Category: personal

Fri. Oct. 31, 2025 – Halloween

Cold-ish to start, getting mildly nice later, and cool again in the evening… like yesterday. Hopefully without a lot of wind. Yesterday was very nice, if a bit chilly after dark.

I did get my pickups done, but basically resigned myself to not doing a crazy display this year. We had weather, I got a late start, and I just wasn’t feeling it this year. Usually I love Halloween, not for any occult or religious reason, but because I can decorate and make props letting a bit of my theater background out. This year, it will be some of my classic decor but not much new. And usually I have a bunch of it out for weeks before the day. Not this time, which is a little disappointing and sad if I’m honest with myself. NEXT year…

I will have to spend some time getting stuff out of the attic and getting a few things in place. Foam headstones and some lighting, animated witch figures, some skeletons (maybe wrapped like mummies as I’ve decided on that for next year.) Certainly the fog machine and the video projection of Sauron’s Eye. It should still be fun, even if not as much stuff as usual.

I’ve got other stuff from the list to do too, but that will have to wait until Saturday and Sunday. We’re here for kid stuff anyway.

Enjoy the secular version of the holiday, pass out candy and treats to the little beggars, and maybe chat with your neighbors. Building community is a prep.

So is stacking, but you knew that.
nick

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Thur. Oct. 30, 2025 – Halloween approaches

Cool, soon to be cold. Probably low 60sF to start then warmer later. Not too warm though, I don’t think it even hit 75F yesterday. Clear skies and more wind is probably in the forecast again. It was 55F when I went to bed.

I actually got some stuff done today. I received my IKEA delivery (and later assembled the drawers and doors.) Paid the lawn guy. His industrial strength backpack blower could barely move all the acorns off the walk and into the grass. The concrete is stained with the tannin from where they got crushed and wet. Did four pickups and the thrift store next door to one.

I even made dinner and did a load of laundry. Oh, and there was more domestic bliss in the morning too. I even found a little time to read. All in all a productive day.

Today I’m hoping to do more of the same. I still have shelves to mount in the laundry room, and to replace everything we moved out to paint and reconfigure… and I have more cleaning and organizing to do, as well as more decorating. I might hit a thrift store on my way home from the two pickups I need to do and see if more stuff for my tentative theme jumps out at me. If not, this might be a fairly low key year.

Most of this work is to improve my current situation. Shore up some things, so to speak. I’ve still got a lot of generator work to do, including installing the wheel kit I got yesterday… among other things. The list is long, the time is short, and the motivation is lacking.

Don’t stop stacking.

nick

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Wed. Oct. 29, 2025 – when first we practice to deceive

Cool. Even cooler than before since a front blew in yesterday. We got two bouts of heavy rain, but they didn’t last long. Soaked everything twice though. Today is supposed to be clear, and it’s still getting hot in the afternoon. We’ll see.

I didn’t get much of anything done. I did order the doors and a set of shelves for the laundry room/pantry project. IKEA’s website sux the ded bunnies. And they’re not cheap. But it will be delivered today, sometime before noon. That’s better than if I went to the store myself, especially since they only had the stuff in a store in Round Rock. I’m not making a 5 hour round trip to save $30 in delivery fees. Clearly there are some weird logistics and fulfillment issues when it’s quicker to get a delivery to my door than pick stuff up at my local store, or even the nearest ‘in stock’ store. Part of teh sux is that their site showed all the items in stock at my local store. But I can’t pick them up there.

Anyway, I felt really weird most of yesterday to the point I went and had a lie down for a while. I think I’m allergic to D2’s Homecoming flowers. When I’m in the kitchen, my head feels very strange, full, buzzy, lightheaded and dizzy but not really?? And I feel better when I’m away from the bouquet. I don’t want to throw out the kid’s flowers, but I’m pretty sure they are making me ill.

I did get a little cleaning done, and read for a while.

Today though, I’ve got stuff to do while waiting for the delivery, then a couple of pickups. I should do more decorating too. Hopefully the rain is done.

Being part of the community is a prep. And making things fun for the kids is too. These are the good old times.

But I won’t forget stacking either.

nick

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Sun. Oct. 19, 2025 – hope I can get a few more things underway

Cool-ish, then warmer, maybe all the way to hot. It was very nice yesterday, with some clouds but no rain. Forecast has us in the clear for a couple more days. I did some flood watering of the front yard yesterday, and I have to check the sprinklers today.

I got a few things done yesterday. Not finished, but steps on the path toward finished. I put another coat of drywall mud on my laundry room repairs. I watered the yard. Cleaned the water feature and got the pump reconnected to the little waterfall thing. I think I’ll add some goldfish this week as there were little tiny worms in the filter material. The sound of the water is nice.

I also did some minor rearranging in my office, adding some mini wire shelves to stack some of the radio and test gear a little more neatly, which gave me some more room to put stuff away. It also got the shelves out of the kitchen where they were [temporarily] stored. A couple of other small jobs got done too. It was more productive than just sitting around, but while it was progress it wasn’t huge. I did keep me moving toward the goal.

Since the tasks are big, even small steps are helpful.

Today I’ll do some more and hopefully several ‘in process’ tasks will complete to make some real progress. There is so much to do it’s a bit overwhelming and disheartening. It’s taken a while to overcome the inertia so I want to keep making progress.

I’ll also be getting some of the Halloween stuff out. I’ve got a reputation to uphold, after all. Being part of the neighborhood and community is important.

D1 is sick again. Swollen neck glands, and a constricted throat. Doc in the box prescribed antibiotics because the flu test is only about 70% accurate. If she responds well, we’ll know it was an infection, not a virus. She is confused and unhappy because she never really got sick as a little kid and she doesn’t like it.

By the time I was her age, I’d had the real flu with all the puking, serious fevers, a couple dozen stitches, nose bleeds, a black eye, strep, mono, and chicken pox. I’d had an infection of my optic nerve, and various other things, including serious burns, and before I left high school, a few car accidents, and some traumatic brain injuries, and dozens of hangovers. Oh, and severe allergies and chronic bronchitis. I tore something in my shoulder wrestling, and was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, although we went with physical therapy and not surgery. I knew the receptionist at the local hospital by name and even tried to date her later on.

Oh, and a full series of rabies shots.

FWIW, it didn’t get any better over the next few years either. My list of injuries just grew from there.

My siblings had much the same. My cousins too, and worse.

I’m glad my kids haven’t had all that, but hearing her cry last night because a cockroach landed on her makes me wonder how she’s going to cope when Real Life ™ gets around to kicking her in the teeth. It’s especially worrisome because of what I believe is coming for us all.

But that’s a different sort of prep, one that isn’t really solvable by stacking. Stacks will make everything else better though. Get to it.

nick

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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.

————
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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