There seems to be no length that the ‘Deep State’ will not go to destroy former President Trump. It very well may be that they have a point that some of the materials that then President Trump DID NOT PACK UP and move to Mar A Lago might be important to national security. The point is that he had no part of selecting or packing of the documents. Also, I have serious doubts that he or anyone else spent hours going through those documents. He allowed the FBI access previously and told them come back any time. Add to that the question: To what end would rifling through tens of thousands of pages of boring ass crap be? With 24/7 camera surveillance and Secret Service personnel on site. who would risk trying to pilfer anything? Whether you are a Democrat, a Rastafarian, Episcopalian, Republican or Conservative this has to reek of political harassment. What do you think the reaction would have been, if President Trump had authorized a similar raid on former President Obama’s home? This has constitutional implications, not the least of which is ‘Can a sitting President revoke the privileges of a former President’. If that is constitutional we are likely to see President Biden’s, conversations with staff, his documents confiscated and his entire life investigated and exposed. Whatever your true political religion might be we cannot allow this to become a trend. Regardless of their politics, former Presidents must not be politically harassed by anyone.

Life in Alaska has been and is continuing to be difficult for me. Some days I am very tired. I’ll be 78 in November. In the past week or so, I have bucked up 2 cords of firewood and then have split most of it. Summer has been working 6 days a week so she has been very little help in getting the firewood stored away in the tents. It is not her fault that she has little time to help out here on the ‘homestead’. Dan and his brother have been working on the new foundation of the house every weekend. Dan works full time and then works his weekends here. It’s been way more Dan than Dave on this project. However, I am appreciative for the effort Dave puts into the project. I have been helping wherever I can but I seem mostly to be in the way and firewood processing has been my life for days and days. It has rained incessantly and I that I may be growing webbing between my toes. I’ve split wood in the rain but drew the line when it started to thunder. Thunder is a rarity here in Alaska. It is so rare that people will go outside to look for lightning. As of today, I’ve had to stop splitting the birch as the tent floor is covered in split birch. Tomorrow after a 10:00 AM clothes dryer repair, I am going to be stacking all of that loose birch. If I get that done quickly, I’ll be back on the splitter doing more birch. I finished all of the spruce rounds today and they are piled up awaiting a new tent. I’m doing, at least, 10 cords of wood for this winter. If I have the money and the time, I’ll do 12-14 cords. I’ve heard that you aren’t a Real Alaskan until you’ve had to burn the furniture to stay warm. If that is the measure, I think I’ll pass.

My appliance repair has not been a great financial success. The problem is that there just aren’t enough people to make it a real business. There are only about 8,000 permanent residents in the area that includes Homer and Anchor Point. Frankly, I don’t think I’m game for another business with even 2 employees much less 28. Mostly, I work here on the ‘homestead’ and get an occasional repair call. It isn’t monetarily very rewarding but it gets me off this hill and into society from time to time. Long before we moved to Alaska I was bad to talk to myself. My late wife, Connie, would chide me about this habit. Just to aggravate her I would tell her that when I wanted to speak to someone intelligent, I’d talk to myself. The problem with spending so much time alone is that you start to answer yourself. You have long, serious conversations about trivial things. I can see how when a person is left alone for a long time that they withdraw from society and become hermits. You don’t have to move into a cave to become a hermit. You can easily become a hermit in any neighborhood in any city. Where do you think that the “GET OFF MY GRASS” people come from? They are people that have lived alone so long that they have become un-socialized. They are urban/suburban hermits.

Enough “Deep Thoughts”. Old time SNL watchers will recognize the joke. SNL was once funny. Nobody was above the ridicule that they dished out. The made fun of Republicans, Democrats, Hollywood stars, all manner of politicians and they made us laugh Now they become so WOKE and politically leftist that they are no longer funny. They are, in fact, a mere shadow of the real SNL I really miss the days when comedians were allowed to be funny, we laughed at each other and no one was offended. I am now offended by the fact that so many people are offended about everything that amounts to nothing. I’m afraid that humor is dead and soon to be buried by the Marxist WOKETARDS.,

On to other things. Dan seems to think that we’ll (meaning himself) will get the house level and stabilized before winter. I am hoping that he is correct. If he gets the house leveled, I will be able to get the skirting around the house. This will make the house warmer and protect the plumbing that we’ve been burning a crap load of electricity with heat tapes to protect them from freezing. One of our electricity bills from last winter was near $350 and that has nothing to do with heating the house aside from the fan in the fuel oil heater. The entire house, except the kitchen, is lighted by 9 watt LEDs. The security lighting is on motion sensors and is, also, LED. We, necessarily, have to heat the water tanks and water lines in the water house. They are on thermostats that are set for 35F and both of the tanks and the houses are heavily insulated. If I have time before the snow flies I am going to put 2” furring strips on the outside walls of the tank sheds and then add 2” of foam board insulation and top that with plywood sheathing. Winters seem to be getting colder and electricity is getting more expensive. I think we are already paying 30+ cents per KWh. In Florida we were paying about 10 cents per KWH. The difference is significant to say the very least.

A project that has lain idle for nearly a year is now on my radar. That project is the repair of the Land Rover. It had a terrible scraping noise in the rear. I took it to a mechanic and he said that the brake calipers were rubbing on the brake discs. I had visions of someone else repairing this until he gave me a price of $800. New calipers and new brake pads are about $150. This meant that I was going to be the one that repaired the Rover. I dutifully removed the tires and unbolted the calipers. To my surprise when I had unbolted the calipers and started to remove them the entire rear axle came out. It seems, as I have stated before, no one thought to check the oil in the rear end. All of the bearings were not just worn but completely gone. We bought another Rover of the same model and year for a few hundred dollars about a year ago. I will be removing the entire rear axle assembly from the black Rover and installing it in the Red Rover. It reminds me of a kid’s game that kids can no longer play because it is exclusionary and racist. Never mind. Anyway the project requires removing 54 rusty bolts and reinstalling 27 newly cleaned bolts. With the normal interruptions and aggravations it will probably take me two days to complete this relatively simple task. I’ll be buying two cans of WD40 tomorrow. I suspect that I might need it all before I get the 22 year old bolts out of these vehicles. It seems that a third operating vehicle would be a luxury and superfluous, but Summer needs a vehicle to get to work and I need a vehicle to get around for whatever I need to do on the ‘homestead’ or my pitiful appliance repair endeavor. If one vehicle breaks, I’d be stranded on this damned hill or driving Summer to and from work. Neither option appeals to me or Summer.

This expected, anticipated “adventure” into Alaska has been a drudge. For five years now it has been very low on the adventure scale. I have not been fishing. I have not been hunting. I have not done any touristy sightseeing. I have not joined the local yacht club so that I can go do the sailing I love. What I have done is work too much and drink way too much vodka. I did join the American Legion. I’ve been to the club twice. Once to fill out the application to join and once to give them a copy of my DD214 to prove that I was, indeed, a war veteran. I’ve never even had a beer in the place. I was put off by the fact that on both visits the people at the bar were older than me and that’s really old. They don’t seem to be trying to attract younger veterans or any auxiliary people. The fact is I don’t see how they are keeping the doors open.

Alright, It’s 11:00 at night and I vowed to go to bed earlier than midnight. Two reasons for the earlier to bed. One: I drink less vodka. Two: I get an extra hour or so of sleep. Both are good reasons for early assumption of a horizontal position. One great benefit of this new bedtime is that it is very difficult to drink vodka lying on your side unless your are drinking Russian style. That’s out of the bottle, if you didn’t know. GOOD NIGHT!!!

Recently, the Chinese official news was threatening to blast Nancy Pelosi’s plane out of the sky, if she was foolish enough to visit Taiwan. I found that amusing as she is and has been a good and loyal friend to the CCP for many years. It was all very strange. It was as if she was trying to start WWIII. It’s over now. The Chinese have completely surrounded Taiwan and the semi-conductor business will cease shortly. Your new phone is on hold.

It seems lately that non-face to face interactions are leading to massive depressions. You need to go meet your neighbor. You might scare him or her at first but they’ll get over it. Even if you detest your neighbor, you should keep a dialogue open. The lack of human contact and the realization that we are in a Matrix designed by people not accountable to anyone ie. Soros, Xi, Yuckerberg, and a bunch of others who have FU money and power. The American public is being ’sliced and diced’ to keep us separated. Dems, apparently, hate everyone. Repubs hate Dems. Blacks hate whites. Etcetera, etcetera etcetera. ad infinitum. It really is Us against Them. It is really, really the U.S. against Them. The “Them” being all of the billionaires and despots (like Xi and Putin) deciding how we should live and in what manner America will exist.

On another matter the Monkeypox ‘Scare you to death’ campaign just took unexpected turn. Now the government is admitting that, so far, it is a disease of gay and bisexual persons. If you don’t want to believe me here is the info. You aren’t likely to find it anywhere else. https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-monkeypox-gay-bisexual-men

It has been an interesting week. Summer caught Covid. She had the first Covid jab and reacted so badly that they would not give her the second jab. It hasn’t been much of an imposition for her. She’s had no appreciable level of fever, if any at all. Mostly she’s felt tired and weak but otherwise just fine. I have, so far, tested negative for the Covid Crud.

Dan and I got the waterproofing barrier (Bituthene) onto the new foundation wall. It really wasn’t that difficult on my part as the ‘helper’. With the barrier on we are now ready to backfill. Of course, there will be drain piping around the foundation on both sides that will be done just before the backfilling commences. Summer will be very happy to have her house stabilized. Sliding down the hill into the abyss, as Martha might say “Isn’t a good thing”.

Monday, I got the last of the firewood logs reduced to rounds and when it wasn’t raining I split all of the huge pile of rounds. Then came the stacking. I hate the stacking. Splitting is kind of a Zen thing. You can contemplate the current state of the world or wonder why ‘W’ is pronounced Double ‘U’ and not Double ‘V’. Or why the plural of tooth is teeth but the plural of booth isn’t beeth. In other words, as long as you keep your hand out from the front or back of the moving ram there is no intellect required. There is no need to think about which round you put on the splitter, it is simply whichever one that is closest to the splitter. Stacking, however, requires thinking and not about lunch or supper. In order to get as much wood into the tents to protect it from rain and snow, it is imperative upon you to think. Every nook and cranny must be filled. Summer is the ‘Stacker Extraordinaire’. I am a slug by comparison. The stacked wood must, as closely as possible, resemble a solid wall with the large voids avoided. All of this filling in and making sure that it is all stacked as tightly as possible requires you to decide where each piece of wood fits into the stack puzzle. It is Jenga in reverse and if you don’t stack carefully you will end up with a lot less wood in the tent. The result of that would be wood lying out on the ground getting wet and later, covered in snow. The result of that some of it will be frozen so solidly to the earth that only an earthquake or the Spring thaw will release it. So-o-o-o for better or worse, I stacked all of the dry Spruce. And that’s another thing. I bought, from my wood guy Jeff, a good bit of Birch and paid extra for it. Only when I began to process it into rounds did I discover that it was all green as grass in June. Some of the large Birch limbs were rotted in the center making them useless except as fire starting material. Of course, even they will require drying as the wood surrounding the core is green and wet and the rotted center is like a sponge. I will take the blame for this fiasco. I did not specify dry Birch and it seems that many Alaskans are literalists. “You ask for Birch, you got Birch. If you wanted dry Birch, you should have told me.” Now, Summer and I will be stacking wet Birch in the back of the second wood tent. This we do so that, MAYBE, it will be dry enough to burn next February or March. I will be buying only Spruce going forward. I won’t be complaining too much to Jeff as he has been the least expensive source for firewood that I have found. Besides complaining would simply be complaining about my own stupidity. BTW each tent holds just a bit over 4 1/2 cords of wood.

Today I will get on with taking all of the stored items out of the second wood tent, if Summer is up to helping me lift a few things. In the above picture you can see a portion of a heater, the end of the door that was/is destined to be used on out Arctic entrance when the house is completely leveled. and no longer moving south. There is, also, some moderately heavy stuff hidden behind the pile of green Birch. The tires pictured are the winter tires for the Subaru Forester and there are only three. I have no idea where the fourth tire has gone. It was supposed to have been stacked with the other three. That is a mystery that will necessarily need to be solved before the snow flies. Anyway, somehow or other, I will be moving all of this stuff to the big tent that was once Summer’s plant store. It is 16 feet wide and 40 feet long. We can store a lot of useless junk in that much space.

Monday will be another trip to Soldotna. This trip will be a combination of truck repair and wood hauling. The truck we purchased had an ignition switch problem. You have to jiggle the switch around while attempting to turn it. Summer has figured out the combination of jiggle and turn so that it is less of an aggravation to her than myself. It has taken months for the dealer to procure the switch and make the appointment to have it installed. Procuring the switch was complicated by the effort to get the ignition switch that would match the door locks. You would think that with the VIN number that it wouldn’t be a problem. You’d be thinking wrongly. Anyway, the plan is to drop the trailer at Jeff’s wood yard and then be at the dealer before 10:00 AM. This is going to take a superhuman effort on my part because I don’t usually go to bed before 12:00 AM and I normally crawl out of bed at about 8:00 AM, bleary eyed and craving coffee. It’s about 80 miles to Jeff’s wood yard and another 5-6 miles to the dealer. I’ll make it. I just won’t like it.

The Tuesday, Wednesday or however long it takes, the plan is to clean up the area around where the backfilling of the foundation will take place. There is a bunch of drops of various pieces of lumber used to construction the new foundation along with some other debris and tools that needs to be removed from the area. Also, There is a stack of 80 pound bags of concrete that need to be moved to a drier location. They’ve been stacked there for over two years and some of them have solidified. Those will be used to build a retaining wall or something. The good stuff will be moved into the former goose abode. In the picture below under the green tarp is 50-60 bags of concrete. Also, while I am moving material there are a bunch of nice rocks in the hole. I am collecting them for some yet to be defined project. I find that, often, I at am at loose ends and need just one more thing to do.

I guess that brings you up to date. Now I have to go out and do some of this stuff. Ciao!