Warm and damp today, probably clear, but no guarantees. It did get to be a beautiful spring day yesterday, in the depth of winter. Had that warm, moist smell and was sunny. TOO EARLY! Don’t want to trick the plants.
Did run some errands and do a pickup yesterday. Decided to pick up my new freezers at the last minute on Friday. Then I do my non-prepping hobby on Saturday, and head to the BOL afterwards. We’re supposed to be clear until then, but I’ll put a tarp on the load overnight anyway. Picked up around the house and did some other home stuff. Christmas tree is stripped and all the indoor decorations are put away.
Today I’ve got stuff to pick up. Clothes for D1. Stuff for the BOL. Parts for metro shelves for my storage unit. Funny, but the cheapest place to get them was a couple of miles from my house. Cheaper than amazon, and much cheaper than ebay. And they had them for same day in store pickup. Of course, they only had two shelves worth, but that’s all I needed anyway right now.
Had some more spoiled milk in an unopened container. Should have still been good for a couple of more days, but was chunky. There is definitely something going on with milk longevity.
Ordered chinese delivery for dinner and the owner thanked me for being a good and loyal customer. I told her we decided that if we ever wanted to have local restaurants available, we needed to patronize them now (throughout the pandemic). It’s good food, but not cheap. I can buy a lot of on sale meat for what we spent, but we will get another couple of servings out of the leftovers, and we consider it an investment in our community. That’s also one of the reasons we don’t use an online or mail order pharmacy. We want one in our community. We want it to be profitable and successful, and employ our neighbors.
It’s meatspace. I can ask her how business is, if she’s having supply issues, or other problems. I can get intel locally that I can use. You might be surprised what you can learn from just talking to people, especially if they have a bit of time, and you are not a stranger. I’ve talked about it before, but you really need to get out and about in your community. You need to talk to store owners, neighbors, craftsmen, service providers, and other random people. Start building relationships, even if it’s just on the level of being the guy who always says ‘hi’ and asks about something. Tip well. Be friendly. Buy from them. Don’t rant. Control your urge to talk, listen more… Because meatspace counts and it will count for a whole lot more if things get worse.
Stack up some relationships. And stuff.
nick