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Category: prepping

Mon. Aug. 23, 2021 – insert title here — ;-)

Hot. Sunny. Humid. Overcast. Rainy. Houston. Sunday was hot and humid, no rain, no overcast.

I did some small work in the garage, and I continue to be impressed with how well the exhaust fan keeps the temps down. Oh, it was still hot, but nothing like last year or the year before. Definitely worth doing.

I set two more traps for Sr. Raton. He walked past the traps I’d already set, so I baited these with peanut butter and bacon. I know he was there, because he knocked a package of Costco canned chicken off the shelf. However, someone‘s been nibbling on the poison block I screwed to the wall along a likely infiltration path…. so SOMEONE is not long for this world. I just hope he takes himself outside before expiring. I’m sure I’ll know it if he doesn’t.

I had a box of rat traps that I bought last year at auction, and I have been using the poison block refills for the bait stations. I have been baiting with Tomcat Attractant because all the previous rats learned that peanut butter equals death. It got one up in the attic, but my garage thief is not interested, hence the pb&b bait. If you don’t already have some pest control supplies stacked, I’d recommend getting some. If the slide continues, services like trash removal, junk pickup, etc. will be impacted. Your neighbors, floods, droughts, and new construction all influence the migration and presence of pests too. When the need arises, there might not be any available.

The same can be said for soil supplements, and garden pest controls. It will be critical if you are relying on a garden for food, even just supplemental food, that you get as much as you can. Can’t have pests eating or ruining food your kids need. We’ve already seen that gardening supplies can vanish if the demand goes up even a little. Having some reference books with alternative methods wouldn’t be a bad idea either.

Of course the best case is you getting your garden up and productive long before you NEED it. In most places the learning curve is probably not as steep as here, but it can be hard to find the varieties that grow well for you in your location. Local knowledge helps a lot with that. And every farmer knows that luck plays its part, particularly bad luck. Start climbing that curve. (also, you probably don’t have enough seeds, or the right seeds. Work on that too.)

In other news, the Biddn administration has decided to punish Russia by blocking importation of guns and ammo. Give the popularity of the AK and SKS platforms, that is not good news. Cheap imported steel case 7,62×39 didn’t stay cheap during the recent drought, but it was cheaper than 5.56, and a bit more available. It made for a good argument to have both platforms available in your safe. Who knows, the UN peacekeepers and the chinese ‘advisors’ might become mobile resupply pods if things get super sporty, and in that case, 7.62 will be plentiful again. Until then, the supply chain just got broken.

If there’s something you want, or think you will need in the next 2-5 years, I’m suggesting you buy it when and if you see it. If you need fast computers, might want to accelerate your purchase schedule. Even I’m thinking about getting a new box for the house. Almost everything here is a decade or more old, except the NVR I built, and it’s not new. With all the chips that come from Taiwan, if things get a bit sporty on the global geopolitical front, and it seems likely that they will given our withdrawal from the world stage and increased focus on internal issues, it’s possible that the supply of new things of all sorts could be disrupted.

To put it bluntly, Chinese misunderstanding and foreign adventures could wreck Taiwan’s foundries. Chinese really don’t seem to understand that there are some things that actually must be done correctly and well to work, and not just have the appearance of quality. Chip foundries, like aircraft carrier battle groups and nuclear attack subs, are hideously complex and all the pieces have to genuinely work for the system to work. There is no ‘faking’ it and there is no commanding it to happen.

How long could you go if you had to start from what you have now? That’s the question to ask when considering what and how much to stack. It might not come to that. Sanity might prevail. Doesn’t seem like the smart bet though.

Stack it high and wide. Stack some in secret.

nick

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Fri. Aug. 20, 2021 – and time keeps flying by…

Sunny and hot, humid, possible rain, and maybe all three. Didn’t get any rain here at the house yesterday but someone must have. It was actually a bit cooler, but very humid, so the breeze in the shade took some of the heat away from baking in the sun…

After spending most of the morning working on my client’s upgrade plans, I walked to my mechanic to pick up my Ranger. It’s only a few blocks, maybe a mile. I didn’t do too bad, kept up my pace and wasn’t breathing hard at the end. It was HOT in the sun, but a lot of my route was shaded.

Truck needed a bunch of stuff along with the brakes and suspension. I’ve still got the accident damage to repair, and the windshield to replace. That will have to wait though as I get some of this auction stuff out of the way. Having the funds ready to pay for the work made it all a lot easier.

Had an interesting conversation with the guys at my mechanic’s shop. They are all Persian immigrants and all hustle to make successful lives for themselves and their families. They are all around my age, a couple a few years older, so they were there and saw it happen. I’ve mentioned talking with them before. They were surprised that I knew some of the history of the area and the period of the Shaw’s overthrow and the rise of the extremists. Anyway they see a balkanization of the US as inevitable. Bosnia/Herzegovina etc writ large on this continent. The timeline is the only real question in their minds and they are hoping for 8-10 years. I agree with them about the direction we’re heading, but while it might take 10 years, it won’t be that long before it starts.

I think we’d naturally end up with something like the Nine Nations of North America, but it won’t happen ‘naturally’. As many have pointed out, it’s not red state vs blue states, it’s blue cities vs everyone else. The geography that our natural dissimilarities would support won’t be allowed to happen because of the blue hives in the middle. There won’t be any clearly different territories because each of the sections has blue in it and the fighting will be blue city vs red country.

One thing I’m pretty sure of is that it won’t happen without a ton of bloodshed. And the disruption to the country, economy, and the world will be biblical. A while back I opined that in 10 years I’d have a Republic of Texas passport. Time is ticking, and I still think so.

My goal now is to get through the disruption and out the other side. I think prepping can do that. There isn’t a Roman Empire anymore but there are still people living in Rome.

Stack it high. Learn it well. Practice what you preach. Pass it on.

nick

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Wed. Aug. 18, 2021 – Did something change?

Hot and humid again, although less so. Same prediction of rain in the afternoon or evening. Which is how yesterday went. We had sun and rain at the same time for part of the afternoon… so we didn’t get clobbered, but I think we’re 4 for 4 on rain in the afternoon now.

Spent the day moving stuff from one bin to another, getting ready to drop off some auction stuff today. Then I went to Costco to get TP and whatever else struck me as a good deal.

Hmm. Spent almost $800 and didn’t get much meat, and got no TP. The TP area was BARE except for one or two pallets of Scott. No paper towels either. The napkins I like were on sale so I got some of those. They were bringing out about 10 pallets of kirkland TP, but I don’t need to mess with that. If they haven’t restocked Charmin Blue, I’ll pull some from my secondary location. It’s not that I don’t have any, I just am getting low at the house.

What I did get was some of the stuff I haven’t bought in a year or more. 3 boxes of ziplok bags for example. Dishwasher pods. $40 in black bins for the auction. And lots of prepared meals. They are very convenient with the kids and with me being out of the house in the late afternoon. They’re not cheap, or a great value, but they are tasty and convenient. I also doubled up some purchases to get ‘caught up’ on some stuff I’d let run down. Butter. Cheese. Potstickers. Cereal. Our eating habits have changed and I’ve got stuff on the shelves that is just sitting there that would have turned over twice a year ago.

There were some gaps. No lamb rib chops, so I couldn’t compare today’s price with 2019. No lamb convenience meals either. Still no spiral sliced ham- I don’t think it’s coming back at this point. They marked down the pallet of Community brand coffee. They had switched flavors from what was selling well (and what I bought) to a lighter blend, and it looks like it didn’t sell at all. I hope they go back to the dark roast, and don’t drop the company completely. There was one Mountain House box on an otherwise empty pallet. People must have been buying today. The black bins were sold out on the floor, so I grabbed some from the second shelf. No flip top bins at all.

There was still rice in different sized bags and a couple of different varieties, but nothing like pre-wuflu. It was more like 70c/lb than 50c. That could be brand, or seasonal variation, or it could be inflation. Oh, and no Breathe Rite strips in the store… weird. Lots of indian food displacing the chinese and korean, lots of stuff I’ve never seen in the store before, but all in smaller quantities. All the canned veg was national brands, not kirkland.

There seemed to be a good assortment of cheap wine options, 8-12$ bottles. More selection at the low end than I remember them having pre-wuflu, and confirms what I saw last time. There were a lot of discounted items too, which almost seemed back to normal. It wasn’t crowded at 4:00-5:30pm while I was there, but they must have had a pretty busy day. Storms headed this way, and political storms brewing might do that.

It’s not just foreign actors that will be testing Bidden and the US. Our own politicians will be looking to exploit his weakness and mistakes too. That will give our enemies even more encouragement as we continue fighting amongst ourselves. Don’t look for peace, prosperity, and stability. It’s going to get a lot worse before we get back to those.

Prep as best you can for whatever threat you see coming. If you feel like you’ve got to lower your profile, don’t just drop off the air here. Let us know you’re going to be ‘spending more time with family’… so we don’t worry. Or change your nickname… although that won’t stop us from noticing your old nick isn’t coming around anymore. Thanks for the support for Ray and his wife, especially from those of you we don’t hear from that often. Glad to know you are still coming by.

There’s only so many ways I can say “get prepped” but despite all the time Bob spent saying it, and I spent saying it, some of you were still caught short last March. Don’t let that happen again. For REALZ this time, get prepped! Anyone with specific questions, ask them. It will give me something specific to write about, or it’ll let the other experts here chime in, like battery discussion does.

And let’s not forget that life does go on, even in the middle of a global pandemic, and the coming civil war, and the world wide rearrangement. Ordinary stuff needs doin’ too. I’m not the only one with kids (or grandkids) and we have an obligation to them too. They’ll be the ones that come out the other side of this, and they’ll need a good foundation to build off of. They sure aren’t getting that in school, they need to get it from us. Building the next generation is the biggest prep of all.

And of course, keep stacking. Piles of stuff, a head full of knowledge and hands full of work, and a few stout friends, and you’ll have what you need to get through, and even thrive.

At least, that’s what I am hoping, and building toward.

nick

-title question referred to mood, or zeitgeist. You tell me if you are seeing it.

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Tues. Aug. 17, 2021 – the decline is accelerating

Hot and humid, although the storm brought lower temps overnight. 74F when I went to bed last night. I’m thinking today will be pretty much like yesterday. We’ll have a dry morning, wet afternoon, and moist night.

Had a weird morning yesterday. Got dizzy for no apparent reason, had to lie down for a bit. Pulse ox and heartrate were fine. Weird. Gonna have to find a doctor now.

Spent a little time doing auction stuff, then called my latest auctioneer. He’s agreed to start taking stuff in on Wednesday. HOOORAAYYY. Stuff can finally start leaving here.

Spent the rest of the afternoon picking up and spending time with daughter 2. We ended up assembling a book shelf unit for her room. Mom and d1 got home early so that ended that. Next step is paint or vinyl to change the look, but that will be next time.

Made a special dinner for d1 in honor of her Girl Scout mariner certificate. It’s one of my ‘specialty of the house’ dishes. Grilled lamb rib chops. I dug deep in the freezer and got a package from 2016 and one from 2019. From $10/lb to $14/lb in only 3 years. I didn’t look yet at a current one to see how much more it’s come up. Both packages were in the original heavy Costco vac seal and both were delicious (although the older one was slightly more ‘lamb’ smelling before rinsing). Nothing wrong with leaving stuff in the freezer if it’s vac sealed and consistently frozen. I keep the chest freezer at -2F.

I also tested one packet of a case of commercially packaged coffee I got at auction. 72 “4 cup” packs of Seattles Best decaf in commercial food service packs (think hotel room coffee setup.) It was $5 for the case, and it is past its ‘best by’ but smelled and tasted just fine. I don’t drink a lot of decaf but I’ll put it on the shelf (or in the freezer if there is room). If it actually ages out, I’m only out $5.

The burn on my forearm is dark red, smooth, and sore but itchy. I broke out the silvadene cream and have been putting that on it, and covering it with a big bandaid. What’s the point of having the stuff if you don’t use it when needed? I will be adding to the stocks to replace the open tube with unopened. Re-stocking is important-

Because I’m watching the humiliation of the US on the world wide stage. Every ally has to be re-thinking their assessment of our strength. Every enemy is going to be doing the same. Afghanistan is an invader breaker, and has been forever. And now it broke us. Oh, we’re not shuffling out into the snow, but the complete miscalculation, the refusal to understand that aliens are alien, the absolutely shameful way we abandoned YET ANOTHER set of local players, is a serious blow to our power and strength worldwide. It will surely give potential allies pause, and our enemies encouragement.

Those are not good things for me and you. I expect even more disruption to our economy and to our financial system. Confidence and optimism will be battered. When that happens, markets get roiled and prices fall. I’m as out as I can be, and my feelings on the casino for suckers should be pretty clear by now, so I won’t beat a dead horse, but if you’re in the markets, why? How much higher do you expect it to go? When it drops it will drop in a big hurry. I’m not giving financial advice but I’m going to be VERY conservative at this point. Tangibles you have control over. Just saying.

Other people are starting to notice the slide. There will be a point where it’ll be too late for a lot of things, at least for a while. Prepping will help you get through that time.

When I’m feeling pessimistic, I’m really pessimistic. Seeds. Antibiotics. Lots of reference books. Water treatment and power generation. Stealth. Really low key living. And when I’m worst casing, alternate ID. 30 million illegals are getting it somewhere. The mayor of Kabul probably wishes she had some. Just saying.

Keep stacking. I think we’re already in it. When everyone else figures that out, it will get ugly quick.

nick

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Mon. Aug. 16, 2021 – first day of school, FTW!

Sunny and warm, possibly rainy, certain to end up at “hot”. It was hot and humid yesterday until the storm rolled through. Then it dropped to 75F and stayed there for a few hours.

I didn’t get a whole lot done on my free day. Turned out to not be so free when wife and kids got home early. Daughter 1 got her sailing stuff done very quickly and was released to come home. Now she is a ‘certified’ mariner and can do more sailing stuff with GS. Hooray.

The other issue was my back was bothering me. It finally moved and got a lot better some time after my wife got home. Until then picking up anything at all kinda pinched… it finally moved for me and she could here it from 6 feet away. She was a little skeptical until that happened. 🙂 Nothing like hearing the snap crackle pop so loud and clear to confirm that there was an issue.

I got some listing stuff done, and that was about it.

This morning I’ll be walking D1 to the bus pickup spot, and later in the day I’ll be picking up D2 and we’ll have our first afternoon of scheduled together time. I can’t wait. I expect that she’ll be vibrating from school and we might not get anything done, but it will still be a good thing.

Time flies, and if you blink you miss it. Take some time. Stack, but without relationships, what’s the point?

The tighter you build the relationships now, the stronger they’ll be later. And I think we’ll need that strength.

nick

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Sat. Aug. 14, 2021 – non-prepping hobby today

Well, maybe it won’t be quite so hot, but it’s sure to be humid and wet, with some sun mixed in. Yesterday was a bit cooler here in the Bayou City, and I’m sure someone got rain. We got the threat of rain and some thunder, with a power blink, but never really got any significant precipitation. Tropical storm headed this way so the weather will be variable for the next couple of days. Of course, other than ‘hot’ our weather is variable anyway.

Did some small things yesterday. Sold a cable on ebay and shipped that. Had to go by the Post Office to drop it on the counter. Then later at night I got another offer on the same cables. Ebay’s algorithm for promoting listings is a cypher. No sales for a year, then two in one day. Strange.

Went by the Goodwill outlet, and picked up some vintage GI Joe. Nice large pieces (a jeep and trailer), some small clothes and accessories, and one actual Joe in poor shape. One of the accessories will pay for everything else. There were some great books, 50c each, for the apocalypse library and I couldn’t resist a church lady recipe book from Louisiana. One gallon of vintage doll house furniture will make D2 happy, and if not, it’ll go in the auction. Not a lot of people in the store. Felt really quiet.

Went to Home Depot to get some rat killer stuff. Not many people there either. Might have just been the time of day. Picked up some bug killer stuff too. Better to have it in the cabinet, than not be able to get it when I need it. One other thing I needed was a lightbulb for my yard light. When you run them 24/7 even LED lights fail in a few years. The new one is 300w equivalent and has a dusk to dawn sensor. It looks really bright in the dark. I think I’m going to go with a less bright one actually. The light looks really ugly and I like the house to be a bit more ‘artistically’ lit. It’s there for security, but it has to not draw attention to itself. Right now it screams “I’m a crazy bright white security light!”.

I would prefer to be well lit, well covered with cams, physically secure, but have people not see any of it and just think, that’s a pretty house. Grey man. Ideally my whole life will be set up like that.

Today I’m headed to my non-prepping hobby meeting. Time to spend some time with people and shared interests. It can’t all be about stacking ammo and freeze dried food.

But there’s nothing wrong with stacking either of those, and lots more too.

Stack it high.

nick

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Fri. Aug. 13, 2021 – Friday the 13th falls on a Friday this month

Hot and humid, some rain somewhere in town. Yesterday I managed to miss all the rain. Wherever I was it was sunny and hot, but I could see the T storm cells in the distance. Two of them parked over neighborhoods near mine for a while. LOTS of rain came down in a short time.

I spent my morning taking the puppy to the vet for the last of his vaccinations. He was very sore afterwards, and he really doesn’t like the rectal thermometer 🙂

Then I did some pickups, and spent some time talking with one of the auctioneers about taking a bunch of my stuff. He’s game. I told him about a box truck worth, and he seemed ok with that. We talk again on Monday. That would be awesome to get a huge whackload of stuff out of here at one go.

I’m really getting concerned about unloading as much as I can as quickly as I can. The pace of our slide toward violence and civil disorder/war seems to be accelerating. There are blue check mark people (ie real people) on twitter calling for the un-vaxxed to be lined up in front of ditches and machine gunned. They are saying that society should be making the unvaxxed lives miserable until they lose heart and give in. I note that they are saying these things expecting pats on the head and agreement. On the other side, parents are chasing school board members to their cars yelling at them that ‘we know where you live and we’ll find you.’ IN PERSON and on video.

Petty and violent crime are up all over the country, and respect for the law is at lows we haven’t seen in decades. That might be partly because we are no longer ruled by law, and people are waking up to that. Criminals will always see it first and act first to take advantage of it. Ordinary people, who are growing madder by the day, will start soon. Every crime or slight will carry the death penalty WROL. (or without EFFECTIVE rule of law anyway.)

Extremists are getting more extreme. Rhetoric is heating up. Interpersonal violence and official violence are increasing. Add in an invasion of literally ‘the great unwashed’ to the tune of over 1 million, all of them legally criminals, many undoubtedly actual “criminal” criminals. The world political and economic situation continues to deteriorate. When was the last time you saw an article about Greece and its financial issues? When did the EU banks have their last stress test? Anyone think those situations have been made better by the last year and a half of lockdowns and trade disruptions? Is Paris burning cars this summer? How is Venezuela doing? Cuba? How about the failed narco-state to our south?

Then look to our own issues of governance. Even the edges of the mainstream are starting to question Biddn’s mental state. His wastrel son’s laptop is the gift that keeps on giving and someone is doing mental scale balancing of Biddn’s perceived power vs. the money to be made off the scandal. No one wants to be Epsteined, but recognizing the lion is toothless makes people bolder.

Our economic situation hasn’t improved. In every other instance in history, writing a bunch of checks you can’t cover except by running the printing presses has led to inflation. History HASN’T ended. We are seeing inflation. We expect inflation. Why is it so hard to BELIEVE in the bad things inflation brings? Your fixed income becomes ZERO. Your life savings becomes ZERO. Your wages quickly drop to near zero. And in the middle of this, TPTB have decided to fire at least 30% and possibly as much as 50% of their staff with vaccine mandates. Isn’t everyone complaining about a labor shortage? How does reducing the pool of available labor help that? People have lost their minds, and are not making rational decisions. That is a VERY BAD SIGN.

I know. I’m doom and gloom. It comes with the territory. But. Show me the alternative. Make the case that things are getting better.

And if you can’t, you need to start acting. Nothing irrevocable. But there is a lot you can do before it gets to that point. People are moving. Sarah Hoyt (who we sometimes link) has. Our own Jenny saw the possible very local bad things coming and acted. RBT did several years ago. Several other bloggers I read have moved too. Lynn has his gennie installed. Others of you have taken steps too. A fair number of you have casually moved in the last couple of years…

It probably deserves more thought and a lot more words written, but I think we are past the point where a ham radio license and some Baofeng radios will help. Alternative comms ARE going to be needed, but I don’t know what it will look like yet. Alternative food, water, power, sanitation, and healthcare are going to be higher on the list. Alternative income. Alternative security arrangements. Alternatives to going to work every day. Those are the things to prioritize now.

The more stuff you have stacked, the more skills, knowledge, and trustworthy friends you have, the more ALTERNATIVES you will have.

Keep stacking what you need.

Keep your head on a swivel and your options open.

nick

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Wed. Aug. 11, 2021 – hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work I go…

Slightly cooler, still hot and humid. It got a bit cooler yesterday in the late evening. Mid 80s with a nice breeze, so we took a walk as a family with the puppy. I was sweaty by the time we got back.

On the street we ran into a neighbor who I’ve seen walking in the evening with his wife. He uses a supportive rolling walker. We chatted, and he’s recovering from cancer not a stroke. They live about 6 houses down from us. Haven’t met him before. Politically conservative and well informed. Meatspace baby!

Did some more meatspace at daughter 1’s “meet the teacher, pickup your laptop” event at her school. Because of the lockdown, I’d never set foot in her school before. Spent some time catching up with one of the dads who I didn’t see this year, as we didn’t do swim team. He’s a good guy and a friend. He’s got medical issues so he’s been in pretty consistent isolation for the last year and a half. Nice to catch up.

The school doesn’t have much opportunity for volunteering but they do have a program where parent volunteers with a special interest can lead a seminar program the kids can sign up for. They are like electives merged with a club, and a short course. I’m thinking about radio or 3d printing as possible ways for me to do one. I want very much to get into the school this year. Still haven’t heard if we’re doing the “Hands On Science” program this year at D2’s school. I really hope we are, I miss the kids.

I also applied to be part of the school district advisory committee on technical education and votech… I don’t know how they choose, but I’d like to be a champion for shop class.

You have to be out there in the community and participate in the process to really know what is going on, whether it’s school, policing, politics, or any other local thing. Meatspace.

Did my pickup during the day. The most notable thing was the DSM-5 diagnostic manual brand new for $2. They sell for $50 pretty steadily, and that is easy money. I’m trying not to buy stuff for resale, but that I couldn’t pass up.

Money is an awesome prep as it is an enabler and force multiplier. I’d say that you should get as much of it as you reasonably can.

And then use some of it to buy stacks of stuff!

n

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Tues. Aug. 10, 2021 – stuff to do today, and kids at home

Hot and humid, chance of rain for parts of Houston. Yesterday didn’t get as hot as some days last week, but still crossed 100 in the sun. It wasn’t much cooler in the shade either. Stayed mostly sunny all day at my house. I’m thinking today will be pretty much the same. We do have a disturbance headed for Cuba, that might make it to the Gulf in a week, but it seems early to call that one.

Spent the day getting caught up on office and household stuff. Cut the back yard, restocked some of the cabinets. I need to do some shopping pretty soon too.

I’ve got a couple of pickups that need to be done, and no good route to combine them, small things for the house mainly. I like to combine trips for gas and time savings. Can’t always though.

Kids are at home this week so that limits me too.

I’m still pretty sore and stiff from swimming and jumping off the rope swing at the lake. My manboobs are aching. I’ll say it again, and maybe it will finally sink in that “I really need to start stretching again.” Before I can do any exercise, I need to get the planks of wood tenderized into bending again.

No way I will be doing any running or jogging, and especially no rucking, but it would be nice not to be so stiff. Just moving through my day isn’t enough any more. When to find the time though…

Garden is still producing tomatoes, although they are golf ball and racquetball sized. Caterpillars made their appearance and tried to eat what was left of my grape vine. I got them sprayed and might have saved something. No peaches again this year. Cabbage is still one plant with a baseball sized head, and two with just leaves. Collards are trying to grow, but not vigorously. At least the herbs are doing well, oh, except for the rosemary. I have killed another rosemary bush. We use a lot of rosemary too so I’ll be replacing that as soon as possible. Blueberries were done last week, and I’ll be able to take the bird netting down. Apple tree is still ok, no fruit, but the branches are thickening. I need to think about the fall garden soon, despite the 100F days.

There is always more to do and to be done. Somewhere near or in the back yard there is a dead rat. I can smell it, but can’t find it. Joy. I put poison in the garage after finding a box of Mountain House that had been nibbled on, so I’m looking forward to a dead rat in there too. Almond joy.

On top of all the daily normal stuff, and the backlogged stuff, I should know what my brakes and suspension work will cost later today. I’d like to have the Ranger back so I can get the body work done too. Or use it to move auction stuff around town. I need it done and back to work.

So much to do, so little actual desire to do it. I know I need to. I know I’ll feel better ticking the boxes off as the stuff gets done, but I’m weary of the grind. Worst possible time for that too. Oh well. Grinding away is something I’ve got plenty of experience with. It’s just not always the quickest way to get through the list.

Speaking of lists, besides knowing who would rat you out and who might help you, you might want to cast an eye around looking for resources too. If nothing else, it will help you see the area around you the same way the opportunists and criminals will. Start putting stuff away, and making your place less attractive to violence or bad actors.

And stack the stuff you like- buy it when you see it, and get out and look for it. Don’t count on anything being there at the same time you want it. Those days are probably gone for a while.

nick

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Wed. Aug. 4, 2021 – busy busy busy

Hot and humid, sunny. Possibility of rain. Like yesterday only hotter. It was under 100F for most of the afternoon so I worked outside.

Yeah, I wore a white shirt and my cool vest, big straw hat, and drank several electrolyte replacement drinks and took breaks. I did get the back yard mowed, edged, some weeds pulled, and I organized and cleaned and condensed stuff in the driveway. It was the stuff in the driveway that took the most time. Although edging took surprisingly long, far longer than usual and I don’t really know why. I did have to refill the string trimmer twice, and I don’t normally run out but that didn’t take long (since I have string stacked up.)

In the driveway I found some stuff that got water damaged. Freaking rain will find its way through 4 layers of tarp and plastic if you aren’t super careful. And the plastic sheet breaks down from UV. Nothing lasts anymore. The blue tarps get threadbare. The black sheet gets brittle. The white sheet I’m using does both as it has reinforcing threads. It lasted about a year so its actually pretty good. Everything plastic degrades in the sun now. Buckets too. Add salt air and there is no way the alarmists are correct about how long plastic will last in the environment. I can’t even get a tarp to last more than a few months.

The message for preppers is- keep your stuff out of the sun. Have some metal buckets for backup. You need more plastic sheet in storage to replace the stuff you used when it degrades. Plastic sheet and buckets are two of the most underappreciated preps, but they are two of the most versatile.

And if you are storing wood outside in Houston, it will rot. My pallets are squishing, stored 2x material is growing mushrooms, and anything in contact with the ground or concrete is wet. Firewood piles are doing the same.

The antidote for that? Stack more! Rotate your preps. And keep stuff in the proverbial cool dark place.

nick

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