Month: September 2013

08:34 – Only two more days until Barbara returns. Colin is getting impatient. Since Sunday, Barbara’s been in the Michigan UP area, first at Mackinac Island and yesterday at Sault Ste. Marie. She hasn’t had a cell signal since they arrived at Mackinac, so I called her last night at her hotel just to make sure everything was okay. She said everything is fine and that she and Marcy are having a great time.

The morning paper reports that Duke Energy has joined a large and growing list of big companies that are eliminating retiree health insurance. Duke will now pay a fixed amount toward Medicare supplement policies for its retirees. I expect this phenomenon to snowball over the next few years. Eventually, all private retirees and many local and state government retirees will find that their only option is Medicare, with their former employers perhaps paying something towards a supplemental policy. Eventually, I expect federal government and military retirees will also be lumped into the Medicare system. This is just an early sign of the creeping defaults government will make on unsustainable promises.

Kit work continues. I need to inventory our bottle supply and put together a PO for more bottles and caps once I figure out what we’re short of.

12:07 – As it turns out, we’re in a lot better shape on bottles than I thought we were. I found a couple of cases that I didn’t realize we had. That gives us enough empty bottles for another 100+ kits–in addition to the labeled bottles we already have in stock, another 100+ kits worth–so I can put off ordering bottles and caps for another couple months.

I did start transferring cases of bottles from the manufacturer’s packaging–large plastic bags inside cardboard boxes–to 66-quart translucent plastic bins. Those stack a lot better than the boxes and make it easy to see how many bottles of each type we have in stock with just a glance. I need to pick up another six or eight of the 66-quart bins the next time we’re at Home Depot.

09:47 – Barbara’s been gone 96 hours. We miss her. I told Colin this morning that she’d be back in only three more days. That seemed to satisfy him.

The plastic bottles we order in bulk come in cases of 1,100 to 1,650, depending on the size of the bottle. They’re packaged loose-filled in large cardboard boxes with a large plastic bag inside to protect the bottles from dirt. The 30 mL glass bottles are different. They come in “cases” of 168 bottles, which are shrink-wrapped. I hate that packaging, because as soon as I cut the shrink wrap I end up with a loose pile of breakable bottles. I wish they’d package them in cardboard boxes with cardboard dividers to protect the individual bottles.

Katie sent me these two images yesterday, taken in Fort Collins, Colorado where she lives and works.

Hi Bob,

Here are a couple flood pictures (before and after). The first one was taken Friday and the second one was just a few minutes ago.

These were taken right by our work on the path we take our daily walks!

Thought I would share since we were talking about it yesterday.

Katie Dugan

11:57 – Those who follow RCC superstitions should be aware that contact with “holy” water can be hazardous to their health: Holy water in Austria is contaminated, unsafe to drink, researchers say

Although the researchers limited themselves to churches and other religious sites in Austria, it seems likely that the problem is universal. Many people don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom, so the bacteria and viruses on their hands–including potentially deadly coliforms and other pathogens–are transferred to the ‘holy” water. So, the next time you think about touching “holy” water, you might want to think again. Either that, or boil or otherwise sterilize the stuff before you handle it.

09:50 – Barbara’s been gone 72 hours. So far, Colin and I are making do. Only four more days until she returns.

I called AmEP yesterday afternoon just to make sure that Katie was okay. She said she and her husband are fine, as is the business, but that much of Fort Collins and the surrounding area is a complete wreck. She was off Thursday and the business was closed Friday. She said it took her about two and half hours yesterday to drive the two or three miles from their house to the office. Almost all of the bridges are out, and the traffic was a bumper-to-bumper parking lot. But they’re still operating normally, taking orders, receiving shipments from their suppliers, and sending out shipments to their customers. Colin barked while were talking, and I told Katie that that was my Border Collie assistant. As it turns out, Katie also has a Border Collie. She got her when she was in college, and the BC is now 13 years old.

I told Katie that our next science kit would probably be earth science, and that I wanted to include rock and mineral specimens. AmEP has dozens of different rock/mineral kits in their catalog, but as I told Katie I fear single-sourcing anything. I’d hate to have a standard kit that requires a product that the vendor might discontinue without notice. She said that their rock/mineral kits are an “evergreen” product for them. They sell them in large numbers and have been doing so for years. They build the kits themselves rather than importing them from China or wherever. They actually employ a geologist and they own the quarries where they get their rock specimens. Katie said they’d be happy to do a custom kit for me, or if I preferred they’d sell me the stuff in bulk. So, for example, I could order 50 pounds each or whatever of 1″ chunks of 25 different rocks and minerals and build the kits ourselves.

08:52 – Barbara’s been gone 24 hours, and Colin and I are already descending into barbarism, filth, and squalor. Last night, we stalked, pounced, and killed our dinner and ate it raw. That frozen Stouffer’s chicken and brocolli pasta bake never knew what hit it. It was kind of crunchy, though. Next time, we may heat it first. All of Barbara’s training is not lost on us, however. I’m doing a load of laundry as I write this, and later I’ll clean the toilets.

I have all but two of the solutions I need for a new batch of 60 biology kits made up, and most of the bottles filled. I’ll make up three liters each of the 6 molar hydrochloric acid and 6 molar sodium hydroxide solutions today and try to finish bottling everything. Tomorrow I’ll build a dozen or two biology kits and then get to work on what I need to build more chemistry and forensic kits. As expected, kit sales have started to tail off a bit. Some days, we ship six or eight kits and other days none or one. We’re still averaging about three a day, but that’s starting to decline. In October/November, we’ll probably average 1.5/day and then jump back up to around two a day in December.

10:18 – I’m getting a bit concerned about Katie Dugan, who’s my rep at one of our wholesalers, American Educational Products. She’s a delightful young woman, and I talk with her regularly, most recently a day or two before the flooding started. AmEP is in Fort Collins, Colorado, which until this morning I thought was not one of the worst-affected areas. The news reports kept talking about Boulder, but this morning I saw one that mentioned that Fort Collins and its county have more than 350 people unaccounted for, which is the bulk of those unaccounted for. I hope Katie and her new husband are okay.