Adaptive Curmudgeon

I’ve been ignoring PredictIt and everything but the weather (which spent the last several months trying to kill me). My minuscule bets on PredictIt are floating along with whatever currents affect their markets.

So, what does the wisdom of the markets say?

First, the market says frail post-operative former cancer patients who are 86 years old get healthier with time. Go figure!

I’ve lost a few cents a share on my creepy “who will leave SCOTUS first” bet. I bet on Ruth Bader Ginsberg “quits” first. Sadly, this is a deadpool. Ginsberg won’t retire; she’s gonna’ hold on to that post until her last moment on earth. That depresses me. I’d never wish “work until you die” on my worst enemy. Then again it’s her choice and she’s certainly free to make it. Regardless, the share value on “Ginsberg first” is slowly dropping.

This makes no sense to me. She’s not getting any younger. Also, the press is acting like they didn’t just drink the Kool-Aid but freebased it. The story is; “she’s super extra healthy and expressing doubt about it proves you’re a racist, misogynist, poopy-head”. Yet there’s very limited photographic evidence of anything she does. I find it creepy. It reminds me of how Popes and Fidel Castro were super fit and healthy until they were dead last week. Heck, the press dug up Kavinaugh’s high school yearbook but can’t hire a flunky to get a weekly photo of Ginsberg standing upright? Her 86th birthday went by with less fanfare than a fart in a hurricane.

It stinks of wishful thinking over actuarial statistics. At any rate, I’m sitting on my tiny holdings. This a countermarket move. Time will tell if I’m an idiot. I tip my hat to her, Ginsberg is the Keith Richards of the legal system.

Second: the markets are saying Trump is more likely to win the Republican primary and election but it’s less likely that a Republican will win the 2020 election. Go figure!

I’ve got a few cents on Trump (OMG! Russia, Russia, Russia, the walls are closing in on him!) as “2020 Presidential Winner”. That’s gone slightly up.

I’ve got a few cents on Trump (Literally Hitler! When In Danger, When In Doubt, Run In Circles, Scream And Shout!!!) as “2020 Republican Nominee”. That’s gone up too.

I’ve also got a few cents on Republican (Stupid Party) for “Which party wins the Presidency in 2020” and that’s gone down.

So the markets say the following:

1. It’s increasingly likely Trump will win Republican Primary.
2. It’s increasingly likely that Trump will win the election.
3. It’s decreasingly likely that a Republican will win the presidency.

You’re smart folks. Anyone want to square that circle? I would expect all three to have the same momentum. Who the hell knows what it means? It hurts my head to think too much about it so I’m sitting on it and waiting.

Third: the markets are saying the future looks bright:

I took a bath (of small proportion) when I bought YES on “Trump 1st term recession”. I figured it was fairly likely there’d be a recession (2 quarters) in any 4 year term. I figured it even more likely since Trump started out with a damn near rocket launch. After going stratospheric for a few years virtually anything will tend to run out of steam?

I may be wrong.

My shares already lost 13% and they’re dropping. I guess America still isn’t tired of winning?

I’m a glass is half empty kind of guy so I’m holding on “yes there will be a recession”. This may be a bad move. The clock is ticking and I may need a black swan event within the next 18 months.

As always, this is tiny amounts. If you play the rent money on PredictIt you’re on your own. I’m just using the market as a “prediction market” and a test to see if I’m a complete airhead. YMMV.

One of my favorite things is when something from the fossil record comes knocking on your door. I not only love the whole idea of a “living fossil” but actively root for various plants and animals to break on through from past to present. Don’t laugh. It’s rare, but it does sometimes happen.

The most famous example is the coelacanth. The coelacanth was thought to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous period. In 1938 someone caught one. Surprise! Turns out they’re not common but they’re not extinct either.

I love it when a 400 million year old species just plain appears. It was something us smart monkeys didn’t expect. I’d love to have one of these ugly bastards in a giant pressurized fish tank in my secret lair.

There are other “living fossils” that are not quite so rare or surprising. Crocodiles are a gimme; they just plain exude “dinosaur”. Less obvious and more cool is the “not-quite-a-trilobite but really darned close” biological freakshow called a horseshoe crab. They’re said to be 450 million years old and indeed they look pretty alien to me.

Not all living fossils are butt ugly. The dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) is easy on the eyes. Metasequoia was first described in 1941 as a fossil of the Mesozoic Era. At the time it was thought to be extinct by about 150 million years. Shortly thereafter, a few turned up in China. The trees hadn’t gotten the memo.

Since then folks have planted them in various places. It seems to do well enough. It’s possible it wasn’t persisting in the most advantageous spot and we may not know it’s true potential size when grown in better locales! Neat eh? A tree that just about lost the race during the ice age gets a second chance due in part to the assistance of smart monkeys. Everyone pat yourself on the back.

I’ve personally seen a metasequoia and if you know what you’re looking at they’re kinda’ inspiring. They’ve been planted here and there in the US and all over the globe. That makes me happy. I researched putting a few in my yard but my climate’s not right. Bummer.

I’d love to be able to look past my coelacanth tank and see a metasequoia in the yard. (Not a horseshoe crab though… they’re too ugly.) The picture below is a row of smallish metasequoia growing in the UK.

China seems pretty good at harboring ice age refugee tree species. Ginkgo biloba is a tree (usually just called ginkgo) that goes back 270 million years (that’s the early Jurassic y’all!). It was a big deal in its time but tanked. It gradually faded and was thought extinct. But one orphan species survived in, you guessed it, China. Genetics show it came damn close to buying the farm too!

Here’s a picture of ginkgo leaves. They look nothing like more common trees. They’re weird!

If you live in the right climate and have a hankerin’ to plant your yard with Jurassic trees, you can plant ginkgo. It’s not a hard cultivar to find. It’s not a shabby looking tree either. It turns bright yellow in fall. Also, it’s fairly hearty and long lived; said to be biologically capable of a 2,500 year life span. One drawback is that ginkgo plants attract hippies with theories about medicinal botanicals. You may have to fence the hippies out. Here’s a photo of a gorgeous ginkgo in Tokyo.

Of course, the critter that really interests me is the woolly mammoth. These furry tanks went extinct about last week in ecological terms. (I know there are people who flake over ecological conditions on shorter scales but the end of the ice age is waaaaaaaaay more recent than the postulated extinction of coelacanths and dawn redwoods.)

Here’s the thing about woolly mammoths. I want ’em back!

Woolly mammoths got screwed! They took it in the shorts from climate change at the end of the last Ice Age. Global warming, caused by Trump’s failure to embrace the non-binding Kyoto protocol, did most of them in around 10,000 years ago. Despite SUV caused climate change, it’s likely they’d have straggled into modern times if only smart monkeys with pointy sticks didn’t hunt the shit out of them. In fact, a small population of Woolly Mammoths lived on Wrangel Island (Siberia) until 1,700 B.C.

Think about it. There were 800 year old pyramids in Egypt while woolly mammoths were shitting on the tundra in Sibera. So close!

I know there are smart people going all mad scientist on the challenge of cloning one and I’m all for it. I’m rootin’ for the dudes in labcoats big time! I would love to see a woolly mammoth in a zoo before I die. If I really got my druthers there’d be a restored herd of those bad boys roaming Northern Alberta… and I’d have a hunting tag for one!

Don’t laugh. The woolly mammoth is a do-able challenge and stranger things have happened. Some of you are reading my blog on a supercomputer/NSA spy device that you carry in your pocket; so is my hope to see a woolly mammoth really that impossible?

I could go on forever but I’ll stop with a new one I just learned about. This is “a Pleistocene ancestor of the narrow-leafed campion (Silene stenophylla)”. It came about from DNA some clever dude extracted from a seed found in a 32,000 yr old squirrel cache. Seeds are good at persisting and permafrost is good at preserving seeds. End result? The dude got enough DNA to do what needed doing. He cloned it in a modern seed, grew it, and viola… a thing that’s been extinct is now growing in a pot. How cool is that? (Hat tip to Never Yet Melted.)

It’s a cool little plant with a big story to tell. Every time one of these things make it past the “damned near extinct” or in this case the “totally extinct” barrier. I’m happy. Especially if woolly mammoth steaks turn out to taste good.

One more thing. I saw Jurassic Park too. Get over it! It was a book and a movie; not a warning about man’s hubris wrought large. Metasequioa trees and coelacanths aren’t chasing us around like velociraptors. And there’s no reason why woolly mammoths dying off in 1,700 BC is somehow key to human survival in 2,019 AD. It’s just change. I’m an Adaptive Curmudgeon, not a snowflake that sits in the corner weeping over change. Yes there’s risk in anything “coming back from the dead”… but I’m willing to accept a little risk for a little biodiversity… and mammoth BBQ.

I wonder what soil and climate Silene stenophylla needs? I’ll look into it. If you hear about an outbreak of formerly extinct ice plants menacing humanity; it’s probably just me experimenting in the garden.

It was only after I’d been on the road an hour that I realized how isolated I’ve been. I’ve been cooped up for months. For a guy like me, a month without crossing a state line is practically house arrest; no wonder I’ve been getting antsy! Also I tend to hide out when I’m not traveling. I avoid people, human interaction, most social bullshit, and especially the press.

So there I was, gradually emerging from a few months of deep freeze isolation. I hadn’t heard a TV “news” broadcast in forever. Not much radio. Even on the internet I’ve instinctively screened out a lot of what is excreted by politicians and rolled in by the press. I was, in effect, a blank slate.

I reached for the FM knob and then pulled my hand back like it’d been burned. NPR, America’s propaganda arm and state media, is always there and it’ll invariably piss me off. I kept the radio off.

Eventually I had to check into a hotel. Most hotel lobbies have a TV that’s never watched and always yammering away. Cue CNN (the channel most likely to be on in a location where nobody’s watching TV).

First item of “news”. A plane had crashed in Ethiopia. (I’m sure y’all know more details than me.) To my shame, I breathed a sigh of relief. I shouldn’t be relieved that a couple hundred people died but I was just super happy that it was nothing that could possibly be construed as being an American problem. Boeing’s problem? Sure. Tragic loss of life? Sure. But a Boeing in Africa ‘aint a US Federal Problem. In this matter at least, the talking heads would have to quit yanking people’s chain.

The next day I encountered a second item of news. The TV in the lobby was alive with pearl clutching bobbleheads clucking about rich yahoos who’d been scheming and cheating to get their nitwit offspring into fancy colleges. I chuckled and finished their sentence; “also water’s wet and the sky is blue”. Then I left. Not my monkeys not my circus.

The base act of cheating to get into a college; I’m not even sure it’s a crime. It’s immoral of course. And shabby. And embarrassing. None of which is a crime. Oh, of course, it’s 2019 and everything is a Federal Crime. I presume they’ll twist things into the wind and add Federal funding and lob lawyers at it… it’s gonna’ wind up in court.

In my opinion, it’s utterly irrelevant. If Yale or Harvard wants to populate their school with fucking idiots, what’s it to me? After all, it’s their reputation not mine (and a mighty tarnished one at that). Plus it has always been that way. Can you believe actual adults thinking otherwise? Even when I was young and naive I wasn’t that naive.

Every sentient Freshman is well aware there’s a big difference between being a smart and dedicated student (who’ll get a decent ROI on their education investment) and the sniffling sycophants encouraged by the crotch sniffers in the admissions office. It also doesn’t take many encounters with the “elite” educated to find out they’re not remotely elite. Maybe they once were, but now (and even decades ago) a high end college just means Mommy and Daddy have an assload of cash… nothing more.

My application process into college was dirt simple:

Them: “Write an essay that explains why you should be let into our august institution.”

Me: “Because I can pay tuition and I won’t flunk out. Here’s a blistering high SAT and some other crap that proves I won’t be found in the halls licking the windows and peeing myself. Are you done yet? I want to wrap this shit up so I can get to work.”

Them: “That’s not good enough. You cant’ get in unless you were in eleventy extracurricular activities in high school and write an essay about how you weep when whales die.” (Remember “save the whales”?)

Me: “Blow me. I’ll go to a cheap ass State School and have my loans paid off before you can say ‘return on investment’.”

Them: “College is about much more than…”

Me: “No it isn’t.”

I stand by that. One can buy education. One cannot buy “more”. That other shit is just ad copy for fools.

So I didn’t sweat the whole “will I get into school” carousel. I could get into anything that was based on your ability to do the thing and get out. Beyond that, it’s all smoke and mirrors. Thus, I don’t have an Ivy League pedigree. Whoopty fuckin’ do. No regrets. No fear. No bullshit.

A wise student buys an education, they don’t inveigle their way into a societal hand job. (I also happen to be the kind of guy who uses words like inveigle. Try that at an ivy league snowflake factory!) Learn a trade and GTFO. People impressed with a name like Harvard are pretty much the last people whom it’s worth the trouble to impress.

The funny part is this; if you need to drop a couple hundred grand to get your genetic package into Harvard, your genetic package won’t benefit from Harvard and probably won’t benefit from any college. Drop ’em at the Starbucks job where they’ll wind up and save everyone the hassle of a failed education.

The best I can divine is that the colleges are pissed that some third party got a cut instead of it all going to the college’s slush fund (i.e. endowment). Presumably the FBI needed to bust someone somewhere that had nothing to do with politics and they’ve gotten out of the habit of chasing real… ya’ know… criminals. Unlike investigating process crimes amid dudes with suits, real criminals are scary!

We all accept that if little Suzy cheats in a 3rd grade spelling bee it’s not the kind of thing that involved FBI and guns. But if Suzy is 17 and hires a ringer for the SAT I’m supposed to get the vapors? Why? Aside from age and some sort of misplaced respect for names like Yale, what’s the difference? How the hell does SAT cheating get FBI attention? Does it rank up there with murder and arson. “The Gambino family firebombed your house? Can’t waste time on that right now, the FBI’s hot on the trail of someone who falsely pretended to be a gifted water polo athlete to get into Harvard.”

In other news, the game’s rigged. What’s new and who didn’t already know this?

I stayed off grid another day and a half before I was once again in my truck and bored silly. I clicked on the radio.

First thing I encountered was an announcement that the FAA had grounded certain planes. It seems a bit extreme but whatever. I’m sure they’ve got some logical reason and an idea that the Boeing issue can be rectified (probably through software). Of course there was no discussion of Boeing, pilots, lift, airplane mechanics, or anything like that. It all boiled down to someone bitching that The Orange Menace had not moved fast enough in grounding the planes. He (or the FAA) had apparently done what they wanted but too darned slow and this was proof that seventy million deplorable Americans elected a flaming dipshit that will kill us all in our sleep.

I hit scan and listened to a few songs before encountering the second news “article”. Apparently, people think cheating to get into college is both a new thing and super bad. I mean… they were carrying on. Really? Did they not go to college? Where do they hatch these fools?

I’m not a particularly religious man but it reminded me of a Bible passage (I had to look it up). Matthew 10:29:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.

At the risk of blasphemy, I rewrote it for the modern media:

Are not Boeings plentiful? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground without the direct intervention of Donald Trump. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Trump knows this too. He counts them while you sleep.

And if a kid cheats on the SAT the righteous shall dispatch the FBI with guns drawn to protect the hell out of us. Because college is about…

Ha ha ha… OK I couldn’t type it without choking. Let me continue:

…college is all about excellence. It’s about the best education for the very best so that ….

Oh forget it. I quit. Seriously, a kid cheats on the SAT and the FBI responds with drawn guns? These people need to get a life.

I’m kinda’ curious what’s really going on. There must be something that they really really really don’t want to notice. Has Russia, Russia, Russia finally wound down or what?

Oh well, I’m back home and will be crawling back into my shell until the snow melts. I’m sure by then the press will be reporting about the robins flying north and how that was caused or adversely affected by a New York real estate investor who won a hotly contested election.

Like I said in my last post; the skunks are fucking.

Why didn’t someone tell me how easy it could be? All I had to do was blog about it and get waylaid halfway through my thoughts. It was exactly that moment that became the inflection point.

Shall I explain? It came about in the depths of despair, as cruel iced misery bit by bit eroded yours truly (and indeed all northerners). The endgame went from normal minor annoyance to grim fatalism. Fate went long on a grinding war of attrition and for a while it held all the cards. Hope faded and is seemed winter would never end.

Punch drunk and weary I started posting a series of “Winter Vignettes”. Is it overwrought to call them a last ditch effort to preserve the zeitgeist before going down for the count? Yeah. It’s overwrought. Then again you had to be there.

Sometime after my fourth post, things changed. The noose slacked… just a bit. That’s all it took.
Hope blooms anew. There are certainly no robins in the yard but there’s at least the feeling that they’ll eventually return.

So there you have it. A new Curmudgeonly phenological observation: when the Curmudgeon starts muttering darkly about “preserving some memory of the struggle” it’s almost spring.

Other observations:

• • • • I recently used windshield wiper fluid for the first time in months. My windshield sprayers have been frozen solid since New Year’s day. Now they’re thawed again. A miracle.
      • There are no reports of trucks going through the ice but most of the permanent shacks are gone and ice travelers are mostly sticking to ATVs and sleds now. Most of the ice roads still exist but they’re in disarray. Its been so cold that the ice is super thick. It’ll take forever to break up and you could probably drive a Kenworth out there… at night. In an outbreak of sanity, nobody seems to feel like testing this theory. A few hardy souls continue fishing from tents and whatnot and sleds still move about the forest. I said the noose has slacked, not that tulips are blooming.
      • I’ve passed several snowmobiles on groomed trails parallel to the road where a sled deviated from the groomed base and faceplanted hard. One looks like it plunged halfway to China. Snowmobiles aren’t magic. Like any machine, they can get stuck. But it’s not common to see the tail end of one sticking right up at the sky. I know of two. They both look like a duck’s ass. You know how a duck will reach down to get a morsel off the pond vegetation and leave it’s ass high above water like a flag? Two sleds are like that. I’m sure their owners are going to rescue them this weekend. It’ll be a challenge. I imagine burly dudes and winches doing a very difficult nasty cold extraction. Favors will be called in.
      • Twice I’ve detected skunks on the move. They’re not true hibernators and they also breed before spring. This year it’s happening well before the conditions are good for skunk travel; the snow is exceptionally deep. Regardless, the skunks are fucking… a sure sign of winter’s fade.
      • This year, because of the deep snow, forest travel is brutally hard. Moreover, the roadside snowbanks are like walls. Twice I’ve encountered woodland critters who’ve popped out of nature onto the easy traveling road, only to find themselves trapped.
        • The first was a muskrat frantically galloping down a divided highway. The poor bastard was reluctant (or unable) to climb a 3′ snow wall to escape. So he was charging pell-mell down the median as traffic swept by him at 70 MPH. I was rooting for him but he’d drawn a bad hand. The high snow walls were canyon-like and I was trailed by a handful of log trucks driving exactly like log trucks drive. Good luck buddy.
        • The second example was a gaggle of seven deer that trotted out of a packed dense forest on a narrow trail and from there onto a forest dirt road. I slowed but they didn’t see me until they were already on pavement. The other side of the road had the continuation of their trail but seeing me they instinctively fled down the road to put distance between themselves and my hood. Unfortunately, they got penned up. With chest high walls of snow on either side and an idling Dodge behind them, they had no better idea than to trot nervously down the road. Patiently, I followed. I trailed them for a good quarter mile of first one and then another nervously looking over it’s shoulder at me. They looked haggard and resigned, as if to say “please please don’t flatten us, we’ve had a hard winter”. I was more than magnanimous, I know the feeling. Finally one gathered its strength and jumped straight out from the road; over the snow wall and into… well neither me nor the deer knew what would be out there. After the mighty leap, the whole damn deer disappeared into the snow. Whoa! Must have landed on the snowdrift over a ditch? An instant later it popped back up. Good! Terrified, it made a second wild, desperate leap. Two feet gained and it’s head and shoulders were now above the enveloping snow. Two more leaps and it neared the canopy cover of an old pine. Its deer peers and I forgot each other as we watched in rapt attention. It desperately floundered another hard fought five feet and then it was free. It dashed off into the dense (and less snowbound) cover. You could practically see the remainder of the deer sigh as if to say “Really? We’ve got to do that?” They made the crossing in single file. One after another; none making that first leap willingly. All the while the dwindling group left on the road glanced at me idling far behind. I don’t know if they were afraid of the Dodge or wolves which, if one had showed up, would’ve picked them off like a buffet line. When the last one made it back to the woods I breathed a sigh of relief.
      • I don’t usually feed deer but this year I made an exception. On the way home I picked up two 50# bags of cracked corn. I dumped a bag in the snow near one of my old apple trees. (A spot the deer were visiting until the snow got too deep about a month ago.) I haven’t generated much deer activity but the ravens and squirrels had a huge party. Oh well.

And that’s the phenology report from Curmudgeon Compound.

In my last post I wrote:

“This may be the only blog post on the internet typed into a NEO2 perched on a homemade workbench while riding out a blizzard by the warmth of a 70 year old kitchen stove. Is that not making the best of things?”

Pics or it didn’t happen right? Here goes:

Ah…. what a cozy spot!

Time for a digression about workshops.

Workshop:

Every man needs one. Not every man gets one.

If you don’t have a shop, you’re welcome to share my virtual shop.

I’m thankful for what I’ve got but it’s not perfect. Also it’s a process more than a destination. Wind the clock back a few years and my shop was a wreck (as it has been forever). Year after year, the ceiling (made of unsuitable materials) was perpetually collapsing under it’s own weight. Dusty, rotten, scrap “bungalow paneling” was falling in bits and pieces on my tools and machines and projects. Nor was the insulation doing any good. It was an oven whenever it wasn’t iced up. Also, the previous owner was a complete loon about wires so Romex was spread about like spaghetti.

I could ignore it all except the crap falling out of the rafters onto my head! (I wrote a time travel blog post about the idiot who inflicted bad workmanship on the future landowner… me.) Try building decent stuff when shit’s falling on your head… it’s hard.

A few years ago I “took action”. I saved up beforehand and then cried havoc and released buckets of labor and money on a frontal assault. I started with a “fresh” roof and went from there. I was trying to “rehab” it into something more usable. It was a noble cause. It was meant well. It was a fucking disaster.

I faceplanted hard!

I wound up with an overbudget half-finished muddle that was so painfully disappointing I didn’t even blog about it. I made progress but never saw a hint of a finish line.

In retrospect, fixing the mess wasn’t wise. It would have been only 25% more expensive (and amazingly easier!) to clear some different area, pour a slab, and erect a 2 stall “kit” garage. The end result would be larger, simpler, and vastly superior to what I’ve accomplished so far. Simple shit like insulating a wall is just such a timesink within a derelict mess. Rather than just putting up fresh insulation between fresh studs I burned zillions of man hours ripping out mice riddled, soaked, moldy, rotten, crap only to turn around and work my ass off re-insulating off kilter half crooked walls. Years into the battle and I’m not even done yet!

As, for building new, I have plenty of land and that significantly changes the equation. Plus it’s essential to live in free America; zoning out here is not the Gestapo of cities. I can slap up a garage faster than someone in Portland can make a doghouse.

I sincerely regret my underestimation of the hassle involved in “retrofit” over “build from scratch”. If I had to do it all over again I’d just gut the mess; kill the power, rip out the shitty electrical, deep six the defunct garage doors, and wade in there with a wrecking bar and a bad attitude. I could have torn out everything to the studs and hauled away the mess in a few month’s “spare time”. Then I’d stick up a few simple lights and call the empty shell a “machine shed”. The important part is I could have salvaged something useful and declared victory yet escaped without burning my budget. But… nobody is without error. I did my best.

Also, even as it has been a derelict mess I’ve used the shop extensively away. (You have to do what you can with what you’ve got.)

For a year or so and especially this winter (at least in fleeting moments when it was warm enough) I’ve been nibbling away at the edges. Finally, the shop is turning out somewhat pleasant. Even the shit that sucks is becoming “character” instead of “pain in the ass”. It’s “quaint” if you’ve got enough bourbon in ya.

In January (whenever I had enough heat) I painted the new (!) ceiling (it’s just plywood). This took forever as I gained ground incrementally in trench warfare against entropy; a square foot at a time. I put up more lights (one can never have too many cheap shop lights).

With time I slowly gained ground in the life sized Tetrus game of moving too much shit around a too small space. Now it’s (mostly) “cleaned up” (within the scale of “shop clean”). Though, a dead ATV with snowplow in the middle of it all wasn’t exactly my plan. (You’d be amazed how much space you lose when there’s a dead vehicle in your workspace.)

Now that the sawdust system is about 80% done it’s already keeping it from becoming a mess again. The stove and other heat systems work (within reason). There’s a shelf for my radio and podcast playing kindle. The ridiculously over-complex electrical system is much better sorted out. Etc.

What a joy it is to have a decent workspace! Even if cabin fever doldrums turn it mostly into a place to brew coffee and wait for spring… it’s good to have a stool to sit and bench in front of it. It’s becoming a place to think.

Given the huge snowpack, the floor will probably flood in a month. It’s just the nature of the local drainage. It floods most springs and that’s the way of it. (Yes, I’ve done trench work and stuff… sometimes there’s a stupid place to put a building and sometimes the person who owned your land before you bought it put a building in a stupid place. You play the hand you’re dealt, not the one you want.)

Hopefully, I’ll get everything off the floor before it gets too bad. (I have time… the world is ice right now.) It’s usually only 1-4″ of meltwater for a week or two. I’ve already got my machines on wheels (though the new(!) wheel set on the bandsaw toasted out in less than a year… the cracked cement floor eats small wheels). With luck I’ll police my materials (plywood and boards) and get ’em suspended in time. (Lord help me, there’s always something in a cardboard box on the floor and in June I always find it!) Obviously my wood stove and such won’t care if it’s flooded yet again.

So there you have it. An ad hok report of what Dr. Mingo called my “safe space”. (A term I can’t help but appreciate in this context.)

I’m going back out into the maelstrom to shove more damn snow. Please talk amongst yourselves in the meantime.

A.C.

[Winter’s not giving up. Weariness erodes us. I write vignettes so folks in civilized climes can “enjoy” the winter they’re missing. Either that, or they can watch the movie version.

Right now, as I type, it’s snowing like a son of a bitch. My weather radio goes off periodically to warn of the ongoing storm watch. (Thanks NOAA but I already knew. I can “watch” the storm through my window.)

Regardless, there’s hope. The calendar doesn’t lie. All things are cycles and the planetary orbit will not be denied. This too shall pass.

Despite the snow, it’s warm enough to heat my shop again. I retreat to my wood littered, cement floored nest of tools. I’m not being productive though. Until I see a robin on the grass, my gumption is still siphoning off my reserve tank.

I push aside my tools and blog. I have warmth and silence (and bourbon). This may be the only blog post on the internet typed into a NEO2 perched on a homemade workbench while riding out a blizzard by the warmth of a 70 year old kitchen stove. Is that not making the best of things?

If nothing else, it’s better to blog from a workshop than grumble at a television in the house.]

So where was I? Oh yes… sucking on a watermelon Jolly Rancher and turning from pavement to the dirt road.

The driving conditions should be better. There are a few tire tracks where I began the day by breaking trail. I slowly churn through the snow. It’s not easy to see the road’s course but I know it’s under there somewhere.

Keep your head and there will be no worries.

The snow’s deep but manageable. Hope for no additional complications.

On cue, a complication arises. I spy the taillights of a generic SUV at the edge of my forward vision. It’s at full stop. Not good.

I stop. I stay waaaaaaaaaaay back. Lest the county snowplow lurch out of the gloom and turn me into a hood ornament, I flip on hazard lights (my headlamps are already on). I wait.

Now the SUV’s back up lights are on. Definitely not a good sign. I back up almost to the pavement. I intend on staying far away from whatever drama is going down over there. The SUV backs up in fits and starts until it finally noses into a cleared driveway. I inch ahead. When I’m past it, the SUV darts back out of the driveway and hightails it for pavement. What the hell did it see?

This, folks, is what’s called a “clue”. Never plunge into an obstacle that you can’t assess and just scared someone away. I inch ahead but it’s not too bad. Just to be safe, I go back into low range. Ironically, the tire tracks have made things a worse. They obliterated the occasional “blown free” spot. I’m staying on the road by feel as much as visual cue. Slow and steady wins the race.

A quarter mile later I see the problem. A full size 4×4 with a plow is ditched good and solid. Recently too. I can tell it was recent because the driver is still rocking back and forth as if it’ll help. Nice try but the die is already cast. I can see from 50 yards there’s no way in hell he’s driving out of his predicament.

I park in the middle of the road; far from the truck. I put on my hazard lights again, strap on a fur hat, don six layers of jacket, and venture forth. As always, the truck door is almost ripped from my hand. You’d think I’d remember that by now.

My Jolly Rancher has been consumed and I cough like a chain smoking coal miner as I shuffle up to the truck. A man hops out. He’s grinning in that leer of madness a man has when he’s totally screwed and yet keeps trying to make the best of it. I know that leer.

“Just drove  off…” He trails off with his explanation.

I see the tire tracks. The truck is exactly where he pointed it. Bummer. Still, that’s the nature of bad conditions. There’s no shame in missing the road when you can’t see it.

“Shit happens.” I commiserate. “Looks like there’s no damage. How awesome is that?”

At this he makes a weak smile. His truck is buried hood deep in snow but it’s light fluffy snow. His passenger side is 5′ below the road bed but it cam up against a flat field and not a tree or rock. It’s not on a slope so it can’t go any further. It will probably emerge unscathed.

“Yeah. I was lucky. It’ll be fine when I get out… in May.” Gallows humor.

I’m not sure what I can do. Obviously you can’t leave a person out here. But the truck’s toast.

“Can you push?” He asks.

Sure. And after I bench press his Ford F-150 like Superman, I’ll introduce him to my pet unicorn.

“How about a pull?” I wave at the Dodge. “I don’t think I can get you out but I’ll try.”

He brightens considerably and dives back into his truck. His wife is in there (at the bottom of a truck canted 30 degrees and immobile!) Another complication. In my experience, female passengers lash out at whomever’s driving when shit like this happens. Of course, that’s my experience and not yours. YMMV and so forth. If I was on Facebook I’d be put in internet jail for my observation but I’m sticking with it.

Poor guy is doomed and he’s probably not getting positive feedback. I wish I had a Jolly Ranger to offer.

He returns with a tow rope. Now he’s shivering. It’s very cold.

I explain that I’ve got a dually and duallys suck at traction on ice. I’ll try but I can’t promise anything. I’m happy to have tow hooks below my front bumper.

I roll back and get the line taut. He revs his truck. I do the same. My tires break free without doing jack squat. I bounce a bit trying to use the tow strap’s elasticity. No good.

I inspect my tire’s situation on the road. Where I expected frozen dirt there’s very slick ice. It all adds up to one big nope. I hand him his tow strap.

“How about a ride home?” I offer. “I’ll drive you anywhere you want to go.”

He glances sadly at his truck. I know the feeling. The impulse to go down with the ship lodges deep.

I don’t want to leave him here. He’ll be fine until his tank runs empty but then the heater will give out and shit will get real. I’m sure every tow truck in the county is busy right now. Cell phones and credit cards can’t solve this problem in this place at this time. Even so, he’s uncertain. Stubborn.

“How about I try pulling forward?” I offer. I’m sincerely apologetic that duallys are no good at this sort of thing. I wish I had a winch… or a heavy lift helicopter.

He eagerly agrees to a forward pull; grasping at hope. Plunging into waste deep snow he REMOVES his front plow. Whoa! It’s one of those tiny consumer grade “mini plows”. Never seen one in real life.

It’s not too heavy so (with a lot of coughing on my part) we lug it up the slope and down the length of his truck. He wades down to his tailgate and opens it. I give the plow blade a shove and it gently toboggans into the bed. He closes the tailgate. Pretty cool!

I pull ahead and we reset the tow strap. Usually, pulling ahead is better than backing up. However, I have an inkling his truck is too heavy for my dually’s weak traction. Also, I don’t want to be pulled into his gravity well.

Sure enough, my rear tires break loose and my whole rear end abruptly swings 20 degrees towards the gaping maw of the ditch. Yikes! Bravely, I give it one more try. This time my whole truck shimmies 2′ sideways; far too close to turning one stuck truck into two.

Game over. I tried.

We meet again in the snow. I’m already untying the tow rope.

“Not happening man. Sorry. Want a ride now?”

He agrees and plunges back into the snow to retrieve his wife.

Meanwhile I clear my truck cab. I don’t own a cap so everything I need for every situation winds up piled in the rear and passenger seats. It’s a mess. Despite having a huge truck there’s barely room for one up front, provided you don’t mind a sledge hammer under your feet. I can squeeze a second person in the back, provided you don’t mind a wall of jackets and camping gear falling on your lap.

I usher someone into the back seat and realize “wife” was actually “teenage son”. So much for my assessment of social situations. The kid’s shy about riding in my truck. (“Dad, you want me to hop in a truck with some hillbilly serial killer?” “Son, either climb in or die on the road.” Welcome to winter.)

The kid’s clutching a handful of stovepipe. Like me, they were route home from the hardware store. My doorknob gave out, their woodstove pipe warped. Small world.

I drive the few extra miles to their house. It’s not too bad but I pilot the Dodge with the care usually associated with defusing a bomb. I don’t leave until I see them both go inside their house.

Soon I’m back home and it’s time to install the doorknob.

Stay tuned. The story isn’t over yet…

Rumbling down the road, warm and happy and well fed, it’s the best I’ve felt in 6 weeks. This is the second consecutive winter I’ve gotten very sick and the brutal weather has had a multiplying effect this round.

It’s a huge release to bask in the simple comfort of dash heat and mobility within a weather tight cab. Freedom! My truck is overdesigned for most conditions but perfect for right now. I’m enjoying the trip.

Reluctantly, I turn on the radio to check the weather. It goes as expected:

First, America’s Pravda (NPR) breathlessly informs me that stupid bullshit happening in a different time zone is eminently about to cause war, famine, and pestilence. This can only be averted if the right people are in power. Where’s the vat that hatches these “right people”?  They’re never remotely like me. Then again, people “like me” don’t want to run things. There’s a big difference between viewing power as a burden and a pleasure.

Before I wrap up that train of thought, there’s a new topic; an urgent statewide issue that’s a big deal even though I’ve never heard of it. As required by propaganda and tradition, NPR tells me I must spend tax dollars on some boondoggle in a city I never visit. I’m not sure if it’s light rail I’ll never get to ride or a stadium for sports I don’t watch but if I don’t want to fund it, I’m a jerk. In fact, I’m probably racist, and sexist, and maybe Hitler. I should be put up against a wall and “corrected”. They’re getting more rabid with time and I wish they’d chill out and maybe take a nap. Perhaps baby boomers are not taking well to the concept of mortality? Hard to say and I’d rather not peer too deep into that dark well.

The next story is that it’s my fault the earth is going to warm up and sink Miami. In a related nugget of processed information, I should buy a Tesla because there are chargers everywhere. I can’t help but grin as my meaty truck churns through the blizzard. A Tesla in these conditions would be lucky to make twenty miles before it became an iced battery on subsidized wheels. Not that you could charge it at three places within 100 miles of here. And when it froze, who would tow it home? A bigger Tesla?

Trying to keep a positive mental attitude, I idly wonder if Miami might someday look like Venice? Then I wonder about Thonis-Heracleion. That’s an archaic Egyptian seaport near the Nile. It’s a few miles off Alexandria and 20’ below the waterline. I was reading about it a few days ago. I forgot the details about how it sank. (I notice ancient cities “sank” but modern cities fall prey to “rising water”. We should look into that.)  I could joke that someone owned a Dodge 1,200 years ago, but maybe it was something obvious like an earthquake? Did it sink in one day, like the script of an awesome disaster-porn B movie? Did it fade away a fraction at a time over centuries… like Venice? There are a couple dozen such cities all around the Mediterranean. The articles I read always think the only issue is the source of Plato’s stories about Atlantis. Isn’t a sunken city cool even if it isn’t Atlantis? I’ve been meaning to read up on them. I’m never clear how they went from seaport to seafloor. “Earthquake” seems too simple and glib. Meanwhile, modern people have reclaimed land from the sea in the Netherlands, China, and Dubai.

This is all crimethink.

I entertain the idea of future archaeologists finding a statue of Don Johnson from Miami Vice on the seafloor, a mile or two off the shore of modern Florida in 500 years. They could put it in a museum and make bored kids look at it. “This is the hero of an ancient fable where a law enforcement officer in a pink shirt fired primitive weapons at drug bootleggers. Bootlegging is a term from back before all the fun drugs were legalized. OK kids it’s lunchtime so take your Soma and have some Soylent Green. A standardized multiple-choice test will follow this virtual tour, so prepare for it by inserting a ‘Grade-O-Tron’ in your ear.” Add a futuristic Canadian finding a Tesla frozen into a glacier (I imagine somewhere near Edmonton) and it’s the beginning of a fine science fiction story.

With a little heat and a change of scenery I’m feeling happier and thinking fun thoughts. The imagination is a wonderful thing.

Sadly, the “news” now dives below the bar and it sucks me down. Some dude wore a red hat (which is a dog whistle, secret squirrel, decoder ring, call to arms, barely hidden from the clever folks who’ve figured it all out while freebasing politics in their dorm room). This triggered an unemployable snowflake college “student”. (Or should I say college “resident”? Doesn’t “student” imply the hard work of actual study?) This, self-selected victim had to cry into his or her (or its) pillow… in front of the press. I’m not sure who did what, but the main point is that it’s just a fucking hat.

I don’t give a shit about college students getting the vapors. Never have, never will. Ideally, it’s reciprocal. If I stick my truck in a ditch and freeze to death, nobody in a college is going to call the press and publicly weep over my frozen corpse. Some of them might be elated another redneck bought the farm.

Also, anyone who freaks out over an item of clothing should be mocked and ridiculed. The press is giving a cookie to every toddler who throws a tantrum. Put down the microphone and administer a wedgie to these drama lamas!

That said, I’m an outlier. I didn’t even fit in with my fellow college students when I was a college student. I didn’t think of myself as a “college student” but rather as a “young man”; because that’s what I was. My education was a self-funded investment in myself, not an excuse to slither though a decade of extended adolescence. The hat weeper is behind schedule. You’re supposed to get over crying about hats when you’re nine; not when you’re twenty.

It’s getting me down. Damn news.

Do I need this? Do I deserve it? Politics has been corrosive as long as I’ve been alive but does it have to bubble over continuously? I just want to know the weather report. I didn’t need reminding there’s a vast stampeding herd of people who’ve nothing to do but disapprove of my existence. Fuck the radio! I click it off and everything returns to peace and quiet. I’d like weather information, but not at the price of getting preached at by losers.

The reason I want a weather report is to decide if I should tank up. My Dodge has a huge capacity so I can procrastinate. Also, funds are a bit low at the moment. Then again, having only half a tank if I get stuck in a ditch is a bad bargain. There are times when you may be forced by necessity to idle a very long time. This is certainly the weather for such situations.

Being a belt and suspenders kind of guy, I pull over at a truck stop. Once again, the door is nearly ripped from my hand when I open it. The bitter cold gives me a coughing fit that doubles me over. By the time the truck is topped off I’m shivering and coughing. When it gets really cold the card readers never work, so I stagger through the wind to pay inside.

I strike up a conversation with the clerk. He looks bored because there are no customers:

“Have you heard a weather report? I was trying to decide if I should fuel up before another blizzard.”

“This isn’t bad enough?” The clerk waves at the window.

He’s got a point. I can barely see my truck through the blowing wind. Even the ice fishermen and snowmobilers are laying low. Amazing how you can recalibrate your definition of “bad weather”. Reality check accepted!

Then a nice thing happens. The clerk sees me coughing and gives me a Jolly Rancher. He’s grazing on a package of them and, without asking, just tosses one my way.

Watermelon. My favorite!

Everyone knows hard candies are good for a bad throat. Brilliant!

Just like that, my attitude improves. The world is all rainbows and puppies. In the depths of a hard winter, simple kindness moves mountains. Also don’t let the press fool ya’. There are plenty of nice people out there. We’re not merely insufferable packs of idiots; those are just the monkeys in front of the cameras. Most of us are remarkably civilized and some of us are quite likable. This guy is a saint. I thank him profusely and promise myself to remember his face so I can be extra nice to him next time I stop.

Almost home now. The main road is windblown clear; polished. But when I get to my dirt road the story changes…

More to come.

A.C.

Some hours later the sun is up. Things are bright but the light is diffuse and unfocused. It’s light without source or warmth. The wind’s fury has not abated, but rather increased. The sky is a swirling cacophony of ice crystals. Stare at it too long and you lose perspective. There is no depth or horizon.

Nothing living can be seen in any direction. Except snow laden and iced up trees. I’ve probably lost a few trees to this blizzard but they’re too far back in the woods to be visible.

Pondering the broken doorknob, I ask Mrs. Curmudgeon if she’d like to join me on a trip to town. She opines that only a madman would go out there today. Challenge accepted!

I dress like I’m going to run a trap line, give my diesel a huge amount of time to warm up, and bravely sally forth. I don’t technically need 4×4 to get out of the driveway but it’s not overkill. It’s the perfect amount of technology for conditions… on the driveway. On the dirt road beyond my land it gets much worse. I now I absolutely need 4×4. Unlike an SUV, I have a real 4×4. I switch into low range and give the transfer case plenty of time to engage.

Here’s something a lot of folks might not know, if your vehicle doesn’t have a low range, it’s more a grocery getter than heavy equipment… not that such a thing is bad. A good grocery getter is a great thing. But it’s not as tough as the advertisements would have you believe. In practical terms, most use of 4×4 low range in America is from jeepers having fun on a muddy trail; completely reasonable entertainment but not a practical thing. But for me, right now, low range is damn well appreciated.

The snow has drifted and it’s pretty deep. Some glorious patches of clear deeply frozen roadbed are scoured clear. These are interspersed with bumper deep drifts. Luckily, it’s so cold the snow is formless powder, dry as a bone, shifting and listless.

I methodically cross each drift in turn. Pause, assess the situation, aim carefully, think a minute, then punch the accelerator and cross the Rubicon without doubt or hesitation. This isn’t my first rodeo. The heavy truck blasts through admirably.

It’s fun! The cab heat is appreciated too. Compared to my house, the truck is toasty. I take off my fur hat and it’s a delicious luxury just to be “outdoors” without freezing.

Even though I’m having fun, I’m careful. A walk home in these conditions, even a very short one, isn’t tragic but it would be far too memorable for my tastes. Always be aware of the arena in which you play. This is God’s arena. It’s OK to have a little fun but never forget you’re meddling with dangerous forces. I’m just a smart monkey with an expensive vehicle. All that stands between me and a very hard day are the mechanics of a truck built by a company that needs a bailout every few decades and whatever traction the tires can muster.

Then again if I watch another second of TV, I’ll go mad.

Just as I need 4×4 to get down the road I need to spend a few hours out of the house!

After several dozen amusing and only moderately risky drift busts, I make it to the paved road. The paved road is clear. Not clear from plowing but scoured by the wind. It’s spotless almost at the molecular level.

All is not smooth sailing though. The wind is howling. Once again, my ridiculous, overpriced, high maintenance, over-engineered, behemoth earns its keep. It’s all well and good to joke about huge powerful trucks as “compensating for something”, but it’s a joke told by suburbanites who are not on this road, in these conditions, traveling as I am right now.

There’s not much traffic. A log truck here and there and that’s about it. The few personal vehicles out there are trucks like mine. Most of them sporting a snowplow such as I covet but cannot (or will not) afford.

The lack of vehicles isn’t due to the conditions on this road. It’s due to the heavy drifting on all the small feeder roads. For the next several miles, the traction is good and the visibility is decent. The crosswind is very strong but crosswind rarely bothers me. Duallies suck at traction but their squat wide stance makes them great against crosswinds. I sail through conditions that are beautiful and menacing, all while luxuriating in the dash heat; which far exceeds any heat in our firewood bereft house. I find myself humming. I’m warm, it’s peaceful to use a machine for what it was made. I don’t bother with the radio, it would just be shitty pop and shitter politics. Instead I watch the snow and listen to the engine’s counterpoint to the wind. I like to drive.

It’s almost too soon when I get to town. I liked that heated cab!

Stepping back into the maelstrom, the wind rips the truck door from my hands and I’m almost surprised it stays bolted on. Canted at an odd angle I waddle to the hardware store and buy a doorknob. Cheap at any price.

Then I trundle across town, pick the restaurant with the best heat and eat the longest breakfast possible. While braving the 50 paces back to my truck I covet Mrs. Curmudgeon’s vehicle’s remote start. This goes away when I’m back on the open road and the squat heavy truck shrugs off wind which is, if anything, even worse than before.

[This isn’t meant to be an ad, it’s a reminder for myself. Ignore this post at will. No pressure. I mean it.]

[Also, don’t fret. Winter vignettes will return soon.]

I never post an Amazon link to “a thing you might want to buy” unless I’ve personally bought and/or tested it (or an identical item). (Occasionally I’ll discuss an experimental idea I’m considering, but I’m always clear if I’m not fully informed.)

Also, I’m a cheap bastard. I expect every little purchase to be awesome. Being the kind of guy who’ll suffer a long time before I’ll buy a “luxury” and an almost unAmerican anti-consumer nutcase who’ll research an $8 purchase more than some people ponder buying a new car leads me to discover a few things I want to share.

On the other hand I’m easily distracted.

The upshot is that I often buy something I like but by the time I get around to blogging about it the details are forgotten. As a memory aid (and not a crappy subliminal ad!) I’m putting links to some items of interest here. No particular order. My idea is that whenever I get to blogging about it I’ll cut and paste from this post.

Don’t feel obligated to buy anything. If you’re tapped out, I get it. It’s been a long cold hard winter and I’m going to emerge from it as poor as a church-mouse. If it’s happening to you too… you have my sympathies. Also, I don’t want this place to get overly “salesman-like”. That’s why most of my blog is pure text.

Then again, if you buy anything from any link on my blog (regardless of if it’s the item I linked to) I get a tuppence and a pat on the head from Amazon. I will never turn down free money.

Ignore or read as you wish. Probably all this stuff will get discussed in detail sometime in the future anyway.

The season of death drags on. Cabin fever ratchets tight about our souls and tempers flare. We tiptoe around each other and peer at the calendar; is it not March?

Man and machinery, infrastructure and industry grind ever slower as ice hardens within the gears of modern life. We are merely smart monkeys (with only a passing association with smart) and we monkeys need tools to thrive. Without them we’d be forever caged and miserable on the Savannah; huddling fearful in the night, backs to a fire and spears aimed outward toward predators which outclass us. Without machines, my house and all around it for half a thousand miles, is uninhabitable. Whether one acknowledges it or not, it’s simply a fact. We always have and always will lean heavily on our immense assembly of mechanical force multipliers. Yet, only a very few of them were designed for extended use in current conditions.

In a temperature out of spec for the implements of humanity, civilization fades. Time starts to burn. Palliatives wear thin, the liquor cabinet runs dry, books are no longer interesting, conversation is stale, Netflix and all the crappy TV in creation cannot kill the pain of a winter like this. We edge toward the brink.

My woodstove is out cold.

As we ride out the storm, enduring the long bitter downhill slide, things go from bad, to worse, to farcical. When they are farcical is when the spring is nearest and the mind is most loopy. Punch drunk and reeling, the only thing to do is laugh.

I record this inadequate vignette to firm up my memory. I do this for the future; for when the tide changes and life returns anew. I’ll draw upon this memory when some nitwit on a balmy August evening is bitching about mosquitoes. I’ll consult with this memory so I’ll know in my heart I’m doing the right thing when I poleaxe the ungrateful son of a bitch!

…

It was sometime after midnight and yet another windstorm was in full fury. You could feel its fingers prying through our ill insulated and decrepit farmhouse. Alas, the dog needed to go out. Ugh!

I lavish care on my dog, who loves the attention and has earned it tenfold. It would not do to turn it loose only to find a frozen corpse in morning. I hope someday in my old age, should I attain it, people will give the same care to me.

Ruefully but dutifully, I bundle up in a dozen layers to accompany my dog in even the meanest weather. Indeed this night is among the worst. The scouring wind is brutal. It is an almost pathologically ill timed constitutional. Shivering in the intense cold, icy eyes ignoring what is normally a gorgeous sky, I wandered with my good friend and companion. We have only a limited plowed area in which to move. Soon, my dog did its deed. The dog, bred and equipped for the worst of nature, is cold too. It hurries.

Upon returning to the house I found the door wide open. Dear God! In this weather even a moment’s exposure drops the house’s precious internals to unfriendly levels. It is unthinkable I would’ve forgotten to close it.

I investigate the issue. In the intense cold the ground has shifted, as it does. Perhaps the door isn’t sitting well in it’s frame? Swearing, I clear ice from the threshold and slam it home. There’s a confounding issue. The doorknob isn’t turning well. It may be worn out, more likely it’s frozen. Luckily, the deadbolt holds. I turn in for a bad night’s sleep.

The next morning I wake to Mrs. Curmudgeon’s swearing. She gets up earlier than me and this often means the dog, which is now roughly a thousand years old in human years, immediately wants to got out. For most of the time since Christmas this has led to a string of invective from my better half; aimed at not so much my dog as the universe in general.

I’m a light sleeper but a late sleeper. I often wake up, fret about my precious dog, and fall asleep before I’m mobile enough to rescue wife or dog. This time the commotion continues. I shuffle down the stars to see the door is hopelessly jammed shut.

Mrs. Curmudgeon is bludgeoning it and it’s not moving an inch. If there was a house fire, we’d all die… which in the ongoing blizzard seems a pleasant way to go.

The deadbolt works fine but the doorknob can’t muster the twist to retract it’s bolt. Grumbling loudly I grab a screwdriver and work the thing open enough to release the door. The dog makes an urgent run for a snowy place to take a leak, dragging an ill humored wife behind. Bracing against the bitter wind, I examine the doorknob. I could probably fix it, but in this weather disassembling and methodically repairing anything is hopeless. The local hardware store carries doorknobs. It’s not worth the frozen fingers to mess with this one.

As a field expedient repair, I slap on some duct tape to disable it. I call this “the Watergate method”. I wait for dog and wife to get inside and secure the door with the deadbolt. For now we have a deadbolt but no doorknob. These things happen. Outside, the wind is howling and it’s nearly a white out. One needs a good door in such conditions. I shrug and go back to bed.

More to follow…