20 OCTOBER 2022

The MSM is trying desperately to convince the American people that the feeble and cognitively impaired Joe Biden is in charge of our government. All of this when it is obvious that he isn’t even in charge of himself. He has to be led on stage to make some disjointed, incoherent speech and then led off the stage. He is unable to competently read a teleprompter and on several occasions he has shaken the hand of some imaginary person. He, often, is unable to discern the exit from the stage and has to be coaxed off when his wife isn’t near enough to take his elbow and guide him in the proper direction. All of this makes me wonder. I wonder about “Who is, actually, running the country” since it is clearly not Joe Biden. Is it Ron Klain, the Whitehouse Chief of Staff? President Xi? Vladimir Putin? George Soros? Some cabal of billionaire oligarchs? Therein, my friends, lies the crux of the most serious problem in these United States of America. WHO IN THE HELL IS IN CHARGE OF THIS ONGOING DISASTER?? We are now $31,000,000,000,000+ (that’s 31 TRILLION DOLLARS) in debt, the economy is in free fall, inflation is rising by the minute, food shortages are beginning, gasoline will be $8 a gallon very soon, our emergency oil reserves are being depleted as fast as they possibly can be and the average American is getting poorer by the day. We may be unable to discern who is in charge of the Executive Branch of the government. However, we can know who is ultimately to blame for this ‘train wreck’. Those people are Nancy Pelosi, Kevin McCarthy, Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell. Each and everyone of them has contributed to this awful mess by their actions or their inaction. This entire American disaster is down to and the fault of Democrats and RINO Republicans. After these mid term elections, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer will likely retire. McConnell will, hopefully, be unseated as the Senate Majority Leader. McCarthy is aiming for the House Speaker position where he will still be up to all of his RINO ways and continuing the destruction of America. If McConnell and McCarthy are in power in the Senate and Congress there will be no significant change in the future of the US. McConnell is, reputedly, tied very closely to the Chinese Communist Party and McCarthy, whose allegiances are, at the very least, suspect. The Speaker and the Majority Leader control the legislation that comes up for a vote. No matter what legislation is proposed in the Congress or the Senate, nothing substantive or Conservative will get past these two RINOs. They will allow only that legislation that aids their benefactors or themselves. Neither of these men give a Tinker’s Damn about the citizens of America. Only a majority of Conservatives, for instance, would be capable of changing these two bodies the way that the Democrats have changed them. All of this is why I keep harping on an Article 5 Constitutional Convention of States. “WE THE PEOPLE” are not going to be able to sort this out without repealing the 17th Amendment, Term limits, limiting the size, power and scope of government entities and codifying a balanced budget. Without these changes, I fear that the decline of America will continue and accelerate.

Got up this morning at my usual time, 8:00 am. I know that seems late but when you go to bed at midnight it seems correct. In the rack, as we used to say in my Navy days, for 8 hours is my current need. I was once capable of sleeping 2-3 hours, going to work and then partying again until the wee hours of the next morning. Of course, at that time, I was near 60 years younger. At 8:00 am the outside temperature was 29.1F. Summer had built a fire before she left for work so I got when I got up the house was cozy warm. Sunrise was at 9:04 and sunset is scheduled for 6:36. That gets us down to 9 hours 32 minutes of work time. Silly me, I’ve just spent a bit over 2 hours reading the news and drinking coffee. I guess I better stop here and go to work. There is still much to be done before the snow flies. Thankfully, we have sun instead of rain.

31 October 2022

The above was written Pre-Covid. Not pre-pandemic but Pre my getting Covid. For the record it was everything that people said that it was. From Sunday a week ago uNtil this past Thursday, I coughed so hard and often that my ribs hurt and my diaphragm was so exercised that it hurt to breathe. I had coughing fits that lasted five minutes or more. I did not get any chest congestion and that was likely because I was coughing so hard and so often that nothing had the opportunity to settle in my chest. I’ve had a cold/flu where I had chest congestion. It is miserable feeling as though breathing is almost too much work. I had my first real meal since contracting this miserable damned disease. I scrambled a couple of eggs and ended up feeding half of them to the dogs. Summer has had Covid since some time prior to last Saturday and neither of us has felt like cooking. She tested negative last night and went back to work this morning. I’m feeling much better today so I’ll test this evening. If I test negative, I’ll finish up the work I started almost two weeks ago. This isn’t the sickest I’ve ever been BUT it is the longest time that I’ve ever been an invalid since open heart surgery 21 years ago.

AT LEAST, IT IS A SUNNY DAY AND WON’T BE RAINING FOR TRICK OR TREAT.

As you might surmise NOTHING has been done here at home. The outside temperature has dropped into the mid to high 20s during the day and in the high teens some nights. It’s 12 noon here and the temp is 26F. My only ventures to the great outdoors has been to retrieve firewood. Normally, I would not take 26F as being that cold but I think the China Virus thinks that it is very cold. My appliance repair business has ground to a halt. I’ve had to turn down calls for two reasons: One-I don’t feel like doing anything, Two-Nobody else needs to get this if they can avoid it. The last time I have ever been seriously ill was in January 1987. I came down with something on a Monday morning before I could go to work and I was in bed with a high fever and deliriums until early the following Saturday. For most of 6 days I did not know what world I was in. The only remarkable thing about that experience is that since January 1987, I have not had a cold, the flu or any other malady remotely related to those illnesses. That is, of course, up until last Sunday. That bout with whatever it was had two outcomes: The first, of course, was that I haven’t been sick since. The second was that, because of it, I quit smoking. I got out of bed on that Saturday afternoon, lighted my first cigarette in nearly a week. It tasted so bad that I stubbed it out, put two cartons of cigarettes in a paper bag and gave them away the following Monday. I have not returned to cigarettes for these 36 years since.

Dangerous Dan pulled off our foundation job to take care of some long neglected projects at his own home. Also, he is leaving in a few days for a visit with some of his family in Minnesota. Deer hunting is on the agenda. He makes this trip every year and comes back with a cooler full of venison. As for our house, I think the foundation work is over until next Spring. The ground is frozen so digging is done for the year. I still need to bolt the new foundation piers to the house and would have done that this past week except for the obvious reason.

ABOVE IS ONE OF THE PIERS WITH A PIECE OF REBAR INSERTED WHERE THE BOLT GOES THROUGH.

A CORNER WHERE I NEED TO BOLT THE PIER TO THE HOUSE.

Before my bout with this Wuhan Flu, I managed to pick up most everything running loose on the property. There are still a few stray pieces of lumber and some rocks that I need to retrieve, but, for the most part, the picking up is done. The Rover still sits forlornly on its blocks, I need to start the tractor that I haven’t started in near two years. I was going to get gravel and dirt delivered last week and use the tractor to spread it. I still need to do these things but I’ll be doing them in much colder weather. One good thing has come out of the cold snap and that is that it has stopped the incessant raining. Actually, two things have happened. The rain stopped and the ground froze. We are now officially out of ‘Mud Season’ and I could not be happier about that fact. We’ve had a couple of dustings of snow that only lasted but a few hours. The real snow will start in earnest in a couple of days according to the weather forecast. Last winter we went through a period of snow, warm, thaw, freeze, snow, warm thaw freeze and more snow. This pattern occurred several times. This left us with 2-3 inches of ice all over the yard and our gravel street. It was a necessity to wear ice cleats every time you stepped off into the yard. Not wearing cleats risked broken bones and maybe death. I don’t mind the snow so much but I hate the ice. Maybe we’ll just get cold this winter ands stay cold until “Break Up’.

ONE OF THE TWO VOIDS AT THE SIDES OF THE HOUSE THAT NEED TO BE FILLED WITH DIRT

Someone gave Summer a near new refrigerator. It is one of those All refrigerator-No freezer things. It was not cooling when they gave it to her. It, apparently, had a freon leak somewhere around the compressor and/or the evaporator coil. The leak now seems to be repaired and I am being harassed to reassemble the damned thing and get it into the house. Again King Wuhan stepped in and stopped all progress. Now that the temperature has dropped, I’ll have to reassemble it in the store tent but won’t be able to recharge the system until I can bring it inside for a couple of days. I have a couple of other refrigerators that could be repaired except that it is very difficult to adjust temperatures or troubleshoot when the temp outside the box is about the same as the inside of the box. It would be nice to have a warm, insulated place to work. Those will be next Spring projects.

SUMMER’S REFRIGERATOR WAITING FOR ME TO REASSEMBLE IT.

It is 1:23 PM and in 11 hours and 37 minutes I will be 78 years old. That’s it for me. I’m going to lie down for a while.

There do not exist enough sheep, other sheared animals, fur bearing critters or fields of cotton to clothe the entire human race. I went to the continually virtue signaling site of Patagonia web site. The vast majority of their clothing is made from petroleum derived materials. It was the same at REI. With all of the shouting about banning coal and oil production, you’d think that, at least, one of these Eco-Wacko dummies could suggest an alternative better than killing 90% of the human race or wiping out every single fur bearing critter on the planet. Virtually everything these Eco-Wackos use in their miserable, mentally challenged lives is petroleum derived. Their electric vehicle battery materials were gouged from the earth using heavy, heavy equipment burning tens of millions of gallons of diesel fuel and spewing millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. The plastic shell and all of the plastic interior was derived from petroleum. The tires it rolls on were made from petroleum. The lubricants that allow it to roll are made from petroleum. The electric cord with which to charge it is made from petroleum. The the generators and power lines that bring the electricity to and through the power cord were likely smelted using electricity derived from the burning of petroleum products or coal. The car is charged using petroleum/coal generated electricity to charge it. Their electric car is little more than a fancy coal fired electric golf cart. Their hair brush, their comb, their toothbrush, their fancy schmancy shoes, their clothes, the food packaging that protects them from disease and virtually everything else is derived from petroleum. Almost all of the life saving materials at the Emergency Room, in the ambulance getting them to the emergency room and making them comfortable during their hospital stay is derived from petroleum. The list goes on and on through out their miserable, unfulfilling, mentally challenged lives. YOU ARE EITHER STUPID OR INSANE OR BOTH TO ADVOCATE FOR THE BANNING OF PETROLEUM OR COAL (Ditto nuclear power). Here in ‘my neck of the woods’ the Eco-Wacko city council banned petroleum derived plastic grocery bags even though almost everything we put into those bags was packaged in petroleum derived plastic. I am old enough to remember that the argument for the use of plastic bags was that we were destroying the trees. The Eco-Wacko wisdom on the 70s was that we needed to use plastic bags instead of paper bags to “Save the Trees”. Fast forward 50 years and we are using paper bags and killing the trees to ‘Ban the Petroleum”. Eco-Wackoism is a form of brainwashing. It doesn’t need to make sense as it’s adherents are moistly incapable of coherent thought. A few minutes of logical thought shoots gigantic holes into the assertions of looming ecological disaster. I was raised in the suburbs of Birmingham, Alabama during the heyday of the steel mills. The air pollution was real. You could wash your car and an hour later your could write your name on the hood in the particulates that had fallen from the sky. That was real air pollution not this phony CO2 shell game being played now. Any person can get on their petroleum derived plastic clad computer and learn that CO2 levels have been much higher in the past. A past where there were no SUVs and few if any bipedal mammals. Neither the average human nor the use of coal or petroleum pose any great threat to the free world or the human race. The greatest threat to the free world and the human race is the Marxist inspired Eco-Wackos trying to impose their ignorant, ill-informed, cult religious vision of the world upon you.

Yesterday, Dangerous Dan and I, got the piling for the west corner of the house installed. On Friday, he got the 4X4X4 foot hole dug and managed to pour the concrete footing. He managed this without my advice, my micromanagement or any of my physical labor. I was out in the boonies struggling to install a tub boot on a front load washer and, frankly, with the way the boot installation went, I’d rather have been sloshing around in the mud helping Dan. I have put on dozens of the damned things but this one simply did not want to participate. It seems simple enough. You put the boot’s retainer ridge into the groove around the washer door and snap on the spring loaded wire ring. As I said, “I’ve put on dozens of them”. After an hour of trying every solution that my peas brain could conjure, I gave up. The ‘Battle of the Boot’ will resume on Monday. I made a “Strategic Withdrawal”. My late brother assured me that Marines never retreat but they do make “strategic withdrawals’. I was in the Navy, so I did not know that fact or procedure.

In the previous post, I noted that Summer had filled up the two wood tents. Now what is left must be stacked on pallets and covered with a tarp today. Hopefully, that by the end of this day’s work we will be free and clear of wood except to bring it inside and set it ablaze. We discussed digging the potatoes because it has continued to rain almost daily. We’ve been getting a day of sunshine followed by several days of rain. I suspect that the potatoes are rotted and not worth digging but only by digging them will we discover that fact. Summer is, finally, off the six day a week work routine. She will be off Monday and Tuesday. On her off days she is going to clean out the greenhouse and plant her garlic and something else that needs to overwinter in the ground.

We got rid of all of the chickens and the incessant rain has washed away all of the chicken crap. As Martha used to say “That’s a good thing”. Did you know that ‘crap’ is derived from Crapper which is the last name of the man who, in England, invented the flush toilet? I am feeling liberated. I no longer must worry about ducks, geese or chickens. The only critters that must be fed and watered are the three cute but useless dogs in residence. Overwintering the chickens made an enormous amount of extra worry and work last winter. Their water froze several different times due to failures of various heaters. I had to snow blow a path to the coop and keep it open all winter to restock their feed box and water tank. Carrying 50# bags of feed and 5 gallon buckets of water in the snow and, sometimes, ice was both arduous and often dangerous for an old man. “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands”. I’m clapping very vigorously. Buying a couple dozen eggs a month is a small price to pay, even at $6 a dozen, for being free of the work and the responsibility.

I’m borrowing a tent from dangerous Dan. I want to use it to partially enclose the Range Rover. This is so that I can attempt to make the necessary repairs even if it snows and certainly to stay out of the rain. Crawling around on the wet gravel holds no appeal for me. This is a project that would have been done months ago had I not lopped off the end of my finger. A finger, that by the way, has physically healed but has little feeling in it. Mostly it hurts to use it. Well, it doesn’t really hurt much unless I bang it against something but it feels very uncomfortable, almost painful, when I use it to touch something. It’s a very weird sensation that defies description except as very uncomfortable.

The birch leaves are all yellow now and blowing off the trees. There were a few days where some were yellow, some were green and yellow and a few were still green. It is Fall. They are all yellow and falling. The snow will not be far behind this annual event. The raining and constant mud since the end of June has made me look forward to the coming of the snow. Of course, by the end of February I’ll be wishing for the snow to be gone. I guess that I’m just your basic human and not happy (except for the chickens no longer residing on the property) unless I’m unhappy. Since the Summer work season is coming to a close, I have been picking up everything that I don’t want to lose until next Spring. If it snows this winter like the last, anything less than three feet tall will be ‘missing in action’ until Spring. Often the things that go missing are the very things you need in January. There is an ancillary problem with picking up and putting away tools and such. That problem is that I often forget exactly where I put the damned thing of which I’m desperately in need. First Law of Physics: For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. First Law of Storing Stuff: For every bit of ability to safely store an item there there is an equal but opposite ability to forget where in the hell it is. Such is life.

Again we have come to a stopping place and I have to go outside and do some actual work. Those pallets won’t move themselves and the wood lying on the wet ground won’t stack itself on the pallets. Summer is on the injured reserve list. She pulled a muscle in her neck/shoulder area and is in some good bit of pain. That means that the old man has to move all of the wood. ALOHA!!