Cooler and wet. 56F when I went to bed. [55F at 9 am]
Very tired last night. Stayed up too late.
Dinner of pork shoulder in the crock pot with hawaiian sauce, rice and pineapple went pretty well. Wife and one kid liked it. I liked it. The other kid loved the rice. Can’t win some days. The brownie mix came out great and the 8yo was very proud of helping.
Didn’t get as much organized as I was hoping to due to rain. I did get a chance to pull the tarps to the side and dig out a couple of boxes of Mountain House to send mom. Under that bin was another complete loss. Black bin full of moldy damp cardboard and pasta. See my previous comments about the unsuitability of the black bins for long term storage in varying heat and humidity. I’m taking that bin to the end of the driveway and dumping the contents into a black trash bag. Then I’m leaving it in the rain for a while. I don’t want to mess with it at all, but I will clean it eventually. Never gonna store food in it again though.
We’ll see if I can get the gennies going today. That is next on the list to be worked while other things pull me different directions.
If the rain stops or holds off, I’ll get more done than not.
Keep stacking, or pull up the drawbridge and stay safe.
nick
We will be having a weekly shopping trip, to a single store. This is actually a huge adaptation, as my wife normally wants to shop every day or two, and would often go to multiple stores.
Even better would be to use the grocery delivery services, of course, but they are understandably overwhelmed at the moment.
It’s really bizarre what’s sold out and what isn’t. Plenty of rice and pasta, for example, but no polenta. Paper towels, but no toilet paper. Plenty of cheese, but no pre-prepped fondue. Pizza dough, but no pre-prepped pizzas. People are weird.
And the US is fixing to go much deeper in debt. Enough to probably match all the rest of the countries in the world combined. Got to give more money to the freeloaders, those who have not saved a thing. Never have enough money but can afford the newest iPhone. Never have enough money but can go 4-wheeling every weekend. Never have enough money but smoke four packs of cigarettes in the family each day. Yep, those are the ones that are salivating over more “free” money from the government. The FSA is alive and kicking today.
RIP Kenny Rodgers.
Awake.
n
RIP Kenny Rodgers.
Wow. Lyle Waggoner. Rodgers. They come in threes…
I feel bad because the running half joke around our house is that Jenner will eventually undo a lot of his surgeries and still end up looking less freaky as a man than Kenny Rodgers.
My wife’s (now online) conference covered transgender surgeries yesterday. No mention of Jenner for a change.
Braved the Soviet-style line at HEB early this morning. Flour along with fresh meat — chicken leg quarters.
TP is a ticket system in addition to the line. ~20 people allowed in the store at a time. The store opens normally once the line dissipates, but high demand items are usually gone by that time.
I did a show with Kenny and his band at the Hotel Del Mar on Coronado Island in San Diego. What I remember most was a decorative plaster column used as scenery got knocked over and hit one of the band, piano I think, and he needed to go to the hospital and get checked out.
Don’t remember much about the show, but it was intimate, for a corporate dinner party. So many shows back then, I was more likely to remember a bad one than a good one.
Always liked his music.
n
they’ve rolled out the NG in Baltimore. I wonder what their rules of engagement are? How long before the first riot or car fire?
n
Never have enough money but can afford the newest iPhone.
Forget the phone. Ever notice how many people who you encounter who you would swear live paycheck-to-paycheck seem to have the Apple Watch these days.
Of course, that requires an iPhone. Android users need not apply.
Apple’s cash pile and Disney’s troubles are sparking imaginations. As a shareholder, I’m more open to the concept of Apple buying The Mouse, but only if some of the the fetish properties acquired in the last decade get cut loose. Based on what IP goes into the Magic Kingdom in FL, I think even Disney recognizes that they’ll be pared down to their original IP and Pixar at some point.
they’ve rolled out the NG in Baltimore. I wonder what their rules of engagement are? How long before the first riot or car fire?
Baltimore. Even my left-leaning friends in Maryland call the city “The Pit of Despair”.
I’m sure “sh*thole” has been used in their household to describe the city, but God forbid they are on the same side of anything as The Orange Man.
Trump will not order a lockdown or Army deployment and, instead, leave it up to the states and the Governors. The moment Trump orders either one, “The Resistance” will make a point of violating it.
Added grits to the menu this morning. Not a huge hit.
I like them fine, and one child says she’d “eat them if she had to.”
Wife made them sweet, I made them cheezy, daughter 1 added a lot of maple syrup to the bowl and still didn’t finish….
I’ll keep them in the rotation for variety.
n
Oh yes, along with other expensive items that suit their mind. Expensive nail treatment, expensive hair coloring. Black people with really expensive hair extensions (call me “ray”cist, it’s part of my name). Tattoos, lots of expensive tattoos. Using their state issued debit card at the grocery store. Massive tattoos on their equally massive arms and legs with a lot of flabby real estate to accommodate a panorama, ass big enough for a detailed map of Alaska. Cart full of junk food and expensive cuts of meat. Stop at the lottery machine at the exit and buy $100.00 worth of scratch off tickets. But living paycheck to paycheck.
Made a grocery run. Fresh Market and Whole Foods we’re fully stocked and not busy at all (around 10:30 A.M.) Got veggies and a few other things for the next two weeks.
Last stop was Walmart. Filled a cart with normal food shopping, which allows us to not dip into the extra we’ve bought recently,essentially upping our emergency reserves. Easily have a month of normal, every day food on hand. We could eat for several more months after that, though it wouldn’t be a lot of variety.
Walmart wasn’t crowded, around normal traffic for al ost lunchtime on Saturday. I didn’t check tp stock. Some thins were low, like cereal and soup. No Raisin Bran. I guess it’s needed to help use up all that tp… Mac and cheese was wiped out. Chicken was available, though quantities were lower than normal.
No store trips for the next two weeks, except for picking up a prescription next week at Publix. While there, I will get some of their meatballs if possible…they are fantastic.
Mac and cheese was wiped out.
Kraft-Heinz had a lot of problems before the virus fiasco. I saw “Deluxe” dinner in Sam’s a couple of weeks ago, and even though the product is a shadow of its past, I was surprised to see the product dumped at the warehouse store.
Another private equity brain fart destroying two companies instead of one.
No, I didn’t buy any at Sam’s. The HEB (Texas Publix) version is what Kraft “Deluxe” used to be, and we buy that instead.
Does map have the route to Jenny’s house?
Grits are fine. Not a fan of adding sugar, I’d rather have Malt O Meal or Cream of Wheat.
Do they like hominy? Aka un-ground grits.
The kids are ruining errands for ol’ mom and dad today. Long lines, empty lines, limits, tempers growing short.
The first week of work from home for the kids went okay.
My son’s company’s IT Department (in Sweden) cannot figure out how to speed things up. Finally admitted it is a problem with the VPN they are using as well as the main servers being in Sweden. All data goes to Sweden’s servers first then back to the server’s local, then back to Sweden, then to the individual workstations. Of course, the VPN adds a bunch of unnecessary hops. Production has plummeted to about 1/5th of normal. This is not going to end well.
The USPS is still FUBAR here and our carrier lady is not happy. She is going to have work on Sunday to try and untangle the mess of undelivered Priority Mail. She knows that the young no work ethic types will not show up. We normally give her water and treats (she like Werther’s) but they can no longer accept them. They also cannot ring doorbells, they have to knock on the door. and a whole bunch of, what she calls, crazy nonsense “rules” set by the idiots that have never delivered a piece of mail in their life.
My son finally got into Costco. There is a limit of 1 on anything they do have, which is not much. IMHO Costco is turning into a BIG FAIL in this situation. My son said all the old-time employees were asking about me and my wife, hoping we are well. We appreciate those old-timers who have been there for the 30+ years the store has been open and we have been “members”.
Peace, Vigilance, Fair Winds and Following Seas.
Echo Show is playing all of Kenny Rogers songs. “The Greatest” is playing right now.
I just filled the out the census.
Name and age of each person.
Color? White. They wanted race, also. American worked. I’m not German or Scotch-Irish after four generations.
Do you own or rent or etc the house? Who owns the house? Not their business in my opinion.
Will anyone else be living there on April 1st? Will you be living elsewhere on April 1st?
And that was about it. None of the “how many bathrooms bedroom and sq ft and is it all electric or do you have gas heat” prying.
Added grits to the menu this morning. Not a huge hit.
I like them fine, and one child says she’d “eat them if she had to.”
Wife made them sweet, I made them cheezy, daughter 1 added a lot of maple syrup to the bowl and still didn’t finish….
I’ll keep them in the rotation for variety.
A scoop of vanilla ice cream helps a lot. Chocolate not so much.
My paternal grandmother’s solution to anything you would not eat.
I don’t have any. Probably too late now as Gov. Gruesome has shut down non-essentials.
I did not want to look. You can because you if you want.
The USPS is still FUBAR here and our carrier lady is not happy. She is going to have work on Sunday to try and untangle the mess of undelivered Priority Mail. She knows that the young no work ethic types will not show up. We normally give her water and treats (she like Werther’s) but they can no longer accept them. They also cannot ring doorbells, they have to knock on the door. and a whole bunch of, what she calls, crazy nonsense “rules” set by the idiots that have never delivered a piece of mail in their life.
Our USPS’s 77469 and 77479 have been messed up for years. I do not expect them to get better.
I did the same. I’m sure it puts me on yet another list.
My son finally got into Costco. There is a limit of 1 on anything they do have, which is not much. IMHO Costco is turning into a BIG FAIL in this situation. My son said all the old-time employees were asking about me and my wife, hoping we are well. We appreciate those old-timers who have been there for the 30+ years the store has been open and we have been “members”.
Cramer is recommending COST which means that the big guys have lost faith in the stock and are looking to dump their shares onto retail investors.
Whatever Issaquah is doing with toilet paper, paper towels and other in-demand items will backfire on them big time. The local HEB has stock arrive every morning, and sooner or later people will realize that there is no shortage of the paper products.
Panic early and beat the rush.
The last line is another reason to have every cert, license, permit, credential, etc that you can get ahead of time.
n
Whatever Issaquah is doing with toilet paper and paper towels will backfire on them big time. The local HEB has stock arrive every morning, and sooner or later people will realize that there is no shortage.
There is not a shortage today. People are worried about 18 months from now. Shoot, most of them are worried about next month. I doubt that 90% of the nation has more than two weeks of food and TP at their homes.
At the current rate of shutdown, I give the gasoline and electrical grids a month at most before they fail. TPTB are playing with fire on the economy and do not realize that failure could be worse than infecting 25% of the nation (I am not buying the 50% infected prediction).
https://www.thehour.com/business/article/U-S-economy-deteriorating-faster-than-15147050.php
Once the electrical grids fails on lack of fuel, getting it back up will be difficult. The electrical grid has not been down in Texas since the 1950s. Nobody remembers how to put it back together. Synchronizing the “generation islands” will be interesting.
20% of the nation is under lockdown now. I see this lockdown spreading and quickly.
https://www.the-sun.com/news/568703/illinois-pritzker-stay-home-order-coronavirus-us/
@DadCooks
Do you think your mailperson could accept a bottle of Tito’s hand sanitizer?
Once the electrical grids fails on lack of fuel, getting it back up will be difficult. The electrical grid has not been down in Texas since the 1950s. Nobody remembers how to put it back together. Synchronizing the “generation islands” will be interesting.
Just wait until June/July when the temps are hitting 100. Hopefully, the lockdowns are lifted by then. Otherwise, this is going to be the summer all the smart thermostats — Nest, Ecobee, Nexia, RedLink — get the patch that allows ERCOT to override the temperatures in the homes. At first, a rate discount from the electrical service provider will be involved, but that will shift to a surcharge via the OnCor rates for any household that doesn’t have a compliant thermostat.
Congress is now talking about a two trillion dollar stimulus !
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/488795-kudlow-coronavirus-stimulus-package-will-be-more-than-2-trillion
Are these people crazy ?
Just wait until June/July when the temps are hitting 100. Hopefully, the lockdowns are lifted by then.
I am wondering how the suited bureaucrats around the nation are determining whose jobs are needful and whose are not ? Just imagine a Greta Doomberg follower. Any oil and gas job would not be needful to them so the refineries will run out of crude oil and the power plants run out of natural gas. Getting that stuff back on line will take time, much time.
I do not trust bureaucrats. Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy applies to ALL of them. They tend to ignore needs of the nation and please their own wants and desires first.
A trillion here, a trillion there. I say print 20 trillion..that will make sure everyone has enough tp, because that’s all it will be good for.
I am wondering how the suited bureaucrats around the nation are determining whose jobs are needful and whose are not ?
It is a slippery slope. IL, CA, and NY so far, but, this weekend, the bubble headed Florida Ag Commissioner (the last state-wide Dem left standing) is openly pushing for a similar lockdown which the Governor is resisting.
The people endorsing the lockdowns should be argument enough to at least reconsider.
Now that Andrew Gillum is discredited and the party threw the moderates under the bus to run “Party At Kitty And Studs” in 2018, Bubble Head might be all the Dems have left to run for Governor in two years in Florida.
~Jim asked:
No, my wife has crocheted some around the neck carriers for small bottles of hand sanitizer, which we filled from our preps. We offered her one or as many as she would like, but she was adamant that they could not accept anything.
She and some of the other old retired nurses are sewing facemasks. My wife has quite a stash of material. The truth is they are of dubious benefit for disease prevention, but it does provide a placebo effect, and it is gooberment approved.
Our Costco has now posted special hours for seniors (60+) and disabled. Tuesday and Thursday 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.
Recorded the church broadcast for Sunday today at 10:00. Odd to have an empty sanctuary, only a couple of songs. My thought to the preacher speaking is he now knows how many members of congress feel when the chambers are empty.
I will go in Sunday and run the recording, twice, as I need to fill 100 minutes. Recording is about 48 minutes. Close enough.
Need to check some sound cabling to make certain I can get audio from the digital recorder, which inputs into the video switcher. I think I am taking audio from the switcher to distribute to all the other devices. Need to verify.
Also need to create a graphic indicating it is a recorded message, the date it was recorded, and why the church is not live. Also need to load the scriptures into the graphics system to display along with the message. Normally done during live but the preacher failed to give me a list to include on the recording. So that will be done live while playing the recording.
I guess that is why they pay me the big bucks. 🙂
We in Californication are not in “Lockdown” as individuals; consequently, I can go out my front door and walk down my street with my dog for “exercise”.
However, I’m due for my haircut Friday but my barber’s shop is in lockdown, as is my neighborhood dive bar.
L.A. County gives up on containing coronavirus, tells doctors to skip testing of some patients – Los Angeles Times
I think ignoring the vast and growing reservoir of LA’s infected will be very helpful in lowering morbidity and mortality, don’t you?
Sadly, I expect this approach to spread.
Stay inside, behind locked doors, if you can.
A reminder, now confirmed to be the case in OK….
Blue Cross / Blue Shield apparently will let your pharmacy push thru an extra refill on your meds, if you have refills remaining…
If there was a reason you couldn’t get extra last time, like it costs too much to pay on your own, try again.
Get in line, stuff will be running out.
n
I will go in Sunday and run the recording, twice, as I need to fill 100 minutes. Recording is about 48 minutes. Close enough.
You can fill the gap like the PBS stations do with “Star Gazers”. 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om8EbgKL0vM
Though, to be honest, I don’t like the new Pajama Boy. The two real astronomers who replaced Jack Horkheimer were doing a decent job IMHO.
Or fill the gap with Biden’s “chats”. I doubt those will go more than 5-10 minutes.
Coming soon to weekdays on MeTV, where all the reruns live …
“And that’s Uncle Joe … he’s a movin’ kind of slow … at The Junction”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/biden-plans-fireside-corona-chats-snipe-trump-virus-response
The references write themselves. I just go out and chip away the excess material surrounding them.
A reminder, now confirmed to be the case in OK….
Blue Cross / Blue Shield apparently will let your pharmacy push thru an extra refill on your meds, if you have refills remaining…
If there was a reason you couldn’t get extra last time, like it costs too much to pay on your own, try again.
Get in line, stuff will be running out.
I tried to get my BP meds a week ago, BCBS would not let Walgreens fill mine. I got them 90 days on schedule yesterday.
L.A. County gives up on containing coronavirus, tells doctors to skip testing of some patients – Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles County health officials advised doctors to give up on testing patients in the hope of containing the coronavirus outbreak, instructing them to test patients only if a positive result could change how they would be treated.
I think ignoring the vast and growing reservoir of LA’s infected will be very helpful in lowering morbidity and mortality, don’t you?
Sadly, I expect this approach to spread.
Stay inside, behind locked doors, if you can.
I fully expect to get Chinese Flu and survive it since I won’t be a senior for another three months. BTW, I do hope not to get it though.
Seriously, I expect the Chinese Flu to repeat every year until we have all gotten it. I doubt that there will be an effective vaccine any time soon and certainly not a cure.
I wonder if there will be a TamiChineseFlu any time soon ?
@Greg
You know you’re getting old when “Keep looking up!” elicits a laugh from your friends.
You know you’re getting old when “Keep looking up!” elicits a laugh from your friends.
One of my regrets is not hitting the Space Transit Planetarium at the old Miami Science Museum back when we were regularly within driving range at least once a year during the late 90s and 2000s.
I thought Jack would go on forever. He wasn’t very old when he passed.
Plus, the planetarium had the last operational Spitz projector before it was retired in 2015.
I was thinking about what Barbara wrote the other day, about it being hard to reduce contact. Being retired I was down to about two trips into town, per week. Sunday mornings for groceries, and usually Tuesday or Wednesday for the hardware store, auto parts, even medical appointments. It suited me fine. Somehow cutting back to one trip a week now is tougher than I expected.
When I was younger I read a lot of books on long distance solo sailing. As I recall the first week or two was the worst, and eventually the sailor would get used to the isolation. But a single radio-telephone call, or meeting another ship at sea (rare) would reset the clock and the feelings of loneliness would return.
I wonder if the ubiquitous nature of modern communication – phone, text, email, Facetime, Facebook and even normal teevee might, rather than making things better, be making things worse?
“If there was a reason you couldn’t get extra last time, like it costs too much to pay on your own, try again.
Get in line, stuff will be running out.”
I tried to get my BP meds a week ago, BCBS would not let Walgreens fill mine. I got them 90 days on schedule yesterday.
The insurance companies pay the drugstores to tattle on you to your doctor the moment they think you have gone non-compliant by not picking up your meds on schedule. Not giving you a six month supply allows the drugstores to continue to provide the “service” alerting the doctors.
My wife still gets tattle letters at the house from CVS for patients in Vantucky despite the blatant HIPAA problems. I know what the letters look like and simply put them into our shred bag. CVS is fortunate I’m not the curious type.
@ed, as someone who used to travel for work, 6-8 weeks gone at a time, I definitely think the easy and ubiquitous comms are a mixed blessing. In the old days, you’d just be gone. Anyone at home went on with their lives, you did your thing. Nowadays, you get every detail and every issue, every hour of the day. You can’t be there to do anything but you are still a part of it.
Time passes differently with all that constant contact. You used to sort of ‘disconnect’ and slide through the days, in a kind of Groundhog Day effect. Now you are chained to the minute by minute of what’s going on back home.
It is a definitely different experience. MUCH harder to disconnect.
n
I just filled the out the census.
Name and age of each person.
Color? White. They wanted race, also. American worked. I’m not German or Scotch-Irish after four generations.
Do you own or rent or etc the house? Who owns the house? Not their business in my opinion.
Will anyone else be living there on April 1st? Will you be living elsewhere on April 1st?
And that was about it. None of the “how many bathrooms bedroom and sq ft and is it all electric or do you have gas heat” prying.
This is just the initial census. If you are chosen, you will get the 40+ pager. Pray that you are not. We had to fill out the 40+ pager for the business several years ago. There were many threats associated on that commercial census also. I had to pay my accountant over a thousand dollars to fill it out.
Me, I put Belgium, Irish, and English for White.
The wife, I put White: English and Native American: Cherokee.
Color? White. They wanted race, also. American worked. I’m not German or Scotch-Irish after four generations.
What? After four generations, you’re considered Mexican.
Just ask Robert Francis.
Just ask Robert Francis.
AKA Bozo.
I think the grocery situation really varies from place to place. I’ve read some real horror stories, but my experience has actually been pretty chill by comparison. The only anger I’ve seen is over the toilet paper situation and, well, running out of toilet paper and having no way to procure more is bound to make anybody angry. The grocery stores have pretty much restocked on everything at this point. Toilet paper is still scarce but everything else is there. I have not had to wait in the line anywhere for anything. Like I said, I think this really varies from place to place and huge metro areas probably have it the worst. There’s roughly 600,000 people in my metro area. I suppose places with a couple million or more people in the metro areas are much much different. I wonder how the rural areas and super small-town America is faring? I told my wife we should kill some time and take a road trip out to BFE and see what their grocery stores have.
I can’t help but feel the whole concept of social distancing and self quarantine is going to fail. Spring is upon us and people want to be out and about. People will not be prisoners in their own home for months on end. I give us one or two more weeks and people are basically going to say F-it and that will be the end of it. Sorry, this pandemic just isn’t deadly enough to scare anybody into compliance. It’s just not. As cruel as it sounds, I don’t think much of the under-30 population really gives a shit that it’s killing 80-year-olds.
The trick to working from home is having a functional and productive office area to work in. You can’t sit in an office in front of dual widescreen monitors with a full-size keyboard and then suddenly be stuck at home at your kitchen table hunched over a 14” laptop and expect to be as productive. I told my employer that if I am going to be working from home that I am taking my docking station and monitors with me (or they can purchase me a second set of them for use at my house – but I doubt that’s going to happen). Thankfully, I have enough extra space and rooms in my house that I can set up a dedicated office area. Not everybody has that. With kids also out of school and the spouse also home that could make for a very distracting working environment. I worked at telecommute job for two years. Before I began doing so I had to sign a telecommute agreement part of which stated I would have full-time daycare for my child and would not simultaneously be trying to work and care for a small kid at the same time.
My kid starts e-learning on Monday. It will be interesting to see how much that requires of my wife and I. I still don’t think corporate America has come to grips with the fact that a large chunk of their employees have kids who are going to be out of school for the next couple of months and will have to be home with them. Also, parents will be doubling a school teachers for the next couple of months. So, in addition to trying to work from home they’re going to have to deal with kids running up to them because they don’t understand their math homework that was just explained to them via video. I guess it’s time to see if corporate America puts its money where his mouth is when it comes to work life balance.
My employer which made tens of millions of dollars in profit last year and is owned by a very prominent corporation which made tens of billions of dollars of profit last year is already looking for furlough volunteers. We’re only about two weeks into this thing being a really big deal in the US and they’re already talking furlough. How inspirational. It really makes me want to go the extra mile for them when I know they could give a shit less about any of us. Revenues are down 65%. I don’t know how long that will hold
lol. Plugs should pick Stacey “Mr. Haney” Abrams as his VP. That would hit all the SJW marks: fat, Black, female (I think), Prog, dumb as a stump.