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Category: lakehouse

Tues. May 14, 2024 – slightly better day ahead…

Well, today is supposed to be warm and clear with a breeze to help dry things out. That will help with the land, but it won’t make the lake go down any faster…

At the current rate, it’ll be late today before all the water is out of my dockhouse, if there aren’t any more showers, and if I guessed at the depth correctly.

I can’t even start remediation until the lake is down.

In the mean time… I saw some monster fish while I was cleaning the area around my dock, so I spent some time fishing. Standing on my dock, knee deep in water… warm comfortable water… was odd to say the least. But by the afternoon I was going nuts with not working.

So I got the mower together and running. I mated my old 46″ deck to the ‘new’ Cub Cadet with the bad 42″ deck. The manufacturer is the same so I had hope, even if the brand was different. And it fit with only minor adjustment. I had to fix my deck once I thought it would fit. Whatever I hit that took out the motor broke one of the spindles too. 3 of the 4 mounting tabs were broken off. I had replacements in the shed.

After a test cut and some adjustment, I started swapping wheels and tires around to get all good tires on the Cub mower. I didn’t know there were two axle styles so I have a set of brand new rears that I’ll have to sell. I moved the decent rears from the old mower over. Lubed everything, and that took me to nightfall. I still need to do an engine service and replace the drive belt with the new parts I bought for it, but it runs, and mows.

Not sure what I’ll do today while waiting for water to dry, but I’m sure it will be another thrilling adventure!

Prepping saved me a whole lot of trouble with the mowers. I had spares and replacement parts, and was easily able to swap stuff around and get back to running. Even counting the parts that were wrong, I still saved a bunch by buying early and at auction. And since the BOL is set up for use, I don’t have any problem being here for 10 days even though I’d only planned on one.

I’ve got pumps, dehumidifiers, mold killer, tools, and skills, so as soon as the water recedes I’m ready to go to work too.

Prepping works. Stacks help and give choices. Stack!

nick

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Mon. May 13, 2024 – my unlucky day…

Raining wet and flooded. I’m making assumptions as I’m writing this much earlier than I normally do. Yesterday alternated heavy rain, light rain, rain, and small periods of not rain. Lake came up a good 8 inches over the course of the day.

So I watched the slowmo flood yesterday, unloaded my truck, and decided I’d better stay up here and manage the aftermath. And there will be some, as the dockhouse started to get wet around 830pm. Tile floor, and plywood paneling instead of drywall should help with the eventual drying out. Dunno if that will start today, or if I’m here at the lake for this week.

I didn’t want to take a chance on a power outage keeping me from posting, with all the lightning we started to get last night, so this isn’t as timely as normal. If I don’t update in the morning, there’s probably a power issue up here, unless the Ruskies EMP’d us, in which case I’m talking to myself anyway…

Either more rain and flooding today, or I start cleanup.

Fun times. Didn’t have 100 yr flood on my card for this year. And didn’t have it for the BOL at all. I got that wrong.

So I deal with it, because that’s what I do.

Fortunately I already have a big dehumidifier here, and fans, and portable heat. And as a Houstonian, this won’t be my first flood.

Prepping. It’s not just what’s for breakfast.

Stack the stuff you need.

nick

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Sun. May 12, 2024 – it all depends on the weather. And Happy Mothers Day!

Cool and wet, maybe more rain. Bad stuff in the forecast but we’ll see if we get any here. Yesterday was mostly overcast with occasional sun, and some spotty rain.

Had my non-prepping hobby meeting in the morning, a client service call in the afternoon, and headed to the BOL in the evening. Got there after dark, so I didn’t get any mowing done. Given the rain last night, even if it’s sunny and dry today, I might not get to mow. If I’m lucky I’ll get the mower ready.

If not, there are some things I can do inside that would be nice to get off the list, or I could head home early to do some Mothers Day stuff with my wife and kids. I would like to at least make a nice dinner. First I need to unload the truck and put stuff away…

Which is my plan. Get the mower ready if possible, mow if at all possible, and if not, do some stuff and head home.

There’s always something to do. It’s the nature of the beast.

Not the number, the nature!

Stack some stuff.

Enjoy the day.

nick

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Sat. May 11, 2024 – non-prepping hobby, then BOL.

Warm and moist. Light rain is possible. Partly sunny is likely. Which is how yesterday went. The very light rain was only in small areas of town and was brief. If I hadn’t been driving through it, I probably wouldn’t have known.

Did my pickup, then headed to my client’s house to install the new gear. Unfortunately the gear wasn’t actually there, so I ended up doing a couple of maintenance things. The Bluray player was locked up, probably from the same event that fried the receiver, but it recovered with a hard power cycle. It wasn’t a very productive time, but I get paid anyway. Of course the gear was delivered about an hour after I left.

Today I have my meeting for my non-prepping hobby, and no, special clothing is not required. We are having our quarterly swap fest/sale and I’ve got some stuff to sell. After that, I’ll switch trucks and head to my client’s house. I should be able to swap in the new gear, confirm it’s working, and be on my way in about an hour. I’ll head to the BOL from there, and maybe get in before dark.

Once there, I’ve got a pickup load to un-load, and I need to either figure out how to get my mower deck installed on the backup lawn tractor, or I need to rebuild the deck that came with it and get THAT re-installed on the tractor. It’s got a hole in the deck which is not great (and was the main reason it got retired), but I can at least mow with it until I either get the other deck to fit, or weld the hole closed. It’s always something…

And I’ll be headed home earlier than normal on Sunday so as to spend at least a bit of time with my lovely bride, and mother of my lovely children on Mother’s Day. It’ll be lovely.

Stack some good times. They will help during the bad times.

nick

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Fri. May 3, 2024 – not quite star wars day, maybe star police action day?

Cool and damp, with rain possible later. We certainly got a bunch of weather yesterday. Thunder, lightning, wind, rain, more wind, and some places got a LOT of rain. The result when it cleared later in the day was a very pleasant cool sunny evening. With squishy ground.

I did a bit of auction stuff in the morning then headed over to help my buddy. We ended up working by skylight and headlamp after the storm knocked out power for about 4-5 hours. We did make progress on the task at hand. I’m headed back today to do some more.

Later in the day I’ve got a pickup to do, and the kids will need their after school chauffeur. Normal domestic life.

One interesting thing from the storm is that the main road to my BOL was under water for a while. I don’t know yet how long, but it was completely shut down. There are other paths there, especially if you knew ahead of time about the closure, but everything else is pretty far out of the way. The road network ‘mesh’ in rural Texas has nodes that are about 15 minutes apart at 75MPH. Any indirect path adds 20 minutes or more to the trip, and backtracking to go around adds a lot more than that. Of course, floating your vehicle or hydrolocking your engine takes a bit longer still….

It feels weird to not be part of the worst of what’s going on. If you’re affected, let us know how you are making out and any lessons learned.

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I continue to be convinced that things are objectively worse now than they were a year ago, two years ago, or four. I don’t see them getting better. At the risk of wearing out everyone’s patience with the repetitive banging of the drum– get yourself prepared for some hard times coming. There will be medical, social, and economic issues and problems. There will be war, either limited and elsewhere or here. If that sounds extreme, it is, but all the signs from history point to it.

Stack up stuff you need. Having is always better than not having, and you can always give it away later if I’m wrong. If I’m right, then no matter what you have it’s not likely to be enough,but it will help and it will give you options.

Options are good. Stack.

nick

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Tues. Apr. 30, 2024 – well, that didn’t really happen as planned…

Warmer, but still wet. Might be clear. The national forecast was weirdly specific about leaving a bit of clear on our part of the map. Yesterday turned into a fairly nice day by late afternoon. Still damp, but nice.

And I really didn’t get much done beyond catching up on auction stuff. I did look at what it’s going to take to block off the breezeway, and I’m really not looking forward to it. I’d much rather waste time on the internet with my friends. I did get to the HEB to pick up a few things. The extra kids ate a bunch and I needed to top up some lunch snacks and drinks for D2’s school lunch. Swung by the meat dept., but nothing I needed was on sale. They had chuck shoulder roast (select grade) for $3.50 which isn’t bad, but isn’t great and the individual cuts were not great. Eye round roast at $4 wasn’t tempting, and the brisket at $3.50 didn’t move me. I am FULL in the freezer department, so unless I buy another one, it’ll have to be a great bargain before I can buy…

Today I’m supposed to head to my client’s house to poke at some stuff. There is an intermittent issue with signal dropout, that I think is connector related. I’ll lube and clean with Deoxit Gold and see if that helps. If not, I’ve got some failing gear to replace. Depending on that work and any updates or networking stuff I do, I might or might not have time to do a pickup later in the day. I can push the pickup to Wednesday, but I’m already giving up days I promised to my buddy working on my stuff at his shop… Time. Ask me for anything but more time.

And yet, my prepping plan depends on having more time to get ready for whatever is coming. Looks like war to me. It’s a historical cure for a poor economy, and a proven political distraction. It’s also a great way to pass money and power to people. I don’t know the timeline, and we could be in full on economic collapse with all the difficulty that entails before the dogs of war are loosed… or we could just muddle on, with everything getting worse and worse by degrees… However it plays out, time to prepare, and resources to stack are both probably in limited supply.

Stack some for you, and I’ll stack some for me…

nick

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Mon. Apr. 29, 2024 – home again, still got stuff to do…

Wet and warm. Whether it’s still raining, or just the soggy aftermath, it’s gonna be wet today. It was raining when I went to bed, and had been for hours. Not crazy hard, but steadily enough.

Spent Sunday wrapping up at the BOL. The forecast was for bad storms, so wife and kids bailed early to beat the rain. I stayed to do a few things I didn’t get done. After a brief light rain, it cleared up and was a nice day for most of the afternoon. I got several things done, and made progress on a couple more. Then the rain started again, and it was time to head home. LOTS of rain on the way home. Several tornado warnings, and local flooding… lots of people had a bad day, but I dodged most of it.

Today I need to make some progress on my lists here. First off, the rat problem didn’t solve itself. I am going to have to block some more access, mainly through the soffits and the breezeway that links the house attic to the garage attic. My neighbor paid a pest control company $1200 to do the same blocking I’m thinking about. It’s a huge pain in the butt, which is why I’ve put off doing it. But the rats aren’t going for the traps or poison, so I need to step up a bit. It won’t get done today, but maybe I can do some exploration.

I’ve got other paperwork stuff to do, and this week will be busy with stuff too. I should visit my client for a new issue and get him back up. And I’ve got a friend moving away that has been storing some tools for me, that I have to sort out. One of them is a laser sintering 3D printer, which is about 7ft x 5ft x 7ft, and includes a dozen barrels of powder, and a sifting and cleaning station that is 4ft x 4ft x 7ft. I don’t have anywhere to PUT the stuff, which is why it was at his place. Time to sell the powder and break down the printer. We should end up with parts for a 30w engraver. Getting the powder sinter machine to work ended up being too big a job, given where we had to do it. We couldn’t meet the power requirements, or the need for nitrogen gas to fill the build chamber. And neither of us had the time available that we thought we would.

All the normal stuff will be happening this week too, so it should be a busy and full week.

It’s a great life if you don’t falter, right?

So don’t falter. Stack.

nick

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Sun. Apr. 28th, 2024 – so much more to do…

Warm and damp, maybe rain, maybe storms… low 80s yesterday with a lot of wind, but sunny enough to turn the kids pink.

Long day but the kids had fun. The one dad who came to take a kid home, was driving an EV. Had a charger scheduled in a nearby town, only 20 minutes out of his way, for 40 minutes, so he could get home.

The 120v charger is 3 miles of range per hour of charge, the 220v is 30 miles per hour.

I’ve been thinking about buying a charger for here just in case we had a visitor, since they are cheap in the auctions at the moment. Then I had such a visitor. I will look a bit closer this week.

———–

The bottom blew out of my lawn tractor engine just as I finished the lawn… I hit something bad then the motor started clattering. Wasn’t too long until there was some energetic disassembly. Smoke and a lot of oil dumped out the bottom. Dang it. I do not need a project but I have to figure something out, I’ll need to mow next time I come up. I can rebuild the deck for the mower my buddy gave me, or try to fit the bigger one I just rebuilt to it. Or buy something new… at least I got most of the lawn cut first.

————-

Kids swam and played in the water most of the day. They have a lot of energy and still like to just play. It was great to see.

—————

Weeded our garden with a mini roto tiller attachment for the string trimmer motor. It worked pretty well, and while it takes some manhandling, I think it’s still easier than hoeing. The peas are doing well. I test dug around the potatoes and there were golf ball sized taters. I harvested two radishes and they were nice. The turnips are not thriving. Something is turning the leaves to lace, and the roots are only thumb sized, and are more like horseradish at this point. I also took about a dozen blueberries off one bush, and then covered them with bird netting. They were just a day or two short of perfectly sweet.

I think it’s time for round two of radishes and turnips. The pumpkin and squashes haven’t died yet, so that’s a plus. Peppers all have buds, and the tomatoes have both flowers and fruit.

All in all, I’m pleasantly surprised at how well the garden is doing. We have gotten a bunch of rain, so there is that.

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Speaking of rain, the sprinkler pump work will happen today, if it’s not raining. There are various storms forecast for the area, but I’m not worried. It will storm or it won’t. The lake and local geography often keep us from getting the worst of any storms in the area.

———-

Our home owners group met for our annual ‘clean up’ day. I chatted with several people and made an appearance at the meeting later. Community is important. You definitely want to be “in” the group if push comes to shove, and not part of the “them” group. I’m doing what I can to be a part of this group.

Climbing the curve to be “local”. Climbing the curve to grow food. Climbing the curve to harvest protein from the lake and surrounding area. They are all pretty steep so you need to get started…

And stack, because crops fail, and the people with food will have many more options.

nick

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Sat. Apr. 27, 2024 – living the life of Reilly

Warm and damp with overcast and weather in the distance. Possibly weather up close later on. It was 73F with a breeze when I went to bed, and had been for hours.

I spent Friday getting ready to come up here for the weekend. I did a couple of pickups, and took care of some things around the house. I hit Costco for gas, and Home Depot for plumbing supplies. Then I loaded up the truck and headed to the country.

All that messing around meant a late start, so today I’ll be mowing and getting stuff ready for guests. D2 is having some friends up for her birthday. It’s going to be loud. And I’ll probably do more host stuff than working on the place. I know there are a lot of burgers to be cooked at some point, and corn on the cob too.

I will be taking another shot at the irrigation intake line. I got a couple of flexible fittings and intend to get the inlet up out of the muck, and hopefully keep it out this time. Best case would be some sort of floating contraption, but Home Depot was out of the hose I need to make that work. We’ve been getting a lot of rain, so it’s not critical to have the irrigation working yet, but every time I mess with it without solving the issue there is something else that doesn’t get done. I’d like to be done with it for a while.

Had a nice little fire last night, and WRMI was booming in from Miami, loud as broadcast, until it just stopped around 1 am. Conditions changed somewhere between here and there, and that was the end of my listening for the night. Radio is fickle, which is why it takes practice, even for just listening. Tomorrow I hope to do some side by side testing with my faithful Radio Shack radio, and the two new Eton radios. Hopefully they will sound good and pull in the stations.

It all takes practice, and practical knowledge. It takes redundancy in gear and technique. You have to actually DO stuff to know what you don’t know. So get out and do. It will show you places you need to improve.

And stack of course, don’t miss out on that.

nick

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Fri. Apr. 26, 2024 – wow, this week blazed by…

Warm and humid, overcast, possibly clearing later, or possibly raining. No one knows. We did get a little dusting of moisture from the sky yesterday afternoon. Just an occasional spot hitting my face as I walked across the parking lot, or unloaded stuff at home. The national forecast has us possibly getting rain today and this weekend.

I’m really hoping for no rain at the BOL, as we’ll be there and so will 5 of D2’s friends. It’ll be pretty crowded and intense if we’re all in the house all weekend…The forecast looks like the BOL is right on the edge of the weather, and at home that almost always means we don’t get the bad stuff.

Yesterday I mostly did domestic bliss in the morning, and shopped and cooked in the afternoon and evening… which was fine as dinner was a success, with everything coming out as planned. Even got to use my cast iron to sear the seafood, and if my “winging it” sauce was a little bit salty, it still tasted nice and worked well with the scallops.

I ended up getting my wife an OLED nintendo Switch. I went for an “amazon renewed” version in white as I saved $60 which is a significant percentage… I hope I don’t live to regret that, but it looks great so far.

Now that the anniversary stuff is out of the way, I can do a couple of pickups today, then load up for the BOL. Me, D1, and the dog are headed up today to make sure everything is ready for D2 and her friends. We’ll do her birthday when we get back, with just family. I need to giftwrap her presents today, so they’re ready.

I should also hit Lowes while I’m out and get a few more plumbing things for the irrigation system, which might not be working again. This time I’m going to change the angle of the intake pipe, and try to make it float, so the end can’t get stuck down in the silty lakebed. Some McGivering might be in order.

All in all, my day looks pretty ordinary. You’d never know I was a subversive threat to the nation, just because I want honest government, and more self reliance, while opposing immigration, and decrying the increase in crime and criminality. Why I’ve even started a garden without registering it.

The world is getting crazier by the day, and the violence is already getting started for the summer. BLM had some good ol’ new fashioned whitey hate, and race rioting, this summer seems to be going with the old standby of Jew hatred, along with two-faced P-islam…shouting that they’re the religion of peace and if you don’t believe them, they’ll kill you. Coming soon to a city near you.

Get your stacks built. Learn some skills. Meet with likeminded people. It’ll be getting a lot worse before it starts getting better.

n

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