YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN !!!

It was a beautiful morning. One to be appreciated after all the rain and gloom we've had the past couple months. (I think we've used up our annual quota of 60 days of clouds all in one shot!!)

The sun was leaking through the trees to the east and poking at the gaps around the barn doors so I opened them up and stepped out to just stand there and soak up some D.

That's the point where everything went to shit. . .

Instead of being hugged by some rays I was mugged by an electric coop crew clearing right-of-way a half-mile to the south of us.

Then kicked in the nuts by people talking loud in the vicinity of the gate - probably bicyclists trying to recover after a serious uphill grind, (Doesn't matter which way you come from, it's all uphill to our gate which seems to be a popular break-spot)

Taunted by a single-engine plane snarling through the sky above

And if that wasn't enough, had my head drilled by a truck going by on the county road singing that tuneless knobby-tire-whine.

I was ready to march down there, throw all their tools into the chipper and tell the coop-dudes I'm going to take myself off-grid forever.

I had to hang tight to the nearest tree to keep myself from running up to the gate and marching those damn cyclists back to the city where they came from. (OK so they probably came from a B&B in the town of 200 five miles away, but same thing. . .)

If my arms were long enough I would have reached up and snatched that plane right out of the sky and fed it prop-first into the coop wood-chipper.

And I attempted to use some of that wizardry that seems to popular nowadays to put a thrown-rod hex on that truck.









Just when the hell did I turn into the neighborhood curmudgeon???

Though I have to admit, it seems to fit me like a tailored suit.

This Is Not Right!

OK, this may look fine to y'all, but it's not.

There are probably less than a dozen mornings in a year where the barn doors are not opened first thing, then only closed again when it's dark out and we are wrapping things up for the night.

And those days occur in the January-February timeframe, Never in November. And especially not in the first half of November!!

But this morning it was a full 25 degrees colder than the normal low of 50. In fact, for the third day in a row, the high for the day will be less than the normal low.




And even though the barn is not exactly what you would consider weather-tight, with the doors closed it is still considerably warmer than on the other side of them. 52 degrees inside compared to the 25 degrees outside.

Fortunately for us, inside the living quarters which are in a corner of the barn and significantly more weather-tight, we woke up to 64 degrees, and this is without heat which we only run once in a while to take the edge off during the evening, but never while we sleep.



The Van, being a marginally insulated steel box, doesn't fare quite so well, so this is one of the rare occasions when I drag out the neglected power cord

and set up the little space-heater, that frankly sees most of its annual quota of use as a load on the generator during the monthly check-runs.

In these kinds of temperatures it keeps the insides of The Van at 47, warmer than it needs to be but cranked down to the lowest temp and running on the Low setting, that's the lowest I can get it. Still, it sure beats messing around with winterizing! (I designed The Van with both the potable and grey water tanks as well as the pump and what little plumbing there is, including the tank fill and dump lines, to fit inside The Van with nothing hanging out underneath where I can't protect it.)



But look on the bright side!

Having to wear gloves means my old-man hands are covered up, taking years off my age. . .Right??

I'm Prime Stuff !

That's right, I'm a Grade A: USDA Prime: hunk-a beef !

Wait . . . That can't be right.*

*Actually, truth is I am a superb example of a ripped and cut specimen of a man, but you don't know that because I'm really good at disguising it under a fluffy layer of excess calories.

Oh . . . Right . . . What I meant to say is that I'm now an Amazon Prime Member.

For some membership is a coveted accoutrement to be collected like a lothario collects notches on the bedpost. Be it that coveted golf club, or the book club, maybe that not-so-exclusive gentleman's club, (not that I have any firsthand knowledge of gentlemen's clubs! - OK - so there maybe a little knowledge there, but not enough that they know me by name) or even just a seat at the morning McDonald's coffee gathering table, but, being the crotchety old bastard I am, membership is not usually my thing. (Does Sams Club count?)

But for many months now I've been non-member-shamed at Whole Foods.

For years we've been making a trip into the city every week or two and stocking up on produce at Whole Foods and ever since Amazon bought them out the cashier has bugged me for my Prime membership number and I've been forced to admit that I am not one of the elite.

Well no more!  At least for now. . .

I finally broke down and became a Prime Member so now when, after letting that skiny wisp of a spandexed woman with a single carrot in her hand go through ahead of us, we go through the checkout at Whole Foods with our high priced organic-crap-that's-going-to-make-us-live-longer beeping across the scanner and riding the little conveyor down to be stuffed into our socially-responsible reusable bags, I can haughtily hold up my phone and get my membership scanned with a jaunty beep of its own, and then walk away secure in the knowledge that I have claimed my rightful savings.

But the jury is out on whether being a member of such an exclusive club is worth it.

In order to break even on the cost of being a PPM (Proud Prime Member) we will need to realize an average savings of about $2.30 per week at the Whole Foods checkout. I've set up a spreadsheet to track the numbers (and now I have to remember to check the receipt before shredding it because checking after shredding sucks!) and so far it's not looking good, but then again, as a neophyte it could be that I just haven't figured out how to work the system yet and am missing out on some of those Prime Deals.

And throwing the entire fiscal responsibility for my coveted membership onto Whole Foods isn't exactly fair either, after all, there are some 20 additional benefits to being a PPM.

There's the two-day "free" shipping. (Just how the hell is it free if I have to pay to get it? But I suppose calling it "included in the price of membership" just doesn't have the sort of ring that sucks us clueless rubes in as readily as "free" does.) In the past we've always just collected things in our Amazon cart until we made it over the minimum dollar limit for the other, the true, free shipping, then waited patiently for the week-and-a-half to two weeks for stuff to arrive.

That's been good enough for many years now, but it sure was nice the other day to order a low-dollar power-converter for the 12V TV that came out of The Van and have it arrive in a couple days on our Prime membership. I'm not sure how to value that convenience so for now I'll just track what 2-day shipping without membership would have cost, although, now that my account has been activated for Prime, coming up with the non-prime shipping cost is proving to be a challenge.

The other thing I've been threatening to do for a long time now is try out e-reading. With that in mind, and my new Prime Membership in hand, (and desperate to squeeze all the value I can out of my dues) I took a hard look at the various Kindles out there. Fortunately, during my poking around I discovered a free Kindle app for my phone and went that route instead.

It took a while since there is no obvious 'help' button to tell me that instead of touching the universal, but-non-existent-here, app-menu icon I should just tap once anywhere on the screen, but eventually I figured out how to download multiple books at a time and once a book is in the app a data connection is no longer needed which is great. Now, when hiking I won't have to carry a paperback with me, even in signal-less territory, because I always have my phone in my pocket. And it turns out reading on the 2.75 x 5.5 inch screen is a heck of a lot easier than I expected. Between the stark-white background and the screen-optimized font I don't have to take my glasses off and hold the print a few inches from my nose (I'm nearsighted) to read it like I have to do with some paperbacks with non-optimized fonts in faded ink on yellowed paper. (discount books tend to be old books)

In addition, when unexpectedly held up somewhere, such as in the long line at the Post Office the other day, or when The Wife suddenly decides she wants a haircut during one of our supply runs, I have reading material right there in my pocket without having to plan ahead and grab a book before heading out.

Through experimenting I've found that in the dark, like when reading before going to sleep, or in my camp-chair while watching stars and jumping at every monster-like noise out there in the pitch-black woods, I can turn the screen brightness down to about 5%, saving not only battery, but my night-vision too, without compromising the ability to read without straining.  Cool!

Prime Reading, one of those many benefits of Prime Membership, gives me access to a whole bunch of titles I can read for free. Granted, best-sellers are conspicuously absent from this list of titles but then again, I'm not exactly an elitist reader either.

Through what seems like a convoluted process to me at the moment, I can also grab one free book a month off a list of 6 hot titles picked by somebody over at Amazon that are not included in the Prime Reading list.

Since I never buy a book at full price, and almost never at even half price, I'll track my reading savings by valuing each title read at $1, what I normally pay for a paperback.

(by the way, I have no plans to give up paper books and go exclusively e-book, especially since I have nearly 100 unread paperbacks squirreled away on various shelves at the moment.)

Obviously there's a bunch of other"benefits" to Prime membership, such as exclusive Alexa deals, (I'll have enough 'home assistance' when I'm senile and crippled, for now I can manage to turn a light switch on by myself, thank you very much, besides, why the hell would I voluntarily invite yet one more thing that talks into my house?!) Prime Video streaming, (we don't have enough internet or data-plan bandwidth for that) or phone discounts. (so far I've averaged one new phone every 10 years so I don't see that helping out much) All stuff I've lived without so far and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.


So now only time, and my spreadsheet, will tell if being a member of this particular club makes any sense for us.

Memories From The Road: The Witch in My Windshield

Back in October of 1977 I had just bought my brand-new canary-yellow Honda CVCC. Days later, at the checkout of some forgotten store, on a whim (I used to be a fun, whimsical guy. I wonder what happened to him. . .) I picked up a 99 cent Halloween toy,

a gumby-like witch, and hung her from the rear view mirror, turned so she could look down the road in front of us. (Back then rear-view mirrors were stuck to the windshield with a thin metal arm you could hang things from, and back then she had a broom in her right hand that hooked over that metal arm just fine.)

I couldn't bring myself to take her down when Halloween was over because - well who knows - maybe she was looking out for me while dangling there staring down the road with those unblinking eyes.




It wasn't long before the sun destroyed the thin plastic of the broom-handle and it broke off, eliminating her 'hanging point', and I had to prop her on the mirror by making her straddle the arm instead.

When the Honda went to Honda heaven some 200,000 miles later the witch came with me to the new vehicle and she has been doing so ever since, though somewhere along the line she migrated over to The Wife's vehicles.

Nowadays rear-view mirrors have all these fancy gadgets and sensors on them and the wires and such necessary to drive all these fancy gadgets we never knew we needed but apparently can't live without have made the thin metal arm a relic of the past, so, no mater how loose her morals, straddling is no longer an option. Now she's been riding on the dashboard of the last several vehicles instead.

Somewhat faded, a little worse for wear, and a lot grimier, she is still racking up the miles with that same wide-eyed grimace!

The face only a mother, or a once-fun-and-whimsical-guy, could love!

Potable Water Emergency!

Recently Central Texas experienced a 50-year rain event, but because the previous weeks were also unusually rainy the ground was already saturated which resulted in a 100-year flood event. (Bad times for a lot of people but tough to feel too sorry for those that chose to build or purchase million dollar places perched right on the shores of Lake Travis only feet above minor flood stage. . .)



The silt in the flood waters has overwhelmed Austin's water-treatment system, which draws from Lake Travis, the lowest reservoir lake in a chain of lakes along the Colorado River, and the entire city was put on a boil-notice at 0300 Monday morning.

We are perched high above any threat of flood and are way beyond the water system of anybody, let alone Austin, but watching people (on the news) struggling with boiling water or tracking down almost non-existent supplies of bottled water,  potentially for another week to come (the remnants of Hurricane Willa are hitting the area today. If the worst of the rain is to the east of I-35 no big deal, if west of I-35 then additional flooding, and silt, is expected) simply reinforces my belief that every household should have, among a few other "preparedness tools", a gravity feed water purifier on hand. (can't always count on electricity in bad times)

Not a water filter like under your sink which is useless against pathogens, but a full-blown water purifier.

I had to stand way back and use the zoom to avoid getting a
clear reflection of myself in this photo of our stainless steel Berkey purifier.

In our case it's a modest-sized Berkey with two of the black purification elements in it. 

Pour questionable water in the top and draw purified water out of the bottom. Yep, that's all. No pots, no hot burners, no timers, no cooling down, no decanting into containers, just purified water with the flick of a thumb-lever.

Our setup is not fancy, the unit sits out in the barn on a handy shelf near the refrigerator, but it is simple and functional and I use it for all of my drinking water. (The Wife is a little more selective than I am and insists on "real" bottled water if available.) And since water is all I drink, during the summer that can easily run to a couple gallons a day.

It takes several hours, sometimes as many as 12 if I haven't cleaned the filters for a while (in this case a while is usually the better part of a year)  for a gallon of water to work down through the purifiers so I keep an eye on the sight-glass and as soon as it gets down to where the lower tank can take an additional gallon, I dump a jug into the top tank. 

In my case I'm using rainwater collected, rather crudely, in a bucket tucked under a drippy corner of one of our buildings. (I thought it was rather high-tech when The Wife suggested that I set a splatter-guard over the top of the bucket to filter

out the worst of the leaves and stuff!)

I know I could do better, but that would take money and time and this works so why waste resources?!

The bucket is dumped into a 35 gallon tank The Wife used to tow behind the lawn-mower as mobile watering-can back when we had a house on an acre of land in town. (sold the house, kept the tank)

From there I decant water into heavy-duty one-gallon jugs (One gallon is light enough for even this old man to lift up and pour into the Berkey) through a course cloth filter to catch the worst of any algae that might be growing in the tank. The jugs are stored in a dark box until needed which cuts down on any re-growth of algae which can really slow the purification process down.

Once a year or so, when the purification process has slowed to the point of being painful, I remove the black elements from the tank and give them a light scrubbing with a clean green ScotchBright.

The elements aren't cheap but they are rated for up to 3000 gallons each so, in my case, will last for over a decade at an average of one gallon per day. I have about 5 years on them at this point, years during which I have been drinking this water without a single incident of gastro-distress.

Crap! I'm (Michigan) Homeless

It wasn't all that long ago that I wrote a post about the strange place I think thought of as my Michigan home. A place I've never actually lived at but is was still as much home as the house I grew up in.








Now, only months later, Mom has sold that condo and moved herself into an apartment in a nearby independent living facility, leaving me homeless in Michigan. (Sure, my brother and sisters have all offered their driveways -- maybe even willingly -- but that's just not the same. . .)









No longer up for the travel she has been using to break up the long winter months, last winter's icy roads and bitter temperatures left her isolated and lonely in her beloved condo on the lake. That, along with anticipating the day she will give up driving altogether, (us kids are sooo blessed that she is a practical, forward-thinking woman that takes responsibility for herself ) prompted her to make the change.

Now she lives in her own one-bedroom apartment in a place that checks in the mornings to see if she needs anything, (there's a little gizmo on her door that lets security know if it has been opened by 11 AM or so, if not they give her a call.) has beautifully landscaped grounds to stroll, runs an extensive shuttle schedule to local shopping, activities, and churches, and has several activity rooms for games and socializing. (As this is in the area where she has lived since her early 20's, quite a few of her long-time friends live there too)

All the buildings are connected with raised, protected walkways that keep her out of bad weather (if you are familiar with Calgary, think Plus-15) which is good because this place is big, like a dozen 5-story buildings big.

For dinner, which comes with the deal, she has her choice of 4 different sit-down restaurants on the grounds, each with their own chef and menus diverse enough to keep any foodie happy, and, based on Mom-reviews, the food definitely passes muster. For other meals she has a full kitchen in her apartment or there is also a cafeteria style eatery serving a variety of soups, salads, and sandwiches at an unbelievably low price.

It was clearly the right move for her to make. Now that the stress of redistributing or shedding a lifetime's worth of collected stuff is over and the sale of the condo is complete and behind her, she is relaxed and happy and looking forward to a safe, comfortable and active winter, but still. . .

That familiar spot in the driveway next to the condo is now off limits  to The Van. Those concrete steps up to the front door are no longer mine to trod. Never again will I push that door open in the morning to the sounds of Mom getting breakfast ready, or go downstairs to work a puzzle on the big game-table.

And that kind-a sucks!

Ahh The Stupidity, And The Intrusion

I have no idea what idiot wrote the text that went along with this "presidential alert", (Frankly I'm not inclined to trust a president that is obviously more concerned about men being called out on their bad behavior than he is in giving credence to the women that have been impacted by that behavior, to be determining what is and isn't worthy of an emergency notification for me.)  but I do know, this being a governmental project, that several additional people, all government or at least government-adjacent, had to review and sign off on it weeks ago.

Then yesterday (Even though it was in my pocket at the time I don't allow my phone to make any noises and didn't check it until about an hour ago) the message was reviewed and confirmed one more time before being signed off on and sent. (Recent events have proven that sending the wrong message, however well intentioned, can be embarrassing!)

So, given all the checks and reviews, how the hell then did the clowns, who just confiscated our personal property, albeit temporarily, with no probable cause, manage to send a message telling us that we didn't need to take any further action when clearly we did?!

I tried rebooting but nope, that message popped right back up, the lie starring me in the face and preventing me from using my own property.

But I sure as hell didn't trust that "no action required" CONFIRM button. For all I know it could be like the UNSUBSCRIBE button at the end of a spam e-mail that when pressed doesn't actually unsubscribe you at all, but rather announces to the sender that they have managed to hit an active account worthy of more spam.

I really didn't want to participate in potentially adding my phone into some government database as having received their intrusive finger-poke, but it appeared that taking the "non-action" route of pressing CONFIRM was the only way for a non-hacker type to regain ownership of his phone.

I did eventually press their damn button, but only after switching to airplane mode, which  presumably prevented it from sending any data out. It worked, which probably means that there is no such database at all, but, in keeping with my motto of 'trust no one', it could also just be an indication of piss-poor coding.