Category: culture

And still the weather is hot and humid.   Freaking sun.  Burns like the blazes.   108F in the sun at my house yesterday, and it was only partly sunny!

So I stayed inside and did paperwork for our tax accountant.   I didn’t get to the storage unit to reorganize and make more room.  I did get some stuff sorted for later auctions, and did get some cleaning done.   I also spent time watching and bidding on the dozen auctions that closed last night.

And I won a few things that will be helpful here and at the BOL.  Another freezer (to sell to a neighbor at the BOL), a metal cabinet for food storage up there, a couple other small things.    I also got a bunch of stuff related to my non-prepping hobby.   I should flip most of it in November at our local swapfest.

One of the things I’ve wanted for a long time finally came my way.   The 1968 Encyclopedia Britannica.   It’s the one I grew up with and I consider it to be about the perfect age.  New enough the science isn’t laughable, but pre-dating all the eco-warrior ’70s bullspit, and all the PC multi-culti nonsense.   My dad read through it twice.   He was very hard to beat at Trivial Pursuit  🙂   I’ve managed to buy a couple other lesser sets from around the same period, but the EB is the best.  Crazy to want it, I know.   The scenarios where it’s useful are so ‘out there’ it should  make me blush.  I don’t care.   I’ve just expanded my ‘rebuild society library’ by a factor of ten.   I’ll pass it off as nostalgia if I have to.   It was pretty close to the sum of all human knowledge at the time it was produced, at least from the ’10 Thousand foot level.’  It’s like having the internet in 24 volumes.  Well, without all the pron and cat pix.  Ever since my siblings gave mom and dad’s set away at a garage sale, I’ve wanted to replace it.  I just didn’t want it enough to pay the price it brings.  This week I got lucky and got a set for under $20.  Hooray.

FWIW, I consider hard cover books and a good library to be essential preps.   Western Civ doesn’t HAVE to die.   The whole Renaissance came about because of books.  Electronic storage and ebooks are malleable and fallible (doesn’t quite rhyme) and while paper books have their failure modes too, at least they can’t be ‘stealth edited’ or rendered unreadable by a change in file format, or hardware obsolescence.  Good collected works volumes are available for a dollar or less.   There’s no reason not to own most of the western canon.  Own them electronically too, but own them.

Stack up knowledge and learning, history and art.  Stack those deep too.

nick

Another hot humid day here in the swamp.   Bayou City USA.   Houston, TX.  Jeez.  Fall was nice while it lasted.  Not.  It was 102F in the sun yesterday and it felt like it too.

So I mostly stayed in.   I didn’t feel well.  I’ve got a sore throat and felt a bit off all day, so I napped a little, and puttered.  My wuflu test was negative, so I think it’s just a cold or could be seasonal allergies.  Post nasal drip.   Bah, don’t feel like myself and I don’t like it.

Caught another possum last night.  Took him to the same spot I released the last one.   This one was bigger.   I’ll say that the Hav-a-heart traps are bigger than they look, and more finicky to set than they should be.  Very awkward to bait properly.  Not very good at triggering.   I saw the beastie in the cage on my cam, and went out with a broom to activate the trap door.  Took him a couple of miles away, and released him.  (and not like the krazy komandant in Schindler’s List)

Vermin.   Have a plan.  Get the stuff.   Get more than you think you’ll need.

There is still time to stock up.  It’s costing more every day and getting harder to find bargains.   Still worth doing, in my book.

Today I’ll be doing some auction stuff- shipping an ebay sale, picking up some stuff.  Cleaning the house.  Normal stuff.  Boring stuff. Life stuff.  These are the good old days.

Stack it up, food, tools, friends, and all the things you’ll need.

n

Hot as summer yesterday.  Probably hot again today.  Humid too.   The sun was searing my brain.  REALLY hoped Fall was here.   Oh well, guess we’ll wait a bit longer.

Did pickups in the afternoon, and some family stuff in the evening.   Hit the Costco for a few things in between.  It was eerie.   530pm and the place was a ghost town.   Hamburger was more than HEB, as was chicken.  I bought chicken anyway because I like the packaging.   Bought some steaks too, as they were reasonable, looked good, and I hadn’t seen any ribeye in a while.  They had the shelf stable bread back in stock.   Coffee prices were low, or on sale, which is odd considering some of the things going on in the world.  Maybe coffee isn’t a ‘core’ expenditure and its price will fall as people cut back.  Most people I know would describe it as ‘core’ but maybe they move down scale to cheaper brands.

There were only 3 pallets of rice.   There used to be 6.   Pancake mix is up from $6 to $6.89.  But canadian maple syrup is cheaper than last year.  That has to be an exchange rate thing.  The store removed another set of cold cases.  This was a smaller open front, for organic drinks and salads, near the meat section.  Guess they are still remodeling and cutting back.  Something else caught my eye and I just figured out why.   They moved the bottled and sparkling water from next to the frozen fish, to an interior aisle.   They put beer in the aisle where the water used to be.   What caught my eye was the space.  The beer was all under the warehouse rack, and so was the water.   In the old days, the water was stocked on 6 foot high pallets in front of the pallet racking.   There is a whole lot less water on display, maybe half as much.

All this adds up to reduced SKUs, reduced inventory, and a much more open store.

Supply issues are just getting started friends.

Buy it while you can, and stack it high.

n

Cool and humid turning to hot and humid, with a possible bit of rain.   Which forecast pretty well describes yesterday’s actual weather.  It got to just around 100F in the afternoon.   It was certainly hot in the attic.

Shortly after  getting started for the day (with stretches and limbering up) I crawled up into the attic to finally run the new gas line to the kitchen.   Spent some time slithering on my belly like a reptile, and finally got in place, drilled a hole, and failed to get into the wall cavity.   Approaching the problem from outside, by cutting a hole in the soffit and reaching in from the other side confirmed that of all the places I could drill through the top plate of the wall, I’d  hit a freaking stud.  Couldn’t do it on purpose.   I was able to hog out the hole a bit, come through the side of the stud, and make  a path for the pipe.  Except that the fiberglas insulation in the cavity kept the pipe from moving.   I gave up.  Decided to run the pipe down inside a cabinet, and move it when I had the wall open during the [future] kitchen remodel.

Got the pipe run in, but ran short of connectors, valves, and gas appliance hookup kits.   The rest of the install will have to wait until next time.

Helped the septic guy trench for the kitchen drain, then he got everything on the uphill side backfilled and graded.   There is obviously a septic tank in my front yard, but some plants will screen it eventually.   Meanwhile he moved on to the drip line, and we both laid out the pattern.    He’s hoping to finish the install today, with possible cleanup on Sat.

I’ll be home with my non-prepping hobby meeting, and my littlest Girl Scout. My wife and D1 will be doing sailing stuff.    It’s been a long hard working week, and I’ll be glad to be home.

Spent some time chatting with the neighbors about politics and the future.   They are very like minded and have a lot of skills and success harvesting all the local game.  I volunteered to help break down the next big thing they brought home.  I hope they take me up on it, as I’m anxious to learn.

Keep stacking skills and people.   They will make the difference.

nick