Warmish, humid, possibly raining, and generally yucky weather. Or not. ’cause Houston!
Yesterday was pretty nice, if a bit humid. I did indoors stuff, and then spent the afternoon running around. School, bank, Post office… Daughter2’s STAAR test was fine, but a whole lot of students got to sit around for a day when the huge centralized testing program went offline. Millions of wasted learning hours…
Had to go to the bank. Hmm. Still need a mask. Felt like I was robbing the train or something. Oh, and if the bank was serious about reducing COVID risk, they’d put more than one teller in the glass box in the afternoon. We had 10 or eleven customers standing in line for half an hour, and 3 or four bank employees, all waiting on ONE teller in a not particularly large space. I was the only white person in the bank. Wypeepo don’t go into the bank anymore?
Got my cashier’s check, then it was off to the Post Office… fortunately our branch lets people just leave Priority mail on the counter and not stand in line. The lobby was full of people and the line is very slow moving at the best of times. From the beginning of this whole thing, the PO has been dirty and crowded. Still dirty, slow, and crowded. If a global pandemic won’t get them to change, who can expect anything to change them?
Everywhere I look I see people ready for the whole thing to be over. That is great if it is, and I think there is some evidence to support the idea we’re over the hump. I think far more people have had it than the numbers would suggest and we are therefore closer to ‘herd’ immunity than the fearmongers would have us believe. On the other hand, we’ve seen that every time large groups get together, cases and all the other metrics go up. I HOPE we’re at the point where that won’t happen in any big way. Like so many other times, I find myself saying “we’ll see”. *
Today should be more of the same. One of my auctions went live yesterday, so I need to work on filling bins for the next one (and driving myself mad watching the bids). I’ve certainly got plenty of stuff. I’m a bit concerned that demand for other people’s stuff is falling off. It will at some point outside of “grail” objects, it’s bound to be hard to sell collectables to people who are short on money for food. JerryP used to say he was after peoples’ beer money, not their ‘eating’ money. Almost everything I have in inventory is fully in the realm of discretionary spending. When money gets tight, that spending dries up. If you’ve been thinking about selling off some crap, I mean precious memories, do it now.
As an aside, it’s been so long since I was in the bank or used the ATM that I didn’t realize my card had expired. Took a while to figure out that the replacement was buried under stuff on my desk. LOTS of stuff expired on my birthday and I need to get on top of that. Passport, debit card, ARRL membership, non-prepping hobby org membership, and I’m sure some other stuff too. Take a second to look through your stuff and see if you will need to renew anything, and get a jump on it. Everything is taking longer these days, and you wouldn’t want to be without your CHL or ham license, or any professional memberships or licenses.
There’s always something more to consider or do. That’s why you need to get a good base in place to cover, well, the basics. Then you have time to consider the less obvious things, and build real depth in your preps.
And have stacks of stuff. Always stacks of stuff.
nick
*some translators of the story behind the link use “we’ll see” instead of the farmer’s “who knows” or “maybe”…