Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

12/31/19: 11:30 PM
Supplemental entry.

Finally it’s over.

The old year and a week from hell—7 consecutive days working in which I didn’t get much at all done at home. Did get out a little bit to do stuff one day and got my propane. It was probably delivered yesterday as this morning I noticed the tell tale ruts of a truck that came in and the tank is now 80 percent full. Enough to get the greenhouse through the winter.

Fired up the outside furnace and was dreading that the big logs would not catch while I was away but they did and it was idling when I got home with a decent amount of wood left. Switched over a short while ago.

Finally got to the pond this afternoon before heading out. Pulled most of the leaves off the net but discovered a couple casualties. A goldfish dead at the waters edge and the cat was feeding on it! Looks like it was dead and just thawed out of the ice but maybe it strayed into shallow water and Tom caught it ? Not sure and won’t get mad at the cat over a goldfish.

Also found a dead catfish near the center under the net and pulled it to shore with the dip net.

Kind of a bummer but not so bad since I have plenty of replacement stock indoors and in the greenhouse. It may be that these ones were getting old anyway. I’ve had them quite a while. Since about 2014. Life expectancy is about 6 to 8 years according to a source I pulled up—Though Ray says they ought to live longer. So it could be cold stunning or poisoning from the leaves. Got most of those off the netting so hopefully the pond will be ok. If I get that monster tank I might be able to keep all my monster fish inside and have no more worries.

Soaked the air plants for a couple hours and spread them out in a potting tray to dry while I was gone and put them back on the branch when I got home. Also the picky areolata ate her 6 pellets while in the feeding bucket. The new setup in the snake cage seems to be working out well. The enclosed space and 60 watt bulbs give the little ones extra warmth and more waste heat for the Room.

The two older Squares eat readily when I move them to the water in the TT setup. Hopefully that will become like the original setup when the occupants came out to greet me whenever I come into the room.

Work was better today than it was for most of the week. Especially yesterday when we had a cardiac arrest that we worked for almost two hours on top of just a generally shitful day. New Year’s Eve turned out quiet as it often does. Thankfully since I was scheduled at the window my whole 8 hours—and got to go home 2 hours early.

1/1/2020: 11:23 AM
Supplemental entry continued

Fell asleep while composing. When I woke up I had to switch back to oil and tend the outside furnace because the latter had fallen behind and the house had dropped to 66 degrees.

The fire had gone out and two big chunks I threw in last night and part of a smaller log from yesterday afternoon remained. There were also some live coals that a managed to rekindle from with a dead pine branch and twigs broken up and some old motor oil poured on the logs for good measure. Hoping the split wood I have coming tomorrow will mitigate this problem with the bigger logs not catching or sustaining a burn. It’s looking more and more—excuse my redundant repetitions—like I’ll be using both systems in tandem running on oil when I’m away for the day and switching over to the outside system for the night which conserves oil plus it’s no biggie to switch back in the morning to catch up and reload the fire box. The one thing I’d rather avoid is having to relight the fire from scratch and have to wait forever for it to heat up the boiler and in turn the house. The nice thing about good old reliable oil is that it catches up quicker and keeps up better in colder weather.

Back inside I attempted to pick up where I left off with the mail, but had problems with the phone freezing up related to storage space issues again. Managed to launch what I had to get it out of here and then deleted some more photos from the camera roll and some emails and did a shutdown and reboot.

Got off work early a little after 9PM and spent about an hour listening to H. Beam Piper’s “Last Enemy” in the X-ray waiting room until my phone died and then headed home to load a couple big chunks into the firebox and went inside to check out the Florida Room and do some tinkering. Then had chicken nuggets and did more tinkering before bed.

More tipping points to balance out what has been a lousy week. In addition to the improvements for the turts I got positive results from the Crystal Anthurium that is now down to a single leaf and was looking more and more like it would go the way of the first one last spring. I took it out of the square net pot and trimmed off all the dead roots and scraped the rhizome to wound it a little before dusting with rooting powder before putting it into a small round net pot and setting that inside a gallon plastic jar with a bed of moist clay pebbles with a cover of Saran Wrap to retain humidity to maintain a happy medium of moisture in the substrate it’s potted in and high humidity. And it worked. The plant is starting to strike new roots so it may have been saved in the nick of time. Plus I have a piece of rhizome broken off the end that my might produce an additional plant.

That is a good thing to start off the new year. Now to deal with the Anthurium rupicola that has been languishing in the bedroom vivarium. Think I’ll transfer it to a plastic container of moss for a while and try to beef it up before moving it to the Florida room. Possibly the new vivarium now in the works.

It was pretty decent in there last night. Pushing 76 degrees with both LED bulbs and the two 60 watt bulbs in the Vision Cages going. And I had another tipping point epiphany for redirecting the grow light hood so I can throw more light toward the back end of the Turtle Table. Slid a 2x4 across the I beam in the center of the room to the wood beam above the window to the stair well. If I can find a way to secure that in place and some hooks or something to hang the mounting hardware onto I’ll be able to turn the hood perpendicular and swivel one of the bulbs in the desired direction. Might have to wait until I find the appropriate hardware.

 

Hard to believe it’s 2020 now. A big milestone in SF and futurist predictions like 1997 or 2001 or 2010—think of Lost in Space (TOS) and the Arthur C. Clarke Space Odyssey movies. And there was Sea Quest DSV of the 1990s—which began its future storyline in 2018! Kind of sad we are nowhere close to fulfilling such visions; but at least meat is not illegal—yet (see episode with the contraband hamburger that keeps getting confiscated up the chain of command until it ends up in the hands of the captain who takes it to his quarters and eats it!) There was a similar health Nazi theme on Babylon 5 at the time where they were enforcing military fitness standards where Jerry Doyle’s Michael Garibaldi character was being compelled to loose weight while poor Susan Ivanova was being forced to gain —it was the future according to Bloomberg and I saw another of his calling all grifters/climate-change gravy-train political ads last night. So they’re definitely working on it and 2020 is going to be an interesting year. And another hottest on record for sure. If they could just deliver on their promise of snow becoming a thing of the past. Had a light dusting last night!

1/2/2020
Another supplemental entry: Firewood delivery—second day of the New Year.

Finally gave in and settled for a load of split wood from a mill in the hills near Scottdale. Apparently no one is dealing in whole logs and it took me a while to grasp this new paradigm. It came on a big truck. Actually a fire truck converted into a dump truck! I went to visit the place a week before placing my order. Kind of a scary place and I don’t think I’ll take my car in there ever again.

Deep ruts and had the ground not been frozen it would have been a treacherous mud hole! And one of the “fire trucks” was there—(not the one that came into my place; it was a red one!) The young guy running the splitter who came over to meet me was wearing a Trump hat! He was nice as pie too—like the fellow at the Uniontown Lowe’s who told me that the people at the otter store I usually go who told me they have a 2 cuts per order of lumber policy—are lazy and just don’t want to work. Quite a few Millennials got their act together!

The wood is good quality too. High percentage of heavy stuff—oak , hickory and black cherry. Probably more BTUs than some of the loads of whole 24 inch logs from Keslar’s. Another load of this stuff in addition to the stuff sourced from Bruce and what I’m cutting now on my own place should get me through the winter. Also have a little coal left on the pad and half a tank of oil and filled the propane tank for the greenhouse. This season I plan on getting two more plus have a load of poles brought in to cut up myself for Cadillac logs to get me through the colder nights. I’m also going to use oil more frequently as backup. Will elaborate more on this in future installments as the Norseman’s Hell Saga continues to unfold.

Postscript: Incremental improvements

So nice to have an ample supply of wood again and maybe a reliable supplier. I’m also cutting up my own too and in the process getting things moving with the long overdue cleanup of the property since the logging operation on 2014.

Cutting up the downed cherry which in addition to some big logs for cold nights will make the spring vault more accessible so I can start giving that more attention in addition to getting new trees planted.

Finally cut up the huge tulip poplar trunk I had Matt the logger leave by the driveway in addition to other logs including more desirable cherry. That was a mistake despite best laid intentions to have a convenient source of big stuff close at hand to cut up as needed in colder weather. Which never happened because the logs are very thick and difficult to cut through. But circumstances are pressing now and I’m just plain sick and tired of looking at them.

Reframing that—it turned out for the better that the plan got stalled at the time because that wood is way more useful now than had I burned it up promptly a few years ago!

The poplar log was dismembered and moved last weekend and I’ve burned some of it since. Eventually I’ll get to the others and then the way will be open to put on a French drain to catch the runoff and seepage from a wet weather spring that has been turning the driveway into a sheet of ice. I dug a modest ditch in the meantime to put an end to ice formation on the turnaround. Will deepen it and add a drain pipe and coarse gravel come nicer weather and connect it to an existing ditch behind the current jumble of logs.

Postscript: Last Entry

Florida Room continues to improve with the addition of wisteria vines and some artificial “jungle vines” I’m making from those grey foam caulking fillers sold by the roll in hardware stores.

I also Jerry rigged a 2x4 between the I beam and the top of the wall above the window to the staircase to remount the grow light hood so I could rotate it perpendicular and swivel one of the LED bulbs to throw more light to the plants in the back corner.

Note the nice braided wisteria vine! This is the pursuit of happiness at its best. I love doing this stuff and hope for a future where I can keep on doing it without government interference. The Green New Deal is a recipe for dystopia the likes of the SF novel Fallen Angels in which the greenie weenies succeed in reducing the carbon footprint at the expense of a society that is ill prepared to deal with a coming Ice Age.

Note: publication of this “supplemental” edition which I intended to have out around the beginning of the new year—or end of the old—was delayed. First because the editor was down with a serious illness for a couple weeks. Then because of problems with the size of the photos embedded in the article that caused it to get stuck in his mailbox! This required another week to rework things and I’m in the process on a Saturday morning doing some final editing and sending the manuscripts and photos separately with hope that this article will finally happen come Sunday morning!

I found a way to downsize the photos too so they should be easier to deal with. These mobile devices can be such a pain when it comes to issues like this. I may be getting a new phone in the near future because the one I’m using to write and take the pictures that make these articles visually interesting just keeps giving me more issues! Don’t even want to go there today!

At least Norseman’s Hell has been kinder to me than in previous years. Thankfully! I’d probably be screwed otherwise. Aside from the Green New Dealers clamoring and champing at the bit to get in power and outlaw my way of life—there has not been much in the way of newsworthy existential threats to write about this winter. There still have been some interesting developments ongoing while publication of this one was in limbo. I will eventually bundle that into a real winter edition plus another one about the Florida Room in the Adventures in Herpetology thread I’m looking to get started on this year.

And while the winter of. 2020 has been mostly benign so far and we are running the clock out on January—there is still February and March to get through—which are notorious for big winter storms.