09:19 – It was 67.3F (19.5C) when I took Colin out at 0710, hazy and bright. Barbara is off to help the Friends of the Library haul a bunch of books.
Justin showed up yesterday morning to install the downstairs floor. He spent hours doing prep work and then hours more actually installing the floor. As with many jobs, the key is to prep well. He just showed up a couple of minutes ago to finish up downstairs and then get started on the master bathroom upstairs, where he’ll be laying ceramic tile.
Barbara will be delighted to hear that I’m going to start using most of our stock of 2-liter soft drink bottles to store water instead of food. I’m not sure how many we have on-hand, but it should be enough to store another few hundred liters of drinking water. I’ll continue using some 2-liter bottles to store sugar, rice, and other dry bulk foods that fit into them easily, but we’ll use most of them for water storage.
I debated between storing untreated well water, which of course we drink routinely now, and chlorinating the water as we fill the bottles. I’ll probably just store raw well water, since we’ll continue to store commercial bottled water as well. In a long-term emergency, we could drink the commercial bottled water and use the raw well water for flushing toilets (or, for that matter, in cooking where the water would be boiled). And if worse comes to horrible, we could chlorinate the raw well water for drinking.
I’ll fill the 2-liter bottles just full enough that they can freeze without bursting the bottles. That way, we could even store them under a tarp outdoors if we want to. A 2-liter bottle is just under 13″ (33 cm) tall and about 4″ (10 cm) in diameter, so a space 80″ (2 meters) square by 40″ (1 meter) tall would be enough space to store 1,200 2-liter bottles, holding 2,400 liters (600 gallons) of water. In terms of space efficiency that’d be 2,400/4,000 or 60% efficient. Pretty darned good.
Email from Kathy. She and Mike took some of the Nestle Nido that they’d made up according to instructions, which was too rich for them, and tried diluting it with more water. To make a long story short, they decided that using 1.5 times the amount of water specified (which yields five gallons per can of Nido) was pretty close to the 2% fresh milk they ordinarily use, perhaps a bit richer. It’s not homogenized, of course, so you have to give it a good shake, but it tastes fine.
With four of them, including two teenagers, they normally go through a couple of gallons per week. Call it 100 gallons per year. That’s 20 cans at the dilution they prefer. She’s still a bit concerned about best-by dates, so she decided to order five of the large cans–a three-month supply–as well as four of the small cans, which she’ll date and taste-test 12, 18, 24, and 36 months out to see how well they store. After they have some long-term experience drinking the stuff, assuming they’re still happy with it, she plans to order 20 more large cans to give them their year’s supply. But she’s reasonably satisfied that she’s found a solution to their LTS milk needs.
She also intends to do some testing with Nido to see if it will also satisfy their other dairy needs/wants. She plans to try using Nido to make up cream, buttermilk, yogurt, and possibly butter and cheese. She promises to keep me posted. I appreciate that, because I don’t have time to test everything I’d like to test.
And I sent Kathy’s email address to the Prepper Girls, so my guess is that they’ll be scheming together before long. In fact, they may end up doing a face-to-face meetup, since several of them live in Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky, all within a couple or three hours’ drive of Kathy.
Remove the label and set the bottle in the sun for a few hours after you fill it. I’ve checked the water several years after storing it and it was always fine. I’ve checked only one bottled of unexposed water and it smelled bad; hardly enough to count as science.
Yep, what you’re referring to is called SODIS (solar disinfection). It’s widely used in the third world for obtaining safe drinking water. The interesting thing is that the sun’s UV deactivates but doesn’t necessarily kill microorganisms. It basically stuns them, but after you take the bottled water out of the sunlight the stunned microbes start to recover. After a few hours out of the sun, the count of active microbes start to increase, and after 12 hours or a day it’s pretty much back where you started, except that the mix of species changes. Some of them are in fact killed dead by day-long exposure to direct sun, but some do recover.
I’d just chlorinate and be done with it. No need to keep track of separate water.
You’ve got pipettes and droppers, and all that good stuff to make it all science-y too.
Me? I just rinse the bottle one last time with diluted chlorine water (using the entirely scientific method of smelling the concentration.) Drain the solution, and fill with filtered water. Our water has enough sediment and iron that unfiltered has a yellowish cast that I don’t like seeing in stored water.
You might want to add an under sink or “whole house” water filter at your filling station (wash sink in the basement?) just to get rid of particulates and organics before bottling. I use an “RV/ Marine” hose for jug filling, as they are rated for potable water. The garden hoses may be made of nasty chemistry (and recycled mat’l) , or the jackets may be lubed with lead. [don’t know how the lead thing works but I was told that cat 5 cable jacket was lubed with lead during manf, and that’s why Cali has the cancer warning on cable] In any case the hose, filter, and associated plumbing bits are <$50 and should all be available at a big box store.
I used this method for my aquatainers, and that water was fine after 5 years….
n
We have a 1-micron filter between the well and pressure tank, so not much sediment gets through.
Chlorination is not as simple as most people think. Public utilities chlorinate to a specific concentration of free chlorine, which goal may take a lot more initially to reach. There’s biological oxygen demand and chemical oxygen demand to take into account. The proxy for this in CDC literature is “cloudiness” but that’s not really a good proxy. Bright, sparkling, completely clear water may contain a boatload of microorganisms or organic chemicals, so the amount of active chlorine necessary initially covers a pretty broad range.
It’s interesting that the CDC recommends amounts of chlorine bleach per quarter/liter/gallon depending on the concentration of the bleach. But the last table on the page specifies how much bleach to use if you don’t know the concentration, and that amount is the same as if you’re using 1% bleach. They say that 8.25% is the most common concentration, so obviously they’re not too concerned about people using 8.25 times more than necessary. My attitude is it’s better to use too much than not enough, particularly since chlorine bleach rapidly loses strength, even in an unopened bottle.
https://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/emergency/drinking/making-water-safe.html
Yeah, I have the tools to determine actual chlorine concentration, but most people don’t. Assuming a fresh bottle of bleach, I always recommend that people use the double concentration that CDC recommends for cloudy water. There should be a noticeable bleach smell to a sensitive nose after you finish chlorinating. If/when you need to use that stored water, simply let it sit in the open air until any bleach odor present dissipates.
Sort of good news on the tax scene. County assessor reports tax evaluations up $6B this year with oil contributing $2.4B. Taxes suck but it shows the oil industry is back up. Of course certain greenie weenies in the state government are doing their best to kill it.
Other news congress names the Bakersfield main post office for Merle Haggard. (Buck got the Oildale one a few years ago so even though MH grew up in Oildale it already gone.)
A conversation a few months ago with the new tenant in the warehouse.
tenant: Here is the rent check.
me: Thanks !
tenant: Well, I had to do the walk of shame this morning.
me: Huh ?
tenant: You know, take the used toilet paper out to the dumpster.
me: Why ?
tenant: Because you cannot put toilet paper in the septic tank.
me: Who said that ? We have an advanced septic system that handles any and all solids.
tenant: Oh. (long pause)
tenant: I am going to get those guys. They messed with me again.
Is anyone else here having trouble with http://www.drudgereport.com and the ad blocker ublock in FireFox ? When I run ublock and go to the drudge report on both my office pc and my home pc, FF flips to a grey background and says this:
“Something interfered with this website loading”
“This could be a temporary problem with your network, or due to your adblocker”
“Try:”
” Check your internet connection and reload the page”
” If you are using an adblocker disable it by clicking on the adblock icon in your browser toolbar”
I may have to move to http://idrudgereport.com as something in the drudge report keeps on messing with my FireFox and causing it to have massive memory usage or leaks.
“They messed with me again.”
Indeed.
WRT ad blockers, etc. in browsers; the various sites are fighting back against this. I figure, like RBT and others here, I won’t go to those sites ever again, accordingly. Like with the paywalls. And lately we gotta keep tweaking FF to keep up.
Someone linked to these two articles today (or yesterday) and I can’t be arsed to figure out where, but it was mainstream (for us.)
http://neverslavery.com/index.php/2017/02/15/basics-survival-part-1-preparing/
http://neverslavery.com/index.php/2017/02/16/basics-survival-part-2-post-collapse/
I post them here, NOT as a suggestion for useful info, but as an example of what bad, obvious, and useless advice looks like. There’s something to be learned from everyone, and there are a couple of good ideas in the article, but they are not coming from an authority, and aren’t anything outside of common sense.
Not gonna fisk it, but there are a few that can’t go un-noted. It opens with 2 paragraphs of nasty comments on preppers, which I’ll skip.
“The reality is, that if a nuclear war were to break out, no one would survive. Our Earth would be rendered inhospitable to anyone on the surface. Unless you have a large underground city capable of producing food, water, and oxygen ad-infinitum, your chances of survival from the effects of the bombs alone are close to zero. ”
–tell it to the people of Nagasaki, Hiroshima, and even Chernobyl….
” Lastly, being close enough to a source of water will eliminate the danger of dehydration.”
— he’s talking streams or rivers, and doesn’t even consider what surface water will look like when the sewage treatment plants fail, airborne pollutants (like from cities burning) get washed down, or even the effect of a corpse upstream will have on your “water supply”.
“When getting food, it has to be food with the greatest shelf life. Non-perishables are a good start, but they may not give you the best sustenance to keep you going for extended periods of time. ”
–WTF is he talking about here? Sawdust?
“You will need real nutrition. Freeze dried food is the best because it has a very long shelf life, it is made with real farm fresh food, and it can be bought in bulk. So instead of having a thousand 10-ounce containers from the food aisle, you can have a hundred 20-ounce cans of freeze dried food ready for you to add water if you need it. ”
–again, WTF? Leaving off the expense, which would I rather have, 10,000 oz of canned food? or 2000 oz of freeze dried? I’ll take FIVE TIMES AS MUCH please…
“A view of AK-47 shells. The AK-47 is the most widely used assault rifle in the world.”
–I guess if your article is aimed at clueless noobs the amount of fail in this one caption is not an issue. For the rest of us, it’s just another red flag that this guy has NO CLUE what he’s talking about.
He ends the “basic” article with the insistence that you WILL have to kill someone. Maybe, but if you do, you’re probably F’d anyway. ROL always returns. Just logistically, after you shoot the looters, then what? Leave the rotting corpse on your porch? No thought given to that… and that might be a good time to use the hazmat suit and filter that he scorns in the first paragraph….
nick
ADDED- only look at the second article if you need a good laugh. His “tactical” knowledge is even more lacking than his ‘basic prepping’ knowledge.
“Is anyone else here having trouble with http://www.drudgereport.com and the ad blocker ublock in FireFox ? ”
I visit that site very infrequently, but I just checked in Mozilla and Vivaldi, both with Ad Block Plus working, and had no problems viewing the site.
Yeah, sites are getting desperate, and they’re in a no-win situation. I think the best they can hope for is to get away with what Instapundit and Daily Caller do, embedding links to Amazon products that they get a commission on.
Either that, or as I’ve been saying for years, implement a micro-payment system that’ll let people pay per visit or per page view. I’d happily pay 0.1 cent or one cent or whatever per article on all these sites that keep trying to force ads on me.
Advertising needs to die. In print, on-line, everywhere.
Maybe those articles are deliberately bad advice, intended to get the target audience killed if TSHTF.
In fact, whether or not those are trolling, someone should put articles full of horrible advice into the NYT, Salon, and Mother Jones.
The worst thing about articles like those two, is that some people will go there and take the advice, or decide that the whole thing is pointless. And it’s not. EVERY person who prepares is one LESS desperate person in an emergency.
The other thing that offends me about the articles is how poorly written they are. They are formal articles, not blog comments or txting exchanges. Knowing the difference between “less” and “fewer” is important. Writing clearly, idea leading to idea, flowing smoothly from introduction to conclusion is important.
The articles read like a collection of cut and paste plagiarism barely linked together.
Bah, grumpy this am….
Currently 98F with 56%RH and sunny. Feels like of 109F in my driveway. Cooler in the shade, but I don’t have a ton of work to do in the shade.
Gonna find excuses to sit in the AC today.
n
I think the best they can hope for is to get away with what Instapundit and Daily Caller do, embedding links to Amazon products that they get a commission on.
Instapundit has ads for clickbait sites along the right edge and ads embedded in the stories and along the right.
Even many well-intentioned prepping sites depend on authority by repetition. That’s why I try to test stuff whenever practical. I want data, not anecdotes.
One example of something I’ve not gotten around to testing: most prepping sites say that not only do you not need an oxygen absorber in LTS white sugar, but using one is actually counterproductive because it causes the sugar to solidify into a solid mass.
The first part of that statement is true beyond doubt. Sugar may not be as inert as sand, but it’s damned close. Chemically, atmospheric oxygen isn’t going to bother it. Biologically, solid dry sugar is about the least friendly environment for growth of microorganisms imaginable. It would suck the water right out of them osmotically.
But I’m still trying to figure out how an oxygen absorber could cause sugar to form a rock-like mass. Most oxygen absorbers are simply iron powder and table salt. They work by using the available oxygen and moisture to cause iron powder to oxidize to rust. (Which means if a product is 100% dry there’s no point to using an oxygen absorber, because it won’t work without moisture.) So, by what mechanism could that absorber cause the sugar to behave as so many prepping sites claim it does?
The answer doesn’t really matter, because sugar doesn’t need an absorber. But I’m minded to try putting one into a container of free-flowing white granulated sugar just to see if it causes a solid mass to form. I’d bet money it doesn’t.
But this is just a very common example of authority by repetition, which is why I’m looking forward to Kathy’s actual real-world experience with the Nido.
“Other news congress names the Bakersfield main post office for Merle Haggard. (Buck got the Oildale one a few years ago so even though MH grew up in Oildale it already gone.)”
Reminds me, need to get back there. Haven’t been to Buck Owens Crystal Palace in six years.
@dkreck
Will be up for Cowboy Day at Kennedy Meadows General Store on Sat., Aug. 12. Wonderful BBQ dinner, chicken breast or steak, and country bands for live music. Cool ones on me. (Somewhat concerned about Schaeffer fire which is about 20 miles WNW, checking fire reports daily.)
https://www.google.com/search?q=kennedy+meadows+general+store&oq=kennedy&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j35i39l2j0l3.6267j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
“Instapundit has ads for clickbait sites along the right edge and ads embedded in the stories and along the right.”
Yes, but I’ve never seen one because IP doesn’t block people who are using Ad Blockers, which is the real point. I suspect it isn’t IP doing that, anyway, but PJ Media. I can tolerate articles that live-link to Amazon, because they’re not really ads. If IP starts forcing ads on me, I’ll drop it immediately. I simply won’t tolerate ads.
“causes the sugar to solidify into a solid mass.”
Maybe it’s just the grains locking together under [partial] vacuum when the o2 is used up? like coffee does?
n
No clue. I’ll try it when I remember to do so, but I’d still bet money the sugar will be free-flowing afterwards.
Here’s some food for thought concerning self defense, concealed carry, awareness, etc. Watch the linked video. Ignore the hysterical tone of the reporting, as Gateway Pundit seems to be getting more florid of late.
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2017/07/videoknife-wielding-liberals-terrorize-children-bloody-chick-fil-protest/
You’re sitting in a resturaunt with your kids. A large, aggressive, angry sounding crowd forces their way in. They appear to be bloody. Some are carrying large knives.
What is your immediate response? Desire to help the “wounded”? Draw your weapon? Aim at the knife holder and start yelling “Drop your weapon!” ? Gather the kids and calmly but expeditiously head for the other door? What if they are in front of both doors?
In this case it’s a bunch of idiots, and it was probably immediately obvious they weren’t jihadis stabbing people, but if it WASN’T?
Notice that near the end of the vid the guy in the blue shirt is getting pretty aggressive, bounding around the place. Notice how the patrons are trapped by the booths.
What is the normal police response to someone exiting a building with a large knife, on a public disturbance call? Are you down range of that response? Does that change your actions?
What would your spouse do in this situation? What would your kids do?
nick
Note that this is the ‘lite’ version, as jihadis HAVE burst into restaurants and started attacking people. Note that BLM also has burst into restaurants in an aggressive manner.
“Don’t be there” isn’t a useful response, the premise is that you or your spouse, or the grandparents are already there.
” I’d still bet money the sugar will be free-flowing afterwards.”
Me too. I’d also bet small money that the originator of the advice didn’t “waste” the O2 absorber to open the bag and find out….
n
““Don’t be there” isn’t a useful response, the premise is that you or your spouse, or the grandparents are already there.”
That begs the question.
In this case it’s a bunch of idiots, and it was probably immediately obvious they weren’t jihadis stabbing people, but if it WASN’T?
Pinellas Park, FL. Twenty years ago, that would have ended badly for the idiots, but FL is sadly a “purple” state anymore, doubly so in the Fort Orlampameyers Beach metroplex.
I’d challenge the idiots to try that at the Dwarf House (original Chick-fil-A) in Atlanta.
BTW, I got a security warning from our corporate proxy about something that Gateway Pundit’s site wanted to do to my browser when I clicked the “back” button to return to this site after looking at the Chick-Fil-A story.
To answer Nick’s question, in that situation I would stand, draw, and fire, and continue doing so until all of the bad guys were down or had fled. I feared for my life, your honor. Better 12 than 6. And so on.
Unless they entered very slowly, I would probably have at least gotten into a position where I could draw. If the slovenly chick with the knife had made any threatening moves, that would have escalated quickly. These idiots were very lucky this time.
This is a bit less theoretical as my kids were asking me to go to this very event (although here in the great state of TX, not Fla.) My reluctance and ultimate refusal was based on my aversion to anywhere there are a lot of people looking for free stuff.
Normally, chick-fil-a is one of the nicer, cleaner, and yes, less full of urban youths, of the fast food chains. They also support their local community thru sponsorship of sports teams and school fundraiser nights. The food is pretty good too.
nick
I think it’s important, especially with kids, to continue living in as normal a way as possible, while acknowledging that there are real threats. That’s why I won’t be a hermit, and we continue to attend and visit places like Disneyworld, the Houston Rodeo, and other events. On the other hand, you couldn’t get me to the downtown fireworks celebration if you handcuffed me and dragged me there. Even though nothing happened or has ever happened there except the normal crime associated with public events.
@greg, something weird is going on with GWPundit’s site. Normally it autorefreshes but that is broken, and their top banner is blank, for me.
n
Well, I’m sorry, but I really wouldn’t BE in such a place and would never drag my kids or grandparents to it anyway. And Mein Gott im Himmel, what a herd of morbidly obese pigs! Yikes!
Given that by some weird trick of time and space and adjoining dimensions of physics I am in such a place with my kids, I’d be hustling them out the door and anyone who got in my way would get body-slammed to the floor ricky-tick. If that somehow failed and somebody was waving a blade of some sort in my viz and I wasn’t sure if any of this was real or not, they’d have a gun in their viz toot-sweet. Hopefully nobody would get killed over this malarkey.
From what I saw of the vid, however, it appeared almost immediately that this was just what it looked like, an extremely annoying invasion by prog assholes demonstrating and messing up the piggies’ slop chute meal-time.
But as some commenter said after the story, sooner or later progs like this are gonna pull something similar and there will be a bloodbath.
Just back from taking a local cab to the bank to make a deposit; ordinarily I’d wait till wife was back with my car (her Saab is dead as a doornail in the driveway now, after having started up immediately each time every few weeks all winter long), but since between her fiddling with our accounts, the bank, and the bill-paying I did the other day when there was still ostensibly more than enough in the account to cover said bills, we were deep in the red again.
Not a total PITA loss, however, as I got to chat with the comely young mom driving the cab and discuss local crime (an armed robbery at the downtown Rite Aid I hadn’t known about the other day (probably at the funeral)) and how she’s worried about her little kids going into the publik skool system. I mentioned home schooling and advised her to look into it ricky-tick. We also seemed to be on the same page WRT the obesity and narcotics “epidemics,” and tangentially, politics.
O to be thirty years younger!
But there ya go, yet another Meatspace Opportunity!
I may accelerate my attendance accordingly at the local ham club and gun club monthly meetings, regardless of whether I have my license/s yet. Ditto the Legion and VFW posts.
And from the My Home State Goes Further Down the Toilet Department:
https://howiecarrshow.com/its-no-time-to-change-your-mind/
Jesus wept.
And my Pilgrim, Puritan and Quaker ancestors are spinning in their long-forgotten graves.
How long before it ends up like Puerto Rico and Illinois?
Can no one rid us of these troublesome enablers, saboteurs, wreckers, and traitors?
“I may accelerate my attendance accordingly at the local ham club and gun club monthly meetings, regardless of whether I have my license/s yet.”
As someone who has 50 years’ experience attending both, you’ll be welcome w/ or w/out license/s.
@greg, something weird is going on with GWPundit’s site. Normally it autorefreshes but that is broken, and their top banner is blank, for me.
I knew we had Blue Coat or another similar system installed to intercept and monitor the web pages, but that was the first time I received a security nastygram.
I’m very careful, but, honestly, the only non-worksafe browsing I do differently at home is “Doctor Who” episodes from … well, it is a grey area legally speaking. 🙂
If I think something might be risky, I launch the portable version of firefox with all the security features and no persistence. And I (had) have a machine that is non-critical just for those types of things.
n
And from the My Home State Goes Further Down the Toilet Department:
https://howiecarrshow.com/its-no-time-to-change-your-mind/
“Even though incremental progress is being made lately in getting a handle on this illegal-alien crime wave, it’s still out of control. Just north of us, in Manchester, the Union Leader reported that a Congolese immigrant, who needed a Swahili interpreter in court, was charged with attacking a woman who was 27 weeks pregnant – “striking, pushing, grabbing, kicking and pulling out the hair,” as the paper reported.”
“But the charges were dropped because of his “cultural incompetency” – some bleeding heart in the prosecutor’s office decided he couldn’t understand the “American justice system.””
“My question: if this Congolese was suffering from “cultural incompetency,” why was he allowed to move here in the first place? And do you suppose, with the help of his Swahili translator, that he has been able to make his way in the American welfare system?”
Cultural Incompetency ? Really ? If anyone on this board had performed this heinous act, we would be looking at 5 to 10 years in a state jail.
And if this woman has a father and/or brothers, Mr. “Cultural Incompetency” may find himself swimming back to the Congo via Boston Bay.
But they can’t help themselves, doncha know, it’s the white man’s burden. Poor wogs need our sympathy and help, not our condemnations. You can’t possibly expect them to adopt OUR practices when their culture is so rich and vibrant….
//sarc
As I keep saying, if the government doesn’t protect Normals, we’ll start protecting ourselves.
Cultural Incompetency ? Really ? If anyone on this board had performed this heinous act, we would be looking at 5 to 10 years in a state jail.
Thank you Teddy “Hick, hick” Kennedy and other dead and living prog fukstiks.
My daughter asked me who the picture was of (TKennedy, hanging at the airport) and I replied “a murderer and a thief.” Wife just shot me a ‘look’.
n
“…and I replied “a murderer and a thief.” Wife just shot me a ‘look’.”
And you could have added “a traitor.”
Yeah, been there and done that. I will still speak truth to power, i.e, the wife and kids. They’ll rue the day they didn’t listen to the old man.
As I rue the day I didn’t listen to mine.
WRT “cultural incompetency;” does that mean, say, if I travel to Saudi Arabia and start boozing and fondling the women and snorting coke and I’m arrested, the court will let me slide because of my cultural incompetency? Or in Red Chiner? Or even the Congo?
I’d like to see the dipstick who got the Congolese guy off the hook take him in and expose his/her kids and spouse to thr risk.
In addition to his other crimes, Teddy wasn’t such a good driver, was he?
Teddy the Dud’s poor driving is what leads to the accusation of murder. Drunkenness, poor driving, and standing around doing nothing as the car filled with water. I’m not big on “bad samaritan” laws, but would make an exception here, especially as he’s the one who caused the problem in the first place.
her fiddling with our accounts, the bank, and the bill-paying I did the other day when there was still ostensibly more than enough in the account to cover said bills, we were deep in the red again.
I paid the bills for 20 years and every month the wife complained that I was too grumpy to live with for a week afterwards. Claimed she could do better. So I was happy to give her the family accounting responsibility.
Three months went by without me being a grump at the end of each month. Then wife asked for my help. The check book wouldn’t balance. She hadn’t bothered to balance it till this time. So I sat down with the check book and bank statement and discovered we were almost $3000 in the red. “Not my fault” wife claimed. But she never asked to do the books again nor did she complain about my grumping … for months it took to fix the deficit.
[snip] I paid the bills for 20 years and every month the wife complained that I was too grumpy to live with for a week afterwards. [snip]
Dad did all the books / bill pay / payroll / etc for the businesses, mom did the home finances. My contribution, in the early 1980s, was computerizing everything, including inventory database, on an Apple II. The savings from the audit / tax attorney’s bill paid for the system in the first year, and there was much rejoicing.
Is it a female thing or what? My brothers report the same deal, been going on for decades. Hate to be a misogynist fascist pig but shit, WTF else are we to think?
I just started up a simple Excel (’cause that’s what everyone in the universe is married to, apparently) workbook showing our receivables per month and outgo for bills, and stuff like constantly handing large amounts of cash to Princess for her entertainment and fun travels every summer, and wife’s $200 haircuts out in Kalifornia, and then my occasional steak-and-cheese sub or book that they screech about. After two or three months I’ll show it to her; she’ll be interested at first because I’ll also cover the dates she sends her invoices in and then the dates the actual payments roll in from K Street down in Mordor.
She’ll be less interested in the outgo to Princess or her horse and vet bills or any of the other bills for that matter. She lets the Verizon wireless (phone) bill go until it gets up to big numbers and then suddenly has to pay a huge amount before it gets shut off. And like I say, just. will. not. open. any. mail. So I’m the grumpy point man on the bills AND the taxes, while also scullery monkey, trash boy, lawn-and-garden drone, vehicle navvy, and all-around sanitation engineer.
Someone could say, why are you bitching; she brings home the bacon; she’s the only spouse working. And they’d be right, to a point. But so much of this aggravation could be AVOIDED.
I’m lucky. My wife is borderline OCD and would doubt and double check everything anyway, so I just let her do it.
I keep my cash account, and manage the paypal, but that’s it. I pay my business taxes, and 2 business cards from that money, and she does all the rest.
It was different when I was working full time, with 90k of expenses and reimbursable in a year. I managed my accounts and money, she managed hers, and we both paid into a fund for the joint expenses. It worked well, but did mean a bunch of bank accounts. When they were free it wasn’t an issue. She still did the joint accounting too.
She does a good job of it, and keeps us solvent, and brings home the big checks. Her lifetime earnings will far outpace mine, even though she started late with real money earning.
n
I’m lucky.
Indeed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nyt57LxWy8
She lets the Verizon wireless (phone) bill go until it gets up to big numbers and then suddenly has to pay a huge amount before it gets shut off.
Get the Verizon number moved to StraightTalk. $45/mo, unlimited voice/text, same network coverage. Data is throttled at a certain point, but I doubt she’s seeing much of a signal in the boonies of Canada.
I was lucky, also. My wife was into Big Lots and Ross Dress For Less. Furthermore, she stopped far short of those hoarders that are on TV, A&E network; the house did not have it piled up wall-to-wall.
Just made my scrap run. ~260 pounds of metal, mostly aluminum, stainless steel, and brass. $80. Not gonna put the kids thru college, but not horrible for a half day’s work doing what needed to be done anyway. Beats minimum wage…
Anyway, I only mention it because lots of people think they don’t have the money to prep. There is money everywhere, you just have to recognize it, and act.
$80 is about 70 cans of veg. From scrap metal to food…..
n
But you didn’t get a free kitten like I did on my last scrap/recycle run 😉
Nope, no need for kittens here….
As an anecdote for the state of the world economy, scrap prices are up from several months ago, but down a bit from recent prices. They are still 1/3 or less of what they were several years ago.
n
“If/when you need to use that stored water, simply let it sit in the open air until any bleach odor present dissipates.”
This is why I have britta filter pitchers stored with my water. The filter removes the chlorine taste. They’re cheap at Goodwill…
n
“Not gonna put the kids thru college…”
One wonders why that would be a thing. Nowadays. Commie indoctrination camps is all they are. Combined with babysitting. At vastly exorbitant prices. And endless debt for the kids.
I agree with Gary North on this: have the kids test out the first two years with CLEP and AP exams, and then do the rest online and free via MIT, lab apprenticeships, internships, more and more online and free options, etc. The kids will actually have an advantage if they’ve been home-schooled all along, too.
Your humble northern correspondent nailed thirty credits via CLEP exams. That’s a year off right there, of the basic freshman-level stuff. Did a bunch of other courses part-time, full-time, randomly, at various places, over a bunch of years while I worked to earn my daily bread. NEVER lived in a college dorm. A military barracks is not quite the same thing.
Our kids have dual American-Canadian citizenship so sonny went to college for the four-year gig up there, worked fairly hard, worked during the summers, kept his nose more or less clean while playing intramural hockey, and graduated with honors in history. They make you work up there. Daughter, flighty as she is, has also had her ass kicked at McGill and been made to work hard. When she’s actually there, that is. She should finish with a double major in language and music, which includes about eight languages fluently now, and a number of actual music performances that she got paid for, plus classes in Brittany, Scotland, Ireland, the Maritimes, and here in Vermont and New Hampshire. And she better effin finish by Xmas this year.
From the What Are the Top Stories Department:
https://straightlinelogic.com/2017/07/12/they-said-that-71217/
Explanation:
http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-news-is-content-free.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+google%2FRzFQ+%28oftwominds%29
”
“Not gonna put the kids thru college…”
One wonders why that would be a thing. ”
Just a figure of speech at this point. Wife still thinks it would be a Good Thing. Me, not so much. Maybe one of the small midwestern or mid south schools that still has a shooting team…
n
You might, and I’m just sayin’, look at small Roman Catholic schools; there are about three or four in the country still that produce a decent liberal arts education. Or if they’re STEM-oriented, there’s a wider choice. But be assured that the commie stinkers have made inroads everywhere by now.
But this may all be moot by the time yours reach that age anyway.
Yep. One truism is that the pendulum swings. The wheel turns, and what was down ascends while what was up descends. Cycles seem to be accelerating though, so who knows where we’ll be.
Had no real desire to think long term. Still don’t, but now I have to. Having kids extended my planning horizon and the quickness of passing time has put on the pressure. 8 years passed in an eyeblink. 8 more will pass just as fast or faster. 8 more after that, and they’re launched and on their way. So little time…
nick
Tempus fugit irreperabile…
Not many days go by that I don’t think about how fast my life has gone by. Some times from decades ago seem like yesterday and yet I know it’s been half a century. Smells often set these memories off now. Even how air smells differently from region to region; I was stuck in NJ for three-and-a-half years and when I’d go back to MA for whatever reason, or eventually for another three years, the air immediately smelled like home.
My current (and last) wife and I have been married nearly twenty years and I wince when I remember the kids at five and twelve years of age and now one is six feet and 200 pounds and the other is 6’6″ and 300 and has three little kids of his own. I wince again when I look at my MIL and her two sisters, now heading toward their 90s and know that we’re next in line.
Make sure you tell/show somebody you love them before you can’t anymore. Or they’re not around anymore. Can happen in the blink of an eye.
Pax vobiscum…
Don’t go back to Huntington Beach Slim, next time you’ll need SCUBA gear to get into it…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-12/huge-iceberg-breaks-away-from-antarctica-larsen-c-shelf/8703238
Make sure you tell/show somebody you love them before you can’t anymore. Or they’re not around anymore. Can happen in the blink of an eye.
I can’t repeate that often enough. Ever since my eldest son was murdered in 1995, I remember our last phone call the day before. I was in a hurry to go somewhere and just said a quick “bye”. Ever since that day I have made it a point to tell everyone in my family that I love them before we part or end a call. Don’t end up with lifelong regrets like I did.
You didn’t know, Mr. Harold. It’s a regret, sure, but it isn’t your fault. We’re all so busy all the time and juggling a bunch of stuff and tend to rush through things, and then realize later those were things that mattered more than we thought at the time. We’re sensitive to that up here mainly because of wife losing her first husband in a car wreck in 1992, and of course because of my previous jobs long ago. A very belated sympathy for your loss, too. That is just terrible.
Thing. Me, not so much. Maybe one of the small midwestern or mid south schools that still has a shooting team
There is a college north of you that has a 2,200 member shooting team. It is called Texas A&M University …
I got a degree in mechanical engineering from there in 1982.