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Sat. June 14, 2025 – not your average waste of time

Hot and humid. It’s more natural this way. Some people in Houston and surrounds got rain yesterday. Depended entirely on where you were. Some had a sunny day, some not so much. With all that variability in one city and one day, how does anyone really think they can measure and record “truth” with one or two numbers?

Did my stuff. Spent half the day driving. Went up to the Woodlands, and down to League City. Swung through Laporte and Pasadena on the way home. Lots of driving. Some rain, some sun.

Then I got home, made brats for dinner, and spent the rest of the day in front of the computer. Exciting stuff.

I did get word from my neighbor at the lake that my dockhouse was dry. That meant I could sleep in Houston. The water level has gone down since, removing any urgency I felt earlier about going there to clean up. I’ll monitor and maybe get up there later in the week.

Plenty to do in town here, though. I’ve got one pickup later today, and a bunch of stuff to move, clean, fix, or otherwise mess with. Call it improving my situation.

Call it prepping. I’ll call it “life” as that’s what prepping has done. It’s moved from ‘something I do’ to ‘the way I live’. I may be prejudiced, but I think that’s a worthy goal.

Stack it all!

nick

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Fri. June 13, 2025 – Friday the 13th is on a Friday this month.

Maybe today will be beautiful. It was really nice at sunset last night, after a day of light drizzly rain and overcast. By dinnertime it was drying out and clearing up. By sunset, the sky was clear, and the sun was a gorgeous golden/red/orange. If the clear holds, today will be very nice.

At the BOL, they have been getting a lot of rain, and upstream in the watershed they got even more. The lake is up, and even the main road is flooded. There is an alternate route but it’s longer and less well traveled. Depending on where you need to go, having that main road closed can add quite a bit of time to get to town.

My fishing buddy called to let me know his grandson died yesterday. 22 years old, and apparently just dropped dead. Between his and his wife’s cancer treatments, adding the death of a young man in a close family is a real blow. He would appreciate your prayers.

I did get some stuff done yesterday. One pickup. Dinner into the crockpot. Kid to doc for required physicals. Kid to Costco Optical to get new eyeglasses. Two loads of domestic bliss. Dinner. Kids to the gym. Kid to her activity. Kid home from activity….

Today I’ve got pickups. All over town too. It’s gonna be a juggle to hit them all in any kind of efficient way, because the northern ones might be only in the afternoon, and the southern ones might be all day, but there will be ONE that is in the middle or doesn’t quite work with the others in the area. Still waiting to see if I won anything that I haven’t counted on yet.

I think I’m not going to the BOL this weekend. W is going to a conference next week and would have to come home early. One kid is flying to visit with grandma, the other is volunteering at the local high school in a program for kids and STEM. I’m still not feeling 100%, the jobs I want to do at the BOL are mostly outdoors and not doable with all the rain, and I’ve got a ton to do here. And there is Father’s Day to consider. I’ll do that at home and it will be easier for everyone.

I will be taking my purchases and stacking some, using others to make improvements, and putting some away for later. It’s kinda the definition of prepping.

Get yourself ready for summer and the hurricane/civil war season. It’s coming.

Stack.

nick

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Thur. June 12, 2025 – …then I took and arrow to my knee.

Hot, humid, sunny, overcast, raining, cool, or some combination. Pretty sure we won’t see cold and dry though. Yesterday ended up nice after the rain cleared. It stayed cooler, and never got crazy bright.

I spent the day moving slowly, and not really functioning well. I did get a few things done, mainly in the bathroom. I fixed the flush handle on the toilet. I had a replacement but couldn’t figure out how to switch it to ‘left handed’… some superglue and accelerator fixed and issue with the old one. It works well now. I also took the time to fix a towel holder and the TP holder. The big box store fixtures do wear out over time. A little tightening of screws and they’ll work for a few more years. That bathroom is 13 years into a gut remodel, so they’ll get replaced eventually.

The rest of the day got eaten by doctor visits.

Funnily enough, today will be too. This time it’s the other kid getting her school, camp, and band physicals. I’m the stay at home dad, so it’s my job. It does make it harder to do the auction stuff.

I should say it makes it harder to do everything without motivation and good time management. Right now I’m lacking both. Working on it. Working…

Time for more ‘doing’.

And stacking. Time to replace some breakage in the stacks. Past time, but something I still need to get to.

Do some pulling out and examining of your own preps. There is likely some damage, and maybe more time has passed than you think. Then stack!

nick

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Wed. June 11, 2025 – I was once and adventurer like you…

Hot and humid. Again. And again. 85F to 95F or higher, and then maybe some rain… because it’s humid and there are likely to be threatening clouds. Ah, summer.

Did a couple of pickups yesterday. Both kids took care of themselves, leaving me to do my stuff. I went slow, and mostly felt ok. My head is still a little swirly and I’m not feeling super strong. The heat is taking some out of me too. Still, I can function.

So that is what I’m looking at today too. Some stuff with my local auctioneer, if I can swing it. A doctor appointment for the kid. Maybe some phone work for me because I need to make a couple of appointments too. And I need to get D1 on my AAA card, and do some other business stuff. Bill paying? Yeah, maybe that too. And some listing on ebay. I need to break the log jam of not listing, and build some momentum.

This cold has derailed whatever momentum I had left after vacation interrupted stuff. Life. Overrated.

Oh well. Better suck it up and do some stuff. Summer will be gone before I know it.

Stack something for hurricane season.

nick

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Tues. June 10, 2025 – Feeling better, need to be doing stuff

Hot and humid. Yup. Same as yesterday with maybe some rain, like yesterday. Some parts of Houston got rain. Some didn’t.

I did feel better yesterday, and got up and ran a couple of errands, but I felt wiped out afterwards. I’m planning to do the same today. Go slow, take it easy, but get some things done.

And I’ll try not to cough all over everyone.

The plan to hit the cold hard with supplements and sleep seems to have worked. I can move and breath and mostly function after only three days. Not feeling 100% but feeling better.

As long as I don’t overdo it I should be good.

n

(time to stack some rest.)

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Sat. June 7, 2025 – feeling sick, not much gonna happen today

Probably be warm and maybe even hot. Definitely gonna be moist. Yesterday was pretty hot, although I hid from it as much as possible.

Started feeling sick yesterday and it’s hitting hard today. Classic cold symptoms. I’m taking airborne and trying zicom which is supposed to shorten the misery. Body aches and chills started last night.

OF COURSE I get sick when I have a weekend to get caught up on things. Joy. My only strategy now is to kick it as fast as possible so I don’t fall farther behind.

Everyone talks about D Day, and no one talks about today. I’m guessing the horror really started to set in the next day. I was remiss in not mentioning it yesterday, but we have our own reasons to remember the day. Smaller, but still important.

Hug a loved one. Stack that.

nick

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Fri. June 6, 2025 – take a minute to remember absent friends…

Today is the anniversary of RBT’s birth. Take some time to remember those who have gone before us, and celebrate what they built, especially our late host.

Gone but not forgotten.

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More warm and moist today, and tomorrow, and for the rest of the summer. The only question is “How hot?” We know it will be maximally moist. I don’t think it got hotter than 94F at the house yesterday, but even standing still outdoors had sweat running down my back. Yuck, yuck, and more yuck.

I did not get a ton of stuff done yesterday. The important thing was delivering a load to my auctioneer, and getting a commitment for more. Secondary would have been getting a check, but at least he told me he’d have one for me next week.

Other than that, it was auction stuff in the morning, catching up online, and then unpacking.

Today should be a little more productive, if I’m not feeling horrible. I do feel something coming on… which makes sense giving the number of filthy humans I was around this past week and the vast variety of places they brought germs from. If I can, I’ll be running errands, doing some domestic bliss, and maybe doing some work.

Ordinary day, ordinary life. But the day to day is what defines us most of the time. So do a little stacking and some working on improving your situation too. Make that part of your ordinary life.

nick

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Thur. June 5, 2025 – 05052025 – home sweet home

Hot and humid here in the swamp. Houston may be the City of Trees, but that’s not the first thing that comes to mind, the humidity is. And it looks like it will be both hot and humid for the rest of summer. It’ll all just be a matter of degree.

Started the day fairly leisurely in WDW, ended at home in Houston. Raining, hot and humid in both places, although Houston was worse. Flight and airports were find. Flying mid day and mid week helped. It was a no stress end to a long week.

FWIW, I don’t think I’m up for 5 days in a row in amusement parks, not with this weather anyway. 20K steps a day. No wonder I’m tired.

Home now though. Blessed be Blue Charmin…

Kids are now out of school and home with me all day. No science camps or daytime activities to suck up their energy, just the enhanced gravity well around the teenager’s bed. I should basically have the house to myself until noon at least…

And I better use some of that time wisely. Lots to do. Starting with a run to my auctioneer to drop off a truck load of stuff, I’ll also do some pickups. I’ve got some Dr visits to fit into the next week or two, and lots of cleaning up and selling of stuff. The list is long, and getting longer.

Plus, hurricane season has started. I need to do hurricane preps on top of everything else. Ay Carumba!

But first, some restorative sleep.

Later, more improvements, and more stacking.

n

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Wed. June 4, 2025 – home again home again jiggity jig…

Hot and humid in central Florida, followed by hot and humid in Houston Tx. Probably. It was hot and humid in Orlando except when it was raining. The overcast helped too, but when the sun poked through, boy howdy it got hot. I’ve been wearing my lightweight boonie hat from Columbia to shade my head and keep the sun off my neck, and it helps alot.

Spent the day at Universal Resorts Orlando which apparently is what they call the properties here. Universal Studios, Citywalk, and Universal Islands of Adventure. It’s not actually very big, either in total, or for each park area. Citywalk is a public area of restaurants, shopping, and nightlife, while the others are classic theme parks. Well, Citywalk is a semi-public area anyway. They do search you and restrict you while you are there.

Did I mention that their parks use the same facial recognition hardware that the TSA does? The implementation was not complete yet, unlike Epic, so we did still need to have a printed ticket to scan for the lockers, and to move from IOA to US. Printed because there are times when your phone is locked up, in a locker that can only be opened by scanning your park ticket.

We at least walked through most of the various “lands” but spent most of our time in Potter world. See yesterday’s comments for more details.

It was expensive, tiring, and even the kids will be glad to be home. Got to see mom and sibling, spend time with my wife and kids, and see some fun attractions. I’ll be glad to be home too.

Stacking up the good times,

nick

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Tues. June 3, 2025 – more competition to check out….

And more hot, humid, and probably rainy weather. The overcast was nice, and the rain held off until evening, and then cleared out pretty quickly. The forecast calls for pretty much the same today.

Epic Universal is a new park. It’s only been open to the public for about a week, with soft open for friends and family before that. There are a lot of “tweaks” being made, as you’d expect. There are a lot of unfinished things too. Masking tape still in place, missing electrical covers, building supplies or trash out where they can be seen… The funniest was the rain water dripping out of ceiling mounted smoke detectors in the Carousel attraction. There must be a big leak in that roof, and probably more than one based on the number of places there were drips.

There were a lot of broken things too. 10% of the Carousel was tagged out. I suspect the lap belt system is at fault, based on what I saw them trying to fix. Mandatory lap belts for a carousel, even for adults! Several places already had significant wear, or intentional damage. There were a lot of props and stage dressings that were too close to audience or guests. That stuff will vanish quickly. Sound levels throughout the park were off, mainly too loud, but still unintelligible.

On the other hand, the level of design and detailing was very high. I was using google translate on the signs and waybills in the France area, and they all translated and most were funny as well as being ‘in world’.

I wouldn’t recommend Epic at this time. Let them work out operational issues and do the shake down cruise fixes. Let them figure out how to get wait times down. Nothing there is worth the waits that we saw yesterday.

Today we’re on another Universal property, although I’m not sure what and when. Should be fun if the waits aren’t as bad as Epic. If it rains, all bets are off, as all the outdoor rides shut down. Then the indoor ride wait times skyrocket. It’s always something.

Flexibility and patience will be key- as they are with prepping. Stack stuff, work on flexibility and patience.

nick

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