Cool but still crazy humid.
Like yesterday. At least it wasn’t so hot in the attic.
Did some work yesterday, after picking up a small window AC unit and a 7cuft chest freezer. The freezer was scratch and dent, never even turned on. Still looking to sell it on, rather than fill it up. I might though.
Today I’m chained to the house. I’ll make the best of it. Plenty to do after all…
keep stacking.
n
Cool, chance of rain, then again, maybe not.
Had overcast most of Sunday, but when the sun came out, it sure seemed premature to be draining the pool… but drain it we did. Now we need a few more days of no rain to get it dry. It’s so humid, nothing is drying even with fans on it. My (preps) submersible pump sure came in handy. My floor dryer blower will too. It occurred to me that if you live somewhere with heavy rain and flooding, you should have a way to move water. When I had a chance to pick up some pumps cheap I did. Ditto for the floor dryer.
My wife is working from home M, W, F this week so I have a bit of leaway for pickups and other tasks. So of COURSE my client is having issues. I’m going to try to do my pickups quickly in the morning, then head over to his place. It sounds like more gear is dying from the lightning strikes. We’ll probably replace it all piecemeal. Speaking of pickups, what did I get? Some accessory stuff for gubs, 3 bottles of smokeless powder, a small chest freezer, which I will offer to a couple of friends before trying to find it a place at home. Some household stuff. I even picked up some masks. I got a couple of boxes of fifty surgical style with earloops. I don’t wear them but I know people who do. The price was reasonable. I got a box of the K95 double strap “3m” style for 0.40$ per mask. That’s a far cry from $3/mask. I’ve got plenty of N95s left for our use, but my low bid won, so hey, more on the stack.
Spent a couple of hours looking at the website for the 11 acre property we are considering. The house is very strange. It took me over an hour to figure out the floor plan from the photos, and in the end, I have no idea why you’d build something that way… I know why it’s still available now, in addition to being one of the ugliest houses we’ve seen. “A different wood featured in every room!” is not the plus the seller thinks it is. Every window is different (which is how I finally figured out where the missing room was.) So much of the wood paneling is on a diagonal or horizontal. Some rooms have 5 or more woods in natural finishes… Low porch roofs make it look very low to the ground. And why wouldn’t you put the big windows and a door on the lake view side of the house? Both bedrooms are tiny, long and narrow. On the other hand, it has a dedicated smoke house, 30×30 metal building as garage/shop, and a covered shed for vehicle storage. And it’s up against a forest. It’s on a ‘no permanent docks’ lake which saves $15-40K right off the bat. It’s very different from the properties we were looking at a few weeks ago.
So I’m going to have a busy day and a busy week. I’d best get to it.
Keep stacking what you can, while you can. This election isn’t over, and even when it is, the fight for our country will just be getting started. Keep the faith, but also keep your powder dry.
nick
Cool, damp, sunny later.
Nice day on Saturday. I did some things, picked up some things, bid on some things, and received some things I ordered.
Spent some time at my secondary working to free up space. I realized that both of my local auction houses have basically said what I gave them is all they’re taking until next year. Also, from Thanksgiving to February ebay sales have always been slow for me. That means if I want to get the stuff out of my house, I need to either have an auction of my own, move some to my secondary and storage, or take a bunch to a listing service. Or just start scrapping out what I can. Or I embrace the power of and…
I will say I’m filled with anxiety. The number of people celebrating the end of honest elections in the US is frankly terrifying. Their willingness to overlook obvious problems, discount what the actual law and procedure say, and accept the biased media line they’re being fed doesn’t bode well for the future. They’re well trained sheep, herded whatever direction the shepherd wants them to move. Outrage on tap, denunciations, two minute hates- the whole shebang. What’s the difference between a happy mob in the street and an unhappy mob? Still a mob. Still a wild animal, barely under control.
What have we already seen? NATIONAL movements to deify career criminals, and demonize cops. Mobs chanting “Death to America” in our cities. Tide pod and other dangerous and idiotic challenges sweep across social media. Freaking “13 Reasons Why” on television. Blue whale on the internet. FFS. MTV broke the nation’s ability to concentrate and facebook, twitter, tiktok, et al broke the ability to think of consequences past 5 minutes of cut rate fame.
The biased media reports on the crooked count and people line up in the streets to celebrate. Which, BTW, apparently means hounding people out of their homes… It’s been only a few days. The conditioning to expect instant and omniscient results has worked. The mob acts like they think Trump will leave tomorrow and their new king will be crowned on Tuesday.
The left is already calling for ‘accountability’ and tracking of Trump supporters. I feel like I’m suddenly in the USSR. I know what an “accountability file” means when the far right uses it. I’m pretty sure it means the same to the left. And what it means in practice is imprisonment, impoverishment, and extra judicial killings. Every single time.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that we have until February at the latest before the shooting starts in earnest.* It’ll be kooks at first, or victims of the mob, but singletons. Then it’ll be sneaky but still basically suicide with no real hope of getting away with it. THEN it’ll go pro. I REALLY hope I’m wrong. I really hope there are people on their side to calm the murderous masses. I really hope the people on our side decide to live and fight another day. I guess that will depend on how bad it gets, and how quickly.
I’ll also bet that they are calling for Trump to resign and ‘make way’ before the end of the coming week. They’ll want to keep the momentum up before the law can catch up with the cheating. They might use mobs in the street and threat of violence so Trump can resign to ‘calm passions’ ‘for the good of the nation’… no one will want to hear a word about Hunter either, he’s going to get away with it.
Biden couldn’t even get through his first speech without a ‘gaffe’. He won’t last until the Ides of March. I’d put a case of Mountain House on that bet.**
There are people saying “it’s not that bad, he won’t have the Senate, it’ll be gridlock” and “he’ll suck so bad we’ll get it back in 4 years”. Except we won’t. The fix is in. If they get away with it this time it will be worse next time. And think about this, Ol’ Joe wakes up dead in February and the world mourns the passing of an elder statesman, just like drunken killer Kennedy… and we have Harris for 8 years, and her hand picked vice, AOC or the Iman, for 8 more after that. The Mean Girls ™ will be armed with the full power of the bigcorps, and three letter agencies. A weaponized IRS denying tax exempt status will seem so quaint, if any of the dirt people can even remember that. It certainly won’t be in any of the online ‘learner tools’…
Long before those 16 years are up, we’ll be fighting for independence again. I’ll have my Republic of Texas passport after all. It’ll be printed in Spanish.
Keep stacking.
nick
*by ‘shooting’ I mean armed violence, could be shooting, or arson, or bombings
** guess what it was before I changed it for sounding like a vague threat
Cool and clear, at least for another day or two.
It did get into the 80s in the sun yesterday, and the air is still saturated, but it’s very pleasant compared to a month ago.
I spent the afternoon dropping off a couple more things for the local auction. I stopped by my industrial auctioneer, and he doesn’t want any more stuff until next year. Dang. My local guy isn’t interested in taking much more of my stuff this year either. I’m hosed. I haven’t even gotten spam from my craigslist listings. I am going to have to get a FB Marketplace account. I’ll have to set up another lappy to do it, as I won’t have that spyware on my main or secondary machine. I’ve got some researching to do. No way I can reach my goals without moving stuff a pallet at a time.
My non-prepping hobby club meets today, but I still don’t know if I’ll attend. Bigger venue, temps taken, and masks enforced, but I’m coughing again, and daughter’s classmate tested positive, and all that. Seems unwise to be in a room full of guys older than me. Maybe I’ll just go hang out in the parking lot. It’s double suck because it’s the day we have our own little swapmeet just for members, and there is probably stuff I could sell if I’d known with more than 3 or 4 days notice.
I’ve also got to pick up some domestic bliss stuff in Conroe, which is an hour and a half round trip if there is traffic.
I’m sure there is a lot of stuff for me to do here as well 😉 like drain the pool, cut the grass, fix the broken stuff, move/organize/put away….
I’m going to take daughter’s advice and see if I sleep through my alarm or not. In any case I expect to be away from the computer for a while.
Election Flockery continues apace. I had to read the wiki to be sure of something. When I mentioned it, my wife reacted as if the Rs forced the 2000 Florida recount to steal the election, so it’s all just karmic balance… Which of course wasn’t what I remembered. I was right, the Ds filed for the recount, which the Rs tried to kill several times. Also the allegation was incompetence and racism, not MASSIVE and ORGANIZED fraud. Just ‘cuz the Rs ended up winners, they get blamed for it. Wasn’t the case at all. In the end it came down to <1000 votes, not 90,000.
Pray for an aggressive and righteous response to the allegations of fraud by the appropriate agencies, or we’ll be praying for the souls of our dead.
You can’t have too much, or stashed in too many places. Start thinking about dispersal and cover, hiding places and friends in useful places. Just in case they come for you or your stuff. It’s happened before, it will happen again. And keep stacking, resources, skills, knowledge, and contacts.
nick
Cool, dry and sunny. Nice.
Just like yesterday. Only we did get a bit of patchy cloud, making me wonder if rain was coming anywhere in town. Didn’t materialize though.
Spent the morning getting some additional stuff ready for auction, spent the afternoon dropping it off, chatting with the auctioneer, and then wasting better than an hour on a pickup when the guys weren’t there.
I made over $800 on the previous bins of stuff so I’m hoping for more this time around. Drop in the bucket, both for stuff and for money, but ‘baby steps’.
I mentioned previously that I was shifting my focus and treating the election shenanigans as a disaster that has arrived. I meant that the watching, waiting, and prepping phase was over, and now I’m in the ‘dealing with it’ phase. If this was a hurricane, I’d be raking the yard, running the gennie, and passing out hot chocolate. As it is, I’m not going to watch obsessively, only ‘keep an eye’ on things. I can’t change anything except to spread awareness, and the people that are likely to be convinced already are, so that’s mostly wasted effort. Instead I’ll continue getting ready for the next blow, getting stuff in order here. Bad times are still coming, and now they might come with sleepy Joe or the ho* in charge.
My advice is the same. Be ready for shortages. Be prepared to stay at home for prolonged periods. Expect social and economic disruptions and continuing degradation from ‘the good old days.’ Plan to see this through to the other side. Grand gestures are grand, but there are still Jews in Poland, and Germany. We, the collective we, can and will get through this. We, the personal we, may not. But there are no guarantees in this life anyway, and as Zero Hedge says, On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
So do what you can, accept that it might not be enough, but give it the old school try.
And keep stacking.
nick
Cool and sunny, another beautiful fall day. Probably.
That was yesterday to a T. I did a bunch of work outside because it was so nice.
Took down and put away all the Halloween decor, both inside and out. I’ll still be finding stuff I missed for a week or more I’m sure. Moved stuff around in the driveway. Moved some stuff in the garage. Cleaned the house.
When I get stressed I clean. Kitchen is clean. And I am stressed.
I don’t see anything good coming out of the blatant and amateurish cheating going on. I see CWII looming. I hope you’ve been factoring that possibility into your plans and preps. I think perhaps we haven’t acknowledged how brutal and vindictive that could be. Lots of old scores get settled in the name of progress.
Think on it. What would you do differently if you KNEW your neighbor thought they could kill you with the power of the state? Think SWATTING on an industrial scale. Think about weaponized IRS audits. Think about ‘compliance’ audits. We’re not going to get there overnight, but those are the sort of thing that happen very suddenly if they happen.
Got some things that you know don’t have a paper trail? Might want to secure them separately from the stuff that does. How about ‘tangibles’ without a trail? It’s worth remembering that the family hiding Anne Frank was breaking the law, and those who betrayed her, and imprisoned her were enforcing it. Only took a couple of years to get to that point too, in a ‘modern’ and industrial country.
I’m not panicked yet, or calling for drastic measures, just pointing out that if you think things might be headed in that direction, the time to act is SOONER rather than later.
In the mean time, keep stacking.
nick
Cool and clear. Like yesterday.
Spent Tuesday at the dentist in the morning, then messing around in the afternoon. Evening was filled up with election coverage.
I went to bed with the clear suggestion that DJT would prevail, but who knows?
Maybe things this morning are different. Maybe Joe stroked out in the night. In any case, it’s out of our hands. All we can control is our response to whatever comes.
Mine is to keep prepping.
n
Cool and clear. Still damp though. Should be a nice day.
Yesterday was nice. A bit chilly, 45F at 6am, 49F by 7am, and warming throughout.
It was a bit cool in the shade when I was pressure washing. Still, not freezing.
So I pressure washed the north side of the house. What a difference to have the green and black off the siding and eves. Did the driveway too. Took in and put away some more decor. That will continue for another day or two.
Kids have remote learning today. Not sure why, they were scheduled to have the day completely off. We’ll be headed to the dentist later, and OH, wife and I will be voting in person.
If you haven’t voted yet, and you are eligible, please do so. Vote your conscience but consider the plans each of the candidates has for America. If you seriously can’t pick, leave President blank and at least vote NO on all the incumbent judges. If they’re well loved, it won’t hurt them, and if they should go, you’ll be helping. For the other local positions, I hope you can make informed choices. If you know nothing at all about them, the Republican party doesn’t want to go socialist, and the Democrat party does. Vote on that basis. Local matters and it’s where your vote DOES count.
Lots of predictions. I’ll say that I think it will be Trump by a wide margin. I’m basing that mostly on enthusiasm. His base is fired up and WILL go to the polls. Biden is the negative candidate, his base is reluctant, and might just say “F it” and stay home, or switch. I hope I’m right, because I see dire changes to the US coming if the Dems take control. They’ve TOLD us what they want, and it isn’t for you and I to live in peace and comfort.
Short term, keep your eyes open and your options open too. Treat crowds like flood waters and ‘turn around, don’t drown.’ Take another route. Try another time. Give my druthers, I’d stay home today. There are places that are going to explode tonight. Stay away from them if you can. If you can’t, WIN.
And remember that there are cameras everywhere.
Stay frosty.
nick
Cool, but clear and sunny.
Sunday was another gorgeous day. Comfortable temps, clear and blue sky.
So I did a little work outside, picking up some of my decor. Then did some plumbing (see yesterday’s comments) and then some pressure washing.
Today I’ve got one ebay sale to ship, an auction pickup, pressure washing to finish, more decor to take down and put away, and all the general stuff of the week… We’re supposed to have a couple more dry days so I want to get all the decor in.
The weather is finally nice enough to do some work around the house too, so I have projects moving off the back burner. Naturally, just about the time I’ve worked up a good head of steam, we’ll be driving to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with my mom… I better get some stuff done before that.
I couldn’t really imagine what “election day violence” would look like. I didn’t have to courtesy of BLM and antifa. This is going to be a wild week. Hold on tight and hunker down.
(and keep stacking, although skills and connections might be more practical than shopping this week.)
nick
Cool, dry and a light breeze. Sunny later. I hope.
Yesterday was a perfect weather day. Really nice. I hope today is too.
I summarized our experience of Halloween in Houston in comments last night, but for completeness sake- it was good. Not as busy as previous years, but we still got beggars, and we sent ours our foraging too. Fewer people in the neighborhood giving out treats, but at least one couple is both sick and elderly so I can’t really blame them at all.
I was so busy I didn’t have time to even look at the moon through binos, but I did notice when the bright full moon rose. I wish I’d had a bit of time to at least look.
I really hope that doesn’t become a mantra – ” I just wish I’d had more time…”
I saved a bit of time and got deliveries from HEB and Costco. Fridges are full up again and that is good. Instacart makes it convenient. You’ll save time and exposure but won’t save any money. Still, sometimes that’s the tradeoff you need to make.
Bacon, sirloin, and hamburger added to the stack. Bread added to the stack. Milk and cream added to the stack. Other stuff too. Time is FLYING by. Do what you can in the time remaining. Keep working on your own stack.
nick