22 November 2020 Sunday

Your Millennials have been indoctrinated (nay programmed) to think that all of their ideas and thoughts are not only original but brilliant. Even though they were all given a trophy with no achievement, they think they have accomplished some mythical task. Praise for failure and ‘self esteem’ boosts with no effort to excel. “Very good Cindy 2+2 can equal 5, if you want it to”. These over-educated, under-knowledged robots are destroying history. They have no concept of history. They haven’t been taught history (Ancient, World or American) so they have no idea that the majority of their brilliant thoughts have already been thought. The vast majority of all ideas put forth by these Millennials have already been tried and failed miserably. Their current big idea, Socialism, has failed dozens of times. Not only has it failed, it has murdered 100,000,000 plus humans and polluted much of the earth.. The murdering and polluting continues in Socialist/Communist countries around the world. You likely can’t find a single Millennial that recognizes the fact that America is the least polluting industrialized major nation in the world. The European Union (Pop. 340 million after deducting the Great Britain’s 70 million population) is far more polluted and poverty stricken. They have a standard of living, on average, about half that of the US. WHY? Socialism is the answer. Socialism/Communism is always the answer when you ask why a particular country is poverty stricken. India is a prime example of a socialist, mass polluting, poverty stricken country. A few people are very wealthy and the balance live in abject poverty. That, also, explains why so many Indians immigrate to the US.

Spent much of the day building a goose house. We’re using an already fenced area (last summer’s garden) to round up and keep the geese in one place for the winter. The geese have been running loose and making nuisances of themselves for over a year. We had intended to fence in an area for them this past summer. The problem is that reality got in the way of progress. Same for the chickens with the same results. Chickens and the three remaining ducks will be living in the greenhouse for the balance of the winter. Winter is upon us with the concomitant problems.

The goose house construction consists of two packing crates in which Dan had windows delivered. They, by happenstance, were of the same dimensions in length and width. One was deeper than the other but stacked atop one another they created a container tall enough for a goose to stand up inside. A couple of 2x4s, two sheets of plywood, some other scraps and several pallets made up the balance of the snow blocking enclosure.

23 November 2020 Monday

 I spent part of the day getting electricity to the goose house.  I wanted to keep the power cord off the ground so that it would not get tangled in the snow blower or be frozen down so solidly that it could not be retrieved until April.  I scrapped around through my junk looking for something to create a mast.  I found a piece of 2×2 and a crutch.  The crutch was one of a pair that I’ve been hauling around for over 20 years.  I never needed them again, couldn’t give them away (Salvation Army has dozens of them) and never found any other use for them.  By screwing the crutch onto the 2×2, I was able to get the power cord almost 10 feet off the ground.  Problem solved.

    The next challenge was to move the water trough to a position next to the goose house.  The moving was easy but hauling 10 gallons of water to it whilst walking in the snow was a challenge.  When I, eventually, got the water into the trough I plugged in the heater to keep the water from freezing.  After that I shoveled a big pile of snow on top of the water to finish filling the trough.  You can see that in one of the pictures above.

The balance of the day was spent bringing in firewood, picking up stuff that the snow had not yet covered and, generally, taking care of things inside that had been neglected because of all of the work outside.

24 November 2020 Tuesday

Snow still on the ground but the need to go to Home Depot in Kenai overrode the trepidation of getting out onto the roads.  They take very good care of the roads close to town,  The roads out of town get a lot less attention.  This hills will be sanded but the valleys in between are often neglected.  I was supposed to go to Anchorage today to get cataract surgery.  I listened to the weather forecast yesterday morning and with that information. and the possibility that Summer had been exposed to the Dreaded Covid, I decided to put off the eye surgery until next spring.  The Chugach Mountain road, while very good, is very curvy and at a fairly high altitude.  The mountains are a 140 miles or so north of Fritz Creek and has passes that are at 1000 feet or so. These roads are subject to avalanches especially after it rains.  Rain was part of the weather forecast that stopped my trip.   Also, some of the curves on this road are inverse pitched.  This means that if you slide you are likely sliding to the outside of the curve and the outside is often a drop off of several hundred feet.  I may have mentioned this previously but let me reiterate.  “I am allergic to death.”  Anyway, I toddled off to Kenai with a great deal of care.  They road indeed had some bad patches but was in overall pretty good shape.  Since I am, because of the cataracts, very night blind I was in a hurry to get to Kenai and back before dark.  I hurried every chance I got and when I got to Home Depot, Wal Mart and the Three Bears Grocery stores I rushed as much as possible.  Home Depot took nearly forever as the clerk ignored me for over over 10 minutes, while I stood at the Return Desk.  She processed three other customers before turning to me and telling me that she had to use the register that she was on.  I was just a little peeved but remembered just in time that there is no cure for stupid and no point in arguing with an idiot.  She was a polite idiot but an idiot nevertheless.  It took her near 10 minutes to sort out the receipt and return two pieces of stove pipe I’d purchased last week.   Twenty very long minutes were spent with me pacing in place with the extreme need to get to the restroom all the way across the building.  At last, with cash in hand, Suzy and I dashed across the store cursing those ambling shoppers who seemed to have no particular destination in mind.  Sometimes, store traffic reminds me of vehicle traffic in Florida.  You’ve got a bunch of people on the road with no where to go and in no hurry to get there.  Many of these impediments to progress are a bunch of old farts.  I used to tell Connie that “If all of these damned old people would get out of the damned way I could get to where I was going in the same decade”.  Of course, I was in my late 60’s when I was saying that.  I’m sure everyone has seen some of these people just meandering up and down the aisles of your favorite store with little or nothing in their basket and stopping every three feet to look at something.  These are the same people who will get side by side on the freeway, block both lanes and with me directly behind screaming “Get the hell out of the way, you stupid @#**+@#s”.  Wal Mart and Three Bears went pretty quickly.  Except that at Wal Mart I became mesmerized and found myself wandering aimlessly like the people I’d just been cursing at Home Depot.  Anyway, with my purchases made, a sandwich from the deli and a full tank of diesel, I hit the road for home.  The road home was, virtually, ice and snow free.  The temp had risen to the mid thirties and the road had absorbed enough heat to be clear but wet.  I made it home just thirty minutes before dark.  Enough time to bring in firewood and feed the critters.  With myself safely ensconced in my easy chair I sipped a well deserved bourbon and coke.  Yep.  I went for the bourbon instead of the vodka today.