Tues. July 27, 2021 – trying to get caught up, then some interesting learning…

By on July 27th, 2021 in gardening, personal, WuFlu

Hot and hot. Sunny and hot. Hot. Yesterday was hot, over 100F in the shade. Today will be hot.

So I cut the grass. I’d started the back and the battery died, so I needed to finish today. Only took a few minutes in the sun, then I did the front, which is in the shade. Barely broke a sweat despite the heat.

Did a bit of weeding in the garden too. Tomatoes are showing some stress, and the fruits are very small now. No actual ripe tomatoes at the moment. One of the three cabbages is forming a head, the other 2 are just leaves. The collards are doing ok. One plus to the citrus trees dying in the freeze, I get more sun and can maybe do some more beds where the trees were. That will take a bit of thought to decide. I still have the lime and grapefruit trees in pots that I could plant.

Daughter 1 had her second shot Sunday. She wasn’t feeling 100% yesterday. By the end of the day she was kinda ache-y and a little nauseous. I’m trying not to be a d!ck about it. Wasn’t my decision. We’ll see how today goes.

I’ve got to get out of the house today and get some stuff done. I have a class through my Citizen’s Police Academy later this evening. Should be very interesting. More on that later.

In order to get out of the house, I’m going to see about dropping the kids off at the pool for the day. There is at least one friend that might be good for a day at the pool too, and then my wife can pick them all up at the end of the day. Plus, it gets them out of the house and exercising.

It will be nice to get back in school and have more time during the day. Which really bugs me one some levels, because I was looking forward to spending time with the kids. Didn’t do much of that though after all. So we’ve arranged after school care for daughter 2 four days a week and I’ll have to pick her up one day. I hope to use that time for some together time with her. If I don’t structure the time, it doesn’t happen, so I’m giving this a shot. Time is flying by.

It’s flying by for more than just family time. The changes and violence around us seems to be accelerating. Big changes usually come pretty suddenly and people say “no one saw it coming” when plenty of people did. Use your sight. Stack stuff.

nick

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Wed. July 28, 2021 – ti i iii ime is (not) on my si i ide…

No it ain’t.

Another hot humid sunny day with a chance of rain. Which is what I had at home yesterday, but not what all of central Houston (inside the Loop) got. They got overcast with rain. Micro climates, we haz them. And that makes it really hard to get forecasts for Houston and the surrounding area right. That and they’re just guessing anyway. Even looking out the window won’t work.

Spent the day on things, somehow it passed anyway. I did get 4 of the big black bins out of the foyer and over to my storage unit. I figure they can sit there while waiting for an auctioneer to take them instead of where my wife sees them every day. In return I brought a rolling metro rack home to stack more things on. Or to take to my other storage unit, and to stack things on it there, until the auctioneer takes them for sale.

I’m looking at getting over to both units today too. And I need to start piling stuff I want to try to sell at my non-prepping hobby regional meet and swap fest. That is specialist stuff that could go on ebay but might sell quicker in person. I’ll trade some sale price for not having to ship or list. That’s coming up in about 3-4 weeks and I need to start on it.

Pickups today too, if I can find the time. Some preps, some household, some gifts for later. Gub accessories. Needful things without a sales receipt attached.

————————————————————–

I’ve mentioned before that I think everyone should take advantage of all the training they can get, whatever it might be for. Collecting IDs and privileges can’t hurt. You are ALREADY on their lists, you might as well be in the ‘good guy’ column. CERT, any police/public interaction program, active shooter response through your church, ham radio, Red Cross, Stop the Bleed, even locksmithing can get you the ability to carry certain tools in your vehicle without it being a crime. CERT got me an official first responder ID from the County. The CPA programs got me ID with the city and the Constable’s office as a volunteer. Being a ‘known quantity’ can also open up more training opportunities, and more chances to learn about how your local guys do what they do.

CERT was very well supported in our area with high level attention from the city, county, and emergency agencies. Had the chance to meet and learn from some interesting people. You can sign up and take a whole bunch of FEMA online courses associated with that too. You will learn a lot. The police interaction programs gave me a whole lot better understanding of their procedures, challenges, resources, and mindset. After passing through those programs, I could take further classes with them, and volunteer to help them with training, both of which gave me further insights.

Last night’s class was also both interesting and informative. I have a clearer picture of the operational tempo of two of the specialist units in our police department, how they interact with other local and federal agencies and teams, where some of their funding comes from and the capabilities that funding bought (and the strings attached.) I got some public but not widely disseminated information about some of the stuff they’ve done recently, and some of the stuff they do daily. And, based on their joking and ‘aside’ comments, have a feeling about where they stand on some current issues of governance and public behaviour. All good things to know.

Meatspace baby. You need to be in it. You need to go to the neighborhood meetings. You need to know some of your local government. You need to know some of their enforcers. And yeah, being known to them, at least on some level, isn’t a bad thing either. It gives you access, and opportunities and might get you the benefit of the doubt at a time when that’s crucial. Being in the ‘provisional good guy’ column beats being in the ‘presumed bad guy’ column.

Goodwill and knowing people, you can stack them too. Get busy.

nick

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Thur. July 29, 2021 – kids at rock gym, me working…

Sunny and hot, chance of rain. We’re in the middle of the thunderstorm zone today and tomorrow so we might actually get it. We didn’t get any rain yesterday despite the possibility. I even drove across town, and didn’t get wet.

Did my pickup yesterday and have a couple to do today. Then I’m off to my secondary to do a bunch more clean up. It’s gonna be a long day of hot hard work if everything goes to plan.

And I need to keep an eye on some auctions. There is a vet clinic selling everything, not too far from my house. There are a number of things I’d like to have from that auction… if the zombies ever come.

There’s another fairly close auction with a bunch of air rifles and the current prices are low. In the auctions in general, there has been a lot of late bidding lately, so low prices 8 hours out might not mean what it would have last year, but I’d like to pick up a couple of nice ones for the stacks…

And there is another auction with a bunch of stuff for my non-prepping hobby. I didn’t win any of the stuff I was bidding on this week, so I’m keeping an eye on this sale.

But I can’t sit in front of the computer all day, the kids are out of my hair, and I’ve got stuff to get done.

SO MUCH STUFF.

But it will let me break this log jam and keep making forward progress. “Everything takes longer and costs more.” If I repeated that mantra at work, I should understand that it applies to me in my home life too, right? But I’m SPECIAL and I operate as if it wasn’t true. Well it is true, and not acknowledging that can lead to frustration and disappointment and discouragement. Time to deal with it and just keep pushing through.

The end goal is to have stacks of stuff that will help me, not hinder me. Anything that hinders has to go. And if it helps, it gets priority.

I’m picking up more shelves today… and while it costs time, they should help organize, condense, and ultimately improve my situation.

Keep working to improve your situation. By stacking, or by getting rid of some stuff. Sometimes getting rid of a stack is the best thing you can do.

nick

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Fri. July 30, 2021 – whew, I’m beat up today…

By on July 30th, 2021 in ebay, medical, personal, rats, why we prepare, WuFlu

Hot and humid, possible rain. We didn’t get the rain yesterday, and I was north, south, and in the middle. It was a bit cooler with the breeze when the sun went behind a cloud. Otherwise it was hot.

I got my morning stuff out of the way, then got out of the house to do my pickups. Shelves mostly. Then I headed to my secondary location. Set up some shelves so I can move the stuff that’s on top of the shipping containers, and chop up the containers. I also decided to just trash everything, not save the stuff with aluminum frames for recycle. Let someone pull them out of the dumpsters, if they get lucky.

I filled my pickup 3 times and filled two dumpsters. Cut up two of the containers and emptied them. I am starting to see a big space, that will fill instantly as I start moving stuff around. Still, progress, right? It is beating me up though. I can do two of the containers before I’m stumbling and starting to not be coordinated and graceful. Working alone with saws and moving stuff, not a good idea when you get weary.

Part of that is being 55. Part is that it’s very hot. Part is that each container needs about 30 trips out to the truck while carrying the stuff. Since I started with the shelves and dumping the stuff that was on pallets in the parking lot, I was ready to be done after one container. I pushed through and got the second done too. I’m starting to get pretty scratched up too. Just handling and moving around the stuff has been beating up my arms, shins, calves, and hands.

Wah, wah, wah…. ok enough whining. I also chatted with my neighbor there, and sold him a metalworking tool. He’s going to assemble it, then we’ll finalize the price. Even if it’s beat up or missing fasteners, he should be able to get it working. Walking around his space, I realized I’ve been selling him stuff for years. He gets the machines and tools he needs, I get to move some inventory. Win win! And that is how meatspace is supposed to work.

Puppy had a good day, despite being home alone. No accidents in the house! He used the doggy door and went out during the day. Hooray. That is definitely progress.

Today I’ve got the kids at home, so my tired body will get a bit of rest, but there is still a lot do do here. Maybe I’ll get some of it done 🙂

And then I can continue stacking all the things!

nick

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Sat. July 31, 2021 – early to bed, early to rise….

By on July 31st, 2021 in ebay, medical, personal, rats, WuFlu

Perhaps not quite as hot today? Maybe we’ll get some of the rain that threatened yesterday but never got to my house. Still in the T-storm ‘possible’ zone according to the national weather liars… we never got more than a spatter, although we did get the delta T and the wind.

I spent the day messing about indoors for the most part. I was wiped out from my day shifting tradeshow booth from storage to dumpster, and my back and hands hurt, so I took it easier. Had the kids at home so my options were limited anyway. Mostly I did maintenance stuff around the house and yard. Not much of it, but some. I also did some auction stuff, and while everyone else watched a movie (Jungle Cruise), I put a repair project back together.

It had been sitting apart in my office for a LONG time. Didn’t work when finished. There was a part that was completely rotted away that I hadn’t noticed, but it was obvious that something was missing when I got it together. Oh well, it takes up a lot less room together than apart, and I may sell it for parts.

Everywhere I clean, organize, or move stuff, I find more stuff that I’d ‘tucked away.’ It’s ebay stuff for the most part, but it never got listed. Some is stuff I wanted for myself, but never moved to its final location. And a lot of it is books. I would really like to have more bookshelves, but I’ve run out of wall…

Today I’ve got two pickups then I’m headed back to my secondary to continue plugging away at it. I need the space so I can do the auction, to start getting more space… and summer is running out. School in about 2 weeks or just a bit more. When school starts I’ve got the big rip and replace for my client to do, as well as the auctions. And all the house stuff.

I better get to it.

Stack something! You know you wanna.

nick

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Sun. Aug. 1, 2021 – new month, same old story…

By on August 1st, 2021 in personal, WuFlu

Sunny and hot, with or without rain. Like Saturday. We got clobbered at various times and places yesterday, but you would hardly know if you weren’t in the right place at the right time. The slightly lower humidity and the sun helped to really dry stuff off much more quickly than usual.

I got my pickups done, and got over to my secondary location. I broke down the last two shipping crates and disposed of the contents. It has really opened a lot of room, which I must now fill. I’ll be ‘tetris-ing’ stuff into the newly created space to make room for the pallets of stuff I’m auctioning. I may also find more stuff for the recycler or dumpster. Scrap prices are up, so I may scrap some things myself.

Once I really make some space over there, I can move a bunch of preps back over. I moved them home when it looked like we might be facing real movement restrictions. It’s conditioned space, so a better place to store stuff than my garage or patio. And it’s spreading the eggs to more than one basket. Looking at pix of tornado devastation, it’s very important to have some of your stuff elsewhere, even if that is just a storage unit or a black bin in a friend’s garage.

Don’t know what I’ll get to today. I have a bunch of small tasks stacked up at home. Little things with the kids, like hanging paintings, or fixing stuff, and they have asked if we can do some of that. Probably a good way to spend the day…

Stack up some love and time with the family too.

nick

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Mon. Aug. 2, 2021 – same old stuff- you’d think I would try something new

By on August 2nd, 2021 in personal, WuFlu

Hot and humid, possible rain. Pretty much like every day here. We call it ‘summer’. Certainly was hot and humid yesterday. Hid in the house all day.

Didn’t get much done yesterday. Did some small office things, a couple of repairs from the stack. Finished the three small projects I started yesterday for auction. Opened some mail.

Cooked breakfast (spam slices and instant hash brown potatoes, d2’s favorite breakfast.)

Cooked dinner (lamb roast, canned peas, boiled cubed turnips, shelf stable bread.)

D1’s cut cheek continues to heal. Little bit of bruising showing now which is consistent with the mechanism of injury.

Puppy will poop in the house when there are people home, but mostly doesn’t when people are not here. Strange. He doesn’t get any attention at all unless we catch him in the act, so that’s not it. The joys of having a toddler in the house.

Today should be messing around in the house and yard, spending some time with the kids and dog, and one pickup.

Maybe move some more stuff around. So I can stack some more.

Stack it up. Bad times are coming.

nick

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Tues. Aug. 3, 2021 – do all the things!

By on August 3rd, 2021 in ebay, personal, WuFlu

Hot and humid. Got over 100F at my house yesterday and the bright sun was like a laser scorching my eyes and skin. I got soaked in sweat just standing outside my truck talking on the phone.

Spent the morning sleeping. Then did a pickup of some vintage audio gear. Speakers need to be re-foamed, and all the other stuff needs to be tested but there should be some money there. Hit the goodwill outlet on the way home and grabbed most of the Harvard Five Foot Book Shelf books. I think I have 40+ of the 50+ volumes. 50c per book. Depending on the edition they should sell for $150 – 300. I picked them up to sell, but of course, I would like to have them on MY shelf. If I had room on my shelves. Which I don’t. At all. Funny, they are old so the book sellers skipped them completely. They were in the bin for at least an hour… but they don’t have UPC codes to scan so those guys don’t want them.

The goodwill outlet I stopped at is ‘in the hood’. It’s only the second time I’ve been in there. It’s a lot dirtier, with a lot more broken stuff than the outlet in my neighborhood. The other one, also in a ‘bad’ neighborhood (Greenspoint, known locally as ‘Gunspoint’) is dirty and full of broken junk too. I guess location might matter. Management probably does too.

I need to in-process the stuff I got, and get the auction stuff separated and stacked, as well as get back to my secondary and make some more progress there. I’m finally building momentum, so you know what comes next. . . long weekend away from home. Yup. 4 days, plus time to pack, and un-pack. At least it will be at one of the lakes we are looking at for a getaway house. We can drive around and maybe even see a property or two. That part is helpful for long term goals. 4 days off, not so much.

But there is more to life than work and prepping. These are the good old days and I do need to spend them with family.

And hey, maybe I’ll end up with a BOL after all…

(keep stacking)

nick

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Wed. Aug. 4, 2021 – busy busy busy

By on August 4th, 2021 in personal, prepping, WuFlu

Hot and humid, sunny. Possibility of rain. Like yesterday only hotter. It was under 100F for most of the afternoon so I worked outside.

Yeah, I wore a white shirt and my cool vest, big straw hat, and drank several electrolyte replacement drinks and took breaks. I did get the back yard mowed, edged, some weeds pulled, and I organized and cleaned and condensed stuff in the driveway. It was the stuff in the driveway that took the most time. Although edging took surprisingly long, far longer than usual and I don’t really know why. I did have to refill the string trimmer twice, and I don’t normally run out but that didn’t take long (since I have string stacked up.)

In the driveway I found some stuff that got water damaged. Freaking rain will find its way through 4 layers of tarp and plastic if you aren’t super careful. And the plastic sheet breaks down from UV. Nothing lasts anymore. The blue tarps get threadbare. The black sheet gets brittle. The white sheet I’m using does both as it has reinforcing threads. It lasted about a year so its actually pretty good. Everything plastic degrades in the sun now. Buckets too. Add salt air and there is no way the alarmists are correct about how long plastic will last in the environment. I can’t even get a tarp to last more than a few months.

The message for preppers is- keep your stuff out of the sun. Have some metal buckets for backup. You need more plastic sheet in storage to replace the stuff you used when it degrades. Plastic sheet and buckets are two of the most underappreciated preps, but they are two of the most versatile.

And if you are storing wood outside in Houston, it will rot. My pallets are squishing, stored 2x material is growing mushrooms, and anything in contact with the ground or concrete is wet. Firewood piles are doing the same.

The antidote for that? Stack more! Rotate your preps. And keep stuff in the proverbial cool dark place.

nick

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Thur. Aug. 5, 2021 – maybe headed out, maybe not

Hot and humid, chance of thunderstorms. Got the tiniest bit of rain late in the day yesterday, after a nice, slightly cooler day with a lot of overcast. Since it was under 100F I did some work at my storage unit. Still got soaked to the skin with sweat.

Spent the rest of the day doing small things, like getting my tire repaired, taking daughter the younger to the library. She had a book on hold that came in and was fairly vibrating with NEED to have it. She’d mostly finished it by bedtime. It was my first time in our local branch library, and it was full of weirdos. Yeah kid, I’m not sending you there alone. Another fallen institution. I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours alone at our local library when I was a kid. Now it’s full of homeless and degenerates.

Wife let the kids stay up late, until midnight, so not rising at the buttcrack of dawn this A.M. to get the car loaded. We had a talk and I may stay behind and then join them for the weekend. That will get me two more good working days that I really need. Between the truck maintenance and the auction clearing out and setting up, I’m falling further behind every day. If I keep posting throughout the day, I’m probably at home.

On a different note, scrap prices are back up. I took some of what I was throwing out to the scrapyard and got 60c/pound for dirty aluminum, and 67c/lb for stainless steel. Even regular steel brought 6c. $15 of the $53 was triple my money by selling off the cr@p that came with a lot of shelving I won last week. Go me. The columbians who bought out the previous owner have managed to clear out almost all the scrap that had piled up on the grounds and in the building. It’s quite amazing. I guess prices got to the point where they were motivated to move it all.

Now I need to keep moving and get more stuff out and sold or scrapped.

Maybe there is still some time left before the shooting starts. I was shocked to read Slow Joe’s comments on the eviction moratorium. He swore to uphold the Constitution, not look for ways around it. If we needed any confirmation that rule of law was dead, his statements about that put the final nail in the coffin. I know the guy isn’t a genius, and his ‘well spoken’ President often lamented that the Constitution got in the way of what he wanted to do, but to come out and say plainly that you know what you are doing doesn’t pass muster, but the length of time it takes the courts to address it will make it moot, so you’re gonna do it anyway, is just freaking nuts.

ANYTHING is possible under color of law now. ANYTHING. The Curmudgeon in charge over at https://adaptivecurmudgeon.com/ has some observations that are worth a consideration.

Irrational people are breaking things. They complain that the “other” is a terrorist, or a disease vector, or “bad for the earth”, or racist, or whatever. There’s a purpose to that. They’re working themselves up into evil actions. Once a person believes “others” must be “corrected” (by force if necessary) they can enjoy a righteous frenzy. Make no mistake, they will enjoy it. They seek to unload their hate and bloodlust. They want to experience the ecstasy of hurting “the other”; their society, their fellow citizens, friends, family, and neighbors. Most people would rather destroy than create. It’s the nature of man. It’s only civilization which keeps it at bay. So, they destroy civilization too. When the smoke clears and time passes, if they’re still standing, they’ll try to remember some version of events that makes them blameless, or even heroes. A few will repent, but it will mean nothing to the ashes under their feet.

This isn’t new. This has happened before. There are countless examples of whole societies losing their damn mind, working up to a religious fervor, and running amok…

Go and read it.

Then stack some more of everything. Keep in mind that money in the bank isn’t. The people that turned in Anne Frank were following the law and the people hiding her were breaking it. And no one cares about you as much as you do. Plan accordingly.

nick

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