Hot showers and cold beers

Hot showers and cold beers is how I measure civilized living. Cold beers are easy right now. There's still plenty of snow on the ground. I haven't even bothered starting up the refrigerator. Instead, I'm using it like a big cooler. Every couple of days I put a roasting pan full of snow in the refrigerator.

Eventually the snow will all go away, but I'm working on a low energy refrigeration solution. Of course, in a a pinch, I could just plug the darn thing in. It would take a bite of my limited off grid power, but cold beers are cold beers.

How showers . . . well that's another story. At first my lovely wife was happy to have any water at all flow from the faucets. I'm taking plenty of hot showers, but I'm I'm heating the water on top of the woodstove. My lovely wife has put up with that until now. If all goes well, we'll soon have hot water at the turn of a faucet -just like people in the First World. I need some plumbing parts to make that happen, nothing major, but it'll have to wait until our next trip into town. The hardware store list grows ever longer.

All my time is not spent working on the house. There are other demands on my attention. Picking up the loose ends of one's life after a long absence doesn't happen overnight. Then again, how showers and cold beer are important.

-Sixbears