Freeze!

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Here's an update while I am up for it:

Just ask Brou or Daisy - it sure was chili dogs here last night! Mark saw a reading of ten degrees below zero when he got up at dawn to let the dogs out. We later thought about the out-of-state elk hunters up top with Slim. I was getting ready to form a rescue mission when Slim finally returned our call. Apparently all was in good order when we initially called but he had been in the middle of driving his newly arrived herd of a hundred or two head the remaining five miles up to his ranch. He admitted that he was quite contentedly off his horse and settled more comfortably into his pick-up truck for the duration.

We knew that he was picking up the hunters in Albuquerque yesterday and now Slim caught us up on the details. He had to stop and check his cows in the corn lot before heading to the big city. The plane was one hour late so he grabbed a bite to eat while waiting. The hunters hadn't been fed on the plane so they stopped on the way back to eat and fuel up. Notice that I used the term fuel. It was only after he had topped up his Dodge diesel that Slim noticed that he had pulled up to the wrong pump and filled up on gas. Ever had one of those days? Luckily, he noticed the smell of gas as he pulled out the nozzle and hadn't started up the engine. The hunters were a couple of easy-going guys and didn't complain as he secured a number of 5 gallon cans and a pump with adequate capacity to siphon out the half and half in order to start the process all over again.

What annoyed Slim the most was the onslaught of bums asking him for gas money as this embarrassing circus was taking place. "Hell, I offered them a whole five gallons and a can and they still walked away. Would you believe that!?" I guess a real can of fuel, pure or half and half, just won't buy a bottle of booze in the end. Who said beggars can't be choosers anyway? Maybe the ethanol lobby is missing a big offshoot market here.

With temperatures of ten below, our water pipes finally froze up at the Rat. I sighed and dropped my head in resignation as the faucet squeezed out one last drop late this morning. How long before it would eventually thaw out? We fired up the blast furnace in the addition to give the water tank and plumbing there a little heat. A little later we decided to pull up the hatch to the space beneath the addition to heat up the wellhead and other plumbing and fired up the heater again. Mark noted that it was foolhardy to pull up part of the floor in a room with no lighting of any sort.

So the predictable tale of two idjits continues. An hour later, I ask Mark if he would step out and fire up the generator. It wasn't 30 seconds later that I heard a thunderous crash and a stream of ultra-volume expletives. I burst into that kind of grasp-the-wall-for-support hysterics. If you are part of that perfect breed of rational humans, I still don't want to hear any 'tut-tuts' out of you. Having been in the same position previously as Mark was now, I was more than qualified to welcome him into the fraternity of trapdoor idjits. And I had paid my dues right then and there since Daisy's little dance with me earlier had left me in a further deteriorating state of extreme pain. Laughing now has its own torments as does coughing from this nicely timed chest cold. I paid for every laugh today dearly, especially when another stream of cursing arose as he hit his head on the generator room's low door immediately thereafter. We both ended up laughing hysterically in the end - what else can you do sometimes?
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Sorry, I just had to go back and add this Dore litho again. I can never get enough of it. You can see its first suitable blog use here: Don't ever wanna hear about YOUR potholes!
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The good news? The heat allowed into the crawl space freed up the pipes! The forecast calls for a slight warming trend - afternoon highs in the low forties for the next few days so we will hopefully dodge the big freeze bullet again.
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