Only two hermits remain. The ninth hermit has been joined by a tenth. They live on a small ranch in Central Texas with The Dogs of Hermits’ Rest. He does not hang out in bars anywhere near as much as when he was trying to be Li Po.
Other than family and music and song writing, his interests include writing. He has authored many technical tomes, several short stories, and a novel. He does have a day job or two, and he re-publishes some of his writings for those here.
For more information, see the complete profile.
And she’s climbing the stairway to heaven.—Robert Plant
Going up and down the stairs just got easier and safer. The contractor installed the custom stair rails today. He did a really good job on them, echoing the scrollwork in the front door. Also ties together with the chandeliers Suna chose for the entry.
Jaime and his son are hard at work installing the kitchen appliances. I think the hardest one is going to be the refrigerator, which is designed to fit inside a cabinet. Once it’s in, we can install the cabinet panels that will make it invisible.
I am glad the granite is tough because it is certainly being challenged, as you can see in the photo.
Suna is a member of a blue healer group on Facebook. One of the other members read of Stella’s tragic accident and contacted her. She said her bitch had just pupped, and she offered us one of the two pups. It is an extremely sweet offer, but I’m not sure I am ready for another dog—especially one that will look a lot like Stella.
Stella died today. I am heartbroken. She’s been my constant companion for more than a year—ever since she chose me.
All I can say is she must have really loved me to help me learn a lesson this hard.
I buried her in the field near Heinrich’s grave. I will miss her for a long, long time.
Try'na make a dovetail joint fit tightAnything I do I know I must do rightAnd while the buzz saws whineI paint the fireplugs red—Steve Forbert
You can buy prefab granite countertops if you buy prefab cabinets. If you have custom cabinets in your house, you have to select individual slabs of granite at a stone yard. That’s Suna’s job. I literally couldn’t tell the difference between some of the slabs she sweated over.
But that’s all done now. The cabinets have been measured and the countertops designed. We found out we were a little short on one of the types, and we had to pick out another slab to have enough. That’s a risk when you buy the granite way too soon.
The granite artisan, shaped the general cuts in his shop but brought enough tools to cut the holes for the cooktop, sinks, and so on here onsite. We had enough scrap from the cuts to make almost all of our window sills out of granite or whatever stone we used in that room. Suna knows all their names.
You can stab ’n’ shoot ‘n’ spitBut they won’t be fixin’ itThey’re lyin’ an’ lazyThey’re drivin’ you crazy—Frank Zappa
Our septic system is finally complete, and it passed inspection. Since we’re way out in the county, the septic was the only permit we had to pull and the only inspection we had to pass. But that was bad enough.
Our first contractor disappeared after finishing the installation. He told us the system had passed inspection, and we should be receiving the license to operate the septic “in a few days.” That was the last we ever heard from him.
When I went to the county to inquire about the license, they told me he had most certainly not passed the inspection and that it would be illegal to use the working restroom in the garage for anything. The inspector told me she had only known him to have about a 30% pass rate, and she was going to pull his license to work in Milam county. And this was a guy who had been recommended!
Damn! Not knowing how this works, I’d already paid the bastard, who wouldn’t answer his phone or emails. And his voicemail was too full to accept other messages—probably with other dissatisfied customers.
After a couple of weeks, I decided I had to just eat the cost. My lawyer said I had a good case but the chances of the bad contractor having anything to collect would be infinitesimal.
I set about finding another contractor who would finish the work. It’s easier to find a contractor to do a job than it is to find one willing to fix someone else’s mess. But I did.
He showed up here a couple of days ago and went to work. Between my backhoe and his trackhoe, he got the tank dug out and moved. He had to be really careful because we had since installed a 500 gallon underground propane tank next to the septic tank.
Nothing blew up, and he managed to get the tank leveled, which involved replumbing the main supply line. When he attempted to lift the tank to level it, it moved almost a foot closer to the propane tank. It turned out to be level when it stopped.
Lesson learned: You don’t know what you don’t know. Don’t beat yourself up about learning a lesson. The school of hard knocks will do that for you.
Anyone knows an ant, can't.Move a rubber tree plant.—Sammy Cahn
I didn’t originally intend to post these pictures, but then it hit me. I’m trying to be as honest as I can about our move to the ranch, and that means talking about scary stuff, too. I know I already did that by talking about yesterday’s tornados and floods, but I thought these two pictures would drive my point home.
First, I mentioned the flying siding yesterday. I’ll be brief. Just look how far that piece of siding buried itself in the ground when it hit. Now imagine if it had hit somebody. It would be like when I worked in Houston, and a gust of wind blew a sheet of plywood off the roof of one of the skyscrapers. It cut a lawyer in half.
Now some of you will say, “Lawyer…no big loss.” But it could have been anybody. This siding, too, could have cut someone in half if it hadn’t landed harmlessly in our woods.
Living underground, fire ants are particularly susceptible to floods. They have evolved a cutthroat survival strategy. As their mound floods, the ants flee to the surface.
If water continues to rise, they build floating islands on the corpses of their siblings. The islands are attached to the original mound by a thin string of dead ants. If the water rises enough to break that “string,” the island floats away. It has everything it needs to rebuild the colony where it lands. Notice the princess ant is at the very top of the island in the picture.
The big problem comes when the island floats into an animal or maybe a person. The ants swarm all over that refuge, sometimes millions of them. And they’re not happy. Stay as far away from them as you can.
Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warmCome in, she saidI’ll give ya shelter from the storm—Bob Dylan
We found out why we have a storm room this afternoon—the one I have always joked is our “zombie apocalypse room.”
A severe storm blew up—heavy rains, gusting winds, tornados. It dumped almost three inches of rain in less than an hour. Given that the ground was already saturated and the ponds were already full to capacity, there wasn’t much hope to avoid a serious flood.
The house is on one of the highest points of the ranch. So I wasn’t worried about the flooding. The tornados were another matter. We all—Suna, me, Jaime’s family, Grillo, and Stella—all crowded into the storm room and locked the metal doors. Rose insisted on running upstairs to hide, but she and the house came through without a scratch.
The winds were strong enough to blow Jaime’s wet saw off the front porch. We also found a 4x8 sheet of metal siding buried six inches in the ground just on the other side of the gate. The siding was the wrong color to have come from any of our buildings or any of Ralph’s.
Ralph stood on his back porch taking pictures until he realized pieces of his hay barn were flying over the house. He was uninjured. In fact, the only injury sustained on either property was a small cut on one of the horses.
Our neighbors in Pettibone weren’t so lucky. The tornado touched down in that area several times. It destroyed a huge swath of trees and phone lines. It also took out at least two houses. And, yes, there were fatalities reported there. I don’t have the details.
As bad as the storm was, I’m glad we, our neighbors, and most of the country came out fairly well.
Most of the inside hearth is cinder block and cement wrapped in the same German tile as the fireplace wall. The exterior hearth will be the same thing wrapped in the same stone as the house. The top of both hearths is a very fossilly two-inch thick limestone.
Jaime determined that the blocks were too big to be esthetic as they arrived from the quarry. My job today is to pick the parts of the blocks with the most fossils. Stella helped.
Jaime and crew will cut them to my markings and position them on top of the cinder blocks. This is a lot of physical work—for Jaime’s crew, not me—and I don’t begrudge them a dime of what I’m paying them. Their artisanship and sheer talent will make this house much more beautiful than I ever imagined.
And if California slides into the oceanLike the mystics and statistics say it willI predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill—Warren Zevon
After listening to Ralph gripe about “those damned sparrows” building nests in his eaves and crapping on everything, we took his experience to heart. We had Murdock come back out, now that the electrical is run and the siding is up, to enclose the eaves on our porches in metal. Let’s see those bloody sparrows build nests there.
House finches are another matter.
Construction often requires destruction. Today, Andy, whom everybody calls Grillo (grasshopper) for some reason, was upset that he had to take down a house finch nest. He was so upset that he built the babies a box and hung it back up in place after installing the plastic wrap that helps water seal the house. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the parents will most likely abandon the nest anyway.
