09:19 – Happy anniversary to us. Barbara and I were married 33 years today, on September 10, 1983.
We’re not doing anything special to celebrate the occasion. We don’t need to. Just knowing we’ve been married 33 years is enough of a celebration in itself.
11:06 – Barbara is off to the gym and supermarket. More kit stuff this afternoon.
Two months until election day. I’m not really expecting any widespread violence, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it occurred. I sure wouldn’t want to be in a city of any size on that day or the day after, particularly if Trump wins the election. It looks as though North Carolina is going to be in play. I’m not much on voting for the lesser of two evils, but in this case Trump is analogous to a common cold, while Clinton is ebola. So I’m going to vote in the national elections this year, and I’m going to vote for Trump. I suspect Barbara will do the same. I just wonder if the Libertarians will draw enough votes to prevent either Trump or Clinton from gaining a majority. Ordinarily, I’d expect that if the election went to the House they’d vote straight party-line, but with the dynamics this year it’s hard to say what would happen. Other than whoever was awarded the election would not be recognized as legitimate by his or her opponents. This could end up a real mess.
Speaking of time passing, I see that our average first low in the 40’s (<10C) is a week from now, and our average first low in the 30's (<4C) is a month from now. Autumn is definitely imminent here in Sparta. All the cattle ranchers are bringing in the autumn crop of hay. Lori, our USPS carrier, has been working on her hay for the last couple days. She said this morning that her brother brought over his roller yesterday, so all her hay is now rolled. She's leaving it out for now because it was still a bit green, but another couple days in the sun should dry it sufficiently that it'll be safe for her to put it in the barn without worrying about burning down the barn.
09:46 – More kit work today. This time of year, the trick is to maintain sufficient finished goods inventory to allow us to ship in a timely manner, but not build up inventory so far that we end up with a lot of unsold kits in stock when the rush slacks off.
From some of the comments yesterday, I see that I need to write a brief explanation of chemical leavening agents. Baking soda (sodium bicarbonate, sodium hydrogen carbonate, or NaHCO3) is the basis of all common chemical leavening agents. In the presence of an acid or heat, baking soda evolves carbon dioxide gas, which forms the bubbles familiar to anyone who’s baked or made pancakes. In combination with a solid edible acid, baking soda becomes baking powder.
There are two types of baking powder, single-acting and double-acting. Single-acting baking powder contains a stoichiometric equivalent (or an excess) of the solid acid. When water is added to the dough, the baking soda and acid immediately react to form carbon dioxide bubbles. All of the baking soda is consumed in that process. Double-acting baking power contains an excess of baking soda. Part of that is consumed when water is added to the dough, forming bubbles, but part remains in the dough. When that remaining baking soda is exposed to heat in the oven, each two molecules of baking soda react to form one molecule of sodium carbonate, one molecule of water, and one molecule of carbon dioxide gas. That release of carbon dioxide because of oven heat is the second action of double-acting baking powder.
Almost any solid edible acid can be used to make baking powder. I mentioned citric acid because it’s as good as any other acid, it’s cheap (I paid about $2/pound for a five-pound bag of it), and as a very common food additive it’s very readily available in food-grade form. But you can use other solid edible acids such as cream of tartar, aluminum sulfates, and so on. The aluminum-based acids are popular in commercial baking powders, but concern about aluminum consumption has caused manufacturers to shift away from aluminum-based baking powders to those that use organic acids like cream of tartar or citric acid.
In fact, the acid doesn’t even have to be in powder form, which is why many recipes use only baking soda rather than baking powder. Liquid acids in the recipe–such as vinegar, sour cream, buttermilk, lemon juice, etc.–also react with baking soda to form carbon dioxide gas. If you use just enough baking soda to neutralize those liquid acids, you end up with the equivalent of single-acting baking powder, albeit partially liquid; if you use an excess of baking soda, you end up with the equivalent of double-acting baking powder.
09:54 – Barbara is off to the gym and bank. Later today we’ll be doing more kit stuff. We’re down to half a dozen forensic kits in stock, so building more of those will be first priority. That means we need to make up chemical bags for them, which means I need to make up several of the chemicals and get them bottled first.
Email from Jen, who decided to take advantage of the Augason Farms Labor Day sale to stock up on more powdered eggs. She ordered another dozen #10 cans, about 72 dozen worth, to add to the 30+ cans she already had in their pantry. That gives her something like 250 dozen worth. As Jen said, at about $3/dozen, the powdered whole eggs are three times the price of fresh, but they don’t keep chickens and she has no intention of doing so. A lot of people store powdered eggs only for baking purposes, but Jen has scrambled eggs on their LTS breakfast menu. She’s tried making scrambled eggs from the powder, and says it works just fine. None of them could tell much if any difference between scrambled eggs from fresh and from powder. With more than 40 cans in stock, they’ll be able to have scrambled eggs once or twice a week for the six of them for a year, and still have plenty for baking. It’ll make a nice break from pancakes and oatmeal.
Speaking of baking, Jen said they had one #10 can of baking powder in their LTS pantry, but she decided to back that up using my method of storing the ingredients separately. So she added a 13-pound bag of baking soda from Sam’s and a 5-pound container of citric acid she ordered on Amazon. Both of those ingredients have essentially unlimited shelf lives, while baking powder, once opened, can have a shelf life of only six months to a year, or even less. The problem is that any moisture, even atmospheric water vapor, reacts with the baking powder to activate it and render it useless. One can instead mix the baking soda and citric acid to make up baking powder on-the-fly, either single- or double-acting depending on the proportions you use.
I’ve started re-reading Eric Flint’s 1632 (Ring of Fire) series, which I last read probably 12 or 15 years ago. It’s about a contemporary small West Virginia town that is physically and temporally displaced from 2000 West Virginia to 1632 central Germany, plopped down right in the middle of the 30 Years War. It wasn’t written as a PA/prepper series, but that’s what it is. The first volume is free for the download on Amazon.com. I think the series is up to 16 or 17 titles now. I have the first half dozen already, and may grab the others eventually.
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11:05 – It’s back to work for us. At the moment, Barbara is filling sodium dithionite bottles for forensic kits. That stuff has an obnoxious odor, although fortunately not a strong one. It smells like something died. It’s used as a reducing bleach in forensic fiber analysis, and also for bleaching wood pulp in paper mills, which is probably a good part of why they smell so terrible.
Colin is still basking in his Best Dog Ever laurels. This morning when I called him, he actually stopped what he was doing and came on the run.
I decided not to order any Augason Farms stuff yesterday. If there’d been free shipping with a $50 order, or even $100, I’d probably have ordered a few cans each of powdered eggs and butter powder. But I really didn’t want to order $200 of stuff, at least until I get a better handle on our current food inventory levels.
Speaking of which, when I put in an Amazon Prime order the other day, I opted for free no-rush shipping in return for a coupon that provides free shipping on one Prime Pantry box. Then I started looking in Prime Pantry for items we use. Originally, PP had some very good deals on stuff, cheaper than I could get it at Costco or Sam’s, even counting the $6 shipping charge. That’s no longer true. Everything in PP costs more, even with my free shipping coupon, than it would at Walmart, let alone Costco or Sam’s Club. For example, a case of 10 cans of Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup sells at Sam’s for a buck a can. It was $1.25/can in Prime Pantry. The same was true on the 20 or so other items I checked. Amazon was always at least noticeably higher and often much higher. Amazon is apparently following the old tradition of undercutting competitors’ prices to gain market share and then boosting prices above what competitors charge.
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10:12 – Happy Labor Day.
The big news around here is that Barbara has finally awarded Colin the Best Dog Ever trophy. It took Colin five and a half years, but he finally got this coveted trophy. The previous BDE holder was Duncan, who was the first dog Barbara ever raised from a puppy. Colin is delighted that he’s finally won. For the last year or so, he’s been in a tie with Duncan, but this morning he finally made it over the top.
This is the last day of the Augason Farms Labor Day sale. They have about 20 items on sale, including egg powder and butter powder. Be careful, though. Some of the items, like cheese powder, are actually priced higher even with the sale than Walmart charges. Augason has a $200 minimum for free shipping, so if you need $200 worth of the items they have on sale, now is a good day to order them. Egg powder is now $17.49 per #10 can, which is what I paid for it when I last ordered it a couple or three years ago.
Back to work on science kits. I have several to get ready to ship tomorrow morning.
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11:40 – We’re taking the Labor Day holiday weekend off, other than working on some projects in the house and yard.
09:50 – Robbie, Lori’s regular substitute, just showed up with the mail. Two boxes for us, one from Amazon and one from Walmart, all kit stuff. The back of Robbie’s vehicle was crammed full of boxes, nearly all Amazon.
Amazon really is taking over US retail, one step at a time. Robbie told me something this morning that I wasn’t aware of. Early every morning, an Amazon truck shows up at our local post office. I figured Amazon used FedEx or UPS to get boxes to local post offices. But, no. If Amazon is running a daily delivery truck to little Sparta, NC, you know they have to be doing the same for nearly all US post offices. Robbie said there were usually 200 or 300 packages on that Amazon truck, and that’s only going to increase as Amazon continues to stamp out their competition. I told Robbie that it wouldn’t surprise me if, a few years from now, Amazon went into direct competition with USPS, UPS, and FedEx by delivering directly to customers. The only difference is that they’ll be delivering only Amazon shipments, although it wouldn’t surprise me to see them go after UPS and FedEx customers, at least at first.
Our friends are supposed to arrive late this morning. They’ll be staying until Monday afternoon, so Colin is about to have a big weekend. More people to boss around and check on in the middle of the night, more food to beg, more of all the stuff he likes to do.
Since we moved up here last December, we’ve established a morning routine for Colin. When Barbara gets up, she gives him breakfast, immediately after which I put him on leash and take him out for his morning constitutional. We stay on our property the whole time. I just mentioned to Barbara the other day that I wanted to get Colin in the habit of going off-leash. The weather is fine right now, but before long we’ll have snow and ice on the ground, and the last thing I need is a 70-pound dog putting it in four-paw drive while I try to hold onto the leash without falling.
So this morning, I took Colin off-leash. Sure enough, he followed the same route we walk every morning. When we finished walking that route, I shouted, “In the house!” and he trotted up to the front door and waited to be let in. Good dog.
10:31 – Ruh-roh. Email from Jessica, who wants to contact Jen and Brittany directly via email. I emailed Brittany and Jen to ask their permission to share their email addresses, and I’m guessing they’ll agree.
I think of prepping as a sex-neutral activity, so I’m not sure why prepper girls apparently want to talk with each other privately, away from prepper guys. I mean, it’s not as if there are any sex-specific prepping issues, activities, or supplies, other than the obvious. Are there?
09:25 – Barbara left about 0755 to drive to Winston for a doctor appointment and to run errands. It’ll be wild women and parties for Colin and me until she returns this afternoon.
Yesterday, I noticed belatedly that September is officially National Prepping Month. Even Obama, that asshole, got involved, issuing a statement that encouraged all US citizens to stockpile a year’s supply of food and an AR-15 with 1,000 rounds. Or something like that. Apparently, we’re going to need those AR-15s to combat Climate Change, which is the biggest threat to our way of life.
Barbara and I have one episode left to watch in Heartland season six. Just in time, Netflix streaming added Heartland season seven yesterday. Last night, I also started re-reading Pat Frank’s 1959 PA novel Alas, Babylon, which I last read probably 40 years ago. I got only about 10% into the book, but so far it holds up pretty well. Historical novels that actually date from the period in which they’re set are always better than efforts by contemporary authors to write something set in a period that they never actually lived in. That’s why Conan Doyle’s Victorian novels are better than Anne Perry’s, for example. Well, that and Conan Doyle is a better writer.
There’s been a lot of discussion in the comments on the alt-right movement. My impression is that alt-right is a bunch of racist, anti-Jewish, neo-Nazi, skinhead thugs, and I doubt that impression will change anytime soon.
I don’t believe that groups are important, particularly groups defined by trivialities like skin color. Individuals are what counts, and individual rights are the only rights that matter or indeed even exist. There is not and never has been any such thing as group rights.
The whole idea of groups being important seems to be part of the human DNA, although I’m apparently missing that gene. We see it constantly as groups form in opposition to other groups. Sometimes it’s relatively harmless, such as when an arbitrarily-defined group of football fans opposes another arbitrarily-defined group of other football fans. They’re all passive participants. It’s not like they’re running patterns down on the field or sacking the opposing quarterback themselves. They’re just watching, but the important part is that they’re accepted members of a group. It becomes less harmless when it’s armies instead of football teams. Instead of a football score of “Germany 17/France 14”, it ends up “Germany 600,000 dead/France 750,000 dead”. And it’s all because for some reason most humans want desperately to belong to a group. I blame it on evolution. In the distant past, a lone human was a soon-to-be-dead human, so humans gathered in family groups and clans and tribes and eventually nations for mutual protection.
The important thing–and what differentiates us Normals from progs–is to focus on individual character. If someone is friendly, honest, and a hard worker, no decent human cares what color that person’s skin is, whether that person’s chromosomes are XX or XY, and so on. If someone is not friendly, honest, and a hard worker, no decent human cares what group that person identifies with. We Normals judge people on their merits; progs judge people according to their group membership, which is simply evil.
09:20 – This morning is the first in several weeks that we haven’t had a science kit sitting waiting for USPS to pick it up. It’s gotten to the point where Lori, our USPS carrier, just says “See you tomorrow” as she pulls out of our drive every morning. I already have overnight orders to ship tomorrow morning, so this is likely only a momentary lull. With the new school year starting, I suspect we’ll be shipping kits pretty much every day for the rest of this month and into October.
Barbara is cleaning house upstairs today in preparation for our friends arriving Saturday. Colin is crouched under my desk, waiting to pounce when the vacuum cleaner approaches him.
After I read about the new BATFE regulation that defines ammunition as a high explosive, I started checking on-line sites that sell ammo. I didn’t have time to get much of a sample, but it seems that ammo prices have increased 20% or so overnight. I wouldn’t be surprised to see them double or triple pretty quickly, and to see the supply dry up. That’s what Obama intended, of course.
The federal government is fortunate that nearly all of us Normals are peaceful types. As this attack on Normals continues and accelerates, I keep halfway expecting to see reports of targeted assassinations of politicians, judges, and bureaucrats. I mean, if even 0.001% of gun owners decide they’ve had enough, things could get very exciting for our masters, and not in a good way. Literally, just 0.001% could start things rolling. And there are certainly a lot more than 0.001% of gun owners who are perfectly capable of taking down a target at 500 yards or more.