Cool and wet again, maybe.
Certainly rained most of yesterday. The ground is saturated. I have standing water in my yard.
I got some very small things done, but had a very late start. Felt good to sleep though, after staying up way too late.
Today I’m supposed to be able to take some stuff to one of my local auctions. I’ll do that on the way to my rent house, where my tenants have managed to twist the handles off the new shower valves. I think they are just cranking the everloving heck out of them. The knobs and the valve stems were new. If they normally fail in a couple of weeks, I think Home Depot might complain to the vendor about the returns. Therefore, I think it’s operator error. If the stems aren’t ruined, I’ll replace the knobs again, and epoxy the freaking things in place. I know you only need finger tight to shut the valves off, I checked when I installed the new ones. An uncomfortable conversation with the tenants is in my future.
The year is finally nearly over. It’s NOT that I expect 2021 to be better, in fact I expect it to be worse in almost every way. It’s that I would like to see the clean break of the year change. It’s POSSIBLE that will have a positive effect on at least some people. A lot of the baggage of the year will be behind us too with the date change. It’s superstitious, and somewhat silly, but that describes most people too. FWIW, this will be the first year I’m not anxious about a terror attack on Times Square. That’s gotta be a blessing.
No matter what happens with the presidential election, I expect politics in 2021 to be INSANE. Half the people will feel cheated and disenfranchised. Violence is almost certain to increase. It’s much easier to destroy than to create, and some things once damaged, can’t be fixed. Yeah, it’s possible we’ll end up replacing stuff with totally new ideas, execution, or tech, but I’m rating that lower than a meteor strike or aliens revealing themselves. You need optimism and prosperity for those sorts of changes. What you get from anger and desperation is a whole lot uglier. Add that we have historically gotten ourselves out of similar fixes with massive wars, well, the future I’m preparing for isn’t bright.
It is possible to get through it though. There are still Jews in Germany. There are Romans in Rome. There are good ol’ boys in the South. Norway and Finland survived WWII as did the UK. Almost everyone BUT the US was impoverished by it and disheartened for a couple of generations though.
In any case, I want to get myself and my loved ones through the trouble I think is coming. Skills, connections, and stuff should all help with that. So I’m stacking. You should too.
nick