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Category: march to war

Fri. Sept. 24, 2021 – feels like it should be a significant date

Should be cool and sunny today. It was gorgeous yesterday. AbFab weather. Hooray cold front.

I spent most of the day fixing things for ebay. I did 3 different coffee makers. They sell surprisingly well, and are fairly simple. One needed internal cleaning and ‘descaling’. One needed an O ring to stop a leak. One didn’t need anything but a good scrub. I got them listed this evening.

I also cleaned and listed a couple of other things too. Cut the grass in the back yard.

Set up a fitness tracker. I don’t care about how many steps I’ve taken, but there is supposed to be some insight available about sleep patterns. That I do have an interest in. Of course I need to wear the stupid thing in bed, which might be a deal breaker. I’ll give it a try for a while anyway.

D2 had a school open house which cut my afternoon short. Nice to see the teachers, and a couple of the kids recognized me. I miss my science volunteering. It was very gratifying to see the signs for “Bleeding Control Kit” next to the signs for the AEDs in the school. Every AED cabinet has the equivalent of an IFAK in it, district wide. They rolled that out just as covid hit. I’d been advocating for it for at least a year, maybe two and they did it.

D1 has another GS sailing camp this weekend so she’ll be leaving for that late in the afternoon. I’m hoping my wife will take her, but I might be roped into the drive. We’re doing as much normal stuff as we can. Feels a bit frantic, but the world is getting ready for something.

China is flexing on Taiwan. They’ve got Hong Kong under the boot, so they can move on to the next target on the list.

At home, polls are showing regret and a growing unhappiness with Slow Joe.

Australia is going full jackboot.

The Towelie-ban is doing exactly what you’d expect them to do.

Invaders keep pouring over our border, and dispersing into the country.

Money people are still playing games with the money.

And people are angry, emotional, and lashing out.

I think it would be typical for the actual kickoff to come out of left field and surprise everyone. Something is coming. You can feel it building.

Stack. And stack some more.

nick

Read the comments: 55 Comments

Fri. Sept. 17, 2021 – another week gone in a flash…

Slightly cooler, still humid, maybe rain. Had overcast most of yesterday and some threatening clouds, but never did rain where I was. It’s lot easier to do auction pickup with the pickup truck but then I need to be fairly confident that it won’t rain.

Pickups are the order of the day, at least the order of the afternoon…

Yesterday’s pickup went well. Got stuff for my non-prepping hobby, including something to flip. In the late afternoon, I finally got together with the craigslist flake and did a deal. Sold my $5 auction purchase for $250. I wish I had more of them… I do have more high value items to sell, I just need to get busy with listing them.

I am starting to see a difference in my house, my office, and my secondary location. It’s just slow going.

And I want to go faster, because the decline is accelerating. The latest is fedgov limiting the drugs that 7 southern states will get to treat covid. We’re using up too much, what with our not vaxxing, and not cowering, so they need to save some for the others, who might need it later, because we’ve been BAD and don’t DESERVE the EXPENSIVE treatment. So, people in Florida and Texas can just suffer and die. If there’s anyone thinking that “well they should hold some back for the other people who might need them later” contrast this action with NY Governor sending State Troopers to other parts of the state to seize ventilators for NYC’s use in the early lockdown days.

The uniparty intends to bring us to heel. I don’t think that is going to work out like they think.

USE the time that’s left. Always be improving your position. And stack stuff. Lots of stuff.

nick

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Sun. Sept. 12, 2021 – big storm coming, better get ready

Nice day in the forecast for today. Cooler and sunny, not crazy hot. Sat. was similar, although it did get hot in the afternoon.

Went to my meeting, had a good time. Went shopping. Came home.

Plan for today is sleep in, then either do some stuff around the house, or sort stuff in storage and get it ready to take to the auction.

There is a big storm coming. Both literally and figuratively as it turns out. The Gulf Coast of Texas, Louisiana, and even parts further east are about to get up to 20 inches of rain if the forecasts are right. That’s several days of downpour and flooding with lots of damage.

So I’ll be topping up the day to day and getting ready to not have my pickup truck for moving stuff that can get wet.

In the figurative sense, we’ve been talking about the coming troubles for a while. I don’t see any way to avoid it at this point, and these things tend to kick off with very little warning. Use what time you have well. Hey, maybe it will be months or years. Good. Our stacks will be higher.

I quoted author Larry Correia yesterday, and I think one part of his advice bears repeating. Make yourself useful to your community. I’ve been slowly coming around to the importance of this. RBT thought he could position himself as resident wizard, but I thought that trying to do this AFTER the Fall was pretty difficult. (We had one discussion about this wrt ham radio.) He did get out into the community more at the new house than he ever mentioned at the old.

Other people in the blogosphere have been hammering on ‘tribe’ and community for a while, and on the folly of being a ‘lone wolf’. In our isolated and fragmented and mobile lives, it’s a difficult thing to do- becoming part of a group, part of a community IRL… we’ve found online substitutes but too often neglect the local, local, local aspects.

Hence part of my push for meatspace activities, real world training opportunities, group activities, and civic participation. We don’t have lodge brothers anymore. We don’t have high school friends nearby, or even poker buddies. Use what opportunities arise. Get out there and meet some people. Leverage what you have.

And stack it high and deep.

nick

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Fri. Sept. 10, 2021 – some days these write themselves, others? Not so much.

Probably hot and humid, although if we’re lucky we’ll get a little less of each. Yesterday started cool but ramped up to over 105F in the sun at my house… that is pretty hot. It was less in the shade, but still, pretty hot.

Did my pickups. Had to get D1 from school. She stayed after for some math tutoring and the bus situation for late buses isn’t great. That cut my day short. I did get stuff into appropriate bins and I have an appointment to drop off those bins at my auctioneer today. I have to load up a few at my storage unit too.

I did a small amount of additional cleanup of my patio pantry shelves. Another box of instant oatmeal, and two more big round cardboard canisters of regular oatmeal went in the trash. There will be some more spoilage when I get the shelves fully cleaned. I’m sure there is another ugly surprise in the garage shelves too, when I get to them.

There was some discussion of Best By dates and stored food longevity over at Borepatch’s blog. I made a comments about some of my successes and losses. This week we ate ham I froze a year and a half ago, Knorr pasta in a ‘sorta’ foil pouch from 6 years ago was fine, and 5 yo cake mix tastes great. IDK when the crumbled bacon is from, nor the butter. It lives in the freezer until needed, and I’ve got a lot of it to rotate through. I’ve let some stuff draw down a bit, and I’ll be fixing that in the next couple of weeks. I already am ahead of replenishment on several items once again. Still, balancing is needed.

Other stuff needs to be looked at and rotated or refreshed too. Gasoline is my biggest question mark and I need to spend the time to go through all the cans and check on their condition. I’m pretty sure I will need to siphon the gas off the top and leave the water behind in several cans. Getting the dual fuel kit for my Honda inverter gennie would take some of that pressure off, but it’s one more thing to do.

Oh and I’ll be doing plumbing today. Got the shower part too late in the day to do the repair last night. Hey, it did get here in one day, just too late in the day on that one day…

Gotta get a bunch of work done so I don’t feel bad about doing my normal monthly non-prepping hobby meeting tomorrow. My biggest observance for 9-11 is living my life NORMALLY for that day. And remembering the dead. But trying for normal.

Keep working on your stacks. Might want some extra buckets. There’s a plastic shortage headed our way. And buckets are crazy useful.

Stack all the things!

nick

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Thur. Sept. 9, 2021 – cha cha changes

Slightly less hot, followed by hot, and accompanied by really freaking moist. I was really encouraged when I got up yesterday and it was 68F. First under 70F morning all summer. Then it still managed to get to over 100F in the sun here at Casa De Nick… so I’m thinking today will be a lot like yesterday. And hopefully we get a couple more days without rain so things can dry out a bit.

I did my errands yesterday, including stopping by my secondary location and putting away some of the stuff I pulled for my swapmeet. I need to take a couple more bins to my auctioneer, and move some stuff to storage today. I’ve got a pickup too, including a Creality 3d printer. It’s a filament style, open framework, and I’m hoping it both works, and is simple enough for the kids to run. My big uPrint is too complicated, large, and uses a proprietary CAD/CAM package. I wanted something a bit more approachable, and if I end up doing a ‘maker’ class at D1’s school, I could conceivably take the Creality in for class. I guess we’ll see. (been a while since I said that)

It’s interesting watching some other bloggers I read for different reasons become very interested in food storage, or some other aspect of prepping. When you look at empty shelves, and you think “Ya know, we ARE in the middle of a global pandemic, there have been a lot of riots, crime seems to be going up, and a crazy man is in the Oval Office, maybe putting some food up is a good idea, there might really be hyperinflation, or a civil war…”

Change is in the air, and not in a good way. People are starting to smell smoke and are realizing they are standing in an inch of gasoline. There are so many places the spark could come from, it seems almost inevitable that it WILL come.

I know there were some regular readers here who were caught a bit short way back in March and April of 2020. Please don’t let that happen again. Take the time and do some of the things you’ve been putting off. What can it hurt? 4 buckets of rice, <$200 worth, could help you stretch whatever you can get. In a year, or less, those buckets could save your life. What else could you get for $200 that you could say the same, that is so easy, and that will still have value, even if nothing bad happens? I think if I was starting from scratch on food, and was looking at what I could do that wasn't "crazy", didn't cost too much, would last, and was easy to store, I'd buy as much rice as I could. I'd get a pound or two of salt, a gallon of soy sauce, and a shoebox full of gravy mixes. You could get all that, 100-150 pounds of rice and the rest in a single black bin with the yellow top... or several buckets. I'd go with the buckets, but I've got bins with bags of rice in them and it stored fine for years. Add canned veg to mix into the rice, some canned meat, and canned beans as you can. There are a lot of strategies, and you can combine them, just DO IT. Get some food put away for a rainy day. Because when Claire Wolfe starts saying things I was saying a couple of months ago, I'm starting to get a bit freaked out. It means that a certain amount of the zeitgeist is changing to 'getting through this' and 'coming out the other side'. People are starting to see an event, a period, an era, what have you, and they are shifting from surviving the moment to planning for the long term. This is very different from 6 months ago. People are making plans to pull back, go underground, hide, (take active measures), etc. and survival has become the goal. NOT 'get back to the way things were', but survive until they can start again. That's a change in mindset. No more 'try to keep some bad thing from happening.' Now it's 'try to survive the bad thing. Later you can do something else, if/when you make it through.' Eventually it will be about 'what comes next' but we have to get through some stuff before it even makes sense to think much about that. Changes. Big changes. Little changes. 1939-1945. Six years but what a difference in the world. On the bright side, change brings opportunity for some. It opens doors that were firmly shut, shuts some that were long overdue for shuttering, and generally stirs the pot. Stay flexible. Keep your eyes and ears open. Act if it makes sense. And stack all the things. nick

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Sun. Sept. 5, 2021 – did some stuff, more to do

Hot and humid, little chance of rain. And we got through yesterday without getting rain at home. It did get hot. Morning was cool, but by the time I was outside it went from 85F to 105F in the sun. Since I was in the sun, well, it was hot.

Got the front yard cut. Started on the back but ran out of battery. If I charge it, I can do front and back. If I leave it after doing the back,the next week I can only do the front, or the back again. It’s pretty consistent. Still liking the mower btw. I love that I don’t have to wear ear pro.

Spent a bunch of time cleaning one section of my food storage shelves. The rat was moving around on them, and on the stores, so it needed to be cleaned. I started with the easiest of the three shelves. I am very happy with my idea of putting everything in low bins with lids. The food in that section was all protected from spoilage. The stuff that wasn’t in plastic? It didn’t fare as well. I lost a box of instant oatmeal in envelopes to bugs. I lost several of the big cardboard oatmeal containers to ‘moisture’. And I had some bulging cans. 4 cans of evaporated milk were bulging a bit. They were best by 2015 and have been poorly stored so I’m not put out. I expect spoilage and losses because my storage conditions are so bad. My Kraft Mac n cheese is one year past best by, and it tastes a bit “old”. Two cases. Dang. Funny how your eating patterns can change.

One of the things we’ve learned with this whole “lockdown” thing is that our eating habits changed a lot. Over the last year we pretty much stopped eating breakfast cereal. We were steady eaters of Cheerios since the kids were babies. Mac n cheese consumption is way down, and I’m more likely to make the cheese sauce from FD cheese powder and milk, with normal pasta, than from a box. I don’t know how much is just the kids getting older, or if there was some appetite fatigue, but it’s something to consider in your long term food plan.

What to do about it? Variety and versatility. I store stuff like the Kraft Mac n cheese because it’s easy and quick. The kids can grab it for themselves. But, it’s not as versatile as bare pasta and cheese powder. We still eat a lot of pasta, but much less orange cheese. To combat any potential appetite fatigue, I stock lots of weirder things that we don’t normally eat but might make an interesting change of pace. Lima beans. Butter beans. Canned asparagus spears. Artichoke hearts. Weird imported fruits. You name it, if I saw it on a shelf, I’ve probably picked up a can or two. I occasionally bust out the weird and add it to a meal just to see if it might be great (and to acclimate the family to the idea of eating unusual stuff.)

As I read around the web, I’m becoming increasingly nervous about food. Having some spoilage from the rats and heat is contributing to my concerns. If things get bad, you probably don’t have enough food. You may not have enough boots, socks, and underwear. How’s the elastic on your shorts? I just replaced a bunch of pairs that were a bit crunchy from the dryer being hot (and they are years old.) But back to food… Unlike Bob, I’m not counting calories and just filling buckets with salt, sugar, flour, rice, and beans. You can do that, and there is plenty of guidance here (look at the keywords on the right), but I think in terms of “meals.” It also keeps me from worrying about nutrition too much. Normal meals are going to be normally nutritious. If you’re not starving now, you won’t be later.

I do have lots of buckets filled with those things (except beans, I keep those in cans.) I think of the buckets as meal extenders. Bread/tortillas/pasta added to a canned meal, or rice combined with other food will extend the length of time that my canned meal plan will last. Whatever your preference, and plan, consider adding to your stack. After all, if things don’t get bad, you can donate excess to food banks or your neighbors. And consider variety and novelty when stacking. More is better. More choice is better too.

Keep stacking.

nick

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Fri. Sept. 3, 2021 – yes I am a slacker

Hot and humid, maybe rain for me. Certainly rain for someone. Yesterday, it was hot, humid, and still. Until it wasn’t. Then the rain came.

I got very little done yesterday. My whole morning was spent as chauffeur. My afternoon got eaten by a carb induced crash (food and sleep, not cars and noise) and rain.

I’ve got to make some of that up today. So that’s the goal. And even if it rains and I can’t do what I need to do outside, there is a big pile to do inside that I need to attack. So I will try again.

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To whom it may concern,

I don’t have the mindset to be a lord or a serf, so I need all y’all to get your shite back in the bag. I feel like that is the likeliest outcome as we pass through this period of great change- a return to feudalism. The middle class will be wiped out. Some members of the upper middle will be elevated, and the lower middle and lower will be ground down into the dirt like peasants throughout history. LANDED GENTRY. Renter. Slave if things get bad enough. I suppose there will be a new church to suck up the second sons (the NGOs and .edu do it now), and some favored artisans. Court jesters won’t be included though, the new lords have no sense of humor. Skilled technicians and actual traders/importers/makers might find a niche. The merchant class in the old sense might hold on, the lords like their luxuries. “Dickensian” will be the best of the worst.

It won’t matter to most of the world, they live that way already. It’ll suck for the majority of the western world though. Not sure how to play that thought for my kids. Need more time to figure something out.

So pull it together and hold on to western civilization for a bit longer.

Sincerely,

Dad of two.

Stacks. Skills. Connections. Land. Knowledge. Go and get you some.

nick

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Thur. Sept. 2, 2021 – lots of errands today

Hot and humid, some chance of rain. It got hot and humid pretty quickly yesterday. I was going to wait until evening to cut the grass but the massive thunder had me rushing to get it cut before it got wet again. And then after rushing to cut it in the 97F heat, it never did rain on me. It did rain on some people. Not me though. Some cool rain would have been nice. It’s a good thing I got it cut, another 10 minutes of growth and I couldn’t have pushed the mower through it. Speaking of hot, still 83F at midnight.

Did much less in the morning than I hoped. Sick child was part of that, but I was crazy tired. Fell asleep in my office chair. I haven’t been getting enough sleep and it’s catching up with me. I’ve been trying to get to bed earlier and having a bit of success, but not enough. I wake after 5 hours so that should give you an idea of what “not enough” means to me. Sometimes I can catch up on weekends, but I’ve been crazy busy the last couple so no extra sleep for me.

So after slacking in the morning, I did household stuff in the afternoon. Cleaned up the dead rat, moved some stuff around. Made dinner. Not super productive.

Today is crazy though. D1 to foot doc followup then to school in the morning. D2 to be picked up early from school an hour later. She was feeling much better after sleeping most of the day, so she’s back to school for a short day. No idea why the district has a half day on the Thursday before a long weekend and then a full day on Friday. I’m guessing it’s because then their teachers would do a bunk and skip whatever they’re doing to make their weekend longer. Just another example of the district doing what’s in their interest and not in mine.

If I can I’ll do a drop off of auction stuff. If not, I’ll put it in more bins and stack it higher. Since I’ll have D2 home with me, she may just have to accompany me on my errands.

Not much in the auctions for pickup this week as I was busy all weekend. It’s a weird change not having a bunch of pickups to do during the week. Only one ‘hang over’ needful thing still to pickup from 2 weeks ago and I may have him just ship it so I don’t have to find time to drive to Rosenberg. If I was honest in the beginning, I’d have paid the $25 and had it shipped two weeks ago. It’s only about a 2 hour round trip, but time is what I don’t have (motivation either,but that’s different) at the moment.

Haven’t been over to my secondary in a while either, and that project needs to progress. Isn’t happening today in any meaningful way though I might get some stuff dropped off there.

Always so much to do, and the world gets weirder every day. Don’t delay, prep today ! ! !

Stacks won’t hurt, but I’m beginning to think they better be hidden. And dispersed. ‘Cuz someone else might want them too, and they might bring more friends than you can shoot.

Stack it high, and in a bunch of places.

nick

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Tues. Aug. 31, 2021 – so. now we’re done with August.

Hot and humid. It was 85F when I went to bed, that doesn’t bode well for today. And while yesterday started cooler, it got plenty hot by afternoon. I knew I should have cut the back yard grass early. Now it’s so long, and the temps are high, and I just can’t get motivated to do it.

Plenty of stuff to do though, as usual.

Spent the day doing auction and sales stuff. Picked up D2 and did a couple of hours of together time. We spent the last part of that sorting through some thrift store bags. She likes the treasure hunt too, although she gets excited about different things. Since many of the items in the bags are things I picked up for her, or the household, she was pretty excited.

Then the other one came home and the sniping and general sororite‘ dynamic went into full effect. Joy. I understand ‘man cave’ much better now and I expect that will only strengthen. Unless they’re living in the streets taking potshots at UN blue helmets…

Freaking world does not want to settle down. Get your self set up now, while amazon delivers and things are a click away. Water collection, storage, purification, heating, and use. Electrical generation, storage, and drastically reduced use. Solar panels, charge controllers, batteries, led lights, and window air units. Fans. Shade and breeze. Food. Stored, grown, caught, processed, preserved, and eaten. Got enough salt? You can improvise a lot, but some things you need. Got books on fermentation? Any practical experience? People ALWAYS want to have a drink. What are the critical components you just can’t fake?

How does your garden grow? Seeds are small, light, available, and you need more than you think. Also, you need pesticides specific to what you are growing. Heirloom varieties, saving seed, and local knowledge. Greenhouse, seed starters, rooting compound, grow lights, heat mats, plastic sheet, depending on climate. Don’t count on it getting hotter. Don’t count on it being cooler.

What goes in must come out. Sanitation, trash disposal, pest control.

String, cord, rope. Wire. Cable. Wire rope. Chain. Webbing. Repair for all of them. Tapes and glues. Repair, reuse, recycle. Be prepared to squeeze every bit of use out of stuff.

Think about the stuff they had on the farm in 1910 and you will be close to what you need. This is my grandfather’s ax. My father replaced the handle and I replaced the head.

Doom, gloom, oh no, oh woe… and yet it fits better than cheerleading. I keep looking for reasons to be optimistic and I don’t see them. I’ve asked you guys to chime in if you see them and no one mentioned any. (SpaceX might be able to get away just in time, but they’re a long time from being a liferaft… for a while, computing applied to medicine looked poised for a huge leap, but that has cooled.) So plan to get through some bad times. I intend to.

Keep stacking.

nick

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Mon. Aug. 30, 2021 – long weekend wore me out.

Hot and humid, but maybe a BIT cooler. Did get some random rain drops yesterday, and some overcast, but mostly it was hot and humid.

The final day of my convention/meeting/swapmeet was a shorter day. The group does a couple of things to keep people there ’til the end. Most conventions or sales have much reduced attendance and fewer sellers on the last day. Our group does a drawing for sellers/exhibitors for $250 cash, but you have to be there and your booth has to be still set up. They follow that with a drawing for attendees for a $250 voucher to spend at a remaining vendor’s booth. There are still a lot of people who bail early, but there are people there until the end and there is excitement and good feelings just before calling it a day. I’ve worked a huge number of meetings/conventions/tradeshows and ours is unique in my experience with this incentive to stay the whole scheduled time.

Today I have to get all the things I put aside over the weekend done, as well as putting my leftovers away, and I have to do this week’s stuff too. I’m going to be extra busy for a while until I catch up. Like I wasn’t busy enough anyway.

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For a blog with a high degree of prepping emphasis, I said very little about the freaking CAT 4 hurricane that hit Louisiana and bordering states yesterday. I put it down to selfishness and inward focus. I will be looking outward for a while at least to cover the aftermath. If you’ve been affected by IDA, please share your experience. What worked, what didn’t, what surprised you. If you want, you can email it to me and I’ll post it whole with any anonymizing requested. Obviously it might be a bit before you’re actually done with IDA. I’ll wait, but please consider commenting or writing something.

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What little news I did see over the weekend wasn’t good. Same stuff and more of it would sum it up. It will get sporty out there, and could be very soon. Don’t wait with your prepping. Get at least some of everything that you want or need. If we have more time, you can add to that. In these times, it won’t do you as much good to have 5 buckets of white flour, but no rice, or 8 rifles and no food. Balance. That is what is needed and you might not have enough time to correct an imbalance in your current purchasing.

That said, anything is better than nothing. Get to stacking.

nick

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