Cool and maybe wet. The national forecast has us in a possible rainy zone, but the edge of the front is very close by. It’s been my observation that when the forecast has us on the edge, we don’t get the weather. I guess we’ll see.
Yesterday was very nice. Shirt sleeves and shorts weather with a gorgeous blue sky. Which was nice for my walk home from the auto repair place. It looks like my Expedition’s problems are deeper than a bad pressure sensor or worn out battery. My repair guy will call me later with pricing and options. It’s always something, and while my gut tells me there is a lot of life left in the truck, and I don’t want the expense and risks of replacing it, I also don’t want to keep throwing good money after bad. I already put $4k into the motor last time and was pretty sure that was the last I wanted to spend on it. Clean low miles ’13 and ’14 Expeditions are $10k to $20K depending on miles and trim. New they are $60K to $80K… so that is VERY unlikely to happen.
My day will also involve some errands, probably cleaning up at my secondary IF it doesn’t rain. I’ve got a dozen bins worth of stuff for auction if I can get the auctioneer to take delivery… she said she’d take a bunch, and I’ve got a bunch. I’d love to get that started.
Looking at my stuff in auctions that closed last night, well, it ain’t gonna pay for any gold coins. I am starting to get concerned by the lower prices that stuff is bringing. Not just my stuff, but stuff I’d be buying if I wasn’t already full up. There seems to be a trend downward over the last few weeks. I expect that as things in the economy get tighter and tighter, there will come a point where buyers just stop buying anything other than necessities. They may continue buying daily living items, and shopping for bargains on ‘stuff’, but eventually there won’t be any more money for ‘extras’. I need to unload a bunch more stuff before that happens.
Still slowly chipping away at about 10 different things at the same time. It’s slow, but varied, and that helps is a couple of ways. Just showing progress on some of the projects helps with domestic bliss. And I can shift focus when I find myself bumping into physical limits more often than I used to.
Today I was walking on eggshells because of spasms and something in my back that was “right on the edge” of becoming something really bad. Simple bending movements were causing discomfort and apprehension all out of line with the actual exertion. I’ve learned that I absolutely don’t want to aggravate that sort of thing. So instead of doing a bunch of physical stuff, I was very careful and limited my movements. Hopefully that was enough to be back to normal today.
There are several prominent bloggers in the ‘liberty sphere’ part of the web that have been hammering on physical fitness as a prep. I’m not going to do ruck marches or calisthenics, or even jog, but it’s clear that I need to do something additional and that my normal activity level is not enough to overcome the effects of aging. Anything effective takes time, and time is in short supply. But clearly I’m losing time in other places, and don’t feel good while doing so, so it would be better to spend the time upfront and get the benefit of being in better shape too. Knowing and doing are two different things however.
It’s always something.
Meanwhile, I’m organizing stacks, and adding to them in specific areas, mainly food and medical supplies. I need to rebalance my camp stove and lantern stockpile in light of lessons learned from the deep freeze, and I need to go through some other stuff too. Stored easily accessible drinking water is the next thing for me to tear into and rotate.
Plumbing supplies and gasoline stocks can be put away, replenished, and rotated too. And I can’t forget the garden…
Stacking is the easy part. Keep stacking, you can sort it out later.
nick