Attribute to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

2020—the Milestone Year that went bad continues to be a time of mixed blessings. And it’s been busy too as I continue to labor to get things done—mostly in the Florida Room where the renovation going on two years is nearing its conclusion and work is currently underway to declutter and reorganize the remainder of the basement to accommodate more fish tanks along with a general reorganization of that space to get all my tools and household appliances like a washer and dryer and other things in order. Hopefully before the beginning of the end or come what may depending on who wins the election in November.

Heaven Help Us!

Have been trying all season long to put together the first edition of the Diaries that begins with the dreary days of the Coronavirus Winter and runs through the summer to the 4th of July. And then the second edition from there until Labor Day. However it’s looking more and more unlikely that it will happen that way mainly because I’m so damned busy and the longer I delay the more out of date an pointless the storyline seems to become—so I’m leaning strongly in favor of scrapping it and starting over with a digest version that will cover the significant events and milestones of the Milestone Year. I’m still calling it that because it has been a year of milestones on many fronts and things have been going well over all in spite of the ongoing national crisis and a few mishaps and setbacks on my home front. Regardless I keep on hanging on. It’s all I can do.

In lieu of the Digest Version which I haven’t got a prayer either getting to press this week—I figure it’s worth doing another supplemental. After what seemed a smashing success of getting the Florida Room back together and the other improvements documented in my last Adventures in Herpetology article—I had a mishap involving the escape of one of the two Rhinoclemmys areolata who found a way to get out of the Turtle Table setup and onto the floor and presumably out of the Room and either went down the floor drain or out the door if it was left open while he was at large. When it was discovered that he was missing last Thursday—that prompted a sleepless night of carrying a lot of stuff out of the basement and searching in every poss nook and cranny to no avail. With the passage of time and transition to chilly fall weather underway the prospect of this tropical species surviving even short term and being recovered is not good. It’s another hard lesson that has prompted more safeguards and improvements that I’ll write about in the coming weeks along with a major turning point in clearing out and dealing with most of the clutter in my basement.

That and two other projects ongoing.

Thursday night a week from the sickening discovery of the missing turtle I picked up some lumber on the way home from work and started working on a backstop to screen the eyesore of the oil tanks in front of which the other 40B duo that is currently in the Florida Room will go to make room for the 20L / 29 duo when the stand for that is finally done.

Saturday morning I visited the guy who is building that and it will be done soon and we should also be able to bring the 150 monster tank and stand over to place on the slab I poured for it this summer. And I spent the evening doing more redding up. This time on my other upstairs bedroom to start removing some clutter including two more tall tanks like the duo I placed above the big vivarium in the Florida Room. I decided to clean those up and remove the front panes first for a front opening conversion and leave the other two in situ rather than take them down and drag them out of there again.

One of the second duo was especially problematic because it had been used previously to house a colony of Lobster Roaches which unlike my current Dubia colony can climb class and required a Vaseline barrier in the inner rim to keep them from escaping when the lid was opened. I looked up a few solutions to that online before carrying that one downstairs to work on it.

Decided to go with alcohol and dishwashing soap but beforehand I used some pieces of cardboard and paper towels to scrape and wipe off the superfluous remnants to have less for the solvents to clear away.

There were some serious blobs remaining like this area where the barrier actually slid down the glass over the years that the tank was sitting in mothball status.

Got a good bit and then wiped the inside rim down with alcohol to dissolve the Vaseline and dry paper towels to sponge it up. It did a pretty good job. Then I took the tank outside in front of the garage where I worked on the old mouse tubs and sweater box cages last Sunday and proceeded to partially both tanks with warm soapy water and ran into a serious problem that qualifies as a crisis.

The water flow from the hose seemed to be losing pressure dwindled to a feeble dribble and then stopped!

I noticed earlier when I was drawing water from the kitchen sink that the pressure seemed lower than usual. But now it had stopped and that prompted me to take a trek to the spring vault to see what might be going on up there.

It was nearly dry!

This is unpredicted because it’s never done this for as along as I can remember and while the curse of the Dry Belt has been pretty bad this summer we’ve seen worse and there was always some water in the vault—unless it is deliberately drained out—like I had to do back in April of 2016 when Bruce was helping me install the Pex manifold. (see [Letters Issue 867;)

Or when I had the problem with the continuous dribble from the bathtub faucet that drained the vault. Or a few times when I was topping off the greenhouse pond and forgot and left the water run overnight. Did that recently this summer and had a lot of sand and silt coming through the plumbing but that subsided after several days when I let the vault refill.

Funny this time I did not get any issues of stuff being pulled through the line but I think the problem stems from a combination of the drought conditions and a slow leak in the line that may be the cause of that wet spot that appeared in the field above the greenhouse a few years ago. Thought it may have been the result of the abnormally wet summer of 2018 which was causing all kinds of wet basement and water on the driveway issues. Wet weather springs that may have been caused by the high amounts of rainfall and disturbances from the heavy trucks and other equipment during the logging operation in 2014. Another suspicion was that the weight of one of the vehicles may have cracked the water line causing a leak.

I’m now thinking that is my best bet in regard to the cause of the current problem.

So it’s another crisis in the making. No more water for basic household activities like bathing , flushing the toilet or water changes for aquariums until I can get this resolved. Which may take a while until I can make the necessary repairs and for Mother Nature to give me some rain to restore the supply. And the current forecast portends no freaking rain for the foreseeable future!

However right now a drought is a blessing in disguise. Fair weather and minimal flow coming down the line will make digging up a the wet area where the leak is suspected less problematic than wet weather and a full spring vault that would have to be drained because there’s no way to shut off the line at the source.

It will also be the golden opportunity to get into the vault and work on that problem and shovel out the accumulation of sand and silt that is long overdue and I’ve been putting off because it’s unpleasant to get in there and mess around in the cold water. Let not a crisis go to waste and it works just as well for a hillbilly Jerry rigger like me in Greater Appalachia as it does for a progressive policy wonk in Washington looking to take advantage of a national crisis to get something done.

After I returned to finish up cleaning the two tanks I tallied my resources and counted my blessings. It does not take much water to wash a couple sets of uniforms that was my next project. A 5 gallon bucket and two jugs of rainwater and then two more for the rinse. And I’ve got a whole bunch of those sitting around waiting for spent tea bags to make Jerry Baker’s tea tonic solution for watering plants. And I’ve got a barrel full of the same in the basement that I keep on hand for filling the jugs during the winter and it’s mostly full.

Takes me two wash basins worth to bathe in the tub—which I do under normal conditions to conserve water. I can also tap the ponds and the 300 gallon Rubbermaid’s which I’ve done before at Crunch Time to transfer water to aquariums in the basement which better for the fish that are coming in anyway because it’s the same water they were living in all season long and there’s no issue with change of chemistry or temperature. And I can also use the wash water and what I drain out of the kitchen tanks to flush the toilet.

There’s also the artesian well to take my jugs to like Aunt Mona & Uncle Budd were doing when their well pump gave out in the final years before they bailed from their old trailer and moved to C’ville.

Hope it doesn’t get that bad!