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Month: October 2022

Fri. Oct. 21, 2022 – 10212022 – 3023 comes next, right?

… then 4024…

Probably a cool morning, warming later, and not so cold at night.  It got pretty hot in the sun yesterday by mid afternoon.  Got to 78F in the house with the doors open.  I broke a sweat.  ‘Course, long sleeves and long pants…

Crew got a lot of work done yesterday.   They leveled the house.  Nothing high tech, except the level which was a base station and a sensor connected by a cable.  Not sure of the tech, but it has a digital display.  Made it easy to measure the floors.   They used bottle jacks to lift the house.   5 or 6 of them pumping at the same time.  Then they moved to different holes and did it again.  They did it in a bunch of small lifts, with foam lifting the middle of the house in between.  Very strange to see the massive chimney move upward by half inches.

They got most of the piers secured, but have a couple to finish and some holes left to fill today.   They got the plumbing done, water service needs a bit of mortar and insulation, drain line is good.  I’ve got the new service entrance connected to my new pex and old copper.  When we abandon the copper, I’ll be able to easily reconfigure the connections since I made them at the water heater.   Feels like real progress is being made.

Today I will get up in the attic and run the gas line.   I may also get the kitchen sink stubbed out with pex.   I just put valves on the ends of the run for yesterday.  The crew will need me to move some dirt from the pile to fill holes, because I stole some of the sand to fill where the backfill settled around the septic tank.   The rain really caused some settling.  That should eat some of my time, running back and forth with the garden tractor and dump trailer.

Since the females are at GS camp this weekend, I’m staying up here at least until Saturday night, or Sunday.   I’ll keep working the list.  And trying to catch a fish.

Work some skills.   Stack some things.

nick

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Thur. Oct. 20, 2022 – 10202022 – ‘I done seen about everything, when I’ve seen an elephant fly…”

Cold and damp.  Warming slightly.   Then, later, more cold.  FROST on the grass fer Pete’s sake.

They got most if not all the piers and jacks in place yesterday so today we get to see a housefly.  Or a house fly.  Sorta.   While still sitting on the ground, it will rise up, about 3 inches.  Unlike most things that go up, hopefully this one won’t come down.

I did knock off a couple of small tasks yesterday, and I might get a couple more done today.   I want to watch them work, so I might not.   What I SHOULD do is run the gas line for the furnace.  Put a new toilet together for the hall bath.  (They will remove the existing to video the drain after lifting the house to make sure it’s still intact.  Might as well put the new one back instead of the old.) And finish stubbing out the plumbing supply for the kitchen sink.   At a minimum I need to cap the ends so we can pressure test before they replace the water service to the house.  That only takes a minute with sharkbite fittings.   It would be awesome to get the stubs in and pressure test them at the same time.

Any of those things would be a good thing.  All three will be a miracle of actually working on stuff, and good luck that it doesn’t cause a failure cascade.

We’ll see.

I also brought up my really tall and sturdy extension ladder.  I will hang the new cell booster antenna pole, if the U bolts I got fit the bracket.   If not, I’ll head to the store first.   Lowes doesn’t carry many U bolts, and about half were out of stock.   If I’m feeling sporty, I might use the ladder to trim some trees.  IF.

One of the things I got done was assembling a 3/4 sized propane patio heater.  It was cheap because the hardware was missing.   I had plenty in my coffee can of loose screws and hardware.   Along with all the batteries, that can of random fasteners has saved the day more than once. Now the guys can stand under it and get some of the chill off.  Later I’ll take it down to the dock to bolster my fire ring at night.  I was going to grab one of the full sized ones from the house, but didn’t have time.  Maybe later.

Always be working the plan.  Always be stacking…

nick

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Wed. Oct. 19, 2022 – still working, still stacking

Cold in the morning, cool all day, but warm in the sun.   That describes yesterday, and probably today.   It was gorgeous and sunny though the breeze was stiff and chilly at times.  It made working outdoors very pleasant.

Spent the day doing what I could to help the guys keep moving, and knocking off little tasks on my list.   The big thing I did was removing a 4 foot wide strip of decking from the dock so the guys can access the bulkhead today.   They are supposed to do the foam reinforcing and backfill later today.

Speaking of which, the sand fill under the house is so soft it’s essentially liquid.  The “Dingo” tracked machine can barely stay upright on the sand as it shifts around.  If I hadn’t been told to leave as much concrete as possible, they wouldn’t be able to use the machine.   Stabilizing the sand will move up my priority list.  Short of remove and replace, I’m thinking the foam injection makes sense.   Some sort of geotextile in layers might be possible but it would mean moving a bunch of the sand anyway.   Stabilizing the hill and the retaining walls was always on the radar, but the actual soil being wrong is a bit over the top…

I note that even if we’d scraped the house and started fresh, we’d still be facing some sort of soil and retaining corrections.   Ditto for the septic system.  And as an aside, the neighboring HOA park and boat launch is actually 2 lots, so I have even more distance on that side from any neighbors than I initially though.   You just don’t get that kind of space normally.   There is just a lot more up front work and expense than we’d have liked.

Today the guys will continue setting the helical piers, hopefully the foam guy will get started on the bulkhead, and after around noon, I’ll be headed home.   I’ve got a couple of pickups to do, some material to buy,  some tools I need to get from home, and I’m missing the kids.  After dinner  I’ll drive back up tonight so I can be here for the guys first thing on Thursday.

I should be able to bring up some more food stacks and maybe some medical as well.

Always be working to improve your position, and keep stacking!

nick

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Tues. Oct. 18, 2022 – work continues, rain didn’t stop them

Cool but damp in the morning, warming with the nuclear fire in the sky, but not getting crazy hot… that’s my hope anyway.   It stayed very nice (other than humid) all day yesterday.

The crew showed up and got to work.  The new machine does the job but has a learning curve.   Boss man did a pretty good job of climbing the curve.  He expects they’ll be faster today.  They started on the back side, where there wasn’t much, if any, water in the holes.  Most of the holes dried out while they were doing the other work.  If any are still wet today they have a pump.

I got a couple of smaller tasks done.  Moved my metal cabinet into the garage and moved all the canned goods and the freeze drieds to the cabinet.   Plenty of room for more.   I stacked the buckets beside it.   6x 30day buckets of freeze dried (but mostly breakfast and sides, no meat or good main meals).  60 days rice.  10 gallons of flour.  A shelf of pouch meat, and some canned chicken.  A couple of flats of veg and beans.   LOTS more to go before I feel comfortable but it would be good for a short term event.  It beats the heck out of foraging and eating cattail roots.

I’ve got a couple of different ways to cook up here, but need to get a set of coleman dual fuel appliances and some fuel stacked.   I’ve got the propane lantern and camp stove, and some 1 pound bottles already.  There is an electric hot plate and microwave too, if we lost gas, but had power.   I feel like I need some more depth, like I’ve got at home.  (Solid fuel camp stove, back packer stoves, butane table top stove, hobo stove, jet boil system, rocket stove, and more multiples of all that.)  I like to eat and I like to eat hot food.

Eventually we’ll get the wood burning stove in place and I’ll have that too.

There were TWO solar ovens, NIB, in an estate sale last week.  Never seen that before, but they got over $20 and I didn’t see where they ended up.   Too much for me anyway for something I’ve never used before and am a little dubious about.

Some accessories for cooking over an open fire would be nice too, tripod with chain, adjustable height grill, spit…and cast iron.  I need more cast iron up here.   I did bring up a turkey fryer propane ring and pots.   I can heat water in bulk, have a fish fry, or a crawdad boil with that.

I’m actually in good shape for alternative cooking.   I would like to be as set up for water treatment.  That is definitely on the list, beyond the sawyer mini and the other small filters.  We can always gross filter and boil, but that takes a lot of time and energy.  I need more bleach up here.

You can see that even with tall stacks there is always room for more.   Work on that!  Keep stacking!

nick

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Mon. Oct. 17, 2022 – foundation work, yes please!

Cool and kinda crisp this am at the lake.   Humid as humid gets in Houston.   Yesterday was cool but so damp I was sweaty standing still.

Spent the day doing the things I couldn’t leave for a week.   Cut and vac sealed and froze 17 pounds of pork loin.  Two 3 pound roasts, 3 pounds of the dark end marked for pulled pork, a pound of some extra meat they left attached to chisel and extra buck out of me, and the rest in center cut pork chops, 1 inch thick.   It joined the steak I bought on sale in the freezer.

Did a couple of small repairs, sorted some auction stuff, and put out the preliminary Halloween decorations.   Getting them down, I found where the possum was going to the bathroom in my garage attic… yeah, not nice at all.  Gloves and a bag took care of that, but I’ve got no love for the possum.  I set two traps and my wife says she’ll relocate any vermin that get caught while I’m away.

Eventually I got out of the house and on the road.   Made it to the BOL and made an early night of it, because the foundation guys return today.   I’m really interested to see the new machine and see how the process goes.   Then when I’ve had my fill of watching other guys work, I’ll do some of my own.

I guess I can stretch the metaphor and say that doing all the work up here is stacking up a BOL… but it’s a stretch.   I did bring a case of beans up to add to my food stack.

So I am doing a bit of stacking.  You do some too!

nick

 

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Sun. Oct. 16, 2022 – headed out of town… got work to do

Cool and damp.   Getting warmer later.  It was fairly nice all day, but the humidity was high.   Sweat running down my back just standing around… yuck.  And likely more of the same today.

Did some of my stuff.   Got some Halloween stuff done, but first thing on the list today is getting a bunch of stuff out and set up.   I’m well known in the neighborhood for my decorations and that is a good thing.  I’m the guy with the great Halloween display and the cool Christmas stuff, not the weirdo waiting for the end of civilization.  I’m the guy who helped everyone out with plumbing parts after the freeze…   meatspace baby.

We’ll probably get around 150 kids if the weather is ok.    And I’m dressing up this year.   Been growing facial hair to help sell the costume.  It itches.  I don’t have a lot, and some of the facial scarring keeps hair from growing on one cheek, so it’s not symmetrical, but it’s the first time I’ve ever had sideburns.  My indian friends think it looks good.  Some of the younger guys think it looks good.  Everyone else thinks it looks silly.   I’m undecided.  Change is sometimes a good thing.  Hard to try something completely new at my age.   And I’ve been growing it for a couple of months, because it’s so thin and slow growing, so it looked even worse than it does now, as it finally looks intentional.  My oh my, don’t it make ya wanna cry.

Did some weeding in the raised beds.  The collards continue to do well, so I pruned them and weeded that bed.   And surprise, surprise, the watermelon started to grow!  It’s got vines and flowers.  Also, one pepper plant and one cabbage survived, and are growing now.  I weeded that bed too.  The biggest bed, that has the herb garden, is really only growing chives and the grape vines this season, but they are doing ok now.   Both vines had frozen back to the dirt, but they are climbing the trellis…  and even better, one of my potted citrus, that I thought was completely dead, is sprouting leaves and they are not growing just from the root stock but from the tree.  The other herbs are doing ok, other than the rosemary.  I can’t keep a rosemary bush alive for more than 2 seasons.  So it looks like I might have more garden than I thought.  Hooray.

Anyway, plan for today is more Halloween, some shopping at Lowes, maybe a dumpster run on the way out of town, and finally back up to the BOL.    Crew will be there around 9am  to start the actual foundation support work with the helical piles.  That should be interesting to watch.   If I get the plumbing parts I need at Lowes, I should have stuff to do all week while they work on the foundation.  If not, the list of other jobs is long and varied.  I’m sure I’ll stay occupied.

And I’ll be stacking more canned goods up there.   That will let me increase the stacks here too.   Stack it up fellow ants.  Don’t be a grasshopper.

nick

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Sat. Oct. 15, 2022 – home after all

Cool, damp, and warming later.  Sun most likely.   Like yesterday.  Sun was burning through the truck window (radiant heat) but the air was pretty cool until later in the day.  Sunny all day.  Nice night at 72F, but a bit damp.

Spent the day out and about after doing auction stuff.   Had a two hour power outage, preceded by short outages and flickering.   We never had outages without hurricanes when I moved to this house in 2008.  Now they are far too frequent.   I think it’s another example of the deteriorating conditions around us, and it exposed an issue with my UPS setup in my office that I have to get straightened out.

Child was feeling better in the afternoon.  Fever had broken, and she ate a bit.   Still watched TV when I told her not to.  Brat.   If D2 doesn’t develop any symptoms, she’s got a sleepover at a friend’s house tonight.

I’m going to be  doing normal stuff, and getting a lot of my Halloween stuff set up.   I don’t want to wait for the last days, because those will be filled with getting the more fragile stuff set up.   Gotta get the general stuff out now.  If feels like I waited too long as it is.

Sunday I need to pull a bunch of canned goods to take to the BOL.   I’ve been holding back because we’re doing the work, and have stuff everywhere, but it’s not a good retreat until it is stocked.   I will feel better when I’ve moved a bunch more stuff there.  I’ll take half the OTC drugs and medical supplies too.  Lots of duplication here that could be spread out to there…

So look at your situation, and re-stack as needed.   Or stack some more.  Because everything is changing except man’s nature.  It’s reasserting itself, red in tooth and claw.

nick

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Fri. Oct. 14, 2022 – another week gone by, halfway through October…

… fer Pete’s sake.   Cool and damp in Houston today.   Some places got rain last night.   I don’t think we will/did.  Thursday was hot and oppressively humid, and today will likely be similar.

I did home stuff in the morning, but did pickups in the afternoon.  Did a grand circle around Houston in fact, starting out heading north on the Beltway, swinging east, then south and finally closing the circle by coming back up through downtown and heading west.  Ok, not quite a circle.  Lots of driving.

While I was doing pickups I hit one thrift store (the Deseret Industries mentioned a day ago) where I got a pair of tactical shorts and a DVD of Disney’s Swiss Family Robinson.  I love the book and loved the movie.  I hope it holds up to my adult eye.  I always swing through the store if I’m in that part of town.

And after my last pick up (by Hobby Airport) I swung by the Habitat for Humanity reStore (which I try to do when I’m in that part of town).  Turns out they had a bunch of doors that will be  a very nice upgrade to the BOL.  New interior doors were on the list, just not very high.  New door knobs were going on the old doors as they got primed and painted (got a bag of knobs at the goodwill).   It’s amazing the change in appearance that getting rid of the flat builder grade (cheap) doors and gold doorknobs makes.  Upgrading doors and door hardware is straightforward and can be done over time and on a budget.   It’s great bang for buck,  for updating an older property, especially if the original doors were cheap and nothing special.  Buying them new would have been over $800, with another $300 for knobs.   Got lucky the reStore had some cheap.  This particular reStore almost always has doors.  I’ve bought a bunch there.

Secondary market, meatspace.   If I needed the doors right away, there are other places I’d have looked besides the big box stores.   There are places that just sell doors, and sell manufacture overstock, closeouts, blems, etc.  There are architectural salvage stores (where I went to replace a door and some windows on my rent house, which was built in the ’20s or 30’s.)  There are other places to look as well.   KNOWING those places, that they even exist, is part of what I’ve been encouraging people to do.  Start participating in the secondary economy now, while it is voluntary.   Swapmeets, bodegas, discount stores, farmer’s markets, yard sales, thrifts, estate and garage sales, and person to person selling are bound to increase as traditional sellers have supply issues or staffing issues, or just can’t pay the bills and close their doors.

Get some practice buying in places that mostly take cash, that don’t have a constant inventory, that might have  ‘irregular’ supply chains… (not stolen, I’m not advocating that), but if things go all splodey in the economy, informal economies grow.  The line between ‘informal’, ‘grey market’, and ‘black market’ might blur and knowing what is ‘normal’ and what is not can help you avoid any issues.  Or seek them out if it comes to that.

Business always finds a way to get done.   Become familiar with some of the alternative ways…

And the cash you save will help you stack things higher!

nick

 

 

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Thur. Oct. 13, 2022 – Friday the thirteenth lands on a Thursday this month…

Cool and damp as a wet dishrag.   Sweating just waiting for the school bus.   And then hot in the afternoon sun.   Ol’ Sol still packs a wollop.   Last night it was still 79F at midnight.   That’s pretty warm and the reverse of the trend.  I am looking forward to Fall  getting here in earnest.

Spent the first part of the day online doing auction stuff.   Then went looking for some cables that someone wants to buy.   I haven’t sold any in a year, and I’ve “organized” stuff to the point that I couldn’t find them.   They weren’t at home, in the ready  to sell pile, nor were they where they used to be, in the deep storage.  I really hate when that happens.  I’ve got one more place to look today.

Then I went shopping, made dinner, did some auction stuff, and worked on mileage for taxes…  not a super fun day.

Today I’ve got to get to my storage unit and get stuff sorted and on shelves.  Shelves I have to clear a space for and assemble…  then get some more stuff out of the house.   I should do a pickup too.

No further word from the foundation guys.  I’m assuming we won’t try to do anything this week at this point.  I am frustrated by having to depend on these other guys for stuff I need.

How much more dependent am I on the bigger picture, society in general, for all my needs?   More than I’m comfortable with, that’s for sure.  They whole point of prepping is to reduce your dependence on others, to have backups to the “other controlled” aspects  of day to day life.   Disasters break those aspects of our lives, whether they be personal, or regional, or national, or global.   And we prep to minimize the effects when those dependencies break.

Stacks of stuff can help with most things.   Stacks of friends and acquaintances can help with the others.  Some you just have to ride out.

Stack what you can.

nick

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Wed. Oct. 12, 2022 – odometer rolled past 123456 and I missed it

Cool in Houston, getting warmer later.   It was very nice at the BOL.   It was reasonably nice in Houston.   It’s getting to be that time of year, like Spring, when it is very nice to live here.  Pity that the good weather is so short lived.

Mostly spent yesterday on nothing much.  Spent a couple hours chatting with my neighbor.   That was a lot of fun.  I’m learning alot about the history of the area and the lake.   Then I spent the afternoon locking up and driving home.

So not a productive day in the traditional sense.

Today I’m hoping to do some tax stuff, some ebay stuff, and some auction stuff.   First I have to get the kids out the door.  And I have to take a load of trash to my secondary location and dispose of it.   Lots of neglected things around the house here, and things to get together to take up to the BOL.

I’ll get to some of it.

And maybe I’ll get some stuff added to the stacks.   You should too.

 

nick

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