Month: April 2023

Cool and damp, continued chance of rain.   It rained on and off all day Friday, making my auction sorting kinda problematic.  I managed to pick up  the base for my 10″ dobsonian in between showers, and got an item out of storage for an ebay sale.

I went by ‘the bins’, and got a ton of stuff I’ve been looking for.   Crazy how it works sometimes.   I’ve been trying to buy a “stand up desk” converter (scissor lift thing sits on your regular desk and has adjustable height) for months.   Pretty much the exact one I wanted (some are sturdy, some are not) was sitting in a bin, waiting for me.   No good collectibles, no vintage or mid century modern, no pokemon, but I still filled a tub with stuff for the auction and me.  Oh, and half a tub of Christmas lights.   If  they’re not all balled up, I’ve been buying Christmas lights.   This last year I found that a lot of mine are looking pretty ragged, and I’ve got  the BOL to decorate now too.  So time to upgrade for cheap…

Today I’ve got my non-prepping hobby meeting, some stuff for show and tell, and then if the weather is clear, a freezer to deliver.   Might deliver the last of the cookies too.   The season is over for us, but there are a few boxes left in the ‘cookie mom’ just in case inventory.

It’s meatspace, and it’s important.   We are part of a community.   Several in fact.  We are part of groups.  Again, several.  Some of us might only be part of a group we aren’t even aware of – that old loner nut down the street – but we’re part of groups.   The challenge is to not be ‘outed’ as a prepper, or someone to be robbed or take advantage of, but to still be a helpful and valued member of whatever group it is.   Helpful and valued members are less likely to be dimed to confiscation squads.   Helpful and valued group members are more likely to be tipped off to trouble, or opportunity.

The web and online services have ‘disintermediated’ a lot of our relationships and transactions.  When things get spicy, personal will once again reign supreme.  Who you know and who knows you might determine your access to resources, aid, and work.    It takes time and practice to be comfortable in the person to person marketplace.   Get some now, spend the time.   I know I’ve talked about it before, but it is becoming more and more clear to me that the future is personal and local.

Stack up some experience while you are stacking up goods.   This week, go to a grocery store you haven’t been to.   Walk the aisles.  See what they might have that your normal store doesn’t.  Bonus points if the store caters to a different ethnic group than yours.   Ask at least one person something about an item.  Chat.  Get a feel for the pace and rhythm of the place.  Buy something and pay with cash.   If you don’t use cash normally, this is a good time and place to start.  Cash is king in the secondary economy.   Learn to use it.

Learn something this week.   Stack something this week.

nick

Probably raining, cool, and wet.   Yesterday’s weather was rain as predicted but much later in the day than thought.   Then a little clearing, before the heavy rain rolled in later.   We got a bunch, which the grass needed.  Today is supposed to be more rain, but we’ll see.   Might be some other part of Houston’s day in the barrel.

Did auction pickups and drove around.   Mostly stuff for the BOL.   Got some good stuff at the bins.

Spent over an hour talking to an old friend on the phone.  It’s been too long since we spoke.  I don’t want it to be so long again.   I also don’t know if I’ll get a chance to talk with my aunt again.   I was going to call her last week, and got distracted.   Now she’s in the hospital, with rehab and then skilled care in her future.   She might not make it home.   We never know what tomorrow will bring so do what you need to when you need to.   Might not be a ‘later’.

Today should be me at the BOL meeting with the cable internet guy, but — they are liars that lie.  I’m glad I decided not to try going up last night.   The company claims they sent email explaining that they don’t actually service my address, despite insisting that they did.   No such email was received.   The appointment was not canceled.    If I had trusted them, I’d be up there cooling my heels while they never showed.

Instead, I’ll do more stuff here.   There’s no shortage of things that need doin’.   Maybe we’ll decorate eggs tonight.  Kids are off school and wife is off work, so I’m the only one working today.  After last year’s scramble to find egg decorating stuff, I stocked up.  No shortage of stuff this year, either for traditional color, or for more modern systems.   Gnomes are likely.  I really like decorating eggs.

I like to keep the old traditions alive.

Stack some culture, some traditions.   That’s what gets remembered.

nick

Cool, 60-ish, and damp.    Weather was crazy yesterday.   The overcast turned to misty drizzle, then the sky opened late morning.   Then it mostly stopped for a couple of hours.   But in the early evening we had a lot of bump and flash, with actual hail for a brief time.  Big hail.   Ping pong ball sized mostly with a few bigger, and some smaller.   Didn’t last long but it got my attention.

Haven’t looked at the truck yet, but I’m sure there are some dings.   Today has light rain in the forecast.

I used the lull in the rain to do my pickups yesterday.   Stuff for the house, and the BOL mostly.   That late start got me home late too.   Did some more sorting, stacking, and moving stuff around.  Cleaned up and did laundry.   The usual domestic bliss.

Broke down and vac sealed the Costco pork ribs.  Three racks to a pack is more than I want to defrost for one meal, so I cut each rack in half, and bagged them two halves in each bag.   That is more like dinner sized…   The rest of the marinaded pork chops got bagged too.

Don’t know if I’ll head to the BOL today or not.   It’s turning into a challenge to get up there to meet the cable/internet guy, and then mostly turn right around and come home.  I have my non-prepping hobby meeting on Saturday morning, and I have good ‘show and tell’ items and don’t want to miss it.  Plus I’ve been volunteered to be a committee chair for our annual meeting, so I should start getting up to speed on that.   There are other family reasons to not be gone Friday as well.    Maybe I can go up during next week.   Change.  Supposedly it does a body good.

Today is the anniversary of one of my wife’s relatives’ unexpected death.   Having married into the family, he knew what I was facing, and was one of the first to make me feel welcome.  I miss him.  I’ve been thinking about old friends lately, and have started picking up the phone.   Don’t wait if you get the feeling you should reach out.   Twice it’s happened that I talked with a friend shortly before his unexpected death.  I feel better for having had the contacts when I did.

I don’t know why the universe works the way it does.   It might just be innate pattern recognition pulling signals from the noise, or inventing signals where there aren’t any.  Or maybe it’s something quantum, or Taoist synchronicity, or God’s voice.   Happens often enough that I’m convinced something real is going on though.

I don’t have a general sense of dread, nor any specific “feeling”, but I do sort of find myself oddly passive, in a sort of ‘learned helplessness’ sense.  Like it’s all kinda pointless to keep working on the problems.   That’s probably just fatigue, and the fact my calendar has far too many absent friends memorialized on the next couple of pages.  There are good anniversaries coming up too, both daughters have birthdays, and I have a wedding anniversary…   and of course I just had my birthday, which may be a contributing factor.  Memento Mori.  Probably worth considering, and then putting aside- like usual.

And like usual, I want you to stack stuff. I’m giving you permission.   Do it.

nick

Cool and damp.  Overcast, with chance of sun.  Which describes yesterday, and maybe today.

Spent the day messing around.   Had to stay close to home to retrieve D2 from her backpacking trip, so that limited what I could do.  It also interrupted any long tasks.   The upshot was… did some small things around the house.

Spent a few hours working on a coffee maker from the goodwill outlet.   It was worth it as it was a very expensive coffee maker.   Even just for parts it’s worth several hundred bucks.   Often times, they just need to be cleaner or need an inexpensive part.   This one needs the pump replaced.   If I was keeping it, I’d do it as the part is only $50.   But I intended to sell it, and between the pump and a couple of missing trays,  getting it back in order would eat  most of the profit.   So I’ll sell it for parts, and list the troubleshooting I’ve done so far.   I’ve got a couple more in storage to do too.

I did some more sorting, some cleaning, and other small tasks, and that finished my day.

Today I will be doing more of the same unless I can get to my storage unit and pull out stuff to drop off with my auctioneer.  That is high on the list but dependent on good weather.

The sense of urgency is coming back, or maybe it’s a sense of being overwhelmed.  The government has gone mad.   Our institutions are pushing crazy stuff that no one wants, outside of a tiny minority, who are VISIBLY far outside the norm.  The inmates are truly running the asylum, and I want out before the free lobotomies get distributed.

I’m stacking, and moving stacks to somewhere safer.   Think hard about doing the same.   Think hard about the reality of living in a world where the woman of the year has testes and a penis, no ovaries or womb, and a whole industry exists to convince kids to let doctors mutilate them…

Crazy years?  Oh yeah.   Stack it deep.

nick