Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   another sketchy slab drain hole
Saturday, November 26 2022

location: 800 feet west of Woodworth Lake, Fulton County, NY

After my usual Saturday morning cabin routine, I walked down to the dock and proceeded to hook up the chain that had previously been connecting the come-along pulling the floating part of the dock to the long-suffering hemlock I've been using for an anchor. I connected the chain between that hemlock and another piece of hardware on the dock just on the chance that the turnbuckle (which is only rated for 250 pounds) fails. I didn't have any way to easily take up slack in the chain, so after connecting it as tightly as I could, I squeezed an outdoor chair under the middle of the chain.
While I was down at the dock, I managed to get some pictures of the small ducks (in small half-dozen-member flocks) that are on it at this time of year. From their photos, I see that they're likely hooded mergansers and not buffleheads.
Back at the cabin, I set out with the cabin's firewood-hauling backpack (the old one I used to use in Hurley) and the small Ryobi chainsaw directly east of the cabin. I soon found some fairly dry wood that turned out to be a large striped maple (which rarely gets much more than three inches in diameter). This would make for good kindling, which is my term for any piece that is to massive to get burning without a lot of assistance.
Another thing I did was to further trim some of the branches of the trees west of the cabin, where I've been trying to open up a narrow slot through the trees to give me a view of Peck Lake and Lake Edward. Lake Edward itself is hidden in a fold in the Earth, but I found that when I was trimming branches about fifteen feet above the ground, a bunch of buildings on Lake Edward's west shore suddenly came into view, meaning that lake is only just barely hidden from our cabin.
This evening I made "big shell" pasta with a side of sauteed mushrooms, tofu, and onions. I combined the latter with stuffing from Thanksgiving, which wasn't quite as good as I expected it to be. Then I proceeded to eat a bunch of cannabis and drink far more than I should've. I kept expecting the cannabis to kick in, and it never did. I've had good luck eating cannabis from this same batch in the recent past, but for the a couple weekends now it hasn't been working. Have I become desensitized?
Before going off to bed, I drilled a one-inch-wide hole through the basement slab near the heat-pump-based hot water heater to facilitate draining it. I haven't used it in weeks, and it will have to be drained before temperatures in the cabin are allowed to sink below freezing. I've had good luck creating ad hoc drains in basements by simply drilling a hole through the slab into the gravel underneath. I don't know if this practice, which I came up with on my own, is frowned on (it probably is), but it works great and makes dealing with unwanted water in a basement much easier. The new hole took only a few minutes to drill. After that, I vacuumed up the dust and drained the 50 gallons from the hot water heater down into it.


Some of the hooded mergansers I saw on the lake today.


The dock today. It was a pretty nice day, and much of the recent snow has melted. Click to enlarge.


The first raft of ice forming in Woodworth Lake's outlet bay. Click to enlarge.


A friendly chickadee just west of the northwest end of Woodworth Lake. Click to enlarge.


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