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Thur. Aug. 10, 2023 – and time is flying by…

Hot and humid as summer continues here in the South. Likely to keep being hot and humid until it’s not… That will happen fairly suddenly, but not really soon.

We are counting down the days to the start of the new school year. It’s funny how at different times in your life there are different rhythms and different ways to organize your time. With our kids, it’s now “school” but even that changes as they get older. I’m sure the pace and timing of D1’s life, and subsequently ours, will change again now that she’s entering High School.

I spent yesterday driving around doing pickups. Had a chat with one auctioneer about the economy. I noticed this week that prices in the auctions for estate sale type stuff seemed really low. She agreed and thought it was because people are running out of money to spend. The amazon and store returns auctions seem to be holding higher prices for the moment as more people discover them and shop for everyday items. I bought bars of soap and pens at one auction this week. Missed out on dozens of other things because my bid was a bit low. Is it worth it to buy something cheap and simple like that? If I can combine trips with several auctions, yes. If I had to make a special trip? No. The extra time and mileage offsets any savings. I try to bid on and buy enough things that the savings more than pay for the gas and trouble. Other people seem to be discovering the same thing. Of course the best thing is to save a whole lot of money, then it isn’t even close.

Today I’ll do another pickup, go by the rent house* and do a bit of staging for the photographer. They won’t open blinds or shut cabinet doors, so someone has to be there if you don’t want bad photos. Today that will be me. Then I’ll try to do a drop off at my other auctioneer. Some of the stuff I dropped off last week already has good bids, so I’m happy. I would like to get a whole lot more listed too.

I’ll try to make my Costco run today too. I don’t want to put it off. Seems like suddenly time is flying by. The pause was brief.

Back to stacking, scrambling, and a full schedule.

Get your prep on!

nick

*meant to do this on the last post. I have no idea why a rental house is called a “rent house” here in Houston, and throughout the South, but it is. It’s very consistent and people looked at me funny until I adopted the usage. Grey man and all that… even though it sounds bad to my ear.

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Wed. Aug. 9, 2023 – another hot day, filled with exciting white hot action…j

Hot and humid. Yup. Again. Sunny too with no relief in sight according to the national forecast. Oh well. Summer. I will say it’s bloody hot. Better to do inside work than outside.

So I spent all afternoon yesterday finishing up outside work at my rent house*. Fence, parking space, roof flashing, all hot and in the sun. Sweated until I was soaked to the skin. Not kidding, feet were pasty white and wet, same for my ‘undercarriage’. Not quite waterlogged with wrinkles, but dang close.

Today will be a bit different from the last several and more like my normal day. I’ve got several pickups to do, mostly stuff for the BOL and household items. I’d like to do an auction drop off, if I can fit it in, and I’ve got to make a Costco run too. I haven’t been making them as often as I used to and it shows in the state of my stacks.

Last night I had to go to the store for TOILET PAPER. Yup, prepper fail. Kids have been burning through it so fast I thought someone was stealing it, and my normal storage areas are being used for other things (so my inventory management by looking at the stacks isn’t working.) Then we took some to the rent house, and I’ve been taking bulk packages to the BOL to build up stores there. I have TP at the secondary. If the stores were closed I’d hit that backup… but the bale I thought was TP in the garage was Bounty paper towels. So down to the last roll in the house, and that won’t cut it. HEB was open late. Funny though, it’s more expensive, with fewer rolls in the “mega pack” and they are narrower than the Costco sourced Charmin.

Oy, I’m so ashamed. Had to make a special trip just for toilet paper at 10pm… I’d have felt pretty stupid if I got myself shot or robbed doing it, or if I’d had to drive around looking for some and an open store. You let your guard down for just a bit, and it’s amateur hour all of a sudden.

[hangs head]

Well, needs must… I’ll hit Costco today or tomorrow.

There’s a bunch of domestic bliss to attend to also. Normal everyday life. Best if I get started sometime this morning.

Stack it up, and make sure of your inventory!

nick

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Tues. Aug. 8, 2023 – Hard work. Hard times. Hard … body??!?

More of the same. Same ol’ same ol’. Hot and humid. Some overcast and threatening clouds, but no rain. Rinse and repeat. Bo-o-o-ring!

So there I was, sweating through my clothes, sweat dripping from my nose and eyelids, again. Working on something. Again. Drinking water and electrolyte replacement like it was booze and I was Barney on the Simpsons. Seems like lately all I do is work in the heat.

And I can. This is the first summer I’ve been able to work normally after the multi-year recovery from my previous heat injury. So really, I’m thankful that I can. It is getting somewhat old though.

I also remind myself that it’s nothing compared to the labor people used to do, and that we’ll do again, if the world goes pear shaped. In the zombie apocalypse you will NOT be sitting around reading, FINALLY having time to do what you want. You’ll be doing all the work machines and other people used to do for you. You’ll be doing the ‘hidden’ work that others far away did, like providing food, motive power, water, or any of the many many other inputs to your life. Or you’ll be dealing with the outputs of life- waste, effluvia, trash. If you’re lucky, you may be tied to animals, their schedule and their needs.

And with luck, you’ll be fit, strong, and whole. You may not start that way, but if you have enough time, you’ll start heading that way. Not many weight problems in a hand to mouth existence. Not many picky eaters. Not many long term disabilities. Some of that is because if the problems are serious, just surviving them is tough. Some is because without toughness, both mental and physical, you don’t survive. In any case, it doesn’t seem likely that we’ll continue having the physical issues we have now, related to abundance. We’ll have the physical issues caused by scarcity, injury, and accident, but we’ll be thin…

Stack some stuff to keep the wolf from the door. And do what you can now to get in better shape, so you can be strong for yourself and others. We’re gonna need strength and toughness.

nick

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Mon. Aug. 7, 2023 – so, it’s kinda hot lately…

Hot AND humid! We got both kinds of misery. And I had to spend the day in it. Well it went very slowly. But it’s Houston, it’s summer, and OH MY GOD THE WORLD IS GONNA BURN!!11!!!1!! Or maybe not just yet. Gonna be hot for a while yet too. I was busy working in it so I didn’t get a high temp yesterday, but I haven’t got much doubt it was in the low 100s in the sun. On the roof, it was certainly that.

Spent the day working at the rent house. It’s looking good, and is just about ready to rent. Needed paint, some maintenance, and a few style upgrades. LOTS of cleaning. There are a few things left to do, some inside and some out. The fence still needs repair. The parking pad needs some work, and there is a trench drain for the driveway that has been sitting around for a year or more… waiting for someone to dig a trench. I’m trying really hard to not be that someone. We put off some upgrades because they would be disruptive to the tenants, so now is the time. The main thing is to get the inside done so the pix can be taken and the listing put together.

I don’t want to drag out the other stuff though. I’ve got plenty of open projects at the BOL and here as well. Time to be done, and back to earning money on the place. And back to work on the other places.

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Given all the stuff I’ve got on my plate, I guess I can be forgiven for not paying any attention to the hurricane season. We’ve had a couple of ‘invest’ systems identified, but nothing has really developed, and I’m glad for that. While we could use the rain, I’ve already got a full dance card. Very different this year though, without me mentioning anything for a month. Bigger fish to fry I guess.

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Plenty of small fish to fry too. One thing that is starting to worry me wrt stacking- it’s been a while since meat was on sale enough for me to buy any. I’ve been working out of the freezers, and we’ve got plenty, but plenty is reduced by one with every meal. Sometimes, if we have an extra child, plenty gets reduced by two…

Time to add some protein to the freezers. Tri-tip and brisket are still reasonably priced, I think I need to try my hand at cooking some. And put whatever IS cheap in the stacks.

After all, rice doubled with one announcement from India. That can happen with other foods too. A mad cow outbreak would send beef sky high, as would bird flu for chicken. Piggies get sick too. There is chatter about deflationary trends in some items, but I’m not seeing it in food.

So stack it while you can,

nick

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Sun. Aug. 6, 2023 – Good thing this place is all about comments… mostly.

Hot, but there was some overcast and threatening clouds during the day yesterday. I’m hoping for some of that today too, but I’m pretty sure I’ll just get Hot and Humid. It was 80F in the house even though the t-stat was set to 73F. The unit just can’t keep up in high heat. And we’ve had high heat.

Wife and D1 spent Saturday painting interiors, mostly some taupe color called “accessible grey”. It’s beige. A warm beige, pretending to be grey. I know grey and shades of grey are very ‘of the moment’ but FFS, we have enough grey and limited color palette in our lives already. Look in any parking lot. Look at the cars on the road. Look at all the new homes and multi-family developments. Grey. White. Black. Blech. I don’t have to live there, and the color came from the realtor who supposedly knows the market… so mushroom it is.

I tore out rotted siding and replaced it with new. Also did some stuff with flashing and downspouts that I hope will make a difference. D2 did a whole lot of power washing. Kid’s borderline OCD so she did a good job. D1 tried for a while but mostly waved the wand around semi-randomly, or used it to bore holes in the wood. Her talents lie elsewhere.

I hit the grocery store on the way home for gas ($3.30/gal) and a quick trip through the store for milk and veg, and any sale items. They’ve re-designed the whole store. Moved everything. A lot of the changes fly in the face of my understanding of grocery store science. We’ll see if it lasts, or if they are still tweeking it. There were still empty spots on the shelves, no baby formula- just empty security spaces where it should be. Meat was all very high, no bargains. The only sale was on “value” grade beef, sliced thinner than a normal cut, and it was still more than I’d like to spend. Wide mouth Ball lids and rings were half off…

I’ll do another shopping run before school starts, but I did grab a few school lunch and after school snack things, just in case I am busy and don’t make it to the store this week. This trip was the first time in a year or more that they didn’t have sweet onions. Odd.

Here’s a link to an article on the state of the logistics and shipping market domestically that was written just before Yellow went bankrupt, https://www.mhlnews.com/transportation-distribution/article/21268484/is-it-time-for-logistics-to-hit-the-reset-button . It was interesting to read what sort of stuff is believed so widely that you can say it in an industry article without hedging, or explaining yourself.

“Other events also have contributed to the supply chain turmoil, ranging from rampant inflation, labor disruption and banking weaknesses, to political controversy and technological advances.”

Here is the one from 2021– https://www.mhlnews.com/transportation-distribution/article/21168952/the-state-of-us-logistics-2021-building-an-agile-supply-chain

Interesting.

If you see things you need or want, get them while you can. The whole thing is a house of cards and it can come crashing down. Stack. And stack some more.

nick

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Sat. Aug. 5, 2023 – all work and no play makes nick a dull boy. With dull posts.

Hot and the other ‘h’ word. In spades, with cherries on top. Yeah, it was yesterday and will be again today. As I was at the rent house, I couldn’t get an actual temp reading, but the A/C unit couldn’t keep up. It started falling behind around 2pm.

I got a bunch of tasks done at the rental. Started the biggest two, repairing the ceiling, and replacing rotten porch floor boards. I had just enough left over from last time to do almost all of what needed it the most. If I had another couple feet of board, I’d do more. It’s all cut, but I didn’t have glue so I left that for today. The ceiling crack needed to dry, so I’ll add another coat today. The big outdoor job that isn’t the fence is to replace rotten siding boards, and then fix the gutter situation that caused them to be wet and rot in the first place.

Wife and kids will be there cleaning and painting today too. I may have to work outside on the fence… just to get away. Maybe I’ll bring the pressure washer and see how much that improves things. It’s probably time to paint the whole house too, but I’m hoping to put that off another year. Houses need constant attention. If they don’t get it, you end up doing the work in bursts, and they take longer and cost more. There are a lot of things like that in life. Unfortunately, I only have the attention to spare at fairly long intervals, which means things like rotten siding can get out of hand.

Oh well, it is what it is. At least I can do the work.

Always be…. or stack. Or both. But do something.

nick

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Fri. Aug. 4, 2023 – How can it be Friday already? We just had a Friday…

It’s like “you gotta be F-ing kidding me” hot in the sunshine. Hot enough in the shade, crazy hot in the sun. Burn your fingers on metal hot. Well, that’s what yesterday was like, and I’ve no reason to believe today will be any different.

I was sweating like crazy while pulling auction items out of my storage unit. Sweating like crazy dropping them off, and sweating like crazy looking at what needs to be done to get my rent house ready.

Unfortunately, I think I’ll be living Groundhog Day today, doing all those same things again. At least the A/C is working at the rental. Oh, and when they called to say the A/C wasn’t keeping up and the house was too hot in the afternoon? My first question was “is the filter clean?” And I was assured that it was… no freaking way it got so filled with dust and grease that it was pulled halfway up into the plenum in just a week. Nice kids, but LIARS. If I was in the house and sweating, I’d be changing the dang filter, not pretending I did. Some people.

So that’s the plan for today, more work. Gotta get ready for the painting, ‘cuz the Boss ™ she is a slavedriver. At least the fence work can wait a bit.

Having a third (mostly) passive income stream is a prep, and I am glad to have it, but I can’t help but feel like I should be doing something more “prep- y” like working on generators, or re-stacking my stacks…

Ah well, count it as “improving my position”. Stack something. You’ll need it.
nick

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Thur. Aug. 3, 2023 – well, you guessed it, more work to do…

And yes, it is hot out. Likely to be humid too. And sunny. Because it’s summer. I was reading my rural electricity co-op provider’s magazine while at the BOL, and had grabbed one out of the stack from LAST summer. Guess what it said? Yeah, conserve electricity because of the high heat. Also they were raising our rates because of inflation. So this year is pretty much just like last year. Hot.

Somehow we forget. Like the pain of childbirth.

Despite the heat I ran a couple of loads to my local auction house. Picked up one lot I’d won in a more industrial auction. That was for resale. I will try to run at least one more good load to the auction today before heading over to my rent house to start work on it. The ceiling needs repair. I’m going to end up doing the patch in the wall, instead of the painter… and the porch floor has some rotten boards that will need to be replaced. I have to do that every couple of years.

Then I have to seriously consider what to do about the fence. Some of it is pretty worn, as I discovered when the strange neighbor drew my attention to it. I’m tempted to do the absolute minimum, just add a board so I can re-nail the rotten bottoms of the pickets. That will buy a couple of more years for the fence. I don’t want to put thousands or even hundreds of dollars into it. I’ve power washed it a couple of times though, and it’s pretty worn out. Western red cedar 5 inch pickets on pressure treated posts and rails is the default fencing here, and it holds up pretty well, better with washing and sealing, but it doesn’t last forever and that fence is over 15 years old. The joy of property ownership. It’ll be hot out, no matter what I choose to do.

I do think that having a revenue stream from a rental property is a good idea, and a decent hedge against inflation. As long as you can count on .gov to honor property rights, and insist that tenants pay you what you are owed, that is. We’ve seen that we can’t actually count on that in most places. Still a good investment in theory, and for us, in practice. I’d prefer to have some commercial rental property too. It’s easier to get rid of bad tenants, but if the economy goes south, it’s harder to keep good ones. Everyone needs a place to live, businesses can condense down to ‘home based’ if needed, or they go broke completely leaving commercial landlords with empty properties. Every investment involves trade offs, and different risks.

Even cash buried in jars involves risk.

The only way I know to reduce the risk is to diversify, and I don’t mean by holding 10 different stocks. Diversify your investments. Diversify your income. Diversify your suppliers and sources. Diversify what you stack. And hope that the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down all at the same time.

Even if it does, if you’ve stacked, you’ll still be able to eat. Stack it up.

nick

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Wed. Aug. 2, 2023 – Home for a few days… so I’ve got work to do!

Hot and humid of course. It was smoking hot when I left my BOL, and pretty freaking hot when I got to Houston. It started blowing and raining shortly after I got home, and that helped for a short time. Still hot.

Got everything buttoned up, and finished cleaning up some of the mess from all the grading and excavating I did last month at the BOL. It wasn’t on my list to clean the driveway but after seeing it through fresh eyes, it had to be done. It was also the coolest thing I could think of to do in the morning. I’m glad I did it too, as it made a huge difference.

That and putting everything away took most of the day. I left for Houston, did a stop for gas and to pick up some auction items, and eventually got home.

Where I discovered some computer issues. We had a power outage and things didn’t come back up. Details are in yesterday’s comments, but the takeaway is- be sure your electronics are on surge protectors and UPSs, not just ‘power strips’. Even good power strips with metal cases, aren’t necessarily surge protectors. My main PC is one month shy of being 10 years old. It still works (other than this new power supply issue) well for everything I need to do. I have a software environment that I like, with everything saved and auto-filling what needs to be filled, and don’t want to change or re-install a bunch of software. Besides that, it offends my soul to get rid of something that is working well.

So I’ll try a new psu and hope there wasn’t any damage to motherboard or other components.

Today I’ve got stuff to take to my auctioneer. I’ll try to make a couple of trips if I can. One pickup in the afternoon, and IF there is time left after that, I need to go by the rent house and see what my part of the ‘getting ready to rent to new tenants’ clusterflock will be. I’m thinking fence repair, porch floor repair, and ceiling drywall repair, just from what I already know. My wife will be cleaning and painting and doing any small wall repairs. Thank gnu we only have to do this every few years. Five years in this case. I would not like to do it every year.

It’s a busy time of year and the rent house changeover isn’t helping. We’ve got to hit it hard and get the place rented again. There’s no rest for the weary, or the wicked. Take your pick. And stack something.
nick

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Tues. Aug. 1, 2023 – ti- ai- ime AIN’T on my side, no it ain’t

Hot and humid. Hit 114F in part sun. Hit 106F in the shade. More of the same today, I think. It was so hot, I sat in the shade and in the house talking with my fisherman buddy.

At some point he saw a squirrel in the yard and pointed it out. There is a guy up here that hates squirrels and shoots them, which my buddy hates. As he put it, that is food for when things get really tough. That led me to bring up season 9 of “Alone” which I’ve mentioned here recently. They were shooting and snaring squirrels, pretty successfully, and still starving slowly. At 250 calories per squirrel, there isn’t much food on them. I pointed that out, and that everyone up here would be hunting the same squirrel, deer, and piggies if it drops in the pot. He was convinced he’d be getting plenty of game, so I played along. Who’s watching the wife and grandkids while he’s hunting? More extended family.

Oh, so now you’re feeding 20 people on squirrel and other game, same as everyone else up here. Yeah, but we aren’t JUST eating that… OK, what else are you eating? We’ll be eating from the garden. Which garden? We’ll plant one, we’ve got seeds stored up. OK, what do you eat for the months you are waiting for the harvest? Got six months of food stored? Hmmm. No. Ok, got six weeks? Hmmm. No.

So how do you feed the guards? What about all the other folks who show up looking for food? We’ll tell them “no”. What if they insist? They can try, we’ll shoot them. And what about the next ones? Shoot them too. And if they are hungry kids? Hmmm. OK, now you are the bad guy, and everyone decides you don’t deserve to have your food and stuff so they burn you out and take it.

Hmm.

There has been a lot of what Bruce Schneier calls “movie plot” thinking going on up here. One response, but no thought for second or third order effects.

I still think this is a lot better place to ride out any trouble, but some people haven’t given it enough thought, or considered the reactions and actions of other people. Hopefully he’ll do just that now that I’ve planted a seed.

Today if I get a chance I’ll ask him for a rough census of the deer and piggy population. That should get him thinking about how viable living off the land might actually be. He does know the area intimately, and the people that he knows he knows well. He didn’t know there was an outlaw biker clubhouse only 12 miles away though. And there are lots of places out in the country to do bad things without anyone noticing. I’m betting that at least some of the “abandoned” buildings have occupants, or users that you wouldn’t want to meet, or know what they are up to.

If I can get him to think beyond “I’ll hunt and so I’ll have food” to the idea EVERYONE will be hunting for that same food, maybe we can make some better plans.

The problem is bigger than here and what to do here. The wuflu panic had people in cities buying any piece of land in the country they could get, especially if it was near an amenity like a lake. Everyone that knows anyone in the country will be looking to head there if they can. Everyone who has been to a boy scout or girl scout, or church retreat camp will think it might be a better place to be than a burning city. But the countryside, by and large, doesn’t have the resources for a massive influx of people.

And the folks already here won’t be super happy to share. Which brings me neatly around to the idea that IF you think you might end up wanting to ‘head for the hills’ you better do it NOW and start getting yourself established. At least get your foot in the door, so you aren’t part of a wave of refugees. You’ll still be the new guy, but if you work for it, when they circle the wagons, you might be inside the circle, instead of outside.

I’m trying hard to be in the circle, and I think it’s paying off. Get busy working a plan. And stack, so you don’t show up empty handed.

nick

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