10:51 – It was 73.4F (23C) when I took Colin out at 0700, partly cloudy. We apparently had a thunderstorm and heavy rain overnight, although I never woke up. Neither did Colin, or at least if he did he didn’t wake us. The rain apparently didn’t last long, because we got only 0.4″ (1 cm). We’re pretty much taking the holiday weekend off.
We’re now halfway through the year. Science kit revenues are running about 14.5% above revenues for the first half of last year. Not a huge increase, but an improvement on 2015 and 2016, both of which were actually down year-on-year.
The four of us had an early dinner yesterday at Mt. Surf Seafood Restaurant, a family-run restaurant up near the Virginia line that’s been there for almost 20 years. The parking lot was about one third VA plates and two-thirds NC plates.
The food was excellent, and the people were friendly. Including our waitress, Kelly, whom I assumed was part of the family who own the restaurant. Turns out, she wasn’t, although she’s worked there for nine years. As we were paying for dinner and mentioned that we’d just moved to Sparta 18 months ago, we got the usual questions: are you living here year-round, and what made you choose Sparta?
Barbara chatted about that with them for a while, and then I commented that what I liked about living up here is that all of the people are normal. The owner commented that we have some crazies up here, to which I replied, “Yes, but they’re NORMAL crazies.”
I came across a Youtube channel yesterday that was new to me. I don’t pay much attention to Youtube since it censored me several years ago. They never even bothered to email me; they just removed one of my TheHomeScientist videos, the one on making napalm. That’s apparently becoming much more common. A couple of the homesteading channels I’ve looked at have posted anti-Youtube rants because some or all of their videos are being flagged/removed as not being “family-friendly” or “advertiser-friendly”. Screw them. There are alternatives.
The channel I mentioned is one of those that Youtube is stomping all over. I was surprised I’d never heard of it before, given that they’ve been around since 2010, have something like 650,000 subscribers, and have posted something like 1,600 videos. A few of those are short, but the vast majority run anything from 8 or 9 minutes up to half an hour or so. In other words, they’re working this as a full-time job.
The channel is Wranglerstar, and it’s run by a young married couple, Cody Crone (AKA Wranglerstar) and his wife Melissa (AKA Mrs. Wranglerstar). They homestead on 50+ acres in Washington state and are serious preppers. My google-foo isn’t the best, but it took me about 30 seconds to locate them. From the name of their town, I assumed they were in prepper territory in eastern Washington, over near Idaho. Nope. They’re on the very southern edge of Washington, just over the border from Portland, Oregon. IOW, they’re very close to a massive population center, surrounded by superprogs. Oh, well. I wish them the best.
They’re both likable people, particularly Melissa, who comes across as happy, friendly, and helpful. Unfortunately for them, they’re Deplorables on three counts: they’re preppers and own and use guns, they’re homesteaders, and they’re religious. Three strikes and you’re out, says Youtube.
USPS just showed up with my Amazon order: another 500 grams of agar, two spare electronic scales, and a gallon of liquid smoke for the deep pantry.