of a nap, right? But lately Gitmo hasn't been working so well, I think just because it has become so rare that any stay there is a big deal, and so unacceptable.

Yesterday evening Magnus didn't defeat the fence; he nuked the sucker.

I had an overnight houseguest, and we decided to go into town and have dinner at a restaurant there. We visited some neighbors on the way out, so altogether we were gone for maybe a bit less than three hours. When we got back to the property, all three dogs were outside the fence waiting. They seemed very pleased with themselves.

Considering the extent of the property damage they caused, and since lacking opposible thumbs they couldn't have used tools to cause it, I suppose by their standards they had reason to be proud.

*sigh* Excuse me - I have to go haul some really big rocks now.

A Public Service Message

Remember, Folks! Only nine filing days till the deadline!



This has been a public service message from TotallyLegalInEverySingleConceivableWayDesertHermits, Ltd. Our motto: "Please don't kill our dogs, it's in the mail! Honest!"

Our Moment of Cultural Linkage

:-) If you call this culture!



I got some photos from my daughter; seems she threw a Firefly-themed party for Ari the Husband.

No, I don't know if the spelling is deliberate. I hope so, secretly doubt it, and don't plan to ask.

What about ending the heartbreak of psoriasis?

Has Our Divinely Anointed Maximum Leader found the great issue that will at last separate him from accusations that his administration is only a clone of his fallen predecessor's?

If so, is Our Divinely Anointed Maximum Leader a self-deluded megalomaniac, or only a closet idiot? Say what you will about his stated and reputed policy positions, he never came across as an idiot before. But now...

Obama to call for nuclear-free world

PRAGUE (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will call for the elimination of all nuclear weapons across the globe, in remarks on Sunday he hopes will lend credibility to his message in atomic disputes with Iran and North Korea.

Visiting Prague during an eight-day visit to Europe, Obama plans to deliver what his aides have billed as a major speech on weapons proliferation.
...
Obama, a former U.S. senator who succeeded President George W. Bush in January, has long shown interest in the issue of halting weapons proliferation and wants to make it a signature foreign policy issue for his new administration.

"The president has been very focused on these issues of proliferation for many years," White House Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough told reporters.

"Tomorrow, I think you'll hear the president, in a very comprehensive way, outline many of the things that he's been talking about and working on for some time," McDonough said.
...
George Perkovich, a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank in Washington, said that unlike issues such as the economic downturn and the Iraq war, the proliferation agenda is not an issue he inherited from the Bush administration but one he is actively promoting.

"This is one of the few things that is not part of his inheritance," Perkovich said.

The main talking point Obama's sock puppets stress in this Reuters story isn't the joys and blessings of world peace, but how This Isn't Something Bush Was Doing. They state firmly that this has always been a major Obama concern, far more important to him than the U.S. economy and the name of the new White House Puppy. Strange that I don't recall him ever once mentioning it during the entire course of the long, long, endless, exhausting and also very long campaign. 'Course, I wasn't paying that much attention to what he said so he may have snuck it in here and there.

But like Bush's late-term and almost psychotically futile claims of imminent Israeli/Palestinian peace under his leadership, it seems strange that Our Divinely Anointed Maximum Leader would actually choose or be persuaded to expend substantial political capital on something that is so transparently never going to happen. Why not promise to do something believable, like end all crime? To cure all disease and AR rifle system jamming problems forever? To make it rain Skittles and unicorns? Is he this desperate already? Is his administration really this empty?

One of these days, Alice...

Pow! Zoom! To the moon, Alice!

In between strange weather phenomena, I'd finally completed the layout for the concrete piers to be poured under Joel's Secret Lair, Final Edition. Got the batter boards up and level (and you'd laugh if you saw how uneven their heights had to be, to achieve "level" on the long sides of the site.) Got strings pulled for the borders and center pier locations. Good work, thought I.

Yeah. Should have marked those locations with something more substantial than the intersections of jute string. I know my companions' ways. Totally my fault.

So this morning I get up, dress, eat, start looking for my favorite gloves. My $17.95 doeskin-palm work gloves that I couldn't afford but just had to have. My very best gloves. The one pair of gloves I absolutely should never have forgotten at the build site just before last night's windstorm/thunderstorm/snowstorm. Gah!

Suddenly an early walky seemed like just the thing to do, before all that snow melted. Off we went, to the delight of the boys who would have been terribly disappointed in me if I'd waited till the temperature climbed as I usually do. They were so delighted, in fact, that they were still frisking and gamboling about when we got to the site, where that clumsy, bumbling, blundering, disaster-area-in-a-fur-coat hippopotamic land-mass of a Fritz thundered right through my so-very-carefully laid-out spiderweb of string as if it wasn't even there, breaking every single...

He didn't even notice, and had no dreaming clue what I was so mad about. Next time I use kevlar trip-wire, though I doubt they sell it at our little town's sad excuse for a hardware store.

Private to my landlady: It was an effort, but for you I let him live.

T, RIP

Beloved Husband & Father...and Friend.
And a nice motherfucker.

Blessings and peace be upon you.

The Story of the Last Lasagna

I've spoken often here of T., my best friend and landlord who passed away almost exactly a year ago. T was, among other exemplary things, a fantastic cook but his cooking had one amusing peculiarity: He Couldn't Cook Small. Everything he made, he made in sufficient quantities to feed an entire cell block. He often said there was a self-explanatory reason for this; don't ask. He may have been joking.

Anyway, some months before his death he catered a family reunion of some of our neighbors, and baked lasagna. T's lasagna was absolutely to die for. It was also all the bad things you've heard lasagna is supposed to be: a heart attack in a pan. Anyway, he made two of these ludicrous lasagnas, and the whole assembly only ate one. Our friends froze the other one, planning to have it later. Then T died. We probably should have thawed it out for the wake, but we didn't and it sat in a freezer for over a year. They brought it out for the anniversary dinner, but freezer burn had set in. They left it with me; it took three days to thaw. I had instructions to feed it to the boys. (Slightly OT: There's a standard joke about the boys. No matter what question you ask them, what they actually hear is "Want some cheese?" The answer is YES.)

Anyway, I heated some up and it wasn't as far gone as all that. But I could only eat about half of mine because I've grown used to a basic and rather bland diet and this stuff is rich. It was delicious but kind of upset my stomach. I'm not sure I could even eat pizza anymore, and I love pizza.

The boys had no such problems. They were in heaven. Now my problem is to keep it away from them to keep them from making themselves sick or fighting over it.

Lasagna: Nature's Most Perfect Food. Especially this lasagna.

Does anyone really care about this?

Look, I open Yahoo to check the weather forecast and this is all the news they show me. Clearly someone thinks it's important. I'm perplexed.
I'm going to assume the answer is yes, people do care. That show has been around for a long time now - or at least it seems so - and people do talk about it like they care.

I've never seen it, and I'm really not trying to go all Edward Abbey self-righteous on peoples' asses here. I just genuinely don't understand. It just seems so dumb. Why do people care about this? Can someone tell me?

Yet Another Walky Post

Well, yesterday's weather was everything advertised and more. Any day in April where you never lower your hood indoors or out, where you have to tack against the wind just to get across your yard, is no day for a lot of outdoor activity.

But overnight the wind blew itself out and the clouds blew away, and the day dawned unbelievably gorgeous. Magnus and Ghost are feeling better, and it was clearly no morning for hanging around the lair. So off we went to the Short Canyon.

Look close and you can still see Ghost favoring that hind leg on the rocks, but it didn't stop him playing canine mountain goat.

C'mon, Uncle Joel! Quit fiddling with the shiny thing and let's go!

The Short Canyon is a pleasant walk; not too hard, not too long, lotsa nice scenery. It's not quite a tame walk, but not something you know you'll have to drag yourself back from.

We got to the water hole, but it was empty; not a big surprise, it only fills with more precip. We haven't had that much snow. Then it can stay full for a week or more.

Fritz found a nice melt hole further on, though. Rock holds a little water better than sand does, duh.

And on the way back, everybody had a party. The pause that refreshes!

First Pics of the Puppies

About a week and a half ago I mentioned that I might be adding a pup to the pack. This morning my friends S&L sent me the first glimpse I've had of the litter. This is a quandary.



The mama is the one they're clustered around in the first picture. If she's a pure Shepherd I'll eat her paws with chili sauce. She looks more like a Shepherd/Doberman mix. The father is an Akita - I'm told. Every web picture I could scrape up of Akita Shepherds shows a mixed bag in regard to appearance, and this litter certainly fits that rule. Two of them look like Aussies.

They want me to pick! What's to pick from? Eeny meeny miny mo? Yike!

UPDATE: Mystery solved! If I'd scrolled down and read the whole email, I'd have known the answer. It seems there's a polyandry going on here; very reverse Mormon. Heather, it seems, Has Two Daddies. One's an Aussie, the other might be American Akita or a mix; he's definitely not Akita Uni. Any of those latter pups would serve; they'll be big and aggressive but not crazy. I think Anonymous is right: Male and calm around noise is the way to go.

Rats in the pantry

I really hate rats. Especially in the food, I hate rats.


The boys, on the other hand. They love rats. Rats are food.

"Sure, Seymour! 'I found this great place for our new nest,' he says. 'Food for a lifetime,' he says. Just one little catch you failed to notice, Seymour. My mother was right about you; I should have married that kangaroo rat near the wash! Then I wouldn't be in this mess!"

Ghost Update

When Ghost ripped off a rear claw last week, it left the inner pulp in place - a sort of bright-red mini-claw that was obviously sensitive as hell. He limped around on three legs, and for possibly the first time in his life he swore off walkies for the duration. Saturday when our neighbors S&L came in he snuck off to visit them as he usually does, but it was clear that mile-long walk through the rocks was hard on him. My other neighbor L, more knowledgeable about animals than I, told me earlier that the pulp would come off in time and he'd feel better, and then the claw would grow back over the next six weeks or so.

Well, yesterday he finally lost the vestige and it did prove an immediate relief. He's now got what looks like a healthy little wound there, and he's mostly back on four legs. This morning he militated for his walky for the first time in a week and was almost back to his old self - though you could really tell when he hit that boo-boo on a rock. So my neighbor's comforting prediction is proving true, and Ghost is getting back to his old self.