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Category: Barbara

Wednesday, 10 September 2014

07:57 – Barbara and I were married 31 years ago today. It sure doesn’t seem that long. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it felt like maybe eight or nine years. Ten, tops.

12:18 – For those of you who are building emergency car kits, here’s something you might want to get while the getting’s good. I just noticed that one of Amazon.com’s third-party vendors is again selling Polar Pure water treatment bottles. I just ordered two of them for Barbara’s and my car emergency kits, at $20 each plus $4 shipping. These things are the gold standard in portable water purification. They’ve been off the market for several years, ever since the DEA put crystal iodine on their controlled list. My guess is that the DEA will shut down this company in the real near future, so if you’d like one or more of these, grab them now while they’re still available. Their shelf life is unlimited, and they’re rated to purify 2,000 quarts/liters each.

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Sunday, 10 August 2014

09:27 – The weather forecast is glorious for the next several days: cool, cloudy, gray, and drizzling. The high today is forecast to be 71F (22C), and our lows for the next several days are to be around 60F (~15C). Not traditional August weather for around here.

Barbara spent most of yesterday helping her sister move stuff out of storage and into the new room that Frances and Al have just built onto their house. She’s cleaning house right now, and then we’ll get started on more science kit stuff.

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Friday, 18 July 2014

08:08 – Barbara is leaving work at 2:00 this afternoon to head for the golf course. It’s been a very long time since she played golf. I was surprised she decided to play a round instead of spending a couple hours on the driving range first, but she wants to actually play. When she was in high school and college, Barbara was a scratch golfer and actually thought about turning pro, so I’m sure she’ll be unhappy with whatever she shoots today. Kind of like I’d be unhappy with the results if I picked up a tennis racket and headed for the courts after not playing for almost 40 years.

I’m seeing calls for Obama to Do Something about the airliner shoot-down in the Ukraine. Do what, precisely? It seems to me that the US government needs to adopt a new motto: “Don’t Just Do Something. Stand There.” The default position of the US government on world events needs to be: “This is not our problem.”

People slaughtering each other in Africa, Asia, or the Middle East? This is not our problem. Russia invading Ukraine? This is not our problem. North Korea threatening South Korea? This is not our problem. Tsunamis in East Asia? This is not our problem. Almost none of what happens on the world stage is our problem, and US taxpayers shouldn’t be expected to pay to fix any of it. And US troops certainly shouldn’t be deployed outside the US to deal with issues that are not our problem.

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Monday, 23 June 2014

07:48 – Costco run and dinner with Mary and Paul yesterday. Barbara is headed back to work this morning. Colin’s had a full week of Barbara being gone followed by a weekend with her home, so it may take him a day or two to get used to being back in the routine.

Stock on the CK01B chemistry kits is running low, so I need to build another batch.

10:44 – I just got another big purchase order issued, which should be the last big one I need to do until probably October or November. I wanted to get stocked up before the West Coast dockworkers’ contract expires at the end of this month. There are likely to be major disruptions on products from countries that ship to the West Coast. A lot of the components we use in kits are sourced from India whenever possible and otherwise China. But all of the stuff I’ve ordered was in-stock, and once it arrives we’ll have the components we need to build several hundred more kits.

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Saturday, 21 June 2014

07:49 – Barbara got home around lunchtime yesterday. Colin and I are both delighted.

Kevlar inventor Stephanie Kwolek dies aged 90. I never met her, although had things been different I might have. One of my junior high school classmates was her niece, Kathy Kwolek. Kathy was close friends with Debby Dailey, who lived two houses up the street from me. They were two of the first girls I noticed as girls. I was interested in both of them, particularly Kathy, who was far prettier than Debby, but both of them were too busy doing teenage girl things to take much notice of me.

More work on science kits today.

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Friday, 20 June 2014

08:32 – Barbara gets home this afternoon. Colin and I will be delighted. I need to get things straightened up before she arrives.

I’m making up chemicals for forensic science kits and filling bottles today. I also need to get purchase orders issued for items we’re running short of.

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Thursday, 19 June 2014

07:55 – Three days down, two to go until Barbara returns home tomorrow evening. I think Colin just figures she’ll be home when she gets here and there’s no use worrying about when that will be.

I see that Obama has F-18’s flying “recon” over Iraq but has ruled out airstrikes. That’s a shame. Airstrikes would be nice, but they should be even-handed so that the US can’t be accused of taking sides. I’m thinking napalm and FAE’s. Lots and lots of napalm and FAE’s. If we obliterate both sides, no one could later claim that we were showing favoritism.

14:51 – Building more forensic science kits has become a high priority. Normally, forensic science kits make up roughly a tenth of total kit sales, so we typically keep only a dozen or so in stock. In the last week, we’ve sold four forensic science kits, which is at least double what I’d expect, particularly with June being a slow month. What’s very odd is that three of those four have gone to Austin, Texas. I wonder if someone is doing a co-op summer science forensics program. Fortunately, Barbara has already labeled 60 sets of bottles for the FK01A kits, and I have most of the solutions already made up. Now I need to make up the four or five solutions I’m short of and get a PO done for some hardware items.

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Wednesday, 18 June 2014

08:14 – Two days down, three to go until Barbara returns home. Colin slept through the night last night. The night before, I think he was expecting Barbara to come home, so he got excited every time he heard a sound that might be her returning. The official high in Winston-Salem yesterday was 92F, but according to both our outdoor thermometers it got to just over 95F here.

Today I’ll continue making up chemicals and filling bottles.

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Tuesday, 17 June 2014

08:18 – One day down, four to go until Barbara returns home. Colin behaved pretty well yesterday, but last night was horrible. On average, every 45 minutes or so he’d jump down off the bed and go roaring down the hall to the front door, barking his head off. I’d just about get back to sleep when he’d do it again.

It’s not yet summer, but things are warming up around here. Our highs for the next week are to be around 95F (35C), with lows in the low 70’s (~ 22C). Thunderstorms are in prospect just about every day.

This morning I need to make up three liters each of Barfoed’s, Benedict’s, and biuret reagents, and 12.5 liters of Fertilizer concentrate A. Once I get those bottles filled, we’ll have all the chemicals we need to make up another 30 biology kits, and most of what we need for 60 or 70 more beyond that. And then I can get to work on making up chemicals for another batch of forensic kits.

15:57 – I just got email from Netflix saying that they’ve (finally) added season five of Heartland. Now they’re only two seasons behind. Speaking of Heartland, I’m now just over halfway through season two. With three evenings left until Barbara returns, I should get through season two and well into season three. I was considering the wild-women-and-parties thing last night, but Colin preferred to watch Heartland re-runs. He really likes hearing Amy say, “Good boy!” He thinks she’s calling him a good boy.

I now have all the chemicals made up for more biology kits. Tomorrow I’ll start on the ones I need for forensic science kits, which we’re getting low on. That includes one of my least favorite chemicals, black fingerprint powder. Our fingerprint powders use a proprietary formulation, but the white powder is a mixture of titanium dioxide, calcium carbonate, and cornstarch, while the black powder is a mixture of lampblack and graphite. The problem with the black powder is that it gets on everything and produces black smudges that are difficult to remove. I’ll fill unlabeled containers with the black powder, seal them, and then wash them to remove any remaining powder before we label them. Even doing that, we may end up with some black smudges on labels.

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Monday, 16 June 2014

09:05 – Marcy picked up Barbara at 7:15 for their week’s driving trip up the Parkway. Colin wasn’t entirely sure what was happening, but he’ll figure it out this evening when Barbara doesn’t return.

Mary and Paul weren’t available yesterday, so Barbara and I did a Costco run by ourselves. I went prepared with Amazon Prime Pantry prices for some stuff I wanted to buy for our food storage program, and took along a small notebook to record Costco prices on other items for later comparison with Amazon. As it turns out, Amazon is considerably higher than Costco on all of the items I checked.

For example, Amazon Pantry sells a 16-ounce can of Bush’s Baked Beans for $1.48 plus about $0.16 shipping. I was thinking that Costco charged about $12 for a case of eight cans, but when I checked yesterday they were $8.49 per case of eight, or about $1.06/can. Also, the Costco cans were 16.5 ounces rather than 16. So Amazon was about 55% higher on that. Same thing on vanilla extract. Amazon had either McCormick or Kirkland (Costco) branded vanilla extract in 16-ounce bottles for $9.99. Costco sold their own brand for $6.99, so Amazon was about 42% higher on that. Costco had canned corn at $0.67/can. Amazon was $1.04. And so on. If Costco carries something, we’ll get it there.

But there are a lot of things that we want to stock up on that Costco doesn’t carry, or at least our Costco doesn’t. So just out of curiosity, I went over to the Sam’s Club website. As it turns out, unlike Costco, the Sam’s Club site lists store-only items, including prices, and they carry a lot of stuff that Costco doesn’t, including Campbell’s canned soups by the case. Barbara’s going to check with her sister to find out if they still have a membership at Sam’s Club. If not, we may join just for the better prices on a lot of items we want to stock up on.

15:42 – When Barbara travels, she’s often pretty much off-the-grid. But this time she took her laptop with her. I tried to get her to let me install Skype, but she didn’t want it. At the moment, she has no cell service, but at least she can email me. I emailed her earlier to say that Colin is still afraid that I’ll forget to feed him, and wants to know when she’ll be home. I got the following response a little while ago.

Tell him I will be home Friday afternoon.

We arrived at Peaks of Otter about 2pm. On the drive up we saw a fawn and her mom. The fawn was about the size of Colin at six months. We also saw a wild turkey and a ground hog.

We got off the Parkway and drove to the little town of Stewardsville, VA outside of Bedford for lunch at a little diner. Homemade food; she cooked and served.

After we checked in we were going for a walk around the lake but Marcy wanted to move the truck to a different parking area so we drove over to the lodge to see if we needed reservations for dinner and check out the gift shop. Good thing we waited we are having a thunderstorm.

No cell service. Had no problem connecting to the wifi. They give you a room map with the password.

Give Colin a hug.

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