Category: lakehouse

Hot and humid, cuz summer. Yesterday started with rain but was clear after mid-morning and got into the 90sF by late afternoon. It felt HOT and was super sweaty. Today should be the same. The BOL got lots of rain but the lake outflow started to catch up and the level actually went down.

I got a bit of a late start, but I did my pickup. Turned out the place was a UHaul facility with “mini-office/warehouse” spaces. I’ve seen 4 auction companies try to work out of there and go broke. Only one is still doing auctions that I know of. Some locations are ‘death’ locations. They look ok but for whatever reason, businesses don’t thrive there.

I cleared about half of a storage unit out after my pickup… took the stuff to my buddy’s office for sorting and sale. The lock on my unit was cut almost all the way through. That would have been the second time that unit was burgled. The management wasn’t too shocked and wasn’t too interested in doing anything about it either. “You got insurance.” At this point I might make more on the insurance claim than by selling the stuff. She did agree that theft was more common, and violence was rising among the perps.

I might make another trip today, if there is a break in the festivities.* It’s very hot at the office though, and that limits the work I can safely do. I will take an A/C unit and maybe an evap cooler over there if I can get them out of the driveway.

There’s always more to do… but at least I might not have to redo all the work on the dockhouse.

I’ll use the time to do some other stacking or improving.

Happy Fathers Day to everyone here with children of their blood, or their heart.

nick

*not really gonna be any festivities. I might get waffles with bacon for breakfast. And I hinted pretty broadly that I’d like some mudbugs for dinner…

Hot and humid. It’s more natural this way. Some people in Houston and surrounds got rain yesterday. Depended entirely on where you were. Some had a sunny day, some not so much. With all that variability in one city and one day, how does anyone really think they can measure and record “truth” with one or two numbers?

Did my stuff. Spent half the day driving. Went up to the Woodlands, and down to League City. Swung through Laporte and Pasadena on the way home. Lots of driving. Some rain, some sun.

Then I got home, made brats for dinner, and spent the rest of the day in front of the computer. Exciting stuff.

I did get word from my neighbor at the lake that my dockhouse was dry. That meant I could sleep in Houston. The water level has gone down since, removing any urgency I felt earlier about going there to clean up. I’ll monitor and maybe get up there later in the week.

Plenty to do in town here, though. I’ve got one pickup later today, and a bunch of stuff to move, clean, fix, or otherwise mess with. Call it improving my situation.

Call it prepping. I’ll call it “life” as that’s what prepping has done. It’s moved from ‘something I do’ to ‘the way I live’. I may be prejudiced, but I think that’s a worthy goal.

Stack it all!

nick

Maybe today will be beautiful. It was really nice at sunset last night, after a day of light drizzly rain and overcast. By dinnertime it was drying out and clearing up. By sunset, the sky was clear, and the sun was a gorgeous golden/red/orange. If the clear holds, today will be very nice.

At the BOL, they have been getting a lot of rain, and upstream in the watershed they got even more. The lake is up, and even the main road is flooded. There is an alternate route but it’s longer and less well traveled. Depending on where you need to go, having that main road closed can add quite a bit of time to get to town.

My fishing buddy called to let me know his grandson died yesterday. 22 years old, and apparently just dropped dead. Between his and his wife’s cancer treatments, adding the death of a young man in a close family is a real blow. He would appreciate your prayers.

I did get some stuff done yesterday. One pickup. Dinner into the crockpot. Kid to doc for required physicals. Kid to Costco Optical to get new eyeglasses. Two loads of domestic bliss. Dinner. Kids to the gym. Kid to her activity. Kid home from activity….

Today I’ve got pickups. All over town too. It’s gonna be a juggle to hit them all in any kind of efficient way, because the northern ones might be only in the afternoon, and the southern ones might be all day, but there will be ONE that is in the middle or doesn’t quite work with the others in the area. Still waiting to see if I won anything that I haven’t counted on yet.

I think I’m not going to the BOL this weekend. W is going to a conference next week and would have to come home early. One kid is flying to visit with grandma, the other is volunteering at the local high school in a program for kids and STEM. I’m still not feeling 100%, the jobs I want to do at the BOL are mostly outdoors and not doable with all the rain, and I’ve got a ton to do here. And there is Father’s Day to consider. I’ll do that at home and it will be easier for everyone.

I will be taking my purchases and stacking some, using others to make improvements, and putting some away for later. It’s kinda the definition of prepping.

Get yourself ready for summer and the hurricane/civil war season. It’s coming.

Stack.

nick

Hot and humid today, on the unofficial start of Summer. It was steamy all day yesterday even after the rain cleared out. Dunno if we’ll get rain today, but it would be nice to have a nice day.

Flags at half staff until noon, then raised to full, as we spend the morning remembering those who fell in the fight, and the afternoon celebrating what they fought for. Friends and family. It’s always that in the end.

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I spent yesterday chipping away at the list. Some additional items ‘spontaneously’ got added, and were dealt with. I did get the grass cut, and trimmed, and the debris blown clear. I pruned trees. I even bagged the peach tree with a giant mesh bag that is supposed to keep insects and critters from eating your fruit. We’ll see if any survive to be harvested this year. Most years the critters spoil all the fruit before it ripens.

Spent a few minutes talking to one of the neighbors here who lives in Houston and is a bit more prepper minded than most. He just installed a solar system with two Tesla Powerwalls for storage. It’s some sort of leased thing, where he pays a fixed rate, which was less than his utility bill. Don’t know the details, but it sounds like more of the financial shenanigans that most solar companies are dealing in, except that he gets the storage too. He’s just done it, and I’ll be interested in his results and happiness in a few months or a year.

I’m not sure I would want a big battery next to the house… but there is an appeal to having the system.

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Went for a short cruise around the lake with my wife. She enjoyed it, as it was nice and cool with the wind after a day working.

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Today we’ll be doing things to get ready to head home, and I still have to put solar panels somewhere, and unload my truck. It’s gonna be a move this and move that kind of a day, I think. They feel like just shuffling the deck chairs, but it is important. I found some things I’d brought up here while looking for other stuff in the garage, which drove home the need to properly put stuff away. If you can’t find it, do you really have it?

Stack stuff. Learn stuff. USE the stuff.

nick

Sure to be hot and humid today with a chance of rain. We’ll see what we really get. Rain would be good for the land and the lake, but not so much fun for us.

It took me a while to get going yesterday, after rising at a reasonable time, getting out of the house took a while. Loading up the truck took some sweat and time. If I didn’t have a deadline for a pickup, I probably would have left even later. I did make my pickup with 15 minutes to spare. And it included 5 gallons of diesel fuel when I thought I had just gotten empty cans. I will move that to a proper yellow jug today. The rest of the day is in yesterday’s comments.

I’ve got a full slate today, with “unload the truck and put stuff away”, “cut the grass”, and “investigate a slow plumbing leak” leading the list. Freaking indoor plumbing. It’s one of the miracles of the modern age, but sure can be a pain to maintain. You never know what you’ll find when you open a wall…

But I’m hoping for a nail through pex and a very slow leak.

There will need to be some organizing of sheds and a lot of stacking stuff in the shed, with a bit of swapping out winter for summer gear involved too.

There is always more to do. Always more to stack. The stacks make it easier now, they’ll make it possible later…

Get busy.

nick

Hot and humid, probably. We did get a front that came through late in the day, and some wind with a little cooling, but IDK if it will really make a difference. All the rain missed me, and it was 101F in the driveway at 5pm… I think today will be similar. Forecast for the next couple days might have some rain in it.

That would be nice if we weren’t at the BOL for the long weekend.

I did get stuff done yesterday. All my scheduled pickups went well. I managed to get the kid where she needed to be on time. Picked her up too. She went to see an R rated movie with her girlfriend and regretted it. Too much realistic gore and she was really freaked out by the audience laughing at the gruesome deaths. Yeah kid, there are sick people in the world, and they get encouraged by the mass media. Desensitized to violence for years. It’s not an accident, it’s too pervasive.

Today I’m sleeping in a bit, then I will load up. W and the Ds will head up late morning, I’ve got a pickup on the way that I can’t do before afternoon. I’m hoping the solar install stuff gets here before my departure too.

I wouldn’t mind a little rain, if it happens overnight, but I don’t want to spent the whole weekend indoors. However, it’s not up to me, so I’ll just deal with it.

And I’ll be working to improve my situation. Like always. And probably stacking something.

‘Cuz you know that’s the right thing to do, right?

nick

Cool morning followed by hot afternoon. Summer isn’t quite here, but it’s close. It’s still chilly and damp at night, and the fire is welcome.

Spent most of Saturday doing boat related things. Got a few very small things taken care of, and cooked a special dinner for D2’s birthday celebration. The two extra kids ate, but I don’t think they were really down for eating lamb rib chops. Pity because they were really good. W did the side dishes and they were all good too.

Today the family is headed home early while I stay to wrap up. I’ll also try to diagnose and fix the drive issue with my lawn tractor. If I get it fixed, I’ll mow before heading home.

Then it’s a week of doing home stuff which I can’t put off any more.

There’s always more to do. Don’t get complacent.

Stack.

nick