Month: March 2019

Thermometer says 50F outside. House is 70F inside, which means it is chilly and windy outside. I switched the T-stat to “heat” so it should be nice in here soon.

I was tired, kids are tired, wife is tired, so I got to sleep in. Hooray.

Cleaning and unpacking, finishing the little things that didn’t make it into my abbreviated work week, and getting ready for next week should occupy my day.

Given all the high wind, I bet there are some limbs and even maybe trees down in the ‘hood and maybe the yard. I guess I better get busy.

n

The forecast rain finally arrived last night.

I had a post, typed out laboriously on this tablet, one finger at a time… and somehow it got lost.

So, I’m traveling all afternoon, didn’t get any preps done, and went to a funeral.

How about you?

Hopefully just a placeholder. but if I take too long getting ready in the morning, it’ll have to do….

n

Poking it out one letter at a time on the virtual keyboard on the tablet….

The admin page doesn’t display properly on opera for android so I can not actually schedule the post. Weird.

Cold and clear and windy in the city. Gonna start my day.

n

Cool and damp. Better than hot and damp.

We are almost to the end of March. End of the first quarter. End of winter…. It went fast.

Travel day for me. I’ll be online until about 10:00am Central then traveling. I won’t have a child with me so I expect the anal probe at security. Joy.

Lots to do still before departure, so I better get busy.

n

Cool and damp. Still.

Dishwasher still not fixed. At least now it’s throwing an error (DE) about the drain motor. There is the possibility I pinched the drain hose. I’ll check that first. Otherwise, the impeller is probably too worn to empty the machine in 5 minutes. Trying to grind a piece of glass or ceramic can take its toll on a plastic impeller. Neither is a hard repair, but the impeller would have to be ordered. Frustrating to NEED to do the repair, but satisfying when you get it done.

Houston area apparently leads the nation in car crashes. Over 82K last year, that were reported and crossed thru the HPD system. The real number is much higher. About 400 resulted in fatalities. That number is both high, and very low. Safety equipment has made a big difference in what is survivable. So has trauma care, and emergency medicine. Bottom line, it is much more dangerous than any other thing you are likely to do on a regular basis. Act accordingly.

n

Cool and damp this am. Didn’t get to the weather station batteries.

Obligations. Where do they come from, how do we assume them? How do we know we have them? I guess it’s a bit like the definition of pornography- you know it when you see it.

Jerry Pournelle used to wonder where his apparent obligation to provide money for welfare and social services came from. Of course, what happened there was that someone ELSE obligated him.

I’m thinking more of self imposed obligations, or the obligations of history and tradition. What were the King’s obligations, and where did they come from?

What are our obligations in an emergency or disaster? With state licensing, some medical people assume an obligation to help strangers, they have a ‘duty to aid’. Some people assume a ‘duty of care’. Recently someone proposed legislating a ‘duty’ to provide aid after no one stopped to help an injured person. We argued a bit in CERT training if as actual first responders we were now obligated to help. (CERT’s official policy is that your responsibility is to yourself, your family, and your community, in that order. Harris County TX, in the person of the Fire Dept official who was training us, said that we DID have a duty to respond. We were obligated to help by virtue of our training, and the recognition of our somewhat elevated status (we get id cards and vehicle stickers.))

I feel a number of obligations every day. Today, I have the obligation of honoring the life of another family member whose time among us has ended. She was a distant relative, but a constant part of our lives, as all of our family was close when I was growing up. She had an exceptional personality, full of light, curiosity, and intelligence and it was a joy to see her. She seemed perfectly suited and content with her role in the family, community, and life.

So where did I get the obligation to put everything in my busy life on hold and spend time and money traveling to her wake and funeral? I don’t know, but I feel it deeply.

n

(all this is by way of saying, I’m scrambling to get things done before taking the trip on Thursday. Commenting will therefore be lighter, and posts might be late Fri and Sat.)

Cool and damp, maybe I’ll fix the dang thing today….

Didn’t rain yesterday, but it sure got sopping wet humid by the end of the day.

After spending all day Saturday at the hamfest, and most of Sunday gimping slowly around the house, I feel like I lost a weekend. So today should be a ‘catchup’ day. No not ‘catsup’ or even ‘ketchup’ as I prefer… although there must be a day for that, but ‘catch up’ as in getting some of the list done that got skipped over the weekend.

Or maybe I’ll crawl back into bed as soon as every one is out of the house. I’m that tired….

n

Yesterday ended up nice with a strong breeze and overcast after 10am. Never did get the forecast rain, which made me happy.

Today is supposed to be clear. I guess we’ll see.

And I’ll see how late the kids and my back will let me sleep. Standing on concrete all day is hard on knees and back. I ached last night. I expect to ache today.

Getting old is not for the weak.

n

No idea what the weather will be like. It feels so 1899….

I’ll be in the parking lot of the Rosenburg hamfest, all day. I don’t know how I’d recognize you but if you drop by, maybe….

n

Cool and not quite as damp. That’s as precise as I can get until I change the dang batteries in my weather station. It sure got nice yesterday. Forecast is for continued clear, and I really need that for a good day selling tomorrow. I’ve started looking at the forecasters on the map, I’ll see if any are better than the others. It also looks like they changed their map software again (NOAA) so maybe back to accurate??

This week was busy but seemed to take forever.

Spring is definitely here. New growth is poking out everywhere. Garden is going to get some priority after the hamfest.

Preps this week were all about getting the ebay out the door (china boy finally paid, and I shipped to a forwarder.) Other than that, adding groceries to the pile- pork loin is back on sale at HEB, $1/pound, vac pack bulk. REALLY tasty for chops and little roasts.

I did have a problem with icing in my garage fridge. I think I lost 10 pounds of pork shoulder butt roast, I’ll know today. It was vac packed but got warmer than I like for a day or so. Fortunately the rest of the contents are sturdy and unaffected by the higher temp. I think I have the blockage taken care of so I can restock today.

I suggest checking the clearance area of your grocery every time you shop. There are often some huge bargains.

This wasn’t even a good ‘coupon’ trip (HEB has store coupons on the shelf) and I saved $27 to get to $150. I had store coupons for a couple of items (BOGO pasta, some cans), the sale pork, and a bunch of clearanced cleaning stuff for 2/3 off.) You can save a ton of money with smart shopping.

I missed our local .gov meeting, it’s the same night as my CPA class. That sucks, but the CPA stuff is good too. MEATSPACE.

So what did you guys and gals do to prep this week?

n