96F and 56%RH at 9 am is HOT.
Slept in. So did the kids. Feel like sleeping some more.
Still think I’m coming down with something. Throat is scratchy and head is a bit stuffy.
Stuff to do today so I better get started.
n
72F and 96%RH. Beautiful day yesterday, getting hot later, but starting off awesome. More of the same forecast for today.
I’ve got my “non-prepping hobby” meeting this morning, and NO sportsball with the kids to cut it short or take up the rest of the day. It’ll probably be a short meeting with nothing interesting to do. ‘cuz that’s how my life works some days.
Lots of small tasks got accomplished this week. I feel like progress was made, although not on any of the big jobs. Purchases were limited to a few small things, mostly for the household. Ebay sales were non-existent.
Garden is still growing, although the one orange on the tree disappeared.
New water barrel is in place but still needs to be plumbed. No chainsaws are actually running yet, but my hopes are high. Just need some small pieces of fuel line, some cleaning, and one or two small parts (primer bulb, missing nut.)
I made a couple of small changes to my office, and I can walk into it again. Not <i>clean</i> by any stretch, but I’m working on it.
More work to do later today, but now I’m off to meet with actual people. (some of whom are hams, one of whom introduced me to the ham lunch group- meatspace baby! and I’m not talking about the deli counter) I’m going to see if I have time to bring baked goods.
n
72F and saturated. Occasional spotty ‘water from the sky’ yesterday late. I could see localized raining and thunderstorms, but our neighborhood just got the occasional spatter of drops.
Anyone else here wish they’d bought gold in the 70s? Just a little every month?
Or start learning a martial art? Or an instrument? If you’d started at the turn of the century, you’d have almost 20 YEARS of practice in. Pretty much anything other than golf or bridge, if you’ve been “doing it for 20 years” you’re probably pretty good at it and certainly an ‘oldtimer’.
Incrementalism can work in our favor too. Get started. There is time left.
These are the ‘good ole days’. Enjoy them, and use the time wisely.
n
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Robert Bruce Thompson.
It’s also the anniversary of D-Day– the Normandy Invasion… my wife has a relative buried there as do far too many.
Today raise a toast to “Absent friends”.
Nick
75F and raining. Probably not getting super hot today. Yesterday was hot and humid enough for two days. Sun was out until late, when we got a quick and quiet shower. The radar maps had us getting rain late in the night and so we have been. My weather station says we’ve gotten 0.85 inch since midnight.
Did not sleep well last night. Weird dreams. Woke dreaming of working for 0.1%-ers in Chicago or some other old and big city. The gap between the wealthy and the not keeps getting bigger. Our Lords are not tied to the land, but the serfs still are. Methinks that sometime soon, we’ll have a lot fewer Lords, but times will be terrible for the serfs too. Will we see a return of families throwing their daughters out on the water like a lifeline? Will the nouveau riche scramble to find alliances to save their fortunes through their kids? If so, the old money will definitely have the edge, what with all those centuries of practice…
n
79F and 94%RH at 7:55 am. Yesterday was hot, sunny, and mostly clear.
I felt like hammered *stuff* when I got up at 6, so I went back to bed. Feel a lot better at 7:30.
I have swim team practice with the girls this am, so I better get them up and fed.
More later.
n
74F and 99%RH this morning. Jeez it was sweaty and hot yesterday, with full sun most of the day. I did my yard work while the yard was in shade, and there was some overcast later in the day, but jeez, did I mention it was hot?
I continued chipping away at a couple of jobs. I actually had one chainsaw running for almost a minute after cleaning the carb and replacing rotten gas hose. Missing gas hose is a common issue for older saws. I must have sucked up some debris though, because it wouldn’t restart. I ran out of carb cleaner and replacement fuel line before getting the big saw open and running. More work on those later.
I did get my new rain water barrel situated on blocks and leveled.
Garden is still growing.
I did some other small cleanup and maintenance jobs around the house too. I’m alternating between inside and outside, so I have a chance to cool down.
Today the kids are at the rock gym climbing all day, so I have a chance to get some stuff done at my customer site. I have to install some networking and get some outdoor speakers running. All hot work, so I’m trying to get there in the morning. Plans. Huh. We’ll see.
Time to wake the krakens…
n
Hot and humid, possibly with rain. We did get a little bit of rain late yesterday evening, and temps came down slightly. No idea what today will hold. Openweathermap says mid 90s and light rain. We’ll see.
Hopefully, I’m still asleep with the airconditioning running and the kids in bed.
If not, I’ll surely update this.
n
71F and 99%RH. Got a few drops of rain yesterday and some overcast. It really looked like a storm coming a couple of times, but it never came for me.
Early start today because swim team is having a mock meet to do time trials for the kids and deck official training for the parent volunteers. I’m a parent, and apparently I was volunteered.
Then a wrap up party for softball, then a party for my now 10 year old… busy long day ahead.
It would be nice if the forecast rain holds off, and it doesn’t get too hot today.
Weird that we still know few details of the ‘long time and current employee’ who murdered all those people in Virginia Beach. Funny that there isn’t a picture at the top of the story by now. That he used a ‘suppressed .45 handgun with extended magazines’ is pretty specific. And REALLY unusual.
I better get moving. Breakfast isn’t gonna cook itself.
n
79F and 97%RH this am. Turns out that the NOAA forecast calling for T-storms and heavy rain was correct for some parts of Houston, and the openweathermap forecast calling for tenths of a mm was correct for me. While we got just a spatter of fat drops, my wife got inundated in a classic gully washer. Microclimates.
As we kick May to the curb (or kerb, but then you guys don’t use the expression do you?) and prepare for June, local norms for weather begin to reassert themselves. We had a long cooler spring and it was great, but summer is here. For the east and Gulf coasts, that means Hurricane Season. Get ready, we’ve already had one named storm in the Atlantic.
The world continues to see upheaval in the geopolitical balance. It looks like a lot more than normal tussling to me, and not good for civilization. Think about what the fall of Rome must have looked like to the average well to do Roman. Did goods from far away trade begin to be scarce? Did soldiers fail to come home? Were there an awful lot of unfamiliar faces in the marketplace? Was there a lot of foreign gabble heard everywhere you went? Did neighborhoods and enclaves spring up around you that were full of those same foreigners? Was the news full of former subject lands telling Rome to GTFO? Did those subject lands begin to have adventures of their own? Did the familiar political process at home fall apart?
I think we’re well into the fall. How do you get through and how does your family? It’s a slow moving disaster, that lasts a long time. Your planning horizon needs to expand, outsiders probably won’t be a help, and you will have to accept that the change is permanent. I hope not. I hope the rise of movements can reclaim what we had, but I suspect it’s the last burst of energy before collapse.
Not a happy thought for today, but I had some disturbing dreams and woke early.
This should be the WDYDTPTW post, so what DID you do to prep this week??
n