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Category: march to war

Tues. Dec. 15, 2020 – so. That happened. So we’re on that path.

Cold.  Dreary.  Wet later.  Probably some wind too.

Cold all day yesterday.  Every time I went out to the garage, I was very glad to come back in  while we’re grid up and the house was warm, with no effort on my part.  That wasn’t always true, and it might not always stay true.

Mostly I spent the day getting stuff moved around and organized.   I don’t feel like I got a whole lot done, but I did fill two bins for the auction.

Today I’ve got to get to the rent house and address the plumbing issue.  I also have a Christmas present to pick up, and I’m going to try to swap out my full bins for empties at one of the auctioneers.

Meanwhile the march to war continues.  Guns and ammo are still available at a price.  I got eflyers for both yesterday.  They were generally gone in a very short time, so if you need something, get on some email lists.   Body armor is available and still cheap.  You may not be thinking of becoming an urban partisan, but you might want a second chance if you find yourself working at 7-11 trying to keep body and soul together, or going to collect rent at one of your rent houses.  Elements of the left have been very clear that they want everyone to the right of them dead, destroyed, purged, impoverished, beaten, or subdued.  It’s just a matter of which one you hear how severely you should be treated.  And it doesn’t really matter if not all the left feels that way.  The ones that don’t won’t be gunning for you.  You never really know how or why you might come to their attention, but if you do it isn’t going to be fun.

If things go sporty in a big way, it won’t take much to close the container ports.  Anyone with a deer rifle can close air travel for however long they want to, and can stay free.  There aren’t that many bridges across the Mississippi River.  Transformers are vulnerable and have already been targets.   If you can get into the .gov networks and Treasury, you can surely get into the SCADA networks that control the pipelines and pumping stations.  Contaminate a drinking water plant and it’ll be a while before people trust it again.  Do it six times and they’re done for good.

Our infrastructure is fragile.  It was built for a high trust society, and a lot of it is in very remote and yet accessible places.  When there are problems with it, it’s the PEOPLE who get-r-done and fix it.  If those people are unable or unwilling, then it will go down and stay down.  It’s not something you can bring in the Army to fix, or foreigners.  Watch some video of linemen ‘hot sticking’ transmission lines as an example, or of the guy who clears the macerator in the settling pond at  the sewage plant.   Not something for the untrained.

How much infrastructure are you able to live without?

While you’re thinking about that, keep stacking.

nick

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Mon. Dec. 14, 2020 – king for a day

Cool and wet.  Although the forecast doesn’t have any rain for our area, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Yesterday was rainy throughout.  Lots of thunder, lots of rain in the morning, with more rain and heavy wind gusts all through the day.

I did inside stuff.  Marginally productive inside stuff, testing a couple of things, organizing some stuff, but mostly not doing much despite all the movement.   I did find some meds in my travel kit, and that helped.  I’ll be chasing my prescription today, and taking more steps to stack it up.  I can not skip it if I need to.  Not if I want to be active and effective.

Kids spent the whole day by themselves.  My wife ran errands and made cookies.  Yummy PILES of cookies.  I made 2 pounds of bacon for breakfast.  It got eaten too.  Dinner was pulled pork from cans that our Costco carried for a while.  I drain them, heat them, and add BBQ sauce.  Served them on King’s Hawaiian rolls.  Some leftover carrots, baked beans, and fresh onion filled out the plate.   The pulled pork isn’t as versatile as the chicken but it makes a nice change of pace and was widely available and not expensive.

Today I’m at home, while my wife goes into the office, so I’ll be doing at home stuff.   I hope to be a bit more productive today.  Since I’m not going to be allowed to solve the country’s problems today, I’ll have to keep working on my own.

On the wuflu front, we should be seeing peaks from the Thanksgiving spread this week and next.  We’re up, but not storing the dead in freezer trucks, and I’m very glad for that.

On the national insurgency/coup/civil war, it’s just getting started.  Pretty sure lots more is coming.   Someone online pointed out that the dems are not confident.  They aren’t dancing in the street.  They and their propaganda arm are doing their best to gaslight, censor, restrict, and obfuscate, but if they were confident they’d be a whole lot more “in your face” about it.   I find that heartening, but ultimately, I think the deep state and a bunch of others had their Quisling ‘peace in our day’ moment.   The cheaters know they cheated.  The others know they cheated, and they decided NOT to kick off CWII this week.   I think they haven’t bought nearly as much time as they think they have.  I guess we’ll see.

We’ve got a bit more time to get our stuff straightened out.   I could load a box truck here at the house if I was serious and had somewhere to SEND all this stuff.  I might just have to.  I did make two ebay sales yesterday.  I think my net was $40.  That isn’t going to buy much in the way of preps… and it’s not clearing stuff out fast enough.  I usually move the equivalent of two pallets at the March hamfest swapmeet.  That isn’t happening this year either.  On the plus side I figured out how to get more stuff thrown away, even if I can’t get the forklift running right.  I’ll cut it up and move it piece by piece, instead of moving it then cutting it up at the dumpster.  There’ll be a lot more handling of the stuff, but I’ve got the equivalent of a 53 foot tractor trailer taking up space I need for other things.   I won’t get it all back, I’m keeping some of the shipping containers, but they’ll nest to a degree.  I just need to find 10 hours during the day when I can go do it, and when it’s not raining.

Where did I go wrong?  I kept buying stuff long after it stopped selling.  I’ve found myself doing the same with preps…   I get a bug that I should pick up item x, and keep doing so long after I should have recognized I’ve got enough x and moved to y.  So take stock of what you have, where you need to be, and how you hope to get there.   You might be surprised by the hills and the valleys in what you thought was level ground.

I’m sure there are valleys to be filled by more stacking.  And if not, it’s time to level up skills.  A good scanner for Christmas and leaving it on while you work so you can get an idea about what’s going on in your area might be a place to start, if you’ve got the rest taken care of… or start working on your HUMINT so you can get a feel for the restlessness of the natives.  Get out of the house and talk to some people, at a safe distance of course.

Figure out your needs and keep stacking them.

nick

 

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Sun. Dec. 13, 2020 – street skirmishes in the nation’s capitol…

Well, in Houston it’s cool and damp.

Elsewhere Civil War II is heating up.  There are a couple of links late yesterday.

Yesterday I did get some stuff done.  Most of what I was hoping to accomplish, but still not anywhere near what was needed.  Today if the weather holds, I’ll head over to my secondary location and do some work over there.

Got the tree up and decorated.  House smells nice.  My wife and girls are baking cookies today.

It’s a bit crazy that while I was watching a couple of episodes of The Mandalorian (stilted, heavy handed, third writer and still it’s meh) there was fighting in the streets of DC.  I was pretty sure it would hold off until after Christmas, but I guess the anger is growing faster than I thought.  That is the problem with being comfortable here in Houston.  I have a hard time getting a sense of the real mood and conditions in the rest of the country.

Things do tend to change slowly until they change all at once.  We might be closer to flipping the switch than I thought.  Use what time you have to improve your position.  This isn’t going away, and it isn’t getting better without getting a whole lot worse first.

Stack it as high as you can.

Nick

 

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Sat. Dec. 12, 2020 – getting close to Christmas….

Cool, wet, maybe rain.

Yesterday got pretty wet late in the afternoon.  The forecast called for about .2 inches, and I’m not sure what we ended up getting, but it was cats and dogs for a while.

A couple of things conspired against me and my list.  My wife had errands to run, which I didn’t expect.  That kept me home until 2pm.  I got one pickup and one drop off done.  Didn’t get my settlement from last week’s auction, the auctioneer was having a company meeting.  I should get a check in the mail from the industrial auction some time next week.  That’s good news.

The other thing was the rain.  Pouring rain meant no Christmas decor went up.  Stuff is slipping like Fox’s ratings.

While I was waiting for my wife to get back I wasn’t UN-productive.  I cut my hair.  Went through some more stuff and put it in the auction box.   I pulled two parts and shipped them for an ebay sale.  Tested some stuff with an eye toward listing it or sending it to auction.  Tried to test an XBox360 and discovered I was missing the IEC cordset.  M$ doesn’t use a normal cord, theirs has a ‘key’ at the bottom.  I went through a box of cords and didn’t find one.  But I just need to test it so I got out a gouge and made my own key slot.  FTW!  Didn’t get a chance to use it yet.  I’m sure it will need some additional “adjusting”.

Today is the monthly meeting of my non-prepping hobby.  I think I would like to go.   I’m feeling ok, it’s probably raining so I can’t work outside, and I miss the club.  Seems dumb to have waited until the numbers are all record high to finally break down and meet but that is the state of the state.  Nothing makes sense or feels right.

Later today I need to break down and vac seal and freeze all the meat I bought this week.  Costco was out of turkeys by the time my shopper got there.  They were showing stock when I ordered.  The price was good so I guess they ‘flew’ out of the store.  Instead, I got a lamb roast for Christmas dinner.  I think I’ll cook the whole 6 pounds instead of breaking it down to halves.  Then we’ll have yummy leftovers.  Normally I’d be thinking about a ham, or maybe a ribeye roast, but my wife suggested the lamb.  Since we all love it, it was a no-brainer.  I think there are some traditions that involve lamb at Christmas, just not in our families.   Lamb is a good choice for economy- you can get very good lamb for the same price as mediocre beef, or at least we can get it here.  If we were post-apocalyptic, lamb and sheep would be front and center on the farm, just as they were throughout history.  Very useful animal, your sheep.

Protein in the freezer.  Veg in cans.  Pasta, and the stuff to make bread in buckets.  Ammo in cans.  Gubs in the safe.  That all feels pretty good, but I’m still anxious.  I checked the ammo sales, and nobody had any.  PSA had almost nothing at all in stock.  What they had was really unusual calibers, big game rifle ammo, and blanks.  Some was $5/rnd, most was over $1/rnd.  They might have had one or two boxes of bastard stepchild pistol ammo- cowboy revolvers, and .32 cal.   It’s getting short out there.

And time is getting short too.  The holidays are keeping some stuff under control.  The election stuff hasn’t played out yet, but it’s looking more like Sleepy Joe and the town bike every day.  Legitimate election or not, his policies will not be good for you and I.  That should be terrifying everyone much more than ‘Orangeman bad’.  I can only hope that he’s stymied at every turn, but based on their RINO history and never Trump activism, I bet that ‘in the interest of healing our nation’ there is a flurry of cross aisle cooperation.  If you think “it won’t be that bad, we’ll survive it like everything else”, I’d like to point out that we didn’t ‘survive’ it.  Compare today to 20 years ago, 40, 60.  Culturally and politically we are not living in the same country we were born to. *

Maybe it’s because I’ve got young kids, but I’m appalled at what we’re building for them.   That deserves a whole long post of it’s own, and I’ve got other stuff higher on my list.

Check your list.  Check your assumptions.  Check your stack.  Check your gear.  Check your friends and acquaintances.  And keep stacking.

nick

 

*for a perfect example, consider the band 2livecrew and the massive outcry and censorship of their album and song, ‘Me so horny’.  Now consider the song WAP, for which Cardi B is widely lauded.  The official video on youtube has 300 million views, the audio released first has 181 million.  Dozens of other versions have 10s of millions of views.  The song is flat out obscenity.  There is a radio edit.  It gets airplay.  I’m not linking to the vids, it’s bad enough reading the lyrics.  People think it’s FUNNY.  If you feel compelled to listen to it, watch the vid of the girl signing it.  ‘wap cardi b sign language’ None of it is SFW.  Every aspect of our culture has been degraded.  Every one of our freedoms has been limited.  And it all happened a little bit at a time.

 

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Fri. Dec. 11, 2020 – week went by so fast I missed a day…

Cool, getting warmer, breezy and sunny.  Until the rain comes.

Got some stuff done yesterday.   Not what I was hoping but that’s the story of my life at the moment.

Today I’ve got a couple of pickups about as far apart as you can get in the metro area.  Conroe to League City.  And then I have to see my client out on the northwest side of town, at 290 and 99.  Lots of driving in my day.  I could slip one of the pickups to Saturday, but I’ve got my non-prepping hobby meeting and I feel like I really want to go.  I’m feeling healthy, and I’ll mask up.  I miss the guys and the technical sessions.

I have noticed that if I’m tired from not getting enough sleep, I rarely get done even half of what I hoped to.  I’m not as young as I was I guess.  I have trouble focusing too, when I’m tired.  Good reasons to head to bed earlier.

Physical condition is an often overlooked part of prepping.  I’ve been eating less, and I’ve gradually lost about 10 pounds since March.  I hover around 200 now.  At 190 I’m too thin and my skin hangs on my face.  It would be nice and prudent to convert some of the weight to muscle mass instead of spare tire.  Nice, but I haven’t got the interest in spending much time on it.  With the cooler temps, it’s easier to work outside and inside, so I’m hoping to firm up a bit while doing some work.  Either that or it will break me…

Dinner last night was canned beans, canned corn, leftover canned carrots and frozen pork chops on the grill.  As I was opening the cans, I had a thought.  You used to see a can opener as a primary appliance in every kitchen.  Most had some sort of electric opener, some were attached to cabinets, and there were many styles and models to choose from.  It suddenly struck me that was because our parents and grandparents ate a lot of canned food.  It was the only way to get fruit and veg out of season for most people.  Two sides per dinner meant opening two cans at least.  Soup for lunch, and pie for dessert meant a couple more cans.  Jar openers were common gadgets too.  They used enough cans that it made sense to have a faster and easier way to open them right there on the countertop.  Contrast that with our diets now, with any fruit or veg available fresh in any season due to rapid and cheap shipping and handling, and the global nature of our supply chain.

Prepping and the current emergency have shifted my family’s diet back toward canned… even though we get fresh veg and fruit with every grocery order.

If the supply chain faces further disruption, if the cheap peasant labor in far away lands should suffer a population decline or political strife that shuts down commerce, if energy became much more expensive, everyone would be forced to shift toward canned food.  Which would cause shortages.  One more reason to stock up now.   And to work on your gardening skills.

So stack the stuff you’ll need in the spring for your garden, and stack more canned goods in case your garden doesn’t grow.  In fact, keep stacking all the things…

 

nick

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Thur. Dec. 9, 2020 – if I were a rich man, deedle deedle deedle diedle dum..

Cool and windy.  Getting warmer later.  Basically nice.

Wednesday was cool to start but got to 84F in the sun.  Still pretty damp, there was water in the buckets from days ago, and condensation on the concrete.

I started my day with a fresh from the tree grapefruit.  Ruby red and sweet.   Success at last!  There are about a dozen more.  There are a couple of oranges on the other tree that I’m giving a bit more time.  The lemons are ready, but I leave them in place as long as I can.  Broccoli is doing ok, and I might harvest some spears in a couple of days.

I spent a good part of the day going through ebay/auction stuff, moving it from bin to bin and getting some ready for the next auction.  They stood me up on meeting to get my check and do my dropoff so I’ll have to reschedule.  Next week I’ll have stuff in 3 of the local auctions, and it still won’t have made much of a dent.

I didn’t get much else on my list done, so that all slips into today.  If I’m away from the keyboard, I’m working my list.

Interesting thought experiment, what would 2021 look like if there are aliens here?  They have been here for a while, they haven’t dropped rocks on us, they are either in a lifeboat or have some business with us.  What might it be?  What would the confirmed announcement do to current social issues?  I bet they’d get the blame for wuflu…  What the heck would they want?  Botanicals?  Slaves?  Food?  Fuel?  Colonization has always been about resource extraction for us, or later new markets, and cheap labor.  What would prepping look like for benign aliens instead of zombies?

My suspicion is that people would lose their shirt and we’d want to stay quietly at home for a while, just like a lot of other scenarios.  Couldn’t hurt to be prepped up.

Which raises another issue.  If you didn’t have to worry about budget, beyond some reasonable amount (no buying Yard Moose Mountain) what would a serious prepper look like and be stacking?  Vs an ‘ordinary’ prepper, or a beginning prepper?  What do you start stacking when you realize that 2 weeks while waiting for FEMA and the outside aid to get there isn’t going to be enough?

What makes one serious?  Is it building a “Rebuild society” library?  Or stocking fish meds?  A suture kit?  Injectable drugs?  Having a stocked root cellar?  Livestock? A garden measured in fractions of an acre?  Bushcraft knowledge?  Foraging for food?  Hunting/fishing/trapping?  Butchering your own food?  A pantry measured in “person-years”?  More than one gun safe?  Off grid power?  Off grid property?

I consider myself pretty serious, but there are things in that list I don’t even have plans for.    Ok that’s a lie.  But there are things in that list I don’t have serious plans for 😉

Get to work.  Stack something today.  Even if it’s just knowledge.

nick

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Tues. Dec. 8, 2020 – work, work, work. And more work.

Cool and sunny, lots of wind.

That was Monday to a ‘T’.  Still not drying outside even with only 35%RH.  I’ve still got standing water on my driveway from 2 days ago.

Well, I took 6 more bins of stuff to the auctioneer yesterday.  And I didn’t even get into the driveway, much into the garage, or at all in my secondary or my storage unit.   I’m going to continue pulling stuff today, and I’ll either get one last drop off today (if I can get away with my wife at work) or I’ll take some to my other auction tomorrow when I go to do my settlement with them.  It won’t be before Christmas, but it will be ready to go right after.  I’m finding stuff I forgot about which is nice but also horrifying.   I found some model train stuff, and some nice Hot Wheels cars from the mid and late 70s.  They should do well.  I wish I had a thousand of them though.

My industrial auctioneer is still listing a few items they didn’t get in the last one, but he’s already told me twice he doesn’t want more stuff from me until next year in January.  I’ve got a ton of stuff for him, but I can’t force people to take it.

On a personal level, I’m feeling very anxious while out driving around.  Everywhere I look I see new bums panhandling.  I see more new For Lease signs.  I saw workers taking down a big sign on a business today, and a whole strip development on what is a pretty busy street with ALL the businesses closed.  There were several- a chinese buffet, and ‘alkaline water’ boutique, some other salon, and a phone or tech repair place.  All gone this week.  Lots more trash in front of several stores too.  Goodwill is parking trailers full of stuff in front of the Outlet.  They can’t process the stuff fast enough to get rid of it.  Even the temporary ‘day’ labor provider across from the Goodwill closed down.

On the sorta prepping front, my wife did most of the jewelry badge with her Girl Scouts this weekend.  I was able to provide a dozen sets of pliers, wire, jump rings and clasps, different stones charms and bits from old costume jewelry, and some of reference material, even a ring sizing mandrel (one part of the badge is learning about the tools.)  I had accumulated the stuff with an eye toward craft projects with  my kids.  I had plenty to share…

And I went into Costco today.  I needed to pick up the Christmas cards, so I walked through the store too.  Not much Christmas merch left on the floor.  And they reorganized the whole place since I was last there!   It looks like they did a major upgrade to their cooling system, made dairy and eggs a big walk in cooler, and tied all their display coolers together- there were pipes linking them that weren’t there before.    They still had a guy wiping cooler door handles, and aisles seemed wider.  I could see marks on the floor that showed that the stuff HAD moved.   They had a whole corral set up for TP, mostly piles of Kirkland, but they had Charmin blue label, so I bought some.  $23 instead of $16 on sale, but it’s time to start building the stack up again.   The only other prices that jumped out at me were $1.87/lb for spiral sliced ham, and in the other direction, $6/lb for Kirkland organic ground beef.   It’s been on sale to match their normal ground beef in the past.  Normal hamburger was ~$3/lb which is a good price.

The TP was my only purchase.  I’ll do instacart for my normal stuff.

The lot was not full, nor were there lines for gas, but it was a Monday afternoon, which is normally a slower time anyway.  During my other dropoff I drove right past what should have been a busy shopping area, but it was not.  In person retail is in trouble if that’s any indication.

All this is to say, even here, in one of the strongest local economies in the country, with ‘sensible’ restrictions from COVID, I’m seeing evidence that the economy is in trouble at ground level.  Big trouble.   We’ve found our local charity for the season, the Stagehand’s local has an emergency fund and present collection for their members.  Yes, they are union pukes.  But they’re OUR pukes… (my wife was card carrying for years) and entertainment is in our blood as well as being part of my wife’s business.  I encourage you to find something local and direct that you can help with this year.  And if you need help, get it, there are resources out there.

Local local local, and Meatspace baby!

Keep stacking.  You can’t help others if you aren’t ok yourself.   And there will be others.

nick

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Fri. Dec. 4, 2020 – ayup, FLEW by.

Cold again, still damp. Maybe some sun though.

I was cold enough yesterday to get my jacket out.  Of course by the time I got to my later appointment, I was sweating and took it off until sundown.

I got some bins of stuff dropped off a my newest local auctioneer.  He was surprised by the amount and actually expected more.  I had the impression he didn’t want a truckload so I didn’t bring one.   I’ll be bringing another load down to him on Monday.   He also took a look at my Pokemon cards and we figured out that I DON’T have a $10K card.   The version I have is $45.  The version with the printed difference (a missing drop shadow) is the one that brings the big money.   It’s likely that it’s the same error that is NOT on my other big money cards too, so no $1200 cards either.  Probably.  I still have to go back through them looking to see if I have any with the missing drop shadow.    Not a lottery winner anymore, but still worth about 40x what I paid.  Funny how that feels disappointing.

I picked up a small but important defensive training item too.   I paid less than online prices, but 50%  more than I would have in January.  I think it will be another 50-100% higher come this January.   It’s very clean and fills a gap in the progression from BB to airsoft to Cricket (gap) to black scary gub.  The store where I picked it up had inventory.  Expensive inventory, slightly more than online sellers, but he had stuff on the shelves and in the display cases.  He said his purchasing manager has been scrambling to find stock.  Much of it is used or consigned too.  Friendly guys and right down the street from one of my auction sellers.

Today I’ll be loading bins, sorting, doing a pickup, and hopefully getting some Christmas lights up.  I used to be the only one on the street with lights, now there are a dozen houses that are already decorated.  I’m the slacker!  I love seeing the change.  BE the change you want in the world.  It’s not just for hippies.

Now I need to get to it.  I’ll leave the politics and conspiracy to everyone else today.  Unless it rains.  Then I’m gonna drive this keyboard like a rental.

Keep stacking.

nick

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Thurs. Dec. 3, 2020 – whoooooshhhhh. <--sound of this week flying by

Cool and wet, but hopefully not raining all day.  Like yesterday.

When I got nothing done.  Well, did get the daughter safely to school and back for her class picture, and annual hearing and vision checkup.  Talked to a couple of the moms while there.  One was the volunteer coordinator for the science program I led.  She’s working on getting something we can do remotely with the kids.  I miss seeing the kids and doing the experiments.

I miss doing all of my volunteer stuff.  I miss my ham radio lunches, and my non-prepping hobby meetings.  (Both of those are primarily composed of guys with a couple of decades on me and a laundry list of co-morbidities.    Wouldn’t be prudent.)  I wonder where we’ll be in three weeks.

It occurs to me I’ve been saying that for 9 months.  We’ll see in a few weeks…  and for the most part, what we saw was not as bad as we feared (but we did see the increases, and the deaths).   And we’ve gradually gotten used to it, and the overton window has moved dramatically.    March – “FREAKING FOUR PEOPLE HAVE DIED IN WASHINGTON!!11!!  December – “It’s barely 2000 dead a week, and most of them were ready to die anyway, I need a beer.”

We got used to it.

I don’t know where we’ll be in three weeks.  I don’t know where we’ll be in three months.  I don’t know where we’ll be in three years.  I do know that what has been set in motion will continue in motion.

In a state that was isolated from the worst of the .gov excesses, where we were never really locked in our homes, where businesses continued as much as possible to keep going, with the strongest economy in the country, I see the signs of the downward spiral.  I was driving in different areas Wednesday, near to home but toward the kid’s school.  Areas that I really haven’t been in much in the last few months.  LOTS more bums.  Lots more immigrants on the street in the rain.  More vacant storefronts.   More ‘For Lease’ signs.   Projects that got started, but now haven’t progressed are everywhere.  They cleared the lot and put up the fence, but no further work has been done, and the weeds are 4 foot high.  They remodeled the restaurant or store but never opened.  There is a LOT of newly vacant commercial property around me.

There are some signs of life.  Several big housing developments are still building houses- a block from one that is built out, but has a 20 foot sign “HUGE incentives to buyers” in front.  The Aldi store a couple of blocks from my house is going to open this week.  I can’t help but wonder though if that is just momentum.   Once the money is in motion, it sometimes costs more to stop than to continue, even if the deal no longer makes sense.

We seem to be in the stage where things gradually get shirtier.  More bums on the street.   More trash and litter.  More illegal dumping.   More graffiti and tags, and they stay up longer.   McDonalds took 20 minutes to get me two large fries, and they both tasted like they’d been held too long, even though the drive thru girl said we were waiting while they cooked them.  Limited menu and few customers too.  AND over $5.

Smaller sizes, and higher prices.  Limited selections and more frequent shortages.  Increasing frequency and duration of outages of basic services.  We are ALREADY in this stage of collapse.  Inertia will carry us further into it no matter what happens in the next two months.

In the past we dealt with adversity.  We rolled up our sleeves and we tightened our belts.  We sacrificed because ‘we were all in it together’.   We’re not anymore.  We can see the ‘elite’ and connected getting a better deal than us.  They say ‘stay home’ while they fly on a private jet to a vacation resort.  A jet they don’t own or pay for, that someone else in their network ‘shares’ with them.   They’re already laying out the new Soviet Union and Nazi Germany in their tweets.  Oppose the party and be crushed.   Express any idea or hold a belief that isn’t approved, and the might of “the people” will be focused against you.

It’s all going to get worse for at least a while too.  There is still hope, but not for long.  We’ll know in a few weeks….

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And then it might get a lot worse.  Possibly very quickly.  And…….

We’ll get used to it.

Hard times are coming.  Hell, for many they are already here, and just getting started.  Use the time wisely.  Keep stacking whatever you think you’ll need.  Moxie and pretzels, if that’s your thing.  But stack it high.

nick

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Wed. Dec. 2, 2020 – both the Advent calendar and the Elf on the Shelf are back

Cool and damp, windy and cool, but no more freezes this week.

Froze here for about 8 hours Monday night though.  I really hope my citrus made it through.  I didn’t remember the warning and was busy so I didn’t cover anything.  I think the lowest it got was 28F and it was there for about 4 hours.  I am really unhappy about that and I’m kicking myself in the nethers for the oversight.

I spent the day yesterday doing auction stuff.  Didn’t get much else done.  Had a moment of weirdness when I noticed a guy standing around in my ‘troubling’ neighbor’s yard.  He looked like a contractor, and was acting like a contractor waiting for a meeting about the house, but the neighbor’s elementary age kids were just coming home from school, and had forgotten their door key.  So they couldn’t just walk past the guy and enter, they had to walk past him twice.  I was in the front yard watching because it caught my attention.  The kids went around to the back, and the guy got a ladder and got up on the roof.  I went to look into the back yard and make sure the kids got in, while keeping an eye on the guy.   He finished on the roof and left.  If it weren’t for the timing, I might not have noticed, but then again, something caught my attention.

The mom and dad came home shortly after, because the kids called about a strange guy in the yard and on the roof.  (They rent, so it could be legit, just something the owner didn’t mention.)  The parents were freaked and came to talk to us about what I saw or didn’t see.  We had a good talk for about half an hour about security issues and calling the Constable’s deputies if anything weird is going on.  She related that on more than one occasion a truck was parked in front of her house watching or waiting, and that one time the truck followed her out of the subdivision.   I gave them the Constable’s number and suggested that that would be an EXCELLENT time to call for a driveby….   I’ve mentioned before that something is going on with these two.  They were super keyed in on my cameras, they had the very tense custody exchange shortly after moving in, and he did the whole ‘get up in your face and see if you back down’ with me the first time we met.  I don’t usually back down.  My normal reaction is to step into it, and mention some of my experiences with cops or crims, depending on which I think will de-escalate the best.  Some things I just ignore* while noting them.  In any case, he cooled off that time.  (Did I mention, both have tats with probable gang history, although nothing as obvious as signs or facial markings.  To be fair, a lot of early middle-aged people in this area have some evidence of past indiscretion on their bodies, so it didn’t concern me but I did note it.)

I think I’ll move my new camera install back to the top of the list, pointed to cover the area in front of their house.  I have good video of the guy’s truck, but nothing great of the guy.  He’s probably just a roofing contractor who was supposed to meet the owner, and the owner didn’t show for some reason.  Probably.  But he didn’t have a front plate on his truck, and he disappeared around the back, up the driveway for a few minutes while I was watching.  Momma said he looked in her car (she didn’t waste any time putting cameras up to cover their vehicles after they moved in, and she knows her way around the system if she checked the video that quickly.)  Hopefully the landlord will shed some light, otherwise we notch up the security level.

Looking at the video took me a bit longer than I expected.  Linux has different tools for playback than I am used to, but I got good recordings of the incident.  I’ve got the motion sensitivity turned too far down for the onboard recording at the camera, as I didn’t get his truck driving away in native resolution on the cam.  I have to take another look at that.  It’s been my experience that no matter what the system, or how you’ve configured and tested it, until you go looking for video of an actual incident you don’t REALLY know what it’s recording or not, and if it’s what you need.

I’m home today with the student, so I’ll continue the auction and ebay preps, and maybe get up on the roof with a new camera.  (Both my plumber and my auction drop off got canceled yesterday, leaving me at loose ends.)  Thursday filled up, so I need to be productive today.  It’s always something.

Oh, and I went through the shelves of food I just stacked in March.  I moved some to my ‘working’ shelves, and I think I’ll move the rest back to my secondary location.  That will free up some space here, and give me some redundancy.  Turns out, I don’t need those 8 gallons of bleach to be so close to hand.  And some buckets of bulk can be shifted too.

On the other hand, I’ve got 7 cu ft of freezer to fill.

Keep your eyes and ears open.  Keep stacking.

nick

 

*once I was chatting with my local work crew in LA.  Quite a few of them had the signs of previously mis-spent youth.  I mentioned that I grew up on the South Side of Chicago (south suburbs to be exact, but South Side has a richer connotation.)  They had previously asked me “where you stay at” which is a dialectical way of asking ‘where do you live right now’.  That particular phrase indicates a subculture I’m familiar with, so when they asked me “who I was with” or “who I ‘claimed'” they were asking me about MY past gang affiliation.  Since I had none, and that would have been all in the past anyway, I ignored the questions like I didn’t hear them and kept on chatting.  Eventually though, they kept poking at it (good-naturedly) and I ended up saying “I know what you’re asking and I am not hearing you ask it, cuz I ain’t gonna answer it” which got a laugh,  and then I made some jokes about throwing signs and tags that got some more laughs.  That worked out ok because they were technically working for me, were mostly guys I’d worked with on other shows, and it was friendly and in a ‘lets see what this white boy really knows’ kinda way…   In another time or place I would have let those questions blow right by me like I didn’t even recognize what they were asking.  Sometimes it’s better to be a player, or to have BEEN a player (even better as you don’t have to keep up the same level of face) and sometimes it’s better to be a ‘civilian’ and off limits and out of play…and sometimes if you are 200 pounds with a grey crew cut, and drive a white Expedition with a push bar it’s better to let them make other assumptions about who you  might work for.

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