Adaptive Curmudgeon

Back in the stone age, when Carter and his cardigan held office, OPEC raised the price of oil and Americans got a serious case of “balls in a vice syndrome”. Carter, showing the problem solving abilities of a chipmunk, orated about malaise, turned down the thermostat, and suggested that ethanol subsidies might lead to “energy independence” in some distantly imaginable Utopian future. He subsequently lost his re-election bid in an electoral college stomping that wouldn’t soon be forgotten. Go America!

My family, adapting to reality rather than wishing it away, ignored every word coming out of the President’s pointy head. We acquired one of those newfangled foreign cars that zipped circles around the ponderous battle cruisers churned out by Detroit and installed a wood stove. It was a lesson that stuck with me; don’t bitch, change!

I grew to love that wood stove. It was pretty. It smelled nice. It was cheaper than fuel oil. It was a great place to hang a Christmas stocking. Pond hockey is better if there’s a warm seat in front of a wood stove waiting for you. Etc… Nobody has fond memories of a furnace.

The stove itself was nothing more than a big metal box. It worked but it was crude. Like me! I’m glad we didn’t spend those years sitting on our ass wearing a sweater.

Fast forward several decades. It’s a brave new world. Many changes have been happy or at least bittersweet but generally with an aftertaste of stupid. We didn’t eliminate war, famine, and pestilence but we outlasted disco, the AMC Gremlin, and Tab soda. Russia never dropped the bomb but we bump around in the Middle East a lot. Microbrew beer was legalized but Sudafed is restricted. Plane tickets are cheap but the TSA does things that were once termed sexual assault. See what I mean? Change that is mostly for the better but not exactly intelligent.

Why do I mention this? Because in the time between my families metal box wood stove and the one I purchased, the EPA turned its Eye of Sauron upon wood stoves and created change that is a mixed bag of good and bad with an aftertaste of stupid. Fire, something mastered by Neanderthals, is now complex.

Modern wood stoves house intricate systems of baffles and heat exchanges by law. This isn’t all bad; they’re better at squeezing heat from wood and smoke considerably less. On the other hand who gives a shit? I don’t exactly live in Phoenix. If I don’t mow my lawn it’ll eventually run rampant with Pine and Aspen. Is it really a key value to conserve wood in an environment where it grows en masse? Didn’t the EPA go to great lengths to conserve the one material that literally “grows on trees”? Should I care about conserving something I can acquire in great quantities without spending a single dime? As for smoke, I live in a sparsely populated area. Me and all my neighbors could burn cars like a summer in Paris it wouldn’t add up to much.  Count on the EPA to do things like that. They regulate the toilet tank reservoir for a guy who lives in a swamp, the wood consumption of a guy who owns a forest, and the wattage of bulbs I stick in a chicken coop. Smooth move fellas.

Time for a Curmudgeonly Gem Of Insight:

“My mental model of a wood stove is a metal combustion chamber with a flue. This was once true but the EPA drove a stake through it.”

And…

“Modern woodstoves cost far more than you’d think; in part because they have stuff.  Stuff breaks.”

Something in the stuff went south. The stove started smoking. It started making less heat. The draft wasn’t as efficient. It stunk up the house. In short, it began to suck.

I tried to figure out how to fix it but as far as I could tell, the internal baffles and crap were spot welded in place and I’d need to be a contortionist with a welding kit to do anything about it. In shame and misery, I put on a sweater and ran the furnace.

The furnace heats just enough to make life bearable but not much more. It takes wood to make the house “toasty warm”. I sat in a sweater and froze my ass off. It was just like the early 1970’s all over again.

This went on for several weeks. Finally I called a guy to “fix” my stove. Actually several guys before I could coax one to drive to the hinterlands (billing me every damn mile) and “fix” it.

What happened next was a surprise.

A few days ago I said this:

“We bought ALL the bacon! OK not ALL the bacon but a whole pig. Everyone knows that joy and bacon are basically the same thing, so imagine the stratospheric high of having well over a hundred pounds of pork in the freezer.”

I have since been informed that fictional culinary badass Ron Swanson has had some things to say about “all the bacon” too:

It was -22 degrees out. The driveway was half plowed; passable but just barely. My snowblower was broken.

I needed to load the snowblower on the truck and haul it to the shop. Then buy a freezer, load it in the truck, and bring it back. Then move more snow before the next storm hits.

Mother nature doesn’t like excuses. Life is tough. Etc…

I looked at the thermometer again. -22. Window panes frosted. Gusting winds. Low visibility.

I came to a wise decision.

Cook bacon.

It was delicious.

Then I went back to bed.

The purpose of winter is to:

1. Cull the weak from the herd.
2. Prepare us for Valhalla.
3. Both 1 & 2.

If you answer #3, you’re still wrong. Winter exist to teach us humility and acceptance.

While I was fretting about freezers, a storm blew up and all hell broke loose. Curmudgeon Compound got snowed in. Meanwhile I’ve been battling some sort of cold that’s either a minor hindrance or aliens slowly chewing out of my ribcage. (Either one is plausible and both have the same symptoms.)

Allow me to define “snowed in” with greater detail: Many people think of “snowed in” as a euphemism for “I don’t feel like brushing a dusting of snow off the Prius“. This is why three flakes of snow brings Manhattan to its knees. When I say “snowed in” it means we’re well and truly totally unreachable by wheel based land transport. The only things that could get from my house to civilization would be a snowmobile or a helicopter. Except helicopters can’t fly in whiteouts. Also I don’t own a snowmobile. In short, I was screwed.

I bundled up like Ralphie’s brother and braved the elements. (See video.)

Time for a Curmudgeonly Gem of Insight:

“Two is one and one is none. If you’re working without a net, three is one.”

To my joy and delight, all three of my snow escape devices fired up pronto. In accordance with my “Al Gore can suck it” policy, I let two idle (warming up) while I used the third (a snow blower) to clear a little space in front of the barn. Half an hour into clearing snow I had just about cleared an excellent place to turn my antique tractor around and point toward the driveway. I mentally patted myself on the back and WHAM the snowblower sucked up a rock and ground to a halt.

Man down! (Actually machine down!) I hate it when that happens but life is like that. It’s also why I have three snow moving machines. The blower was toast (at least until I can get some tools and work on it) so I wheeled it into the barn where it could rest after its dutiful service.

The tractor was idling nicely. (Old tractors idle on really small quantities of fuel. It’s one of their good points.) I backed it up, swung the little beast around, dropped the backblade and tore off into the drifts. Immediately I knew there was too much snow for the backblade. Instead of sliding off the end it was gumming up the works and soon I was dragging around a lump of well packed snow the size of a lawn tractor. Nevertheless I trundled all the way to the road , swung wide (dropping a load of snow the size of a lawn tractor in the middle of everything), and careened back toward the house. I looked back at the big heap of snow. Anyone dumb enough to try driving on the unplowed road (and it would be more like “try” than “do”) would crunch into the pile. They would think unkind thoughts about me… possibly while sliding into the ditch.

The transmission had issues but I got turned around to undo my mess. Just as I reached the end of my driveway the county plow roared by and tossed everything (including the  lawn mower sized lump) back on my driveway. There was no way my tractor could get through that. Well played!

Rather than mess with the laws of physics I slapped the tranny into reverse and spun, slid, careened, drifted, and crashed all the way back to the barn. Now I had a 5′ wide path down the driveway with a beartrap at the end. This was progress but certainly not the end to “snowed in”.

The ATV was idling and ready for battle. Formerly I thought of ATV’s as toys. Mine is old and small but far more valuable than I ever expected. I crashed out of the barn and started hammering on snow willy nilly.

An hour later I had a respectable path to the plowed road. There was much more to do but I was beat. I called it a day, thanked my tractor, my ATV, my wounded snowblower, my heavy jacket, and the benevolent forces of the universe that facilitate piston engine power for jobs that are well beyond the ken of a shovel. Then I trudged through the drifts to the back door in greedy anticipation of my woodstove’s heat.

Back inside, Mrs. Curmudgeon asked me if I was ready to drive to town and buy that freezer we wanted. After all, the driveway was clear and the road was recently plowed.

I decided that commercialism plays too big of a role in our lives and it’s better to read a book instead. There’s nothing like several hours of hard labor in the snow to convince you to stay inside.

In the spirit of the recent Thanksgiving holiday I’ll admit that I have first world problems and sometimes I let them annoy me. I should be (and endeavor to) be damn thankful to have ’em. It’s wise to periodically step back and remind myself to shut up and be happy.

One example started several months ago. We bought ALL the bacon! OK not ALL the bacon but a whole pig. Everyone knows that joy and bacon are basically the same thing, so imagine the stratospheric high of having well over a hundred pounds of pork in the freezer. Mrs. Curmudgeon facilitated the purchase and all I had to do was smile; something I’ll continue to do so long as the bacon supply holds steady.

Unfortunately I’m not just a fan of bacon (who isn’t?) I’m also a coffee snob. A paranoid coffee snob. If you think things might get dicey if war in the Middle East blocks oil shipments you have no idea what really matters. Oil may run civilization but coffee is civilization. An interruption of the coffee supply, no matter how minor, would turn me into a walking catastrophe within hours. I am not alone. Coffee matters!

Thus Mrs. Curmudgeon has stockpiled several packages of coffee beans (roasted but not ground). I like to store them in the freezer because that assures a darned long shelf life. (I have experimented with roasting my own beans… a subject for another post.)

When you’ve got a flock of chickens, a shitload of coffee, and lots of bacon you’ve put a backstop on certain parameters of misery. There’s a lot of uncertainty in life; plan for breakfast!

Along with the pork and coffee, we’ve stashed several chickens and a turkey in the freezer. I’d forgotten how many meat birds we’d raised. Quite the happy surprise. There were a few odds and ends and also, inexplicably, we’d stored some vegetables and one battered frozen pizza. Vegetables? Food that comes in cardboard? How’d they get in there?

Then, because I’m awesome (or lucky), I went out and shot a deer. Yay me!

You can see where this is going can’t you?

I had well and truly exceeded our freezer space resource. I had to remove every item, carefully consider it’s size and dimensions, orient it amid the other packages for optimal space utility, and then slip it into it’s tiny allocated area. Often I’d stop, go back, and rearrange everything previous. This would rescue a few precious cubic inches of space into which I’d cram another package of deer grind. I also exploited the freezer that’s part of the kitchen refrigerator. I did the same with my crappy old “beer fridge” in the garage. (Note: all men who are not recovering alcoholics or the Pope should have a spare fridge in the garage and that fridge should be filled with beer. That’s just common sense.)

I had to remove a few packages of coffee and eat the pizza. I nuked some vegetables and ate them too. (Was it squash or what? I can never tell with orange things.) Something in unlabeled Tupperware freaked me out and there was a half pint of Ben and Jerry’s that looked suspiciously antiquated so I fed them to the chickens. I don’t know how old that stuff was but the birds lived. In the end I got the deer (and everything else) properly stored. Whew!

The whole freezer is now a giant meat Tetris.

Unfortunately it’s just too damn full. If I open the freezer it might very well bury me in an avalanche of frozen steak happiness. Therefore I’m going to get an “axillary backup freezer”. It’s kind of a hassle but I’m OK with it. After all, the only thing better than one freezer full of food is two freezers full of food. However, I can’t help but grumble about the hassle and expense.

First world problem: you’ve got so goddamn much food that one freezer won’t hold it all.

The second freezer will be smallish. I want it that way. Not surprisingly, rearranging the main freezer in a logical manner will wind up filling most of the “backup freezer”. If I have a good ice fishing season or choose to hunt another deer I’ll skate close to filling the available space again.

First world problem: you buy a “backup” freezer but you’re so goddamn uptight about acquiring food that you might fill that one too.

Then I started worrying about my wussy little generator. I don’t have as much backup power as I’d like. That’s OK; nobody has everything they want. I had (barely) enough generation capacity to keep the one freezer and one fridge cool (unless the power goes out in winter, in which case it won’t be an issue for months). My beer fridge wasn’t part of my plan but has only things like bottles of beer. Duh! If the power goes out I’m not going to screw around with it. I’ll drink all I can while it’s cold and warmed beer bottles can always be cooled again.

First world problem: In the event of a long term power outage during hot months you have to get drunk fast.

Alas the new freezer exceeds what I can easily keep powered but another (or bigger) generator would cost more than I wish to spend. If the power goes out I’ll just have to cook like there’s no tomorrow.

This reminded me of my next problem, I’d forgotten to refill the BBQ grill’s backup propane tank. There was no avoiding it, another trip to town to refill tanks is part of my future. I grumbled about that a bit too.

Then it dawned on me; first world problem = “shut the hell up”. I reworked my mental view and smiled the rest of the day.

First world problem: In the unlikely event of a long term power outage in a hot season you have to get drunk fast and eat all the steak and BBQ you want for several days in a row.

I still lust for a newer bigger generator but having made my plans for a steak and beer bash in the event of a power outage I can’t bring myself to fear that fate. I think it’s wiser to shut up and leave the complaining for non-first world problems.

Hat tip to MuskegonPundit.

I recently had an unavoidable expense. Shit happens.

Being Adaptive and all you’d think I’d handle it with grace and dignity. Riiiight! I was more like Red Foxx than I’d like to admit.

A good hunter can expertly “field dress” big game in a matter of minutes. Using a sharp knife and a careful eye they’ll remove the entrails leaving a clean carcass which will cool faster, is easier to transport, and is prepared for the eventual butchering process. Years of experience have taught them precisely where to cut for a minimum of hassle. It takes only a few minutes from shooting big game (antelope, deer, elk, moose, mammoth, etc…) to a field dressed carcass jauntily hung from a tree and a hero’s welcome back at camp.

I am exactly unlike like what I’ve described. Once the animal is dead, I turn from cunning predator to a klutzy moron. Apparently I can operate a rifle but shouldn’t be anywhere near a sharp knife?

It’s not like I haven’t done it before. I can and have field dressed plenty of animals. Nor do I screw up the end product. I’ve never ruined the meat. Slow and gruesome but no wasted meat? I guess it’s a success?

Maybe I’m so paranoid about cutting into something I shouldn’t that I wind up spending twice as long as most hunters? Whatever the reason, I struggle every damn time! I move in fractions of inches. I noodle around with a knife here and there; pondering connective tissues, fat pockets, and oh dear God what the hell is that thing? (Trust me on this. You’ll see some scary shit poking around inside an animal!) It takes me forever. Other hunters seem to go at it easily; “snip snip we’re done”. I go on a horrific voyage of discovery. My back aches, my knee freezes to the snowy ground, I work up a sweat, my hat falls off, I lose a glove, it’s pathetic. I wind up arm deep in a steamy disgusting smelly chest cavity wondering how in the hell people make it sound so easy.

Eventually I finish and look around. The horror scene I’ve created is epic. There is blood everywhere. On my boots, on my knees, on the tree next to me, in a pile of leaves five feet away. It’s pretty much everywhere within a surprisingly large radius.

That’s just the start of it. I probably scratched my nose and now it’s all over my face. Plus how did I get slime on my eyebrow? Oh hell no! Once I gut a deer I can think of nothing else until I get a hot shower and become human again.

I’ll drag the carcass out of the forest mumbling that I should take up a hobby that doesn’t involve entrails. At least twice I’ll trip over a log while pulling the heavy load and face plant. This aids the transition from bloody and sweaty to bloody, covered with leaves, and iced up with wet snow. I suck!

I emerge from the forest looking like that guy from a horror movie.

It happens every time!

——————————————–

This year was even worse than usual. I trudged in from the forest only to realize that I’d worn (and therefore ruined) a perfectly decent pair of jeans. They looked like I’d slaughtered a dozen moose and tossed them in a wood chipper while dancing around in circles. I was the guy that gives PETA nightmares. Why hadn’t I worn a crappy pair of pants that was already stained from painting or working on engines? Idiot!

After I got the deer in the bed of the truck I paused at the truck’s door. If I sat in my beloved truck dressed in this mess I’d ruin my interior. I don’t mind dirt and stuff in a truck… but organs? No way!

I was halfway hypothermic but my truck deserves better. I stood in the snow and stripped off anything that was gruesome or soaked in something I couldn’t readily identify as snow melt. Within seconds I was down to a pair of heavy socks, long underwear, and a t-shirt. I threw everything else in the truck bed. Good for me.  I’d done my very best to preserve my vehicle!

Then, because I’m an idiot, I climbed up in the bed, past the deer, and made my way to the pile of nasty clothes. Two minutes rooting around for the truck keys I’d left in the pocket were the longest two minutes of my life. No vehicles rumbled down the dirt road while I was performing this maneuverer. We should all be happy that humanity was spared my potential moment of indignity. During my adventure in the truck bed, the thermal underwear somehow brushed against something and… screw it, they were tossed in the truck bed too. The socks were more ice than insulation so I tossed them too.

It took a long time until the heater was doing it’s thing but once the blessed heat came on everything looked a lot more reasonable. I wondered what would happen if I got picked up for speeding. Is driving while smelly, shivering, naked, and stupid looking a crime? I drove carefully.

———————————–

But I’m not here to talk about my failings. I’m here to endorse a product that rectifies some of the chaos.

I got home after an uneventful drive and tiptoed to the laundry room with jeans that were not quite frozen and more or less trashed. (Thankfully Mrs. Curmudgeon wasn’t there.)

Here were perfectly decent jeans that now could never be worn anywhere but around the homestead. (Or possibly Wall-Mart… those folks will wear anything.) Mrs. Curmudgeon, presumably because she’s a genius, had left something above the washing machine. What voodoo was this?

If you look like a crime scene. This will fix your clothes!

I’m not sure what’s in this stuff but I sprayed it all over my jeans and washed them with regular detergent too. Then, because I simply assumed they were a disaster, I threw in more detergent and ran the washer again.

End result? Good as new!

I have no idea what amazing chemical miracle is in that bottle but I heartily endorse it. You should get a bottle right now! You won’t be sorry. It’s perfect for clueless hunters who wind up covered in far too much blood. Or perhaps serial killers; I wouldn’t know about that.

A.C.

P.S. I get no money from the sale of this product. I don’t give a crap whether you buy it or not. For that matter, I’m not even sure a detergent company would want an endorsement from someone who looks like a walking crime scene.

Today I decided to post one of Normal Rockwell’s less famous Thanksgiving images. “Refugee Thanksgiving” was released in 1943; around the middle of World War II.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

Ring. Ring.

Me: “Curmudgeon speaking.  If you’re a telemarketer prepare to die.”

Friend: “I tried to call you earlier.  What’s wrong with your cell?”

Me: “I was broke but I fixed it.”

Friend: “Fixed?”

Me: “I hit it with a screwdriver.  It seems to be working again.”

Friend: “Have you noticed that it’s rather quiet lately?”

Me: “Yeah I have.  I’ve had a lot less calls coming in lately.  It’s been nice but I…”

I paused.  The infernal cell phone had been extremely quiet and, moron that I am, I’d missed the obvious.  I flipped it open.  Dead…

Friend: “Have you figured out something?”

Me: “Dammit.  The POS isn’t working!”

Friend: “It’s time for a replacement.  How long have you had that phone?”

Me: “I dunno.  Maybe twelve, thirteen years.  It’s one of the last non-GPS phones.  Got it for free.  I’m gonna’ miss it.”

Friend: “Do we need a wake like when your station wagon died?”

Me: “That’s not funny.  The station wagon was a good car.”

Friend: “I thought you were going to Wal-Mart to buy a replacement.”

Me: “I tried.  But…”

Friend: “But what?”

Me: “It was Wal-Mart.  So much stupid.  It burns.”

Friend: “Sixty different phones and they didn’t have what you want?”

Me: “I’m particular.  Plus I wanted pre-pay.  They mostly deal in gadgets that are merely the physical point of contact for a cloud based payment plan.”

Friend: “Did you use that terminology at the store?”

Me:  “Are you kidding?  I might as well explain physics to my cat.  However, I may have mentioned that I wouldn’t take on a monthly payment for something a silly as a phone if a supermodel begged me so I sure as hell wouldn’t do it for the turd in a shirt working the electronics counter.”

Friend: “This is why you should stay in the woods.  But why fight it?  There are people at Wal-Mart who’d use a payment plan for a candy bar.”

Me: “I didn’t fit in.  So I left.  Give me twenty minutes to solve this.  The Internet will provide.”

———————-

(Twenty minutes later.)  Ring. Ring.

Me (exhausted and mentally drained): “Hello.  If you’re a telemarketer…  Oh hell I’ll buy it.”

Friend: “So did you order a phone?”

Me: “I’m so embarrassed.”

Friend: “What did you do!”

Me: “I ordered a smart phone.”

Friend: “Bwa ha ha ha ha!”

Me: “Now I’m going to have to buy hipster glasses and start eating gluten free bread.”

Friend: “Throughout history there have been turning points; the battle of Thermopylae, the fall of Rome, the siege of Stalingrad…”

Me: “Aaack…”

Friend: “The battle is over and now you have a smart phone.”

Me: “There were so many choices.  I…”

Friend: “I suppose you got Obama to pay for it?”

Me: “Hey now!  Line.  Cross.  Don’t.”

Friend: “OK I take the last part back.  How much did you pay?”

Me: (Choking up…) “Almost a hundred bucks…”

Friend: “That’s nothing.  Don’t you drop that much on a tank of fuel for your truck?”

Me: “Yeah, but the truck does work.”

Friend: “A hundred bucks… for a lot of people that’s a monthly phone bill.  Be glad you don’t have to foot the bill for a teenage daughter.”

Me: “I am thankful for that every day.”

Friend: “I’m just glad you’re not on the roof doing semaphore.”

Me: “Semaphore has its points.  I even considered HAM radio.  But…”

Friend: “…but resistance is futile!”

Me: “I agree.  Now I’m in the market for a Faraday cage phone case.”

Friend: “The NSA is not going to like that.”

Me: “I sure liked it more when spying on citizens was just a theory.”

Friend: “Get with the program; load up Facebook, keep the GPS on, Twitter hourly….”

Me: “I miss my old phone.”

Friend: “…take lots of shitty blurry pictures and post them.  Start creating a running log of your every moment so that it’s all stored on the NSA’s cloud.  Anthony Weiner could give you some social networking tips.”

Me: “Shaddup!”

Friend: “Sure sure, Mr. Off grid.  Are you going to post this on your blog?”

Me: “I’m doomed aren’t I?”

Friend: “Yep.  It was a good last stand but it’s over now.”

Me: (Sighing…)

Friend: “By the way, did you keep the same number?”

Me: “No.”

Friend: “You going to tell me the new one?”

Me: “No.”

Friend: “No worries.  Caller ID will out you!”

Me: “Dammit!”

Friend: “The new world order is going to be interesting.  Join the crowd.”

Me: “I give up.”

Friend: “Everyone does. Good luck now.”

Click.