Category: decline and fall

With the heat, it’s hard to believe summer is ending. We’ve got a month or more of hot and humid ahead of us. I don’t know how much longer we’ll have 100+ degree days though. And a bit cooler at night will be welcome.

And since the start of the school year is way dang early these days, it’s not really the end of Summer that it used to be. Still can’t believe how fast time is flying by.

Did my pickups yesterday, and had nice chats with several people. Met a nice lady that grew up in Chicago not far from where my dad grew up, and we knew a lot of places in common. As she’s 50, she was more of a child of the 90s while I’m a child of the 80s, but still, midwestern and south side of Chicago has a strong cultural influence. And her childhood was a bit more urban than my suburban life. We chatted for over an hour.

Today I have to get youngest out the door. She still wants me to make her a snack for school. Despite my strike I will do so because I get a lot out of it. D1 went to the store and bought TP and some food so the strike will continue a bit longer. As she has to do more of the background stuff I did, maybe she’ll come to realize it. Or maybe not. Teens are very self-centered.

In the afternoon, I have a couple of pickups in Katy. I got some fishing stuff and a nice leather chair for the BOL. The chair will need cleaning, but I’m looking forward to expanding my skills refurbing leather. It’s a distraction, possibly, but also something nice for the BOL.

I’ve got to move some stuff at the shop and get more auction stuff ready, now that I made a little bit of room with the stuff I dropped off.

Should be plenty to do. If my strike continues, I’ll have more time for some stuff. And, maybe the kid will learn some things in preparation to going to college next fall.

Always be working to improve. Stack. I still think it is all going to fall apart economically and socially and the trigger won’t be obvious. Unless they manage to kill Trump, that will make everything go nuts in a very unpredictable way.

n

Cooler, and very wet. Then if the sun comes out, HOT and very wet. Parts of Houston got rain yesterday, parts got a LOT of rain. We got enough at the house I didn’t do any outdoor work.

I did do some office work, and some auction stuff. Then I did my pickup which took most of the afternoon. Not a terribly productive day. I did get a couple of barrel pumps, and almost had a chance to buy a couple of hundred gallons of kerosene, but they turned out to be empty. I’d have loved to get 2 fifty five gallon drums… although I have no idea how I’d have moved them.

Today I’m using the kid’s minivan to move a few bins of auction stuff to my new auctioneer. Then I’ll be home to swap vehicles, and go do another pickup or two. I bought some very expensive speakers for resale… Hopefully, I can just flip them, and not decide I want to keep them.

The work on my Ranger should be done later today, which just means the next phase of work will begin shortly after that. I need it in between though. I’ve been watching a lot of Ranger videos. Very popular to keep them running and very straightforward. I also looked at some bluebook values and I see that while it’s possible to find some that are very cheap, ones like mine with the extended cab are apparently worth about double what I thought they were. Some are going for $8-12K depending on miles and condition. I feel a little better about spending money on it.

Always be working to improve your position. The easiest way is to stack. And to TEST and USE your stacked preps.

nick

Hot and humid. Natch’. More summer in Houston weather headed our way. Surprisingly little rain and not many storms so far… Slightly cooler Sunday and a little bit of rain, so maybe that’s not really accurate? Mostly so though. It does seem to be slowly getting cooler at night.

Didn’t do much of anything productive Sunday. Slept late, read, ate, and watched videos while doing auction stuff. The list gets longer, and somedays I just don’t care.

Well, that’s not entirely true, but I don’t care enough to break through the malaise to make progress.

Today I have to be a bit more productive. It’s just hard to do that and stay on strike. Someone restocked the TP. Someone did at least a bit of shopping, and W made something new for dinner. D2’s automatic and effusive praise caught in her throat though when she saw what was on offer… it must have looked good in the FBook feed, but it looked very odd on the table. Almost ‘Better Off Dead’ odd. Tasted good.

I’ve got to re-bait the rat poison boxes. One stood on the window sill and mocked youngest last night. She was not amused. I’ll put that in the “I will do this thing because I live here” column and do the task, but I will probably poke them about it too.

Stack. And work on yourselves.

nick

Still hot. Still humid. We got hot, humid, and rain yesterday. Although in true Houston fashion, not everyone got wet. In fact, about the only time everyone gets the same rain is a big storm, or when a drizzle parks on us for a while. Expecting more of the mixed bag today.

Did my non-prepping hobby meeting. We’re almost ready for our big event later this month. Then I came home and crashed. Later I ate, and read some more. This not doing stuff sure leaves more time for me to read and watch videos.

Today I’ve got to do some things though. Refreshing all the poison stations and maybe even spraying the insecticide around the house is pretty high on the list. Roaches and rats. Gonna be plenty of both if the world gets spicy. Better have some stuff on hand to deal with it.

Stack some poison and traps…

nick

More heat and humidity inbound although maybe a little less of both. IDK what the high ended up being yesterday, but it was only 87F when I checked temps at my rent house around 4:30pm. Some people got rain (Sugar Land, I’m looking at you) but we didn’t get anything at my house.

I did get some stuff done. Rent house visit ate some time, but I got some nice media stuff at Goodwill afterward. I did a pickup of something for D2 that took me to a part of Houston with no good freeway access. The bad surface street traffic was one reason we didn’t move there when we were looking for a new home, and the cachet of the area dropped rapidly after the bad flooding. It went from being a premier area for suburban living in classic McMansions to vacant homes, hair braiding salons, and halal food joints. And in only a few years.

Today I’ve got pickups to do, and meeting with a new auction company, hopefully to start consigning with and to get some of my stuff S O L D sold.

Mechanic is working on the quote for the work on the Ranger. Is it worth it to spend money on a 23 yo truck? Where else am I going to find a body on frame small truck without a black box, display screen, built in tracking, and (soon) a remote kill switch? It has ABS and air bags and cruise control and that’s all the “features” I want or need. I can add a backup cam if I want one, ditto for TPMS, and for an android based entertainment system. That I haven’t done so already shows how little I really want that though.

The truck has no rust, only 180K miles, and runs great. I should be able to get another 50K miles (more than 10 years the way I drive) if I don’t give it to D2. The sale value of the truck might be close to what this round of mechanical restoration is going to cost, but not having all the extra cr@p that comes with a modern vehicle is looking very good to me. I’m even thinking of buying a Ranger that’s a couple of years newer for myself, and giving it to D2. Lots of nice Rangers on the road.

Older, sturdier, simpler. Tools, trucks, and wives all benefit from those.

Stack the things you need.

nick