Category: lakehouse

Tues. Apr. 12, 2022- lots of driving today

Warmish, but maybe clearer than yesterday.  Maybe not.  One forecast has rain over us for the next two days at least. As usual, we’ll see.

Spent the day doing indoor stuff.  Had some banking in the morning, and early pickup for D2 in the afternoon, so that pretty much precluded getting out and doing anything that would take more than a single hour.  The early rain meant I wasn’t going to work outside either.

Today I’ve got to do most of this week’s pickups.   Since I’m going up to the BOL on Thursday, I’ll get the stuff that is up that way then, but I have to get the rest before that.  And I’ve got to sort and box a few bins worth of stuff to drop off at one auctioneer today, so there is that as well.   It never rains but it pours.

Add the shopping, and prep for the Easter weekend (not going to the BOL, D2 wants another holiday here at home, and no septic system…)  and it’s going to be a busy couple of days.

And there must be some shopping.  I’ve let my stocking levels of some staples drop because we’re eating less of them, and because we got busy and were out of town last week.   The result is fewer eggs in the house than at any time during the last two years.  Milk is similarly low, and there are a couple of other things, like supplements, that I let run down.  Of course I need EXTRA eggs now for Easter too.

Speaking of Easter, I better get a lamb roast out of the freezer.

No guests for Easter this year though.

Life goes on, even with the threat of WWIII, during a worldwide pandemic, with runaway inflation and the prospect of famine on the horizon.

Preps smooth out the ups and downs, and provide a great deal of comfort.  When they run low, I get extra nervous though, so there is balance in the world 🙂

Go out and stock up.   There may come a day when “Prepping, it’s what’s for dinner” saves the day.

Stack it up.

n

 

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Sat. Apr. 9, 2022 – non-prepping hobby day

Cool and clear, still windy. That describes Friday too.  It was back down to 48F when I went to bed.

Spent the day on some phone calls, and a pickup.  Calls paid off when a different septic guy called me back.  He’s supposed to go out to the BOL today and do a perc test, and THEN we talk about design options.   I don’t have to be there, so I’m not driving to the house today.

Over the week gas prices have come down somewhat.   Some other things have gone up to the moon.  Crab for instance.    Snow crab clusters, which used to be a cheap alternative to Alaskan king crab are over $43/pound here.   King crab isn’t even in the store, except Costco, and is over $100/pound.  I can remember when it was $9 at Kroger in Cali.   My sibling says they canceled the season this year, so that price increase could be demand driven and not just inflation.   The bacon I buy was back down a few cents, but the quality was down too, and there was only one 3 pound pack in the cooler.

Takeaway is that shortages continue, as do price increases.  All signs point to more of both coming.

When Tucker Carlson tells his audience it might be time to start stockpiling, it’s already mostly too late…

Get to stacking.

n

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Wed. Apr. 6, 2022 – people are starting to notice, and talk about it.

Warm and clear, might be a nice day.  Yesterday was mostly overcast and a bit on the warm side later in the day.

I’m still feeling a bit goofy which seems to happen when I take powerful antibiotics, but they are doing the job.  Finger is almost back to normal.  Missed one pickup yesterday but made two.  All stuff for the BOL.

Spoke with a septic system engineer about my issues, and he’s willing to come and design a new system.   He said I shouldn’t rule out an anaerobic system, he’ll do the tests and look at the site and see if it’s possible.  I ended up spending a couple of hours putting together a package for him that included annotated pics of the site, the original plat with dimensions, and our desires… I will probably have to go up and meet with him on Saturday.

It’s always something, and there are a couple of peculiarities to working out in the country.  One is that there may not be a lot of choice for who does the work.  It comes down to who is out there, or is willing to work out there, who has the crew, or the tools, or the reputation or the time.  The other is that people are busy.   There is a stereotype about country folk being relaxed and moving slow, but it just ain’t so… at least so far, and with the kind of people I’ve been meeting.

 


 

Title of the post refers to the change in our current state of affairs.  The sense that hard times are coming, that there may not be enough food, that something bad is just around the corner.   I hear it from people I interact with doing auction stuff, from people in stores, and in the online world.  There is not a sense of optimism, of fun, or of good times.     People are noticing gas prices.   They are noticing shortages and increased prices at the store.  They are noticing that violence and crime are up.  And I’m beginning to feel them start to withdraw their consent, as in “the consent of the governed”.   Whether that means politically, or by the polite rules of society, or by the conscious and unconscious rules of western civilization, they are withdrawing their consent.   Circles are shrinking.   Focus is more local.

Taken to extremes, it’s back to the clans and hamlets of the middle ages.  Whether that’s figurative or literal IDK yet, but there is certainly a balkanization going on.  The unifying idea of Americanism is broken.

And that is a really unfortunate state of affairs, as the American Experiment, American Exceptionalism, and American Imperialism brought unbelievable wealth and progress to the world.   I know people will have a reaction to that statement, some very vehemently opposed to it, but – for decades we fed the world.  Computers, the PC, the internet.  Space travel and satellites, GPS.  Medical procedures, drugs, MRI, CT scans, the modern EMS system.

There was a unique spirit, and I’m afraid it’s broken beyond recovery.

So stack it up.  To quote Yoda, “Save you what can.”    There are still people living in Rome.  There will still be people living in “America”.   But would they be recognizable by the originals?

n

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Tues. Apr. 5, 2022 – It’s always somethin’. And it always will be.

Warm-ish and clear-ish today,  but hopefully more clear than yesterday.   It was overcast most of the day with misty drizzle in the afternoon- which happened just as I got set up to cut the grass in the back yard- which has become a haven for possum.   One dead little one under the potting bench day before  yesterday with the big live one in my lawnmower cabinet, led to one big one on the top shelf of my patio grocery store yesterday.

The dog was sure he had the invader well schooled, but I didn’t want the giant rat-looking thing up with my food… he was disinclined to leave however.  So I  brought the dog indoors and waited.  Checked on mister nasty-smell later and he’d tucked himself into the box of instant mashed potatoes.   I don’t think he ate any, but Senor Raton had nibbled off the corner, providing an entry point.  Nothing but naked nasty tail sticking out of the box as a giveaway…  Picked up the box and put it up on the back fence.  Hope he takes it as the eviction it was intended to be.

Possums are a beneficial animal, but they are ugly bastages.

So, all in all, very little cleaning actually got done yesterday, after the cleaning service postponed their visit to Wednesday.

I did get some garage cleaning done, very little mind you, but some.   And I put some stuff away in the house, and, and, and…

But I mostly researched septic systems.   Today I’ll call a guy that covers the area around my BOL and I’ll probably have to go up and meet him.   Then it will be a process of managing the sequencing so that foundation repair/retaining wall guy and septic install guy don’t have to undo or redo work.  Since I’ve clearly got to do a site survey/ site plan to show the septic guy, I took a (not particularly brief) dive down the rabbit hole of point cloud elevation data, topo mapping, and 3d modelling of same.  I wanted a high resolution something that I could download and base my site survey off of without measuring everything myself.  What I got was not much more than I started with.  There is a LIDAR survey of the lake and surrounds, and it has a 1m resolution, far better than the USGS survey’s 10m resolution.

But I can’t figure out how to get just a part of the dataset to use, and even with 1m resolution, the points aren’t that close together.  I guess I’ll be out there with a tape measure after all.

 

Finger feels better, but my back is as sore as some sort of really sore sore thing… jab in the butt made me sit and walk funny.  And not in a Ministry of Funny Walks kind of funny, not at all.  Hope the swelling goes down today.

I’ve got a couple of things to pick up, some calls to make, and some stuff to organize.   After all, we’re just turning rapidly de-valuing fiat currency into hard goods and infrastructure for the future safety and security of my family.  I just was hoping to not have to hook the bank ATM directly to the wood chipper and turn it all to 11…

Stack it all, but especially the things you can’t live without.  Like antibiotics.  Like pain meds.   Like appropriate reference books.  And the wisdom to know when  to use what, and what for.

N

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Fri. Apr. 1, 2022 – don’t be fooled….

Cool and clear, nice day to drive around.    Yesterday was very nice.  Clear and sunny but stayed cool.  More of the same today would be nice.

Plan for today is a couple more pickups, then load the truck for a trip up to the BOL.   Somewhere in there I  will need to shop for groceries.   I’ve been putting it off, but can’t continue.

The infowar out of Ukraine seems to have backed off a notch, but I’m sure things are still going badly for both sides.  The speculation about the end of the USD as a reserve currency seems to be picking up.  And our “leaders” are trying to outdo each other in the short bus olympics.

Stack while you can.

n

(super tired, headed to bed early)

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Thur. Mar. 31, 2022 – tired, busy. Situation normal. Suck it up boy.

Cooler, maybe some rain, as we’re on the edge of a system.   East of us should be getting slammed.

Yesterday was nice, after the rain.

I ended up taking the pickup after all, and had clear skies and sun for the rest of the day.  Finished my pickups, hit the reStore and got stuff I needed, and filled a cart at Goodwill outlet.  Nice clean high value items.

Today I have a couple of things to get, some shopping to do, some organizing, and I need to get the list of stuff I’m taking with me to the BOL together.  Some will be coming from home, some from storage, some from Lowes, and some from a last pickup on Friday.  Hopefully that last can happen as I drive up.

Might be a good idea to pick it up early and load around it though.   It’s pretty big (a bathroom vanity).

Busier than a one armed paper hanger today.

Stacking, prepping, building.   Get to it.

n

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Wed. Mar. 30, 2022 – whistling past the graveyard…

Cool but damp morning, turning into rain later.  Or something like that.   We never did get the rain yesterday although we had a lot of gusty wind, and broken clouds.

Took almost 200 pounds of scrap steel fencing from the BOL to the scrap yard.   Got 16USD for it.  That’s 4 gallons of gas.  Had to be removed and disposed of anyway, so why not recover some value from it?

Did a pickup and hit the Habitat for Humanity reStore on the north side of town.   They had a couple of doors I can use, some cabinets that might work (although it’s a bit early to be looking at cabinets), and some other stuff the would end up at the BOL.   I also grabbed  a vintage turntable, a Garrard Lab 80, to part out.  I should be able to use the proceeds to buy some other stuff for the house.  It is case-less and lid-less so it makes more sense to part it than fix it.  Plus, I don’t need any projects.   Running, it would be a $500 turntable.  The parts will easily make back the $10 cost and put me squarely in profit.   You never know what you’ll find.

Didn’t get to costco or the grocery store, that has slipped to this morning.

This afternoon, I’ve got some more pickups, mostly stuff for the BOL, some stuff for here, and a couple of general preps.

WRT the water dripping from my ceiling, my wife is talking with yet another HVAC contractor about doing the update.  And she called an electrician about getting the hot water heater permanently set up.   So much stuff to do.  All of it takes time, money, and attention.

If you’ve got a list of things to do, or fix, or upgrade, you should probably start that process.   The wait times for parts or product are getting very long, even for commodity items.

And if you haven’t started stacking, you should.   Anything you already use is a good starting point.  Build from there.

nick

 

and if I failed to mention it, or you missed it, Barbara is home and doing well, getting ready for the next step on the road to recovery.

n

 

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Sun. Mar. 27, 2022 – starting at the lake, ending at home

Another beautiful day at the lake.

Got here late afternoon yesterday after a day of driving around picking up things.  Unloaded the truck and put stuff away.

Then, without a permit or anything, I burned a pile of leaves.  F me we’ve fallen so far when that feels extreme.  Nice smell and cleaned up the pile.

I’ll probably do a few small things before heading home.  Maybe cut and stack some tree limbs. Maybe wash some windows.  Maybe install a light fixture. I don’t want to start anything that can go badly wrong, like changing out a toilet.

That would just be tempting fate.

Do not poke the happy fun ball.

Do stack some stuff.  Doesn’t matter what, you’ll need it.   Most stations out here have diesel fuel prices a dollar or more higher than gasoline.  A dollar.   Every thing moves by truck.  Moving it is getting crazy expensive.

 

Stack it up.

 

N

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Sat. Mar. 26, 2022 – home, briefly, then out again, probably

Cool and sunny, clear and nice.   I hope.  Yesterday was exactly what you want from a lakehouse wrt weather.   And it wasn’t bad at home in Houston either.   Spring is great here for the couple of days it lasts.

It doesn’t feel like prepping when I’m not in the store buying rice and canned goods.   Getting the BOL ready to occupy is a major prep, but it doesn’t feel like it.  The 5 hour round trip is a time killer too.

But, after picking up stuff today, I’ll probably head up there to drop it all off.   I can’t leave it here, and it can’t stay in the back of my truck.  It’s almost all destined for the BOL anyway.    There is a natural duplication of stuff when you have more than one location to stock.  I don’t want to be bringing brooms and mops back and forth, nor yard and garden tools.  Some specialized stuff will go back and forth for the nonce.   Stuff like power tools, tree trimming stuff, and construction tools are too expensive at the moment to just duplicate.   EVENTUALLY I’ll have a full set of tools up there, but not just yet.

I may even buy a new gasoline chainsaw for up there.   A gas blower and string trimmer would be useful too.

I spent the night up there spinning the dial on my shortwave radio and there were soooo many signals.  I can’t wait to get a proper radio and antenna set up.   I was surprised to see that there were 5 local repeaters too.  1 for digital voice and 4 traditional ham repeaters.   I didn’t hear any traffic on them, but I’ll  dedicate an analog scanner to those freqs and keep an ear open.   It would be nice to have some ham community up there.  It would help give me an ‘in’ with the locals.   I swear it’s like Peyton Place.   Everyone knows everyone, and everyone knows everyone’s business.   It’s a bit more intense meatspace than I’m used too…

But, most of your help, and most of your trouble is going to come from close to home.  It’s worth it to find our place in the community to get that support and avoid what trouble we can.   Everyone has been very nice so far, but it could just be ‘southern’ nice.   We’re definitely in our trial period.  Hope we have long enough to get to the “us” instead of “them.”

So, stack some cans, but stack some community too.  It takes time, and like a garden, you need to get started early.

n

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Thur. Mar. 24, 2022 – off the the BOL today, and possibly tomorrow

Cool here in Houston, tornado recovery mode in the city near my new BOL.  Our local weather has been crazy variable this past week, so I’ve no idea what today will be like.  USUALLY, I’d say cool and clear, warming later in the day.  I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.   50F when I went to bed.

Spent the day at home doing not as much as I’d like to have done.    Even fell asleep, despite getting a whole 5 hours of sleep at night.  I’m beginning to suspect I need more sleep than I’m getting 😉

Today I’m driving up to the BOL to check on things, meet with the septic service, and possibly meet with the slab repair guy.   I want to meet the slab guy, but he hasn’t committed to a time yet.  Hence my waffling on staying up there overnight.   If I have to I will, so that I can meet the guy on Friday.  I’m sure I’ll find plenty to do to fill my time.   Painting,  tree trimming, measuring and drawing, or yard work all come to mind for diversion and fun…

On the way up, I’ll stop and do two auction pickups.   One is a huge trove of scanners and some related parts, the other is just a light fixture for the new place.   I’m saving only $20 on the fixture, but I’ll be going right by the pickup anyway, and every bit helps.

I went to Home Depot and Lowes last night and was blown away by the increase in prices.   I was specifically looking for fencing, an antenna support pole (more fencing), and gutters.   OMFG.    Fencing and plumbing parts are priced through the roof.  And 8 ft 2×4 lumber was over $8 a stick.    I don’t know how anyone is doing building or remodeling with prices like that.  I guess with all the free money, if you’re financing anyway, a couple extra hundred on your monthly payment is doable… until it isn’t.  I’ll be checking out a couple of the secondary building material stores around me looking for bargains for the new place.   More secondary economy.  And I’ll be hitting the old faithfuls- habitat for humanity reStores.

I think you’ll need to be a bit of a scrounger to keep moving forward in the coming downturn.   Knowing how to do it yourself, or fix it yourself will be important too, and knowing someone ELSE who could do those things won’t hurt.  Being that someone else might be a good place to be…

Stack up some skills.  Stack up what you need to practice those skills. Stack up nodes in your network.

Stack.

nick

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