Month: April 2025

Damp, overcast, cool to start, then maybe rain later according to the weather liars on the radio. We went all day yesterday without rain, but it looked like it was minutes away all day. Maybe today will be the same. Maybe. At least it’s not crazy hot.

Slept most of the morning. I fell asleep in the chair. Work up to do a pickup and then start all the kid things. I realized, I have been trying to live on 4 hours of sleep a night, for years, and it doesn’t work anymore. My body is telling me to sleep more. I will work on getting to bed earlier over the course of the next couple of weeks. Somehow my bedtime moved to almost 2am most nights, and later some. With a 6am wakeup alarm to get the kids out the door, I’m wiped out for the rest of the day.

Today I’ve got a big pickup in Sugar Land. My opening bid of $5 won me two pallets of spray sanitizer. It’s 75% ethanol. I use a lot of alcohol based cleaners, and I wanted it as a backup fuel for cooking. IDK if it will substitute for isopropanol when cleaning and curing resin prints on the 3D printer, but I’m going to try it, now that I’ve got alcohol to burn. Literally. I know it will burn in my boat stove and in a penny or hobo stove too. I didn’t really expect to win it, let alone both pallets. They had other pallets too, but they were a brand with glycerin in the sanitizer. I don’t want the gel. The stuff I got should be water thin to go through the sprayer.

After that pickup, I’ve got others. And all my home stuff on the list too. At least with this pickup, I’m adding to the stacks a bit.

Something I always like to do- stacking…

nick

Probably another day that starts in the 70s and ends in the 80s. Like my daughter’s playlist. Might be clear this time. It was mostly overcast yesterday, but there were clear times and places. This close to the Gulf of America, sometimes it be that way.

Did auction stuff in the morning, then did my pickup. After that it was kid stuff until we were done with dinner. And dinner was indian food, late.

Delicious food. Tender goat for me. I don’t have the chance to eat goat very often, so I usually will order it if it’s on the menu.

Today should be more domestic bliss, some auction pickups, and then the T/Th kid shuffling…

There are a lot of things on the list, and I’m not moving things off it very quickly. I really need to work on that.

And stack. We’re down to one last juicebox for lunch…

nick

Cool to start, maybe high 60s, but likely low 70sF, and getting into the 80sF later. It was sweaty hot at the BOL yesterday afternoon. Until late in the day, it was nice in the shade. Humid, but tolerable. I was soaked later when I was out in the sun.

Kids and wife went home early on Sunday, but I stayed at the BOL to work on stuff. Mainly, I needed to figure out why the mower wasn’t running right. Many hours and skinned knuckles later, I put the old belt back on and the problem went away. The belt I got on amazon must not be correct. I’ll order another this week. I mowed my yard, and part of the HOA lot, but didn’t edge.

Noticed some dewberries along the edge of my property so I harvested about a cup. Lots of thorny defenders marked up my hands, but the berries are nice. There were lots of unripe berries so I should get more later.

More of my peaches were destroyed by whatever animal is raiding the tree. At this rate there won’t be any left to mature.

There are several food sources growing on the BOL property– persimmon, wild garlic, dewberries, peaches, and now apples. I noticed a mulberry tree next to my scrap guy’s yard, heavy with fruit. Maybe I can pick some of that too. Free food is the best food. I’ve also noticed several of my neighbors in Houston that don’t harvest their citrus trees. Hmm. Maybe I should up my foraging game.

Threw a charger on the trolling motor battery, and it’s dead. I’ll put the battery on my charger here and see if I can recover it. Otherwise I’ll explore options for replacing that as it’s not covered by the deal for the boat. Got the GPS/sonar working but the text is so small I don’t think I’ll be able to use it. I’ve got one from an auction that I can take a look at. Maybe it’s bigger and easier to read.

Did general clean up and putting away, and then headed home. Relatively easy drive, only a few crazies, and only a few cops out. I’m glad we didn’t end up farther from Houston as the current drive is about all I want to do on a regular basis.

Today I’ve got domestic bliss to do, some more moving stuff to and from storage, and I’ve got to plan my week. I have pickups, a visit to my client, and other stuff to do. Some of it will be time sensitive, so I should get done what I can to open time for the other stuff later.

And stacking– I’ve got to restack canned goods. Make sure you do your best to keep your stacks, cool, dark, and dry.

nick

Cool to start. Warm to hot later. Even with rain, it was hot and wet yesterday. Then it got clear and sunny late in the day. Lot of water on the ground too, although I didn’t see heavy rain just light rain and drizzle. Some people got a lot of water from the sky.

I did my normal morning, then headed over to my buddy’s shop. He’d made a lot of progress without me, but there were heavy and awkward things that needed both of us to move safely. I worked with him for a couple of hours, but had to leave and do my Wednesday pickups. The kid let me know it was sunny and she’d walk home, so that gave me more time to go back and help my buddy. Which I did. We were able to go out to dinner and do a bit of socializing afterward. He’s been a friend of my wife longer than me, so they had some catching up to do.

Today I’ll go over there asap after breakfast and school stuff. He’s got a few things left to put into the truck, and needs help getting the car towing trailer set up. He’ll leave before noon, and W will join me looking at a boat or two. Depending on how that goes, we’ll be headed home to do final prep for going to the BOL for D2’s birthday and my wedding anniversary. Lots of stuff crammed into this week.

From a prepping standpoint, I won some more solar. I think I won another two 460w panels like the ones I took up to the BOL last week. It might just be one, or it might be two that total to 460w. The price was good enough for it to be any of those and I’ll be happy.

And in a new twist to Amazon returns fraud, I picked up a ubiquiti NanoStation loco M2, looks new in box, but the box is for a Nanostation M2… the smaller “Loco” is $50 retail, the full size is about $150. Looks like someone bought both, but got a $100 discount by returning the small one for the refund amount of the big one. I paid $16, so as long as it powers up ok, I’m still happy. I didn’t notice the discrepancy in the pictures and thought I was buying the smaller one anyway.

Did I mention that people suck and will steal when it is easy and low risk? That will probably get worse as the economy weakens.

———

Work on providing for your own needs, whether that’s water, power, or entertainment. And stack what you need.

nick

Humid. Soaking wet humid. Yesterday and today. Gah. It started cool, but got hot, especially in the sun, and I expect more of the same today. I was sweating through my shirt by noon.

I did auction stuff in the morning but got over to help my buddy for a few hours in the afternoon. It was crazy hot in his shop space when the wind wasn’t blowing. Also very dirty. And the stuff we were moving was heavy. Yeah, I was filthy and soaked with sweat by the time I went to get D1 from school. Turns out she doesn’t want to walk home on sweaty hot days.

Today I’ve got several auction pickups to do, as well as help my buddy. I’m thinking I’ll start with him, then do the pickups, then the kid stuff. I’m busy. Days are full. And I’m still falling behind.

I’m overdue for another Costco run. I haven’t added any bulk food to the stacks in months. I’m actually a bit short on toilet paper. Rats ate my bucket of sugar. And I have projects stacked like firewood.

I guess I’ll steal a line from Oingo Boingo and sleep when I’m dead.

n

(and I’ll keep stacking all the other things, like solar panels and inverters. Stack something.)

Cool, then warmer. Sunny but windy? We’ll see. At the BOL we had a stunningly gorgeous day yesterday. Houston got storms, we got mist, then a fabulous spring day. 70sF at night, 80sF during the day. I’ll take every nice day we can get.

Got up and poked around, but then started doing maintenance on my lawn mower. It was time to install the new drive belt, replace the blades, check filters, and do an oil change. All of which got done, but I still didn’t get to mow, because now there are other issues. Without the drive belt slipping, the top speed is higher. But now something is jamming, catching, or binding, and sometimes you can’t stop. After driving into the retaining wall, and almost pushing it over an plummeting 8ft, I put it away for the time being. I’ll look at it next week.

So I did get some stuff done, but that opened a list of other things to do now. Story of my life…

Today I’ve got some home stuff to do, some auction stuff, and if I have any time left, I’ll help my buddy at his shop. Then it’s Tuesday kid taxi service.

Do not falter. Stack.
n