68F and a bit chilly early, but warming quickly once the sun does it’s thing. Yesterday got pretty warm, well into the 90s in the sunlight. High 80s in the shade. Very gentle breeze.
Perfect weather for a burn pile. It rained recently so there wasn’t much risk of fire spreading, and little to no wind meant I could finally burn some of the root balls we dug up to get the septic in place. I also had a lot of small branches after I cut down 2 small dead ornamental trees. The freeze killed them and they weren’t coming back. The third small tree went on the HOA lot burn pile for later. It had to come out to provide access to the patio.
Readers who have been following along can infer that my replacement chainsaw parts came in and worked. The chinese bar and chain fit, and cut very well. I also finished up with the string trimmer, and blew the debris clear with an attachment for the trimmer’s power unit. I’ve got a pole saw attachment too, but I didn’t need to use it yet. I really like swapping attachments for the unit. Don’t know if the Craftsman branded engine will hold up, but it’s running great so far, and very handy. I’ve got a blower, pole saw, string trimmer (two actually) and mini rototiller.
The potatoes I planted are growing, but the berry bushes don’t seem to be. The rest of the garden looked like a lawn with all the nut grass. Since it’s so late, I might just cover the whole plot with black plastic sheet, and try to kill the nutgrass for next season. Haven’t decided yet. I did cut it to the soil with the string trimmer. So far the deer seem to have left the potatoes alone. They didn’t even eat the loose potatoes I threw in the yard. Maybe I’ll plant a whole lotta potatoes next time. I dug up some of the wild onions from the lot next door. I will see what I can do with them today.
And I’ll be doing more stuff from the list throughout the day. I feel like I got a lot done, gotta take the meds and keep pushing. It may not be the big stuff, but it all still needs doing.
So I’ll keep stacking up chores. And knocking them down, if only a bit at a time.
Stack it up!
n
@Nick
“I hadn’t peed all day, so I’m topping up with gatorade before bed.”
That’s the clue and the right response.
But try to keep the fluids up while you work. Water, rest, and shade when it’s hot. Not unusual to need a quart and hour when it’s hot–my method is one water to one Gatorade each hour, or more. You’ll can still fall behind, but that amount will help. End of day you want to get in some extra until you do pee.
I have a favorite feed cap. On hot days the moisture wicks up and dries, leaving a salt line. Good indicator for more water. End of day I rinse it out and leave it to dry for the next day.
Being short on fluids leads to heat exhaustion, the first step to heat stroke. It’s not corrected by simply topping up–the effects linger and impair your life. As you get older you are not only more prone but it comes up faster.
I know I sound preachy. Done with soapbox for now.
67 F and there is a big glowly thing in the sky at 7 am here on the West side of the Brazos River. The days are still getting longer for a few more weeks.
Yes, Paxton orchestrated the Griddy customer bailout, which always puzzled me. Setting aside the fact that most of the Griddy customers I saw interviewed were far from “just plain fiolk” if you dug hard enough, the company execs facing orange suits and possibly the old fashioned tar/feather facial were Clinton White House operatives.
Its a big club, and you aren’t in it.
The two year cycle of the Texas Legislature allows a lot of things to disappear down the media rabbit hole.
I have a two film DVD of “Uncle Buck” and “The Great Outdoors” sitting in my media queue.
Watch “Uncle Buck” and then “Top Gun Maverick” in close timeframes and you will catch one of the coolest 80s reference in recent film in the form of the Mrs. Iceman cameo.
As for “The Great Outdoors”, I know there are references buried in “Picard” which I didn’t catch, particularly regarding the cabin. That’s an odd choice for the writers, and I’m curious as to why.
The best flick I’ve seen recently is “Sisu”, but it isn’t for the kiddies.
Hollywood will have to relearn how to do movies like this. Even if it isn’t your type of film, the producers will make money.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2k4QAItiSA
When it hit 88 F on the Missouri River last weekend at 2pm, I was done. Too hot for this Texan in Montana. And I had drunk 2.5 water bottles by then and peed once. Seems like being on the water emphasizes the sun even though the river was in the 50s F.
When I was young and working on the farm one of the more difficult tasks was manhandling bales of hay from the field to move to the barn. Stacking on the trailer, unloading the trailer, stacking in a hot barn. On days when the temperature was in the 90’s it was hot work.
Myself and the rest of the crew got our fluids from a hose. It was the same story on every farm. There was no Gatorade or other drinks. We just chugged from the hose on every trip arriving at, and leaving from, the barn.
I suspect most of us on the crew were consuming a gallon of water an hour. We sweated, a lot, which was a good thing. Peeing was just done in the middle of the field.
When I was in the USAF basic training it was in July and August in San Antonio. Many mandatory water breaks and forced to drink water by the training instructor. We were issued salt tablets that we had to take, twice a day. I think the salt tablets are no longer issued. Urinating was every couple of hours, generally a line for the available disposal locations, sometimes portable.
My grandfather worked in Southern California his entire life running a road grader, starting in the 1920’s. When he left in the morning he alway had a large canvas bag that he filled with water. He hung it off the side of his pickup on the way to the job site. That water would get very cold from the evaporation and stayed cold most of the day. I have no idea what the bag held, it was very large, and he would consume most of it during the day.
He also wore long sleeve cotton shirts and a large hat. He said the longs sleeves kept him cooler as when he sweated it soaked into the shirt and then evaporated. The long sleeves kept the sun off his skin and the hat kept the sun off his face.
A lot has been learned about hydration since the 60’s.
And in other news. The pain in my tooth is almost completely gone. I did have an infection. Everyone should keep Amoxicillin on standby. Cheap, difficult to overdose.
The pool is about 2″ from being up to operating level. Water is at the bottom edge of the tile layer. Needs to get to the middle of the layer so the skimmer can operate. 36 hours to fill the pool with the hose. My water bill will be huge but at least I can get the sewer portion adjusted.
Yet another study confirms masks and lockdowns were useless except to authoritarians
https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/05/28/yet-another-study-confirms-masks-and-lockdowns-were-useless-except-to-authoritarians-n553947
bore down to the actual study:
Assessing COVID-19 pandemic policies and behaviours and their economic and educational trade-offs across US states from Jan 1, 2020, to July 31, 2022: an observational analysis
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(23)00461-0/fulltext#seccestitle10
Published in The Lancet. Not the journal it once was, forever tarnished as the publisher of a fabricated paper on vaccine and autism that stood for years until a journalist–a real one–raised questions.
Funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Tainted.
Adjusted data. Here’s the crux of it. Look at Figure 1 and see the map graphics showing unadjusted vs. adjusted data. Big changes. Showing unadjusted is good, but I don’t see any stat group on the team to provide unbiased guidance. Maybe they’re there.
Bbbzzzzzzztttttt, wrong. I missed a day. It is 50 hours to fill the pool. Never do date calculations with a sore tooth. That’s my excuse and I am sticking to it.
During Airborne school, we had to crocodile roll through an outdoor shower and drink water every hour. The first day at the first hour, all the Amish were laughing at us WHITEYs rolling through the shower. The second hour, the Amish were at the lister bag like suckling pigs. Then languishing through the shower roll. The good old days.
Get your Jase Medical anti-biotic kit and put it in the fridge. You can get one per adult. I have two in the fridge and used the Amox out of one just like Mr. Ray, on a tooth infection. Cleared it up.
The Jase kit also has a handy-dandy guide on what anti-biotic to use. You five different kinds.
One upside of the pandemic is the public discrediting of Gates, which has gone further than I ever expected and we haven’t seen the Epstein video stash emerge yet.
Upcoming trip I had three flight changes, one layover was 36 minutes at JFK. Apparently this concerned Delta when I chatted with an agent.
Delta changed the flights, only one change in Amsterdam. I get into Oslo four hours later. We leave Atlanta 11 hours later which is not a problem.
The good part is that Delta also upgraded the wife and I to Delta One, the first class seats, where the seat lies flat. That is normally a $2,700.00 upgrade from Delta Premium Select. So 1st class to Europe. Awesome.
That is normally a $2,700, per seat, upgrade from Premium Select. I also get priority check-in, priority TSA, priority boarding and access to the Delta Lounge in Atlanta.
I can’t be the only one that remembers “Pee or IV;” that was a real motivator. 😀
About 950 miles ESE of Houston, there’s plenty of humidity in the swamp to keep me from drying out too much. I just have to remember that double IPAs are not as hydrating as they seem…
@ray, good news on the tooth, still go get it looked at you don’t want a problem on vacation. Great news on the upgrades too. The lounge access on international is a HUGE plus as the nice lounges have great toilets, real food, and nice alcohol.
@drwilliams, never a bad thing to remind me, and others. People forget, or miss it the first time. Having FINALLY recovered from my heat injury, I’m pretty careful, but yesterday caught me off guard. I was drinking throughout the day, just not enough. I’m on my second quart today and haven’t left the house or the patio yet. Worse than the peeing, dehydration = constipation.
———————
The string trimmer is a very unnatural motion, and has me holding a weight out in front of my body. I think it has the most effect on my back of anything I routinely do. Two Tylenol last night, and two this morning definitely helped (can’t stack NSAIDS, and am already taking one for my back injury). Since I don’t drink alcohol anymore, I feel ok occasionally taking Tylenol.
———————-
@ greg, we haven’t seen the Epstein video stash emerge yet – and we won’t on the premise that it’s child porn which will protect all those assholes. Even if the truth comes out, it’s one thing to hear so and so had sex with someone, than see them raping young girls.
———————-
don’t forget that I’m on a thin pipe and radio blackout up here, so if something noteworthy is in the news, let me know…
———————–
currently 89F in the shade, with sun and blue skies. I think I’m doing projects in the shade today.
n
double IPAs are not as hydrating as they seem… Oh my, that is the truth…
n
Someone always makes a mistake in those situations. Or duplicates were deliberately made as an insurance policy.
@Nick
“The string trimmer is a very unnatural motion, and has me holding a weight out in front of my body. I think it has the most effect on my back of anything I routinely do.”
My workhorse trimmer is a Stihl gas model. It has a neck strap that helps a bunch. If yours doesn’t have one check to see if there is a place to attach one.
Gislaine Maxwell is still alive, so there would appear to be a credible dead-man switch somewhere.
Can’t be too preachy about water. I can remember days doing archaeological survey across the dry lakes and similar when I got 3-4 miles to the gallon and still had to tank up after work. For me, when the Gatoraide actually tastes good is when I really need it; I can hardly stand the taste otherwise.
Adjust the handles so the machine balances on the front handle. Actually, make the trimmer end a bit light, your throttle hand does the steering. That’s what I did my my Solo trimmer/brush cutter (once I discovered chainsaw blades). One hand on throttle to do most of the steering…. The strap helps but after awhile that crutch is in the way after you grow the needed muscles.
Get it balanced and you won’t be holding it with your arms stuck out in front of you.
Don’t forget the ear plugs. And water, if yer not peeing clear you need to drink more.
“Point of No Return”
https://areaocho.com/point-of-no-return-2/
“From CNBC comes the report that 57% of US residents paid no income taxes in 2021.”
“What we have here is a country where more than half of the nation votes for a living. They vote to get largesse from the public treasury without the education or intelligence to see the cost. They also vote to punish the remaining 43% of the country through confiscatory taxation.”
“You will note that I did not say that they vote to make the 43% pay for it, because that 43% doesn’t pay for it. They can’t. The government took in $5.0 trillion through taxation in 2022, but spent $6.5 trillion. For every dollar collected in taxes, the government spent $1.30.”
If one person pays taxes to live here then all should pay taxes to live here. Everyone should pay at least ten cents on the dollar.
“Debt-Limit Deal Sets Up Tough Battle for Passage in Congress”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/debt-limit-deal-sets-up-tough-battle-for-passage-in-congress/ar-AA1bMH2Q
“The deal struck Saturday night by President Joe Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy offers a lot for the two parties not to like, from expanded work requirements for food stamps opposed by Democrats to higher spending levels than conservatives demanded.”
This ain’t going to pass unless a boatload of dumbrocrats vote for it. But the Freedom Caucus in the House may shoot down McCarthy over it.
Trump wants us to default. He may not be wrong. Default today or in five years may be the only choice that we have.
Hat tip to:
https://drudgereport.com/
Another opinion at:
https://areaocho.com/no-limits/
“Tesla Model Y Is the Top Selling Car in Q1, an EV First”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/tesla-model-y-was-the-worlds-top-selling-car-last-quarter
“After ranking as the third best-selling car in the world last year, behind the Toyota RAV4 and the Toyota Corolla, the Model Y topped both in the first quarter of 2023 with 267,200 units sold. This is despite the fact that, as The Verge notes(Opens in a new window), the 2023 Model Y starts at $47,490, more than the 2023 Corolla ($21,550) and RAV4 ($27,575). The total sold figure represents a 69% year-on-year increase for the Model Y, Jato Dynamics says.”
Wow, that is surprising.
“Tesla Data Leak Tips Thousands of Autopilot Safety Complaints”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/tesla-data-leak-tips-thousands-of-autopilot-safety-complaints
“German newspaper Handelsblatt cites 2,400 incident reports with the Autopilot technology. Tesla says it will sue the ex-employee responsible for the data leak.”
With over ten million vehicles on the road around the world, that does not sound like many problems for Tesla.
@Lynn
“If one person pays taxes to live here then all should pay taxes to live here. Everyone should pay at least ten cents on the dollar.”
The report includes several other numbers of interest:
It’s a bit more nuanced.
Fifty years ago a self-employed worker making decent wages was paying about 8% into FICA up to $10,000, then he hit the maximum and didn’t have FICA deducted again until Jan 1. Now it’s 15% up to $147,000. Few people hit the maximum, and the with the Medicare portion never ends, so FICA looks a lot more like a base income tax.
Our tax policy is distorted in many ways:
Citizens who do not pay income taxes vote for representatives that vote on tax rates.
Unearned transfer payment distort the income picture.
Unreported income is seldom investigated, even when used to support ostentatious lifestyles.
Non-citizens who cannot vote are counted in apportioning representation in the House.
Factor these and other distortions together and there are probably a large number of Democratic representatives that should not be able to vote on tax rates at all, because most of their constituents don’t have any skin in the game.
Disaster Looms for Woke Couples Who Won’t Be Able to Wipe Their Butts If UPS Drivers Strike
https://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=404650
Top solution so far: Cut a square out of the carpet in the closet, use it to wipe, and then wash vigorously to be ready for the next use.
I have to disagree a bit. We’ve worked for what we have. Everything (but the truck) is paid for and after selling Mom’s/My house in the RGV I can pay the truck off tomorrow. I have the money.
There’s a bit more than a grand a month of retirement pay plus SS. We don’t make enough money to pay taxes, I do the filing to get what is withheld from the pension. This is by design. We pay property taxes.
When I /have/ to start pulling from my 401k I’m going for a grand a month. Sure, taxes will be withheld but my plan is to draw it slow enough to not exceed my annual standard deduction. And I’ll get a refund. Hey, I put the money in there “pre-tax” and by golly, I plan to pull it out tax free.
Last I looked, you can apply for food stamps on a TX .gov site. Ah, was just looking, don’t need it, don’t qualify because I have two vehicles, never mind their age. And even there, you can play the numbers and wow I can get $160 a month if I lie about having two cars. Forty bucks a week isn’t a huge amount. It adds up.
I wonder how the various wetbacks paying for a huge cart of groceries every week with their EBT cards qualify and how are they paying for a Suburban. … with leather seats.
At CHECC, We’re Down But Not Out!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/27/at-checc-were-down-but-not-out/
Francis Menton finds a ray of hope in SCOTUS WOTUS for the ultimate demise of the CO2 Endangerment Finding, but maybe not soon.
In 2025 Congress should pass a law specifying that all EPA employees have their pensions invested in carbon credits.
Not everyone pays for the autopilot feature.
So…. I ordered a few things from Big River. The minor stuff is maybe going to show this coming Saturday.
The stuff I want right now? Sevin dust. Because it’s flea season. Oh, June 24. A freaking month from now.
So much for convenience. I’ll be trotting my butt to the local hardware store in a couple of days. Holiday and all that…..
Enough tax revenue will be available to prevent default.
Default may not even be legal in that situation.
Another surprise on my upgraded flight to Europe. I had upgraded one leg of the domestic portion to 1st class using my Delta miles. Those miles have been returned to my account. I did pay about $800.00 to upgrade another portion to 1st class. That money has not been refunded, probably will not be refunded. I am OK with that. I have been upgraded to Delta One, an upgrade cost of $5,400 over Premium Select for a little less than $800.00. Seems like a bargain to me.
The online chat ticket agent did me some real favors changing the booking on my trip.
When I first contacted Delta about the 36 minute layover I was told no problem, the gates are in the same concourse. That has changed. Plane arrives at JFK on B36, plane to Detroit departs at A21. That is a long trek to make in 36 minutes, IF the plane arrives on time.
I suspect the online agent realized this and made the changes using their discretion ability. That and the fact that there are six Delta One seats available and no Premium Select on the flight I am taking. Downgrading was probably more difficult than upgrading. Downgrading would have involved refunds and that is something Delta is loathe to have happen based on past experience. Miles are easy to refund, cash is not.
No word as to what they’re pouring. Bud Light, perhaps?
Plenty of that available in the hands of distributors right now.
Even when Anheuser Busch still owned the theme parks and had a brewery on site, the free beer at the hospitality house came from Pepin Distributing, one of the most powerful names in the company’s distributor roster.
https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/2023/05/25/busch-gardens-free-beer-theme-park/
Enough tax revenue will be available to prevent default.
Default may not even be legal in that situation.
The tax revenue is $5.5 trillion per year.
The spending is $7.5 trillion per year.
That is a $2 trillion per year shortfall. $170 billion per month shortfall in spending. Something has to give if the deficit cannot rise beyond the current amount.
“COVID-19, Looking Backwards”
https://wilderwealthywise.com/covid-19-looking-backwards/
“This will probably be my final post on the ‘Rona. It may get a mention from time to time about lingering effects on the economy and society, but I think the whole COVIDmania is far enough in the rear-view mirror that it’s time for the final review, barring some amazing new revelation like Corona was actually made by Big Toilet Paper to move product.”
“The disease clearly did kill people, but so does the flu. It did kill elderly folks by far in a greater percentage than in a normal year, but was nearly a nonexistent threat to most people in good health under the age of 65 or so. It was a threat ranking somewhere below “blood poisoning from cutting a finger opening an aluminum can” for anyone under the age of 20.”
I had it twice. My 84 year old father had it once. No worse than the flu for us.
I know a guy who died from it. He was on a ventilator for a month before they turned it off. He was about 78 or so and in good health for a guy 3/4s of a century old.
My 89 year old friend has had it three times. It did not help his heart health. He has had to stop preaching on Sundays but normal life may have done that to him too. He used to preach at one of our local nursing homes, I have attended several times for his five minute sermons.
Debt service comes first followed by military paychecks. After that, as David Stockman put it in his anaysis a few weeks ago, “Grandma Yellen will have to sharpen her pencil.”
The Fed buying the Treasuries has lowered interst rates and turned the paper into a liquidity instrument for which the buyers effectively pay the Government for the convenience. It may not be legal for the Treasury not to redeem the bonds or make the interest payments if the cash is available, but the whole mess will probably end up in the Supreme Court to decide should the standoff continue that long.
Long day to not get much done…. Did get small stuff done. Worked on the mower. Did all the PM but the brakes. Got side tracked into new headlights, and ended up one nut short. Metric. Gah. Should have been done with it.
The air cleaner and oil were both REALLY bad. Should run better now. And hopefully not blow up during use.
I think we’re having family game night and then I’ll find some time to sit on the dock.
n
wrt taxes, some people will go galt and stop. Legal remedies will fail or take too long. Revolution or violent unrest is coming.
Chaser, also from the CNN poll:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/05/bidens-free-fall-continues.php
Carter exited in 1981, or 41 years ago. No one much under 64 could have voted in 1976 when he was elected.
Clinton left office in 2001, 22 years ago. To have voted in 1996 you’d be at least 44 today.
How old do you have to be to have an opinion about either that means anything?
NOTE: Had to correct the ages.
“Finally, A Solution to The Problem of Intermittent Power Generation — The “Virtual Power Plant””
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/21/finally-a-solution-to-the-problem-of-intermittent-power-generation-the-virtual-power-plant/
“As discussed here many, many times, the big problem with generating electricity from wind and solar sources is that they are intermittent. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t. And sometimes they don’t work for days on end. The times when both wind and sun fail at the same time for multiple days tend to be concentrated in the very coldest days of the winter. This poses a huge problem for central planners’ dreams of “net zero” electricity. Try to solve the problem with grid-scale batteries, and suddenly you’re talking wildly unaffordable costs in the trillions of dollars.”
“Not to worry. Recently everywhere talk has emerged of a new and seemingly easy solution to the problem of intermittency. Have you heard of it? It’s the “Virtual Power Plant.” I mean, today pretty much everything can be “virtual” if you want it to be. We have the “virtual” meeting, the “virtual” office, and the “virtual” school — even “virtual” reality. So why not a “virtual” power plant?”
Are you freaking kidding me ? A virtual power plant is a smart thermostat, a smart water heater, etc, where they can cut load rather than supplying you with power at your convenience. That is a joke. I had one of those back in the 1990s, they killed the air conditioning in my house for around 6 to 8 hours on Labor Day in 1999 when it was 113 F in Sugar Land, Texas. Never again.
“John Kerry targets farmers: ‘We can’t get to Net-Zero…unless agriculture is front & center as part of the solution’ – ‘I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis’”
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/05/21/john-kerry-targets-farmers-we-cant-get-to-net-zerounless-agriculture-is-front-center-as-part-of-the-solution-i-refuse-to-call-it-climate-c/
“Kerry: “We can’t get to net-zero, we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution. So all of us understand here the depths of this mission.” … Kerry added that “lives depend” on world leaders and scientists developing the tools necessary to lower agriculture emissions. … I refuse to call it climate change anymore. It’s not change. It’s a crisis.””
We need to get rid of this guy, he is going to kill us all.
“We need to get rid of this guy, he is going to kill us all.”
Him and all the rest like him need to have their carbon credits audited. After removing the phony ones he’ll be grounded and shoveling manure in a biofuel plant for the rest of his life, eating three squares of bug burgers next to BillG.
When we had our upstairs HVAC replaced recently, I had to remind the installation crew three times that day not to install the “smart” thermostat on the single stage heating/cooling unit with gas furnace.
The new system works great with the old thermostat. Well. sooprise! Upstairs feels cooler on the *exact* same schedule.
I’m screwed with the downstairs unit, however. Different contractor.
I just saw something about ketchup prices going up, and now I can’t find it.
John Kerry … who served in Vietnam … married into Heinz ketchup money via Tay-ray-zah, widow of Senator John Heinz.
Ketchup inflation. To be fair, I doubt it has as much impact on John Kerry’s bottom line as much as Warren Buffett’s these days. Berkshire-Hathaway owns ~ $13 billion worth of the stock.
https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/check-the-price-tag-before-grabbing-a-bottle-of-ketchup-for-your-barbecue/
That reminds me – we need to have someone out to get a quote on replacement gas logs for the fireplace … while we can still buy a new log set.
“Dilbert Reborn – May 28th, 2023 (shared by Scott Adams on his Twitter account)”
https://www.reddit.com/r/dilbert/comments/13ue8fr/dilbert_reborn_may_28th_2023_shared_by_scott/
Wally tells the A.I. to do his job with unexpected results.