Cold and clear. Winter. Some places are getting a lot more of it than they are used to. Hmm. We’ll see how cold it will get in Houston. There were reports last night of snow in the Dallas area. They get snow more often than we do, but even Houston gets snow occasionally.
Yesterday I slept very late, and then did my pickup in Kingwood, which is an area north and east of Houston. Still pretty rural, although there are a lot of mega-developments up there, think giant planned communities… The prices I got on the stuff I bought made it worth the drive. And really it’s only about 40 minutes without traffic.
On my way home, I hit the goodwill bins, with a bunch of resale stuff and stuff for the house and BOL finding it’s way into my cart. I also hit the HEB grocery on my way by. The pharmacy has been nagging me to get my prescriptions, but I was 12 minutes too late. Slackers. The store was pretty wiped out. Don’t know if that is typical for Sunday evening, or if it was storm related, but there were HUGE gaps. 20ft of shelving empty in the ramen noodles section. Cream down to a couple scattered containers. Frozen food picked over. The on sale meat was almost gone, but I did grab another tube of pork loin at $2/pound and a brisket at $2.50. I’ll figure out how to cook it, without spending three days smoking it. There was a whole display front cooler in dairy that was empty, and most of the eggs were gone, except for the organic at twice the price.
I only stopped in for the ‘scrip, but figured I’d grab some meat if there was any. I did notice more downsizing of sale units. The ribeye (lowest quality) was marked “thick” but was only 1/2 inch. That gets the total price down for that unit, and I saw the same thing on other cuts of meat- less meat in the package. Coffee is straight up shrinkflation with smaller packages. 12oz in a bag now, not 16, and cereal boxes are so skinny they barely stand on the shelf, but the thin sliced meat is killing me. You can’t shrink the animal, or the iconic cuts, so you have to slice thinner…
Which brings me to some unpleasant thoughts. Even if you are ok, if most of the people around you aren’t, it’s going to affect you by limiting you too. If no one can afford a ribeye, even sliced to half thickness, there won’t be any for sale, even if YOU can afford one.
It extends more generally too. You’re in a blue city, but have kept your head down, and think you are going to be ok. Then things get sporty, some insurgent spikes your electric substation, drops the water main that crosses over the highway, or does something else in the battle between rural and urban, and lo! suddenly YOU have no water or power either. If one side or the other starts shooting cops, there won’t be any cops for you, no matter what you personally think about cops.
The rule about not standing next to stupid people doing stupid things, is going to be applied in spades, whether you chose to stand next to them or not. Where you are is going to determine about 90% of what your experience of the coming troubles will be like.
Think about that, and plan for it.
Stacks will surely help.
nick