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Month: July 2022

Thur. Jul. 21, 2022 – nope, nothing to see.

Hot and humid.   For a while yet too.  Because “summer in Houston’.   The rest of you might have some reason to complain with your unseasonably warm temps, but not us.  Not really.  Hot yesterday, hot today, hot tamale’.

Spent most of yesterday doing other things.  Did pickup some stuff.  Did get the girls from their day camp leadership thing…

Today I’ve got more of the same, and some prep to do to head back to the BOL for another weekend.

Interesting that the Brits are changing their leadership, and now Italy looks about ready to change theirs.   We certainly wouldn’t mind changing ours.   Germany came pretty close to it in the last month or so too, didn’t they?  No coalition at the moment if I understand it.   Sri Lanka and soon Pakistan and maybe the Philippines too….

Sometimes, everything changes.

Stack up some insurance against the upheaval and uncertainty.

nick

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Wed. Jul. 20, 2022 – yep, still doing the same stuff

Hot and humid.  Possibly crazy hot, although it would be nice to get a break, I don’ t think we will.

I did some of my chores yesterday.   The whole “stop what you’re doing and get a child at 3pm” and then stay home to make sure they aren’t burning the house down thing really shortens my day in a way I’m not used to.

It’s life though.

Today, if I get out of the house early enough, I’ll head to one of my more distant pickups.   And one that isn’t distant but is the opposite of the direction I head most of the time.

I should hit the grocery store for veg and milk.   Anyone else having milk go bad long before it should?  I have thrown out 3 gallons in the last month, vs NONE in the last two years.  I’ve had the last inch in the jug go bad, especially because it gets warm quickly if it sits out, but I expect that.  I don’t expect unopened gallons to get chunky in the fridge.

I’m bidding on a few more of the small chest freezers.  I really only want to win one more, but I’d take two more if it happened that way.   It’s possible we’ll see chicken or beef, especially beef, have a serious price drop if producers cull their herds.  That would be temporary, obviously, but it would be a shame to not be able to take advantage if it does.   An extra freezer would help.

Look for opportunities to stack something particularly high.   There are always opportunities in times of change.

nick

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Tues. Jul. 19, 2022 – working today, and picking up kids…

Hot and humid.  Of course.  And again.   It was still 85F when I went to bed, and that hot when the day started.  It’ll probably be higher than 105F today just to spite me.  But I’ll deal.

Spent most of the day yesterday catching up on stuff online.   Still a couple of small chest freezers in the auctions.   If I had someplace ready for it, I’d get another.   Or two.

Picked up the kid, and a friend.  Had a long conversation with her mom when she came to retrieve the extra… she’s a teacher and we talked about school security issues.   She wants guns in classrooms and schools.  She can’t believe what happened in Uvalde.  I’m pretty sure she’d carry if she could.

I’ve got to get out of the house today, and get some stuff done before picking up the kid again.   We’ll see how it goes, of course.

And there is plenty to do around the house if it comes to that.

Stack stuff up.   And do it with more organization than I did….

nick

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Mon. Jul. 18, 2022 – home again, home again…. blah blah

I’ve got too many posts with the same title…

And to many days that start with HOT HOT HOT,  and yet it IS hot.  And humid.  It was hot at the lake too, hitting 99F a few feet from the water, and much higher further away.   Sunny too.

I did a bunch of small stuff this weekend, mainly because for one reason or another it is stuff I can safely do, or have all the stuff present to do.   Bigger more important things languish… but I can make the place look better and function a little better.

SO ..

I installed the new freezers, and moved stuff out of the kitchen to one of them.  I installed a handrail on the steps I built for the dock.  One of our neighbors who we would like to see more often will be much more comfortable with a solid handrail.  I back filled a bit of a hole at the edge of the same steps.   With the lake down, this would be an excellent time to backfill all of my bulkhead to fill the gaps where water gets UNDER the concrete wall.  Too bad I’m not ready and don’t have the time.  I could start with less but to do the whole thing would take about a dozen cubic yards of material.  I suppose there will be a period of low water next year too.

I did normal visit things, cutting the grass, cleaning up debris, making the place look loved and lived in.

And I tried out my new crawdad traps.   Overnighted two traps, baited with dog food and freshwater mussel… and one had a whole mussel that died before I could cook it.   That trap had 7 or 8 small ‘bait fish’ in it, including one inside the mussel shell.  All the bait was gone.   The other trap in deeper water (3 ft vs 1 ft) had bait left, and nothing inside.  Too small a sample size to draw any conclusions.   The bait fish would have been handy for a morning session trying to catch bigger fish.

Collected and cooked some mussels.   Not horrible, but not New Zealand Green Lips in garlic butter and white wine either.   I should try some smaller ones next time, and cook them in something besides water.  The coons harvested and ate at least one other large mussel, I’m finding one big shell a night on the steps of the dock.

Turns out one of the trees in the back is a peach tree.   Local wildlife has left ONE peach intact so far, but it’s still small and green.  I did find a well gnawed peach pit on the patio, so there was at least one other fruit.  It’s too small a tree to have much fruit anyway, but a nice discovery.

I’m trying to figure out what we actually have in terms of plantings and beds.   The previous owner’s wife was an avid flower gardener, and there are several neglected beds.   One is full of bulbs and flowered earlier.   One is wildflower and rose bushes- the butterflies love that one, but I’m going to take at least half for a ‘salad’ and herb garden.  There is a rock garden with what looks like blue agave… there were several flowering trees, and now I found the peach.   I have done a bunch of weeding and cleaning because “hey, free landscaping!  hey, free trees!  hey, free flowers!”

Speaking of the garden, I’m abandoning my  veg garden at the lake for the rest of the year.  I’ll try again in fall.   I pulled up 4ft of each row, didn’t find a single veg, so it looks like nothing sprouted.  I took the ‘deer guards’ off and cut the watering time to 5 minutes daily.  I can still experiment with how fast the grass grows back, and how little water I can put on the plot.   The most useful thing to do might be to cover the whole thing with black plastic, and let the summer sun  bake the heII out of it.   That is supposed to kill  a lot of the stuff in the soil, including the nutgrass.  Don’t know if there is enough time to try it this year, before the fall garden needs to start.

At home the cukes or zukes are still growing vines.   The grape vine is climbing the trellis.   The collards are thriving.   Peas and beans died.  So I stack cans of veg.

Plenty of the same stuff to do this week as last, with the added complication of picking up D1 from a local ‘leadership’ class at 3pm every day.   Kinda cuts short my workday.  Oh well.  If I can’t drive all over town, I can play chess with D2.

Stack some memories as well as canned goods, they will be there to get you through when the going gets tough.

 

nick

 

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Sun. Jul. 17, 2022 – still at lake, still beautiful

The water is warmer than the air… and the air got pretty hot.  I think we were well into the 90s, but I was working on the sprinklers during the hottest part of the day and didn’t check.  Nice breeze though.   Today should be the same.

I got some stuff done.  I found a bunch of sprinkler heads, a couple of valves, and some broken pipes.  I unloaded the truck and got both freezers going.  Both had very minor dents on a bottom corner, and both work fine so far.

Today I’ve got a couple of things I’d really like to get done.   I’ve got a handrail for the dock steps to install.   I’ve got a toilet tank flush valve to fit/alter/install as it runs for a few seconds every hour.  I’ve got to check my crawdad traps.  I checked them about 2 hours after putting them in, and one had a fish… no bugs though.

The lake mussels are edible if not super tasty.

Brats are better.

Some other small things to do, then head back to Houston in the evening.

Wife and D2 are having fun and getting a workout learning to sail.

Saw one shooting star last night.  Moon is coming up very late so we had a nice dark sky.  Shortwave wasn’t booming in, but there were a lot of stations on the air.

Had a nice chat with a neighbor.  Unfortunately a young adult broke his neck diving off the HOA dock next to my property the day after we were up here last time.   EMS response is two of the neighbors until the red bus can get here.   It took 25 minutes.   By then my neighbors had him out of the water, on a backboard, and stable.   Not a neighborhood kid.  Tresspassing in fact, as the dock and boat ramp are clearly marked for residents only.

It does demonstrate that we’re pretty far from help if you need more than our Volunteer Fire Department and one local nurse can do.  I told her that if I’m here there is an AED in my truck and a bleeding control kit.  I’ve got to build another trauma bag for up here though.  That just moved up the list.  We missed the accident by one day.

Stack some stuff.  Then stack some more stuff.  Then start making more stacks in different places.

nick

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Sat. Jul. 16, 2022 – at lake, plumbing on my mind

Cooler than Houston, but still gonna get hot.   They must have had some rain up here, there is water in the birdbath…  I found the one T storm cell in Houston yesterday.  It was over La Porte.   It hammered them just before I got there to do a pickup.   Lucky for me, it was leaving just as I got there.   I only got gentle rain after being pounded for 15 minutes.

I got home, finished loading up the truck, kicked kid into shape, and headed up, only 2 hours later than I’d hoped.

I’ve got stuff to do today, so we’ll see what actually gets done.   I think it will depend on the heat of the day.

One task, get the freezers installed and cooling down.  That means unloading the truck.   I better get to it.

 

Stack some things that you need to stack some other things.

n

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Fri. Jul. 15, 2022 – another week gone, 4 weeks ’til school starts…

Hot, but less so, humid like a fat guy’s butt crack.  Yeah, I went there.   Apparently the local pharma-purveyors are hiding crack in their cracks… so that’s where my brain went.  According to the scanner anyway.

We did get some rain yesterday.  Cats and dogs for a short while at home, but not 2 miles away.  Only a sprinkle there.  Some places didn’t get any.  I’m hoping for sunny and drier today.

I’ve got a bunch of pickups to do, if I do them. And a shopping list of stuff to take to the lake.  I’ve got a pile of stuff already, and most of my pickups are headed that way too.   PLUS I’ve got to leave room for a passenger, as I’m taking D1 with me.  D2 is getting her chance to learn small boat sailing this weekend and mom is going with her.  Since I’ll have a child with me, I will have to make a better menu plan than usual.

Sadly my latest referral for a guy to do the foundation work decided that the project was too big for him.   That puts me back where  I was.   I am going to start pulling stuff off the schedule and doing it myself or finding someone locally to do it.    Just looking at conduit for the new underground electrical service, and materials will be $750 or more, plus the trencher.   The electrician and mounting stuff will be more than that…  If I can move things along at this point, I think I have to.

Oy.

Meanwhile, I can run pex to everywhere it’s needed.  Through the attic.   In July.  ‘Cuz that’s fun.

Oy.

I’ll be stacking up a whole lotta knowledge and experience on this one.

Figure out what you’ll need and start stacking it.

nick

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Thur. Jul. 14, 2022 – another day, another dollar, or a whole lotta days, a whole lotta dollars…

Hot, humid, but maybe, just maybe a bit less than so far this week.  It would be nice to get a break.   We did get a bit of one yesterday in that it was overcast for much of the day and that helped keep the heat down, at least in my neighborhood.

I did some computer stuff, then went out and did some grocery shopping.  I put my observations about this Costco trip in yesterday’s comments, later in the day.   TL:DR is that things are still disrupted, and will be for some time, but there is a chance to get ready, as things are still available.

My auctions are full of preps.  This week there were chest freezers in one, a dozen generators in another, sometimes there is food, usually tools, or garden equipment, and lately there has been a lot of building material.  There are solar panels, batteries, shelving, can organizers, openers for #10 cans, kitchen equipment, fishing and hunting gear, gubs, ammo, radios, scanners, clothing, traps, and all kinds of good stuff.

If you can’t find it in the store, or you can’t afford the store prices, and you don’t mind a little work or compromise, check out the online auctions, estate sales, yard sales, and peer to peer selling platforms.

You need it, and someone is selling it.

Find it and stack it up.

nick

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Wed. Jul. 13, 2022 – Friday the 13th falls on a Wednesday this month…

F’ing freezing today!  Crazy cold, and blowing snow everywhere.   Just kidding.  Hot and humid today, like yesterday and tomorrow.   Well into the 100s even in the shade, and pretty dang hot in the sun.

So of course I ended up working outdoors and in the driveway.  Finished cutting the grass.  Part of that was clearing a path through the driveway for the mower, which led to some other cleaning and stacking.  And it was hot.  Really hot.

So I took some breaks and drank electrolyte stuff, and sat in the A/C to cool off.

Then I unloaded the wood planks I bought, and stacked them in the attic.   They will be floor up there eventually, but not today.   Too hot.

What I didn’t do is go to Costco or Lowes.   One more day of procrastination, or maybe two…  Sometimes I just go with the flow and it usually works out ok.

Getting cleaned up and to the restaurant for dinner took me into the evening, and it was late when I got home.

Just an ordinary day, without any dramatic actions or challenges, or for that matter triumphs.   But a good day nonetheless.  And a couple of things on the list got done.

Sometimes, that’s the best you can hope for.

More stacking later.

n

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Tues. Jul. 12, 2022 – I like fixing things.

Hot and humid.   Record hot? Maybe.  Maybe not.   Pretty dang hot though.   Yesterday was well into the 100s, even in the shade.

I got part way through cutting the grass in the back yard, ran out of battery.  That is the downside to electrics, not being able to refuel and continue with minimal interruption.   You either need to wait, or exchange the battery.   On the other hand, if I’d paid attention, I’d have pulled the battery and put it on the charger at the end of the last use.  It’s more than enough to do the back and the front  most weeks.

While waiting for the battery to charge or some sense to break into my skull, I fixed a couple of the gas string trimmers I’ve had sitting around.   I usually use the electric one, but that is broken at the moment, and I wanted to finally take a good look at some that I’d gotten cheap, but just put to the side for later.   Well, at 100F, later decided to come.   Air, spark, fuel.   Which aren’t you getting?  Solve that and the thing will run.   On the small gas yard tool engines, it is usually the air filter is so clogged the thing can’t get air, or the gas lines have fallen off or rotted in the tank, or the primer bulb has failed.   I had one with a bad primer bulb AND rotted  hoses.  I had one with rotted hoses. And I have one with a bad spark plug wire.   I replaced hoses and filters, and swapped stuff around until I had two that ran.  Popped on the trimmer head, and… it was fubar’d.    So I didn’t get the yard trimmed.   Oh well, maybe today.  I did feel pretty good about getting two of them running.  Even if the attachment was broken.

I took a break from working in the heat and did pickups.

Picked up a bunch of building materials for the BOL and the attic here.   Chatted with the auctioneer, mentioned I was looking to make some crawdad traps, and he said he had one on the shelf I could have.  Sweet!  Now I’ve got a real one to use as a model for my DIY effort, and I think I’ll buy a couple more as they are only ~$10 with free delivery.   I’ll let you know if I successfully sample nature’s bounty…

Scored another chest freezer (actually two) in last night’s auction.  Half off isn’t bad.  New in box too.  They are only 7 cu ft, but that is a good size for the BOL, to run on battery backup or solar, and I’m unlikely to lose both at the same time, so I wouldn’t lose all my frozen food to a mechanical issue, like I might with one big freezer.

Still didn’t get to lowes or Costco.   Today for sure.  I need PEX and fittings and a variety of hardware for the BOL, and I need to do my normal Costco buys.  I don’t know why I’m having such a hard time getting to the store.

In the wider world, political violence seems to be increasing.  Our own situation is getting more precarious.   Groups are now soliciting the murder of Supreme Court justices.  No other way to look at the offer of “bounties” for real time location info on them.  They’ll claim it was just to harass them and ‘protest’ but it will get someone killed.  They’ve already tried once.

Food insecurity and price inflation is on everyone’s lips this week.   There are people saying it will get better later this year, and better after that.   But there are plenty saying it will be longer than that and far worse.   I’m stacking food. But then you all know that by now.

I’m looking at supply chain for construction and maintenance stuff and I’m stacking that too.

I am even buying new underwear.   I bought a lot of it at the same time, and so I have a lot of it that is all wearing out at the same time too.  Time to do something about that.    That is one risk with one-time, or bulk purchases.   The stuff will either expire, or wear out at about the same time, and you have a bigger whack to replace it.   Better to spread purchases out in time and replace them on a staggered schedule too.   Real Life ™ doesn’t always work out that way though, and better to have it than not.

Clothing is not something that has been hard to get, since our current run of prosperity started decades ago.   But specific items might be out of stock or unavailable in the future.  If it’s been a while since you bought basics, you might want to evaluate the condition of your drawers. 😉

And if called for, stack it up.

nick

 

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