oh my, I'm up even earlier than I thought...

having first coffee and not going back to bed, so today will be a nap day I guess.
Rick, do you have a charged water line out there? Will it reach?
I'd really suggest that....happened to me once and ever since I always soak the area around the pile first with hose, then keep
a hose on the ready. Surprising how fast fire will creep along dry grass with some wind behind it.
Friend in Bucks County just got power back after almost 36 hours out. Has a 7500w gen hard wired into house with an effective if non code
interconnect. He is a very careful guy with an engineering background. They are cold up there now, I'm sure he had his fireplace roaring.
They are in middle of house remodel too, and the lights go off....backup gen kept crew working.
all my heaters are sure on, sucking up electricity and propane like the gluttons they are.
Had some nice low utility bills there for several months, now they start jumping back up.
Have tried to use passive solar by opening all shades on sunny side of house; the kitchen bay window lets so much light in
it will warm the kitchen by five degrees. The kitchen area will cool off slowly over the night and help delay the
heaters coming on.
I would so love to heat with wood. Am giving away several cords of seasoned stacked wood to landscaper or they will rot on my racks.
Plus, I have more wood to split waiting to go. Took me a while to get ten year old Huskee splitter to start yesterday, BS 1250 carb showing its age, some
jet was plugged a bit, but got it going, and after five minutes of burning some fresh premium loaded with Sea Foam, engine smoothed out and
was back to normal.
Splitting wood on a log splitter is a favorite job of mine. As someone who grew up with steel wedges, which we always kept losing in the woods,
never got smart and painted them a bright color, but if you've banged them for years on end, a logsplitter is just a much, much better idea.
All those wedges that would shoot off into the weeds when I hit them wrong on the second swing...yeah, I've had enough of that.
I'm lucky I can still do the log splitter if I'm careful picking logs up and simply saying no to the giant ones.
3am. Have bills to pay. Maybe that will make me sleepy...or not. Main tax bill sitting on desk staring at me. Not due til first of year.
But quarterlies are due then so I pay this one early to stagger the hits on checking account. The non insignificant cost of being a tax paying citizen.
Many don't have that pleasure, they are really missing out.

going slightly astray here...I admit to having real issues with corporations and the wealthy using tax loopholes to avoid paying taxes.
There are some visible examples of that which don't set good examples in my mind.
It's as if the tax code was built just for this kind of evasion, subverted over time.
Clean that up and give me a balanced budget and I'll be a happy man.
Isn't likely to happen though. So our brackets pay the bills.
Definitely a significant line item for a retired guy on reduced income.
But I think of my sister in California who got her power back on after five days out, and I think of
paying all that money, way more than I do, and wind up with such dysfunctional government and infrastructure.
My local roads are all getting repaved, smooth as glass, big white lines on them, makes night driving so much easier.
So I see where my taxes are going. They do roads well here...and winter doesn't wreck them like further North.
As I bounced up and down over the road repairs and bumps on roads in PA when I was just there, am thankful that doesn't happen here.
Southern Virginia has nice roads, rolling hills with glass smooth roads, nice to drive on. Just less people here, which is nice in itself.
Good morning all. As I have now put
you to sleep...