Month: January 2024

Cold. Supposed to be real cold, but might just be Houston cold. Openweathermap.org says high of 47F low of 38F. Could happen. Probably won’t freeze though.

I ended up not going to the BOL. I was bidding on some stuff that has a pickup today, so I couldn’t bid if I went to the BOL. I won, so it’s a good thing I thought it through. I got a new washer for my rent house. Or rather an old washer. Simple mechanical Roper (entry level brand) looks like it’s in good condition. $100. I also picked up another mountain bike since I would be going there anyway. It’s an older bike, but was crazy money when new. Not particularly “mountain bike” looking, not full suspension, no disk brakes, but looks like a solid bike. It will live at the BOl. Can’t have too many bikes, in my opinion. Or supplies to keep them running.

The pickup I did yesterday is UV curing lights for the 3d resin printer. Still trying to move that project along.

Today I will be moving stuff around in the house. Some attic organization might happen too, now that I got some more boards for flooring. And some sorting for auction will happen as part of that. At some point I’ll pickup the bike and washer. Which will mean that my Monday afternoon is committed to installing the washer. I guess it’s a good thing to know what I’ll be doing…

Eye is still a bit blurry, but better than it was. No flashes lately but the floaters still catch me off guard. REALLY glad that I was close to medical help so I can rest easier and not worry about losing my sight in that eye. One of the big disadvantages of living at a BOL is that it is generally far from medical care. When people ask, ‘why don’t you just live at your BOL if you’re home is at risk’, one of the reasons can be “access to healthcare”. Normal and routine access trumps a lot of stuff, if you need it. Going to the doctor is a half day affair for my fishing buddy and his wife.

There are always tradeoffs, and situations are always changing. Some people find it easier to battle inertia if they decide on a preset ‘line in the sand’ that triggers their action. That takes some of the normalcy bias and second guessing out of the equation. Still takes determination and willpower to actually act though.

Takes a lot less determination to stack some food and supplies. It’s kinda the easy way … so you might as well. Right?

nick

*name the movie, quote is near the end, there’s a spark…

Cool and damp. Chilly. Joint achy. That is a forecast you won’t hear on the news… but that’s how a lot of us experience the weather, with varying and various pains. Hopefully today won’t hurt too bad. Yesterday was dank, and everything stayed wet all day. It would be nice to get a bit of sun and warm today.

I did my pickups, some furniture for the house, and some stuff for the BOL. Some stuff to resell might have fallen into my truck too… I might have to make a trip to the BOL just to move this last load of stuff. There is always another bucket or case of cans I can move too if I need to fill up space in the truck. And I really need to get some of the stuff that’s been sitting around here for a while either put away, or moved to where it belongs.

I keep finding other things I want to do more that that though.

I’ve got a couple of pickups today, and I need to shop for a scratch and dent washer for the rent house. I’ll be on that side of town, so I should take a look at the former Sears Outlet. I’ve bought many appliances from them without issue. I don’t have any unusual kid chauffeur duties so I should be able to work around that and get done what I need to do. Should. We’ll see what the universe has in store for me.

And we will adapt ourselves to do what most needs doing.

And I’ll stack something. There’s a remote chance I’ll learn something too.

Do what you can.

nick

Cool this morning, warming later. It was significantly warmer yesterday than the freeze, but still not “warm”. I was in a coat and hat most of the day. 43F when I went to bed beats 29F though. Supposedly we’ll be getting warmer, then cold again for the weekend, than warmer. As long as the lights stay on, doesn’t matter much to me.

Did my stuff yesterday. Two pickups, one of them at a new seller. I love the new sellers because prices are lower. Place is in a horrible neighborhood, in a super run down warehouse, not too far from my secondary location. Feral dogs roaming, digging through trash, graffiti, shady car repair places where the customers have beat up trucks with no plates- generally nowhere you’d want to be after dark, or even on an overcast day.

Did my kid shuttling too. That eats a couple of hours. I got some reading done while waiting though. Finished the Jim Butcher Spire novel. Liked it. Love the cat humor.

Today will be more of the same. Pick some stuff up, sort some stuff out, put some stuff away. The short week is definitely making some stuff harder than it should be.

One of the tasks I should knock off is doing some triage on some of my stored food. I can see that there is spoilage, it’s past time to do something about sorting and tossing some of the oldest stuff, or stuff with damage. There’s a whole project involved in moving it to cabinets in the garage too, with a hundred prerequisites and a fractal to do list. Maybe I can just nap instead? No? Shoot.

Sorting through the stacks isn’t stacking per se, but it’s as close as I’m likely to get today.

The rest of you CAN stack… and should.

nick

Ok, it’s cold. Winter has fallen across the US, and it’s cold in a lot of places. Mid-January. Not really a surprise. Not record cold either, or record snowfall, just “cold”. Yeah it’s unpleasant to be out in the cold. Yeah, it’s more difficult to drive safely, which btw isn’t actually a concern for a large part of the population even on a sunny day, judging by what I see on the road. Yeah, some people always die when it’s cold. They die when it’s hot, and they die when it’s perfectly average. I am tired, tired, tired of people attempting to manipulate me and the rest of the country. FFS. Do what it takes to deal with the reality we live in. This used to be called common sense.

And there endeth the rant.

Nothing new here. Kids are home, because the roads are slick and the buses aren’t set up to deal with it. Neither are the parents for that matter. The rarity of the situation means that prudent stewards of our tax money didn’t spend it “just in case”. Well, they spent it on something else, with even less chance of solving any issues, unless their issue is a lack of hookers and blow, but in any case, it doesn’t make sense for Houston to have stockpiles of salt, and snowplows. I was quite shocked to see the tollroad spraying something on the road surface Sunday as part of their “protocol.” Shocked that they had the spray rig, shocked that they had anything to put down…

But hey, someone was doing some disaster planning, and they actually bought stuff, trained on its use, and deployed it, instead of leaving the plan in a three ring binder on someone’s shelf. I’m kinda impressed.

Spent yesterday doing small jobs around the house.

Supposed to do a pickup today, maybe more than one, but I’ll bet they wave us off. In that case, I’ll do more stuff around the house.

There’s always stuff.

Year end adds additional stuff too.

Do some stuff today. Inventory, polish, clean, read a manual, touch base with a friend, or stack. Or just do some relationship maintenance…

nick

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

That’s my plan anyway. Cold and windy, getting colder. Well we’ll see about that. Supposed to. Should. Might not.

Did my meatspace stuff on Saturday. Had a movie night with the kid. Put away some Christmas stuff. Put the tree out on the curb. Stayed up too late.

So today I’m sleeping in. Then I’ll do some stuff around the house so it won’t be a wreck when my GS troop leader and D2 get home.

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I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but I am a bit, by some of the other blogs I read. They are all somewhere on the red pilled, prepper spectrum, and yet said stuff like “I’ll go to Home Depot tomorrow and get one of those Mr Buddy heaters” or “I’ll go out and get some propane.” Nope, probably not. Probably sold out the day before the big bad cold… WHY PEOPLE?? At this point if you go out for stuff it should be for topping up or correcting some unfortunate timing issue in you use/replenishment cycle. It should not be for getting a critical backup item. One guy had his wife browbeat him into letting preps go. I get that. BUT. Dammit, it’s your job. It’s not rocket science, and everyone’s been talking about it for years now.

Even in my ham radio QST magazine there was an article by a guy who has spent 20 years doing emergency support activities as a ham, who admitted that his own preps never got done, despite preaching preparedness for years. His plan seemed to be “deploy to his ham assignment” and when he couldn’t, it turned out he didn’t have any plan at all. What did he think his family was going to be doing while he played radio?

I fall far short of the ideal, and even of my own goals all the time, but I’m trying. I’m living the life, and doing the stuff… and sharing to show that you can, because if I can do it, you can too. But you have to DO IT.

Don’t keep putting it off, or finding excuses not to get prepped for your local hazards, and then for the bigger stuff. They will come. You will be glad that it all turned out to be a minor issue after all, especially if it was minor because you had preps in place. If you haven’t already, take that first step, and then the next, and the next.

Stack the stuff. For realz.

nick