Category: decline and fall

Hot and humid, although slightly less of each than we’ve had recently. It was only 90F yesterday, and the humidity was lower than “drip off your eyelashes” sweaty.

Did a bunch of cleaning and some sorting yesterday, then had hours sucked away by my hobby website. Still messing around with that, but I think I made progress. I did stuff in any case.

Then I did a couple of pickups. Some parts for water purification, and stuff for one of the kids… and went grocery shopping. I was surprised to see canned veg back under a dollar a can. Pasta was still high, and meat was crazy. Vac sealed pork butt was $2.89 (goes on sale for $1, or even $2), low fat hamburger was almost $5, and premium hamburger was almost $6/ pound. There was one tray of choice beef tenderloin steaks and it was $20/pound. Even bulk chicken legs were $1.30, which is .30 more than they were a couple of years ago. There were very few sale items, and a lot of gaps on the shelves. Could just have been because I was there Friday afternoon– that’s not my normal shopping time. Or it could be more issues with supply, or staff.

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Out in the world, social media companies are shutting down firearms related content creators. The political divide has polarized even more. And people are openly advocating for violence against political opponents. It’s coming to a head. Can’t predict the timeline, but I’m more concerned than ever.

Get your ducks in a row, your stuff in the bag, and keep working on your situation.

Stack it up.

nick

Hot again and humid. Maybe less so because of yesterday’s rain, but I think we’ll be back to swamp normal. It was cooler after the rain yesterday morning. 72F was shockingly cool. But it didn’t last once the sun came out. Brain scorch ensued.

Did my pickups and driving around. Spent far too long in the truck and not enough time doing stuff. So I still have stuff to do, and some more driving around too.

I did get a nice flexible 150W solar panel, and some other useful things for the BOL. I’ll pick up a couple more today.

World is getting wacky. The story of the assassination attempt has big holes and improbable gaps. I know we’re not supposed to attribute to malice what is explained by incompetence, but DANG. If it isn’t malice, it’s Uvalde level stupid.

I can’t help but believe that hard times are coming and they will come in a big fat hurry and out of the blue, so you better get stacked.

In retrospect it will look obvious.

nick

Hot and humid. Of course. It was in the 90s yesterday and hotter in the sun. It must have been slightly less humid though as it didn’t feel quite so hot in the afternoon. I will say that sweat was dripping off my abdomen when I was bent over the generator around noon, and I was in the shade…

Speaking of generators, I was starting it because we lost power around 4am. A limb fell on our supply line and took out the fuse for our pole. Just us and 8 of our neighbors… the utility’s outage tracker had it, and the limited extent. That told me it would be some time before it got fixed. The crews are still working on tickets from the storm and 9 customers is way down the priority list. I’m glad I started the gennies, as it was 5pm before our power was back up.

Working around the outage, I did some more organizing and cleanup. This time it was mostly books and library sorting, as I’ve stacked them all over the office, and am out of shelf space. I need to separate some duplicates or similar subjects to send to the BOL, decide if I want the “rebuild society library” here or there, and see if I can get rid of some volumes. Do I really need 5 versions of “Intro to electricity” textbooks? It’s not JUST a contingency measure. I have actually used some of the reference books. I’ve written about the ditches and culverts engineering book I read to figure out stuff at the BOL, I refer to the electrical construction books, and the surveying books helped when I first surveyed the BOL lot.

I like books. I like that they are readable by humans 100 years later. I started accumulating reference books as a deep prep, for a very unlikely scenario, but now I think it’s a bit less unlikely than when I started. You have to have power and connectivity to keep the technological knowledge base up, and having recently seen how fragile those are, I’m more inclined than ever to stack books. It may be that someone ends up using my books for firestarter in the ruins of western civilization, but even that is useful if it keeps them alive…
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Today will be finishing the book sorting (or at least getting the sorted piles out of the hallway) continuing the office and home cleanup, and doing a pickup or two of auction stuff. I scored another Renology flexible solar panel for 1/3 retail. I hope they can “find” it this time. The auction has a pattern of not being able to find high dollar items that sell crazy cheap… but I keep doing business with them despite the irregularities, because of the “crazy cheap” part… and the panel is “cheap” but not CRAZY cheap…

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Stacks ran the A/C yesterday, and kept my food cold… they help me repair stuff when it breaks, and they feed me and my family. Stacks of preparations are a good thing. Build your own stacks, build your own resiliency.

nick

While it is hot and humid, I don’t like to work outside. I’ve injured myself in the past and have no desire to do so again. Sometimes though, you just have to suck it up. Today might be one of those days. And I’ll be out in the heat and humidity, and sun will bake my brains… because it’s summer in the swamp.

I spent most of the day moving kids around. Took D1 to her camp. Picked her back up. Took both to a book store. Brought them home. Worked on my hobby website for the rest of the afternoon and evening. Websites suck. Rick is a hero.

Did get some more stuff put back where it belongs. Still have stuff to put away.

D1 is traveling with a friend for the rest of the week, so the household is disrupted again. I will plod along. Probably not going to the BOL this weekend, because I’m building a little momentum here and want to keep that going. Use the inertia in my favor…

No one knows for sure what tomorrow will bring, but I’m pretty sure that it won’t be a massive improvement in everyone’s life or outlook. So I prep for bad things. And bad things do happen. They have happened, and they will happen again.

Stacks will help get through the bad times. Get you some!

nick

So another hot humid summer day in Houston is ready to start. And one just finished. Everyone likes to complain about the weather, and we got plenty to complain about…

Took D1 to her day camp (for those without kids, it’s an activity that gets the kids out of the house for a day or a half day). There is a whole industry of “day camps” for kids. Most of them have an educational component, so the kids don’t even get a break from school in the summer anymore. When the kids needed constant supervision, having a place for them to go for a few hours a day was as godsend and we did it. Looking back, it might have been better if the FUN element had been emphasized rather than the “learning”. D1 has her second day today.

Spent the rest of the day doing domestic bliss and passed out from carbs. Can’t do that today, too many things need to be wrapped up around the house.

I need to put the A/C units away. I need to do the last of the laundry. And there is more cleaning and organizing to do in my office and throughout the house. Outdoor shite is gonna have to wait… other than putting my plates on the trucks. I got that done yesterday. Now I have to get my toll tags changed out or at least matched to the new plates. There is always more…

Like my hobby website had issues that boiled down to me not knowing what I’m doing. I hope I got it straightened out… but I won’t know til later today. Stuff was working — for the browsers we tested. But apparently older IE refused to render the template properly, and wouldn’t redirect to the wordpress “parking” url. FFox and android, and apple all worked fine. So that revealed that I had taken control of the URL but not properly transferred it to my new host, and linked it to the wordpress built site. Thought I had, but I was wrong. And IE wouldn’t play along. That should have gone through last night, but I will have to verify it and make sure it is working…

Trying to stack up some community engagement. It’s easier to sit home alone. Not as useful, but easier.

Stack some stuff, the rate of change is speeding up.

nick