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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   promising indications of Spring
Tuesday, April 1 2014
This morning for the first time this Spring, I could hear the enthusiastic calls of Phoebes, who must have just arrived from wherever they spend their winters. Their arrival was at least a week late this year; two years ago they arrived on March 19th. Another indication of Spring was the first evident flock of Canada Geese flying northward overhead. I responded to these two promising signs by starting up the running water in the brownhouse (all this requires is the closing of a tap at the top of the siphon hose and a strong suck — applied by mouth; no other method works very well) and by turning off the household boiler, hopefully until late November.
While out walking the dogs late this morning, I took them up the Chamomile Headwaters Trail, which has been blocked for over a year by a large fallen Chestnut Oak. Today I used my battery-powered chainsaw to cut a chunk of wood out of the middle of the fallen tree so as to reopen the trail. The saw's ten inch bar was shorter than the tree's diameter, so I had to cut from both sides, and at one point the bar got badly pinched, but I was able to do the job much more easily than I could have done it with a bow saw. And I had enough juice leftover to not only fill my pack with a heavy load of salvaged oak, but also build a nice pile to pick up later along the Stick Trail (none of this wood was from the tree I'd just cleared from the Chamomile Headwaters Trail, which was insufficiently dry; if I'm going to carry wood home on my back, it might as well be absolutely dry). I ended my firewood cutting when the saw's battery was completely exhausted.
Temperatures today peaked out just below 60 degrees Fahrenheit. And it wasn't just me and the wildlife who were loving it. All three of the cats took turns out on the laboratory deck, and Clarence eventually wandered the roof ridge of the house itself all the way out to the west end of the gable over the upstairs bathroom (perhaps a eighty feet of roof ridge from where he began at the solar deck).


Clarence today directly above the upstairs bathroom window. The Droid was still in that weird solarize mode when I took this (the sky was blue with cirrus clouds, not black). Click to enlarge.



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