Category: personal

Sun. July 13, 2025 – as the world turns… at least it’s not as the world burns…

Probably another day of mixed sun and thunderstorms. Yesterday had fewer big cells moving around but there were still a few, and I saw a few sprinkles hit my windshield as I drove around. It was 78F when I woke up, hit 101F in my driveway, and was 81F when I went to bed. We didn’t get the cooling rain we’ve been getting, but it was still a nice day.

I started with my non-prepping hobby, and while we didn’t have a full house, it was better attended than last month. Given the median age of our members, not seeing guys at a meeting always raises at least a little concern. After that I raced around and got three pickups done. Ended up having a long conversation with one of my auctioneers, who is fairly like-minded, and thinks that things will be getting ugly and changing completely in the world sooner, rather than later. And while I hadn’t planned to spend time talking with people, I think it was time well spent.

Today I’ll be sleeping in and then doing household stuff, and some other things around the house.

Fairly late last night I decided to sit out and have a tiny little fire while I read a book. Something drew my attention and I sat and thought for a short while.

I realized I’d spent my whole life getting to that point. A point where I could sit in front of my house (which is well stocked to meet almost any local or regional calamity), next to my water feature (which is also 50 gallons of easily filtered water), in my relatively safe and pretty quiet suburban neighborhood, reading a book written by some guy on the internet, delivered wirelessly to a mini computer screen I can hold in my hand, paid for seamlessly using a global system of banking and finance, while my family slept comfortably and securely in air conditioned comfort, clean and well fed.

I LIKE my life and the world I live in. I don’t want to lose it in the short term, no matter what wonders will come after the destruction. Civilizations come and go, world powers wax and wane- this is the natural way of things. No matter what happens, my children will live in a world that will probably be very different from this one, both in detail and in broad strokes.

My grandmother came to the US about the time that the Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk. She witnessed two world wars and the global conflicts spawned in the aftermath. She watched men set foot on the moon on a TV in her home, and had a grandchild who was a little wiz kid at the birth of the personal computer age. Telegrams and radio became black and white TV, then color TV, then the dawn of the Information Age. Her five children gave her 28 grand kids and a couple of times that number of great grands before she died. From Kitty Hawk to airliners, from telegrams to personal computers, the world changed around her, and because of her.

Change is the only constant. Empires rose and fell during her lifetime, wars were fought, distance and time were compressed by travel and telecommunications. Peoples’ personal awareness of the world expanded dramatically from their village to the the farthest corners of the globe.

Will my children and their children live in a world where their personal awareness extends to other planets, other star systems, or wholly created worlds? Will they be able to travel incredible distances in times that seem so short they might as well be magical? Will their minds and bodies expand to meet the challenges and changes of their time? Or will they be stuck on this mud ball, fighting to make a life in the ruins of our great civilization? Will my great-grandchildren find their own version of “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone” standing in the desert, surrounded by nothing but wasteland, “boundless and bare”?

We are so close. And some days it seems like all anyone wants to do is burn it all down.

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Prep like your life depends on it. The goal is to get through it and see what comes next. Stack.

nick

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Thur. June 12, 2025 – …then I took and arrow to my knee.

Hot, humid, sunny, overcast, raining, cool, or some combination. Pretty sure we won’t see cold and dry though. Yesterday ended up nice after the rain cleared. It stayed cooler, and never got crazy bright.

I spent the day moving slowly, and not really functioning well. I did get a few things done, mainly in the bathroom. I fixed the flush handle on the toilet. I had a replacement but couldn’t figure out how to switch it to ‘left handed’… some superglue and accelerator fixed and issue with the old one. It works well now. I also took the time to fix a towel holder and the TP holder. The big box store fixtures do wear out over time. A little tightening of screws and they’ll work for a few more years. That bathroom is 13 years into a gut remodel, so they’ll get replaced eventually.

The rest of the day got eaten by doctor visits.

Funnily enough, today will be too. This time it’s the other kid getting her school, camp, and band physicals. I’m the stay at home dad, so it’s my job. It does make it harder to do the auction stuff.

I should say it makes it harder to do everything without motivation and good time management. Right now I’m lacking both. Working on it. Working…

Time for more ‘doing’.

And stacking. Time to replace some breakage in the stacks. Past time, but something I still need to get to.

Do some pulling out and examining of your own preps. There is likely some damage, and maybe more time has passed than you think. Then stack!

nick

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Wed. June 11, 2025 – I was once and adventurer like you…

Hot and humid. Again. And again. 85F to 95F or higher, and then maybe some rain… because it’s humid and there are likely to be threatening clouds. Ah, summer.

Did a couple of pickups yesterday. Both kids took care of themselves, leaving me to do my stuff. I went slow, and mostly felt ok. My head is still a little swirly and I’m not feeling super strong. The heat is taking some out of me too. Still, I can function.

So that is what I’m looking at today too. Some stuff with my local auctioneer, if I can swing it. A doctor appointment for the kid. Maybe some phone work for me because I need to make a couple of appointments too. And I need to get D1 on my AAA card, and do some other business stuff. Bill paying? Yeah, maybe that too. And some listing on ebay. I need to break the log jam of not listing, and build some momentum.

This cold has derailed whatever momentum I had left after vacation interrupted stuff. Life. Overrated.

Oh well. Better suck it up and do some stuff. Summer will be gone before I know it.

Stack something for hurricane season.

nick

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Tues. June 10, 2025 – Feeling better, need to be doing stuff

Hot and humid. Yup. Same as yesterday with maybe some rain, like yesterday. Some parts of Houston got rain. Some didn’t.

I did feel better yesterday, and got up and ran a couple of errands, but I felt wiped out afterwards. I’m planning to do the same today. Go slow, take it easy, but get some things done.

And I’ll try not to cough all over everyone.

The plan to hit the cold hard with supplements and sleep seems to have worked. I can move and breath and mostly function after only three days. Not feeling 100% but feeling better.

As long as I don’t overdo it I should be good.

n

(time to stack some rest.)

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Mon. June 9, 2025 – what, another open thread?

Yup, and another Houston day. 85F to start, 95F in the middle, and a little cooler to end. Repeat.

Spent the day in bed. Back is killing me, but the cold is responding to the supplements and the sleep.

So today the plan is to get up and move around. Make a pickup even. I’m not liking it, and I wouldn’t want to spread sickness, but this auctioneer is completely inflexible on pickups. So I’ll cough all over their office while mentioning that, and maybe they’ll make a change. Or not.

another opportunity for y’all to choose a topic, not that you don’t anyway…

n

do some stacking!

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Thur. June 5, 2025 – 05052025 – home sweet home

Hot and humid here in the swamp. Houston may be the City of Trees, but that’s not the first thing that comes to mind, the humidity is. And it looks like it will be both hot and humid for the rest of summer. It’ll all just be a matter of degree.

Started the day fairly leisurely in WDW, ended at home in Houston. Raining, hot and humid in both places, although Houston was worse. Flight and airports were find. Flying mid day and mid week helped. It was a no stress end to a long week.

FWIW, I don’t think I’m up for 5 days in a row in amusement parks, not with this weather anyway. 20K steps a day. No wonder I’m tired.

Home now though. Blessed be Blue Charmin…

Kids are now out of school and home with me all day. No science camps or daytime activities to suck up their energy, just the enhanced gravity well around the teenager’s bed. I should basically have the house to myself until noon at least…

And I better use some of that time wisely. Lots to do. Starting with a run to my auctioneer to drop off a truck load of stuff, I’ll also do some pickups. I’ve got some Dr visits to fit into the next week or two, and lots of cleaning up and selling of stuff. The list is long, and getting longer.

Plus, hurricane season has started. I need to do hurricane preps on top of everything else. Ay Carumba!

But first, some restorative sleep.

Later, more improvements, and more stacking.

n

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Tues. June 3, 2025 – more competition to check out….

And more hot, humid, and probably rainy weather. The overcast was nice, and the rain held off until evening, and then cleared out pretty quickly. The forecast calls for pretty much the same today.

Epic Universal is a new park. It’s only been open to the public for about a week, with soft open for friends and family before that. There are a lot of “tweaks” being made, as you’d expect. There are a lot of unfinished things too. Masking tape still in place, missing electrical covers, building supplies or trash out where they can be seen… The funniest was the rain water dripping out of ceiling mounted smoke detectors in the Carousel attraction. There must be a big leak in that roof, and probably more than one based on the number of places there were drips.

There were a lot of broken things too. 10% of the Carousel was tagged out. I suspect the lap belt system is at fault, based on what I saw them trying to fix. Mandatory lap belts for a carousel, even for adults! Several places already had significant wear, or intentional damage. There were a lot of props and stage dressings that were too close to audience or guests. That stuff will vanish quickly. Sound levels throughout the park were off, mainly too loud, but still unintelligible.

On the other hand, the level of design and detailing was very high. I was using google translate on the signs and waybills in the France area, and they all translated and most were funny as well as being ‘in world’.

I wouldn’t recommend Epic at this time. Let them work out operational issues and do the shake down cruise fixes. Let them figure out how to get wait times down. Nothing there is worth the waits that we saw yesterday.

Today we’re on another Universal property, although I’m not sure what and when. Should be fun if the waits aren’t as bad as Epic. If it rains, all bets are off, as all the outdoor rides shut down. Then the indoor ride wait times skyrocket. It’s always something.

Flexibility and patience will be key- as they are with prepping. Stack stuff, work on flexibility and patience.

nick

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Mon. June 2, 2025 – let’s see how the competition plays…

Probably hot and sunny today. Yesterday was nice for most of the day, cool and cloudy, but after noon it got very hot in the sun. So I napped. Later was nice, after the sun went down, especially when there was a breeze.

We spent the morning in Animal Kingdom. The Avatar attraction is still cool, but needs some alignment. They’ve redone the intro stuff, replacing Sigourney Weaver, and taking out most of the eco crap. Not all. Basically they took out almost everything that referred to movie stuff.

We spent the afternoon napping, and evening eating in Epcot. BTW, they re-did the intro stuff for Mission:space too, replacing the white man with a black woman. There is a chinese guy in a wheelchair in the background, running a console too.

Apparently this is pride week which someone suggested was part of the reason for low attendance. It explains all the rainbow crep I keep seeing.

Dunno if it’s related, but the low attendance has been nice for us.

Today will be universal’s Epic. No Fastpasses so it’s gonna suck.

I’ll see what security is like there, when the demographic is typically different than WDW.

I’m falling asleep at the keyboard it’s time for me to stack some zzz’s.

nick

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Sat. May 31, 2025 – Epcot? Hollywood studios? Somewhere else?

Supposed to be another humid, hot day, with a chance of rain. Disney parks are fine in the rain. Universal, not as much. Yesterday was mid 80sF with occasional cooler patches, mostly when it was raining. We avoided most of the rain, only getting sprinkled. I’m hoping for similar today.

See yesterday’s comments if you are interested in my day at the Magic Kingdom.

Today we’re either doing Hollywood Studios, Epcot, both, or something else. Sibling is a planner and an expert Disney user, so I let the wife and sibling plan the days. They’re built around the Lightning Lane availability, I know that much.

My mom has been doing great so far. We have a wheel chair to move her around the parks, but she ‘transfers’ to rides under her own power. She even rode Tron. The chair saves her a lot of energy and lets us move at our walking pace instead of hers.

Surprisingly, the park isn’t full of power chair scooters and double wide baby strollers. It must just be the time of the year. Lots of foreign tourists, mostly spanish speakers, but not the horde of brazillians we’ve had before. They are incredibly obnoxious so I’m happy to not have them. People say american tourists are loud and inappropriate, but the brazillians are horrible.

Just doing my part for international relations…

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FWIW, in the morning I walked through the security scanner without issue. And the entry system read my thumbprint fine. When we returned in the evening, the entry system wouldn’t read my thumbprint and the scanner flagged me for secondary inspection with a wand and a look under my shirt. I had my altoids tin first aid kit in the pocket of my shorts. The guard indicated it was what set off the scanner. They didn’t open it or look in it though. White male with an overshirt… walking alone. FFS, it’s like a stereotype. EVERY time I’ve been alone in the entry line I get pulled out. Airports too. Today I’m taking the kid with me.

I’m stacking some good times, I hope you have some too.

nick

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Fri. May 30, 2025 – Short shrift while I’m on vacation…

Probably warm and humid here in central Florida. Maybe some rain, although I don’t think we’re in the rainy season. There is a front pushing through that might get us some clear sky for the next couple of days. Or not. We’ll see.

Did my errands in the morning, made it to the chiropractor and Costco for gas and sunglasses, and made it home in time to pack and leave for the airport in plenty of time. Of course we didn’t. And then the airport was all kinds of messed up. We’d have missed the flight if it wasn’t delayed an hour by weather. This has happened before, and I’m pretty much done letting my wife do the travel day schedule…

But we got here.

Today is one of the parks, not sure which. The itinerary was worked out long ago and I’m just along for the ride.

I’ll be keeping my eyes open and looking for the stuff most people don’t see. No stacking except memories and good times.

Stack a few yourselves…

nick

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