This was briefly my smartassed solar shower. Lasted through one, count’em: 1 each of those 8 gallon water jugs. Getting 60 pounds of water up there in a way so’s it will stay decided me the showering I got wasn’t worth the hernia I almost got.
So next time in town I went to Walmart and bought a 2 gallon insecticide sprayer.
Posted in 2013, Adventure, Nature, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Science, Senior Citizens, Survival, Texas
Tagged environment, Life, lifestyle, misc, outdoor, personal, redneck, society, sociology, solar shower
Ever noticed how many people hang around discussion boards of every description watching for things they can tell other people NEVER to do?
NEVER play with matches! NEVER ride a bicycle with no brakes! NEVER point an acetylene torch at your face when you light it! NEVER try to get inside a tree shredder while it’s running!
I think there must be something about typing a command about never that feels validating, self-affirming. Telling people what they’ll either have better sense than to do anyway, or who will pay no attention and will do it anyway.
And the fact is, it could as easily be said in ways people might listen to because it wasn’t so offensive and presumptuously downtalking: How about, “Sure would be a big bummer for a person to get his hair caught in that fanbelt.” Something along those lines.
About the only response I can think of appropriate to the NEVER command is “NEVER say NEVER!”
Posted in 2013, Communication, Internet
Tagged communications, Education, Human Behavior, humor, psychology, rhetoric, sociology
Guy with the RV sent me some more pics.
From the front there doesn’t appear to have ever been a collision on that side. No pics of the other side.
Bummer that it only has 80 MPH on the speedometer. I’d figured on coasting down mountains at 110 or better.
He says the fridge isn’t the original. Says the closed compartment above is a freezer.
Says that’s new carpet, which the cats should appreciate. In fact, all that interior needs a few layers of cat hair before it will be able to call itself home.
Posted in 2013, Senior Citizens, Texas, Transportation, Trucks
Tagged culture, Econoline RV, economy, Life, lifestyle, other, personal, rv, senior citizens, society, sociology
I stepped out of the RV to pee around 4:00 am and since it was too dark to read while I stood there pondering life to pass the time. Tried to anticipate whether, late as it was, I’d be able to get back to sleep, or should I come indoors and do some work on the computer I’d been putting off doing.
So when I finished I’d decided to go up to the cabin and get some coffee, maybe do the comp thing. But I noticed the wind had blown over a chair where I’d left a pinch bar and it was on the ground. Picked it up and headed for the cabin porch.
Suddenly I was proud to have the pinchbar because one of the bigger coons I’ve ever encountered met me at the head of the steps, teeth bared. I leaned backward to begin a step and the coon leaned forward suggesting he/she’d be following while I reared the pinchbar back to strike if needed.
Coon came down the top step with its front legs looking me straight in the eye when I spang hit it with the pinchbar and knocked it backward onto the porch. This was beginning to tick me off.
I came up the first step while the coon turned around to face me again baring teeth and sort of whine/growling, not much of a pause before it came fast and I whacked hell out of it again upside the head.
Stunned it enough to give me time to think a moment and decide I wasn’t crazy about how this was all going, so as the coon struggled up and turned to face me I hit it again, this time with all the force I could muster. Took it down again, but not dead, not unconscious.
So I stepped into the cabin and dragged out a .22 pistol inside the door, turned back around just in time to have the coon turning on me again.
Lousy way to start a day.
At least for a while. I’ve been kicking it around in my head a lot lately. If I’m going to do any serious trekking into the high mountains for more than a few days I’m going to have to have someone looking after the felines. And if I want to spend a season work camping somewhere they almost always require couples, as opposed to singles.
Fact is, I run across a lot of men who might be a lot easier to get along with than a woman, but most of them have their own ideas about what they’d prefer to do with themselves as opposed to doing what I might wish them to do. And women tend to be a lot easier to come by in my experience. The problem is keeping things clean and well lighted, the parties of the first and second parts each knowing where the other’s coming from, and where they’re going.
That can get complicated. Mainly because one of the two parties is working on more than one agenda without coming out and saying so, figuring the agenda of the other can be modified after the hook is set better.
But a lot of the things I want to do before I die are going to require someone to lift the other end of something. Finding someone willing to lift the other end and take joy in doing it is no easy matter. Whatever the object needs lifting, whatever the agenda.
Afterthought: A woman who owns a couple of mules or a string of pack goats and a few acres of land up near the continental divide might work out well. Also a stock trailer and something to pull it. Probably can find something on Craigslist.
Afterthought #2: I can’t, in good conscience, recommend me to any woman. In fact, I’d counsel strongly against me as a consideration. Fact is, I’m a nice guy. Got an honest streak in me and enough of a century behind to know this whole thing was a lousy idea. Though fun, in an oblique sort of way.
Posted in 2013, America, Human Behavior, New Mexico, Outdoors, Senior Citizens
Tagged culture, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, musings, other, personal, psychology, Relationships, senior citizens, society, sociology
Something snagged the Invadercat here a while back, tore him up badly and took out one eye. He hung around here a week-or-so for food, didn’t appear to be getting worse. But then he vanished, as he’s always been prone to do. I know he was getting food at one of the ranches around here, probably several.
But once he left he hasn’t been back. Might be one of the other folks who’ve been feeding him took him to a vet and had him doctored, or maybe something got him in the woods. Life’s dangerous enough in the real world for a cat with two good eyes and no serious injuries.
Meanwhile, Ms Tabby’s having worse than her usual battle with spring and summer leg and skin troubles. Getting welts from either cactus, or fire ants on her legs, belly and tail. I see her crouched in the meadow stalking things in places where I know there are fire ant beds, so that might be the problem. But she’s looking worse now than anytime since she’s been with me.
Ms Niaid and Mr Hydrox are doing generally okay, though Niaid’s looking skinnier than I’d like. She’s bringing in several mice per day to show off before she eats them, but still wants the catfood and is the eagerest eater of them all. After I used the sheep shears on her she hasn’t picked up burrs and gotten matted hair so badly, seems a lot more pleased with herself. Gets around well for a senior citizen.
Mr Hydrox only has half of himself sheep sheared, avoided being caught to have it finished after we had a difference of opinion during the operation regarding how much more to take off. But last night he wanted to sleep with me, so I’m thinking he’s going to have less hair soon.
All in all central Texas probably just ain’t the exact right place for these felines and this 70 year old man and the Coincidence Coordinators are raising the ante for staying any longer than I have to.
Posted in 2013, Animals, Outdoors, Texas
Tagged animals, cats, country life, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, musings, Nature, senior citizens, survival
If you think you’ve reached the point where you just can’t look a bologna sandwich in the eye one more time, maybe it’s time to begin using your noggin. Even if all you’ve got is a frying pan and a Coleman camp stove you can make a concoction you’ll savor.
Chop up that bologna into bits the size of dill pickle slices and throw it in the pan with chopped onion, minced garlic, and a teaspoon of grapeseed oil. Turn it and stir it until the bologna browns and curls up on the sides.
Once it’s done, throw on a teaspoon of chopped dill pickles, and smear it all between those two slices of bread. Curry, ginger, ancho, jalapeno, green pepper, all of them will add some variety to carry you through until payday.
The old ‘pound of red and a loaf of bread’ method of squeezing through hard times was never good past the second day. Torturing yourself to death after the third was just a method of robbing life of potential joy.
This ain’t the 20th Century anymore.
Been intending to mention this. When you’re making up your pimento concoction for pimento and cheese sandwiches a few chopped onions and capers added to the mix changes the entire scene.
Also, using cream cheese instead of mayonnaise works fairly well to give it variety if you’re eating it several days in a row. Add capers the second day, add chopped up onions the third, chop up jalapeno and mix it in the day after that. Dash of chopped garlic, ginger, curry. It all works. All good.
A whole new culinary experience every day.
I’m not sure what I think about this proposal to take Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Andrew Jackson and so on off the currency and put Bill Gates, Donald Trump and the Koch brothers on there instead. Certainly there’s merit to the idea.
Old Ben Franklin would probably find the knowledge people are rolling up his picture snorting coke and meth through him unsettling. Building him a karmic load he didn’t pay for.
There are certainly more currently recognizable people guilty of all Andrew Jackson did, one-upped him in a hundred different ways. But Jackson might be said to have set the pace and nailed down the precedents, earned his place on those bills. Even though the people handing them over to supermarket clerks to pay for dog food mostly don’t who he was, nor what he did.
A series of bills reflecting their actual value in the world marketplace after the national debt is subtracted might be a good idea. $1 bills with a minus $1 Million across the bottom. A picture of the last couple of presidents on each side.
All in all I think I’d prefer the government to issue a piece of currency molded in the shape of a straw for people to snort their coke and meth through. If it’s got to have a picture on it, use the first chimpanzee to get launched into space. Or Ronald Reagan for starting the War on Drugs. Building the need for a lot more of those bills to be printed.
Or any of the legion of celebrities who’ve overdosed on the stuff and become immortal.
Tagged culture, currency, economy, Human Behavior, humor, money, musings, other, philosophy, thoughts, US presidents
The Internet came fast, though it’s tempting to take it for granted and just absorb it as it comes along without having to faint and revive yourself.
A person can hop over to Craigslist to see what types of travel trailers and cheap RVs people have they want to sell in lordee-knows-where places he tried to forget exist in Texas. Pop off an email or two to the people doing the selling.
Exhaust that and pop over, shoot off an email to the USFS district handling the Gila Wilderness to find out the condition of this-or-that trail nobody in his right mind would use. Whether a particular trail has been cleared enough to a particular spot to allow a mountain bike to use it.
Pop over to Google maps for a quickie satellite look at a mountain or three, reboot the machine to clear the memory when things start to die.
Pop to dogpile.com to do a search of bicycle forums and discussion boards to see what mountain bikes are costing and what people are saying about them. Then another search or two to find out how much weight a burro could be expected to carry. Whether anyone’s got a notion about them as riding animals and the maximum weight of the person they could carry under particular conditions.
Spang, another websearch to DIY sites looking for ideas for load carrier devices people have put together on bicycle frames, or using bicycle wheels.
Doesn’t appear to be any limit to it. However obscure and esoteric the interest, there’s somone, somewhere on the Internet thinking along the same lines who’s already done some of the heavy thinking.
The neighbor up the hill tells me people are putting together 3D printers in their garages allowing them to duplicate anything that’s ever been manufactured. Putting what they do up on the Internet so other people can manufacture the same thing somehow. Some guy making a crescent wrench that works from his old crescent wrench and a printer.
It’s no wonder the governments of the world are suspicious and concerned. With things like that going on there’s no predicting what will come of it. People might get used to thinking and begin to make a habit of it.
About a century ago two bicycle mechanics put something together the scientific community was busy agreeing couldn’t be done. Without any help they took a manned heavier-than-air flight convincing enough to turn everything upside down.
Didn’t even have computers and the Internet. If they’d had those someone might have been able to convince them they couldn’t do it. Or everyone and his dog would have been making one in his garage.
Posted in 2013, America, Communication, Internet
Tagged culture, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, other, society, sociology, technology
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
So Far From Heaven 