Cooler but also possibly wet. National forecast has us on the edge of a system, and we usually don’t get the rain in that case, but I guess we could. Yesterday was absolutely beautiful. I got a sunburn on my neck while working in the yard.
And yes, the yard is very bright now that we removed the pecan tree in the middle. On the plus side, my one garden bed should get much more light too.
Spent a couple hours in the yard playing with the wife and kids. Did some archery. Did some hitting of the heavy bag. My 11yo mentioned some time ago that she was interested in learning more about fighting. I had a kid sized heavy bag show up in the auctions, so I got it. Took down the trapeze from the ‘play structure’ and hung up the bag today. Funny how different girls are when throwing a ball or a punch. I have to constantly remind her to straighten her wrists, but she’s getting it. We’re going to be doing a lot of palm and elbow strikes and less punching once she gets comfortable. The goal is to surprise any attacker and open up space to get away, not to win cage matches.
The younger child wanted to hit stuff too, but once she got started all she wanted to do was pester me with ‘what ifs’ and ‘but I want to turn my hand while punching’ and ‘ow that kinda hurts.’ It’s gonna be a bit more of a struggle with that one. She’s a barracks lawyer in training and her brain goes a thousand miles an hour.
Part of ‘getting through this, whatever this is’ means getting the kids ready to make their way in the world. They need some physical skills as well as mental, so I’m doing my best to head that way. There’s always something more to do.
Changing subjects entirely, for the last couple of nights I spun the dial on the shortwave to see what the bands sounded like. We’re supposed to get increased sunspot activity which improves ham and shortwave radio propagation, so I want to pay attention and see what the baseline is. Well, nothing spectacular so far. (and not expected either) I did get a night with late evening great signal from Tennessee and Cuba, but it faded as it got later. Usually 5mhz is better later, so that was a bit odd. Otherwise, it’s been noisy and variable for several days. Having a shortwave radio is kind of a prepper cliche’, but after years of tuning around and dozens of radios I was pretty sure that in anything short of the zombie apocalypse there wasn’t going to be much point in shortwave listening.
Most of the stations that are readily receivable are fringe religious broadcasters or state propaganda outlets. Still, the religious stations have news and opinion programming, and even propaganda can give you some information, and tuning the bands to get a rough idea of band conditions is easier with shortwave, so I still recommended people have a good shortwave radio. The recent increase in ‘cancelling’ conservative voices has changed my mind. Alex Jones was one of the very first to be cancelled, and he is still on the air, on shortwave radio, getting his message out. You may think little of his message, but he IS being heard. The religious broadcasters are almost all VERY conservative when you can tell anything about them, and so some other conservative voices are showing up on their news segments, and in their editorial content.
If things online get worse, the only place you might find a conservative voice is on shortwave. Hopefully, more people will take advantage of radio, and more of the existing broadcasters will leverage their platform so that there is an increase of opinions and news available. Shortwave could see a renaissance. One very good thing about shortwave, no one is tracking the listeners. (yes, there are ways to confirm someone is listening but you have to know who they are first, generally, to target them. Not so with online media.) Get a radio and string up a wire, and get some practice in tuning around the dial.
I’ve talked about radios and what you might hear before. So did RBT. Use the keywords for amateur radio and radio and do some reading… especially in the comments.
Today should be spent doing all the stuff I didn’t do this weekend, especially getting more stuff out to auctions for sale. Weather will determine which stuff moves up and down the list. Getting the kids up and out the door will be the first challenge…
Back to normal life. Stack it high!
nick