Hot and humid. No rain in the forecast. Slightly cooler at night and in the morning but still brain roasting sun in the afternoon. It’s still Summer, no matter that school has started.
Took care of some business yesterday. Mostly ran around on little errands. Had to run a uniform to school for D1, then pick her up after school for an appointment. I sat in the truck for an hour listening to Fool Moon, the second Harry Dresden book. Did some returns to Lowes, got gas at Costco, picked up my auto repair parts at Home Depot. That was a weird bit of modern life, order the parts online from some sort of fulfillment portal, and have them delivered to a locker at HD for pickup. Worked though, and saved a bunch on shipping. Just had to wait a week for them to arrive.
The whole business has a lot going on- from the search engine, opening up pricing and stocking status to the search and ecommerce portal, then the warehousing and “last mile” solution, including the construction of the lockers and contracting to partner with HD. The lockers themselves have a degree of complexity that is a marvel of the age. Touch panel screen, automated locks, QR code scanner, and all the online back end to make it possible. The old system of stocking stores, or mail order, or even dealer networks and fulfillment houses seems so simple in comparison. All for a little plastic part that could have been a metal clip and never would have needed replacement.
I crammed a couple other errands and trips in there too.
Today should be similar, start at home, do some stuff, get out and do a bunch more… with hopefully a lot less interruption from das kinder. As I am wont to say, “we’ll see.”
Dinner yesterday included a rice and beans box meal from HEB that was 11 years past “best by”. It tasted ok, not great, not too bad. Some additional seasoning helped. Wife said she liked it, kids don’t normally eat that kind of thing anyway. And I could have eaten it without complaint. The critical thing was storing it indoors, in the dark, and that it was dry ingredients without fats. The directions included adding 2 tablespoons of oil. It’s pretty clear that if the pasta/rice doesn’t absorb weird flavors from the environment, the most common failure of boxed or prepared foods is the fats going old. Something to keep in mind when stocking for the long term.
One other observation, I pulled some pasta out of a bucket. I leave the stuff in the store packaging to isolate it in case of a failure or spoilage. A rat opening one package leaves the others ok to eat, a rat in a bucket of rice, not so much. I had a package of spaghetti noodles that had some kind of black bug in it, and some sort of residue on the pasta. Smelled bad too. The other pasta in the bucket was fine, as it was still sealed in 1 pound plastic packaging. The pasta had a ‘best by’ of Jan-2023 so it was barely out of range. Must have been contaminated at the factory or store and it failed long before I’d have expected.
You never know what a stored item will do until you open it. Have extra on hand.
And stack it up.
nick