Day: June 20, 2023

Tues. June 20, 2023 – toil and trouble

Hot, humid, hot and hot.   Sun supposed to be set on Broil today. So humid yesterday that you sweat through your shorts just standing still.   The sun was so hot, my feet were burning in my black sneakers.

Did my pickups and loaded the truck, and eventually got up here.  Where it was hot and humid.

There are some issues with my equipment order, so I’m only getting the mini-excavator today.   If the part comes in, I get the skid steer tomorrow.   And while communicating all that we discovered that my extra bucket was interpreted as “just send one bucket” so hopefully that is now straightened out.

I still don’t know exactly what I’ll be getting but I’m pretty sure it won’t be what the website showed in pictures.   Oh, it’ll be the same “class” but probably not as nice or new.    I will start practicing and doing what I can with just the excavator, and maybe doing some scoring cuts with the concrete saw in preparation for using the breaker.  Life’s an adventure.

At least most of the concrete breaking is in the shade.

Tree guy might be able to come on next Monday or Tuesday.


 

I stopped at the store for some food before heading up.   HEB had some canned smoked tuna clearanced for 50c/ can.   They had several flavors so I bought about 30 cans.  Beef was crazy high.   They had bacon in stock though.

Has anyone else noticed an unusual number of ‘out of order’ gas pumps?   Seems like every station has one or more nozzles with bags over them now, and for the last couple of weeks.  It seems to be getting worse as I’m seeing it at more stations, and I’m seeing more nozzles out of service at each station.   No gas? or just can’t keep the pumps running?   Weird though, whatever it is.

Maybe an indication of an issue coming our way.   Might want to increase your storage a bit.   Typical prepper guidance is one full refill of your vehicle, or a week running your gennie.   I think that’s good advice if you have somewhere safe to store it.   And it is now hurricane season for those in the affected areas.

Speaking of, Tulsa got clobbered by weather, not ‘tornadoes’ but crazy strong winds tearing the place up with widespread power outages.   I looked for some news to link, but didn’t see anything national.  I’ve got friends there and it’s really messed up.

BTW, if you can’t or don’t have a gennie, at least get an inverter that you can hook to a car battery.   A 1000w inverter will run your freezer no problem and probably your fridge too.   It’s a bit inefficient to sit in your car for an hour just to use the inverter, but it’s less wasteful than losing a freezer full of meat.  No gas, no mess, and small package that could save your food.    Add a deep cycle battery and a battery charger/maintainer for normal times, and you don’t even need to run your car if the outage is only a day or two.  Just don’t leave the inverter connected when you aren’t running it.

There’s always something you can do to improve your position.   Stack it up.

nick

Read the comments: 66 Comments
// ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- // end of file archive.php // -------------------------------------------------------------------------------