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Category: prepping

Wed. July 22, 2020 – some days I’m my own worst enemy

Hot and wet.  No, there is no joke about my likes or dislikes there, definitely not.  Nope.  Definitely not.

Yesterday was actually not so bad, on the roasted by the sun, steamed by the swamp scale.  It was actually cool most of the morning and only slightly hot in the afternoon.  So was I slaving away in my garage and driveway?  No, I was not.  SHOULD I have been?  Yes.  Yes I should have been.

Got stuff done, just not what I’d set for myself.  I did finally deliver an ebay item sold back in February.   Nice guy.  Moving from Oceanside in  Cali to Lake Conroe.  Plans to spend the rest of his days there.   Now I’ve got an open spot on a shelf, better fill it with something.  OH, I just picked up another pair of vintage speakers?  WTH is wrong with me?  They are selling though, so there is that.  Not much else is.

And so, I set myself up for today’s tasks.   Work, freezer, work, pickups, freezer, garage, maybe put the half a squirrel in the trash, cook dinner… or I could combine some of those tasks.  Hmm.  Which ones?

It is the zombie apocalypse and we all need to learn new skills, right?

Speaking of selling, this is the time when you get out those cheap steel cased rounds, and the $324 PSA AR-15s and sell sell sell………   remember the ones you bought just so you could flip them when prices went up?  But now you don’t WANT to sell them.  You figure you might need them at some point.  YOU were smart and got them cheap and stocked up, so now you’re covered, and why would you sell when there aren’t any replacements?  What if things go pear shaped?  Then you’ll wish you had the black rifles and not the worthless fiat bux…….. Or is it just me?

Ammo Depot had 762 in stock and shipping yesterday morning.  They still had some late last night.  It was roughly 27c/rd.   They are showing some 223, at roughly $1/rd unless you want steel jacket, and even that is 40c/rd.  Score one for the commie gun in the black rifle internet flame wars.  Zombie apocalypse lite happens and your barbie gun goes hungry but your re-shaped shovel from krapistan is still affordable…  Don’t delay, order some today…

No idea why my brain is where it’s at, but there is still time to stock up on some things.   Body armor might be a smart choice, if you’ve got everything else taken care of…

No matter what it is, you probably don’t have enough if things really go sideways.

Keep stacking.

 

nick

 

(did I mention I tipped the AAA service guy with a few N95 masks?  It felt…. very strange.  The world is changing around us.)

 

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Mon. July 20, 2020 – let’s get this party started..

Hot hot and more hot, with humid and possible rain thrown in for good measure.

It was plenty hot yesterday.  Over 100F in the shade and WELL over that in the sun.  The sun did manage to peek out for a while.

I spent most of the day outside, when I wasn’t cooling off my brain.   Cut the grass, cleaned the pool, and packed and moved more stuff out of the way of the freezer in the garage.  I wish I’d taken a picture of the before.  I’ll take a picture of the after, but there’s no way to really capture the amount of stuff that needed to be shifted.  Maybe two or three pallets worth?  Stacked 3 foot high?  Something like that anyway.  That is the corner where my workbench (really just storage shelves) lived, with tools on it, under it, and above it.  Supplies, and more tools lived in a three drawer lateral file, and a cabinet above that.  In FRONT of that was several bins worth of parts, “makerspace supplies”, ebay items, and stuff that needs to be repaired.  The walkway from the door to that back corner has about 14 inches of stuff stacked along one side, waist high, that all needs to move so the freezer will fit by.  It’s a mix of inventory, tools, supplies, and junk.  That’s where I finally hit the wall yesterday, there’s no good place to move it to.

So today I’m getting a metro rack cart from my secondary and bringing that here to load up with all the stuff in that path.  Some will go to auction, some will go away, some to ebay, and some will go to my secondary.  There’s always more to do.

That’s the main goal for today.  And tomorrow.  And Wednesday.

We’ll see if it happens or if some other thing interrupts.

I really want to be getting stuff squared away.  I thought I’d have freezer space by now.

Because the world is continuing to go nuts.  With no end in sight.  And I have kids to feed…

So even with all the stuff I’ve already got, I need to keep stacking.

nick

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Sat. July 18, 2020 – funny the things that sometimes pop in your head

Hot and humid.  Really.  No kidding.  Hot. 🙂

Yesterday was hot until the rain, then slightly less hot for a while, until the hot caught back  up.  It was pretty late before we got back down into the 80s.

As predicted no real work got done in the garage or driveway while I was running errands.   The kids did play in the pool for a while.  Between my wife forgetting and overfilling the pool, and then 2 inches  of rain, there has been a LOT of sloshing out.

In order to push myself to actually finish the garage/freezer/workbench reorg, I ordered a good bit of food that will end up frozen.  I also did my normal replenishing.  Not much extra canned meat or dry goods, we’re pretty good on them.  Meat and frozen fruit and veg are what needs building up.  I really hope I don’t end up screwing up another order’s worth of food.

I’m still filling other holes and gaps in long term preps.   I’m trying to improve my stores of things I can get cheaply now, but would be very dear if there was a collapse, or long term interruption to “normal” life.  To that end, and because it’s what’s in the auctions, I’ve been buying safety gear and PPEs.  This auction I got several boxes of safety glasses.  Some tinted brown for outdoor work, some clear.  I previously got a huge selection of clear with bifocal lenses.  They are great for carpentry or soldering, both activities that need safety glasses.  Safety glasses are an expendable, and you should have extra.  Same with gloves, and workboots.  Good fitting ones are essential or you won’t wear them.

Hearing protection and respiratory protection I took care of last year.  I have several boxes of foam ear plugs and I’m set for a while on N95 masks and organic vapor cartridge based respirators.   I even managed to pick up some more tyvek painter’s suits.

I’m also considering what I would need to multiply my strength, just like in the old days.  I’ve got very good block and fall setups with synthetic rope and a lot of rigging supplies from a previous career.  I picked up a dozen spools of 550 cord in various colors at Habitat a couple of years ago, and I’ve added some rope when it became available.  Chain and chain binders are incredibly expensive for some reason.  Chaining my forklift into a trailer would cost about a quarter of what I paid for the forklift if I did it with new, so I’ve been watching for ways to reduce that cost.

If I had more land, I’d be looking for gardening power tools.  Prepping the soil takes a lot of work and any way to make that easier increases your chances of getting a good result.  I wouldn’t turn down some things, but as I don’t have space or the need, I’m not looking for them.  Some of you might be in a different place.

Basic plumbing, electrical, automotive and hardware supplies on hand will save a trip to the store, and can be the difference between a disaster and a disturbance.  Of course you need to know what to do with them, but there are lots of resources available to help with that too.  This is a good time to practice as you can still get help if it all goes pear shaped.

Like RBT, I came to consider that, outside of our normal disasters – hurricanes here in Houston – the most likely scenario was an economic collapse or a long slow decline.  Civil disorder, up to a civil war was in there somewhere, with global pandemic as a longshot.  Pandemic has been a focus of the CDC for a long time (and I constantly referred people to their pandemic preparedness pages as a resource for general disaster prepping), and with ebola in 2014 being in Dallas, I moved that up my list DRAMATICALLY.   Panic buy fits pretty well.  Of course, ebola wasn’t an issue for us here, by the skin of our teeth, but the preps have served me well in what the CDC said was this inevitable pandemic.  (Why was the CDC so ill prepared when this was something they’ve been pushing for a decade?  I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.)

So here we are, living in one of the longshot scenarios, generally doing better than we thought.  Which is awesome.  Unlike some places, we’re not stacking bodies in the streets.  But we are also clearly (to me anyway) in the beginning stages of economic collapse.  Supply lines are disrupted.  Prices are fluctuating.  Markets are being distorted by outside forces and have become increasingly decoupled from fundamentals and become more and more like gambling in a casino.  Everything is slightly worse than before.

Trash isn’t getting picked up as quickly.  Dumping is more common.  Maintenance is being deferred by civic units and individuals (with the caveat that individuals with the means have had more time than usual to do ‘projects’ around the house.  The guy with no job isn’t putting up sheds, and painting the siding though, but he might be powerwashing the driveway…)  Graffiti and tags are more visible and common, and stay in place longer.  Crime increases.  Violence for no reason increases.  Civil discourse becomes more shrill.  People contract their focus and concerns to more local issues.  People’s tolerance for the other, the different, decreases.  Behaviors become more extreme.  Tempers get short.

Any of that sounding familiar?

Given where I think we’re headed, it makes sense to me to stock up on the kinds of things I’m stocking.   I wouldn’t FOCUS on them, as there is still a chance of avoiding the worst aspects of the decline.  But it won’t hurt to start putting them aside, especially at low cost and low effort.  This assumes you have the basics in place.   Water, food, shelter, defense, medical, and money.  Huge piles of tangibles will probably buy you any of the things you need, so money is the best prep, but money is in kinda short supply too at this point for most people.

Periods of great change are scary.  Lots of destruction.  But there are also always opportunities too.  Crime goes up, and the guy who can weld burglar bars gets busy.   Some people are finding ways to prosper in this moment.  I believe hard times, however you want to define that, are coming.  If you don’t, if you think good times are coming, I’d like to hear why you feel that way.   Could be I’m missing something important.

Outside of figuring out what that something is, I’m going to keep stacking.  I think you should too.  I know it’s getting repetitive, but really and truly I think you can improve your situation and I WANT you to.  It’s made a world of difference in my life.

 

nick

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Wed. July 14 15, 2020 – hump day? harrumph day.

Hot again.  More and still.

Spent most of yesterday in the garage.  It was hot.  Dripping sweat hot.

And yeah, it’s taking a crazy long time to clean out the areas I’m working on.  There is a huge amount of ‘build up’ and stuff literally stacked up.  Hah, you thought I was being figurative with “keep stacking”?  Not so much.  I did get a lot of stuff moved, sorted, and/or piled for disposal.  Still  more to do.  I don’t thing pictures would have done it justice, but maybe I’ll take a few representative shots today.  And everything takes longer in the heat.   It’s just not possible for me to ‘bust @ss’ like I used to.  I can’t keep up that pace.  Also, if it wasn’t my stuff, and I had no interest in it, it would be easier to just tear it all out and dumpster it.  That would be quicker, but there is a lot of good stuff in those piles.  I’m good at the ‘getting’ part, less good at the organizing and putting away part.

I did take a couple of breaks to shoot the airsoft sig226 at cans in the back yard.  I put about 100 rounds into cans, mostly unsupported strong and weak hand, standing, but also supported kneeling.   There was a great episode of ‘Michael Bane’s Best Defense’ where the scenario was an armed robbery on the bus you are riding.  One of the defensive moves was to shoot from low,up into the attacker.  The benefit is that any misses or through and throughs go up into the air, rather than the back of the driver’s head or the other passengers.  Most people don’t get any practice from a knee or hiding behind a bench.  Most ranges don’t allow stuff like that.  Using the airsoft I realized I could practice that safely.  So I did.  Recommended.

It actually got to be a bit cool when the wind kicked up around 10pm.  Probably got down to 85F.  Felt like a fridge door opened when I stepped out of the garage anyway.

The national forecast has us on the edge of weather systems for the next few days.  Anything can happen.  Might get rain.  Might not.  I need a couple of more days without rain to get the garage sorted.  Cooler temps and overcast would be ok though.

Dinner was the beef roast I didn’t cook the day before.  Baked potatoes and canned corn accompanied saute’d brusselsprouts.  Brusselsprouts keep a long time in the fridge so they’ve always been one of my go to vegetables.  I just realized the canned corn is still in the microwave.  Dang.   Dessert was a can of carmel apple pie filling in a premade graham cracker crust.   If I’m gonna run the oven for the roast, I’m gonna cook a bunch of stuff in it at the same time.   The roast was vac sealed and frozen and was from last year.

Since I didn’t get out of the house yesterday, I still need to do my auction pickup and dropoff.  I’ll have another bin of stuff for them since I had another day… that will cut into my garage cleaning time, and my furniture repairing time, and my storage clearout/forklift repair time.  Can’t be helped.   Baby steps.

In the mean time, work on a skill.  Go through some stored preps.  Keep stacking (neatly, and well organized, if you can manage it).

nick

Added by RickH

Apparently, Nick has lost a day. I fixed the title. – RickH

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Mon. July 13, 2020 – more work, little play

Hot and humid.  Of course.  Unless it’s raining.

Yesterday got hotter and hotter until it was 109F in the sun in my driveway.  It was over 100F in the garage.  I was moving, but sometimes a bit slower.  I tried to switch tasks, moving from the house to the garage to the sunny driveway to the shady yard, and back.   I drank 2 liters of lemonade, and some iced tea and some water.

I mostly was trying to clear out the four corners of the garage.  One corner blocks entry for the freezer.  One corner is where I want to put it.  The other corner is my main water and food storage area, now being re-purposed as my hobby area and storage for some bulk buckets, and non-perishables, as well as my fire rated file cabinet and a work area.  If I get to cutting the hole in the wall, that’s where the A/C unit will go too.  The last corner is the other side of the roll up door and completes a big U of clear space around the center of the garage, which is mostly full of stuff.

In any case, I made some slow progress.  Never got to my secondary location as I was on  a roll and didn’t want to stop.

Wife painted the new back door, and ordered dinner delivered from one of the local chinese food places.  It was pretty good, and I sure didn’t feel like cooking after being out in the heat all day.  It’s not the end of the world after all.  Except maybe for Florida, Arizona, and Texas.

I guess we’ll see, but the trends are worrying.  Our neighbor to the south seems to have completely lost control of the wuflu situation.  Their curve doesn’t look like it will flatten for some time.  The rest of latin america, africa, and india aren’t looking so good either.  Funny how little news we’re hearing from them.

I’m keeping on keeping on.  That’s the plan anyway.  One of the boxes I found in the garage cleanup was a bunch of wound care supplies from my mom.  Dad doesn’t need them anymore, so I’ll stack them and hope I never need them either.  Running into reminders like that is bittersweet.

But hey, while I was cleaning and organizing, I sold some speakers on ebay.  Turned around and spent the money on parts to fix the bandsaw in the garage.  If it’s gonna sit there, it should work.  One little casting broke, and the machine is NFG.  The casting was way under-engineered (or OVER engineered, and under-spec’d) and is an obvious weak point.  One of the medium term goals for the garage is to have a mini version of my bigger workshop close to hand.  Getting the little 9″ bandsaw running is a step in that direction.

Also found some airsoft and a CO2 powered bb pistol.  So I set up some cans in the yard and put a couple dozen rounds through them.  That was fun!  It was also a nice break from the heat to shoot in the 95F shade.   I’ve never shot a CO2 airgun before and I like it.   It’s way more like semi-auto and better ‘substitute’ practice as you don’t have to re-cock the spring, or pump up the air.  The pistol doesn’t jump around as much, the trigger is wobbly, and it’s a full sized handgun, but it’s still good practice for acquiring the target, getting sight alignment, etc.   I’ve even got retention holsters for them if I wanted to practice drawing and firing.  I’m not getting to the range any time soon, and ammo is expensive and hard to replace, so airgun practice it will be.  It does make a distinctive sound that carries quite well in the unusually quite suburbs…

So, even if you can’t do what you’d normally like to do, keep working on skills, and keep stacking.

 

nick

 

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Sat. July 11, 2020 – continuing to sweat, and work, and work, and work

Hot and humid again.  Same same.

Yesterday stayed hot hot hot all day.  And sweat through to your skin in 5 minutes humid.

So, while I didn’t get much done in the garage, given that it was more than 109F in there, I did yard work.  Cut the grass, pulled a couple of weeds.   Cleaned up the rest of the mess the heavy trash guys left.  Cut and stacked the free firewood.  (Used the electric chainsaw.)  Pushed dirt around the bottom of the pool.

Then did my auction pickup.   Helped load the old bedroom furniture into a lady’s truck (3 trips to fit it all).  Cooked dinner.  Put the kids to bed.  Read more Tales of Alvin Maker: Prentice Alvin to the oldest.  Watched some youtube.

Dinner was some super scraggly and thin asparagus from the last supply drop, and almost 2 pounds of sirloin steak from the freezer.  My 9yo ate the biggest hunk, half a pound at least, and more than I ate.  She is a vicious little carnivore.  Last year’s girl scout cookies for dessert.

Today I’m really really really trying to get the freezer into the garage.  I’ve got to get a ton of shirt out first, and it’s hot.  But I need to get it settled and start stocking it again.  I’ve also looked at freezer temperature alarms, and they are either cheap and poorly reviewed, or pretty dang pricey.  I’ve got normal digital thermometers on the fridge and the chest freezer.  They don’t alarm though, but you can see at a glance the actual temps.  I’m going to look some more before deciding what to get.  I sure don’t want to lose another freezer full.

Speaking of a freezer full, with additional space I’ll be able to store more frozen fruits and veg.  I don’t normally keep much besides meat and butter, with some bread products in the freezers.  My wife has a bag of fruit chunks for smoothies in the kitchen freezer.  One of the observations someone mentioned about the covid lockdowns so far was wishing they had more frozen fruit.  I hadn’t thought much about it, and I have canned fruit and fruit pie filling, but I don’t have much frozen.  I think I’ll add a shelf of frozen fruit to the pile.

Always something more to stack, keep at it.

nick

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Tues. July 7, 2020 – ay, que loco

Hot and humid, but maybe less so.

Yesterday was cooler in the evening than last week.  Hot during the day though.

I didn’t get much done.  Had to go to my storage unit to get an ebay sale item, then pack and ship that.  Grabbed some useful stuff from the unit while I was there.  On the way home, I cruised the heavy trash piles and easily could have filled the pickup with free firewood.  As it was I grabbed mostly 6-8 inch diameter limbs, all oak, and about 4 feet long.  I’ll get them cut and stacked soon enough now that I have the racks in place.  Having the pickup truck makes it easy to do some things that would be much harder without it.  Scavenging, and transporting building supplies are two that leap to mind.

Today I need to drop off a projector for service, hit the Habitat reStore to see if they have a door that will replace my patio door, and do a quick site visit for my client.  He lost about half his wifi in the house.  I think I probably messed up the PoE or net connection when I was over there last week.  I think I’ll mask up, or at least be back to wearing gloves on site, as I didn’t want to be there for a couple of weeks while the covid cooties died off.

Hopefully I can also find time to drop off some auction stuff too.  Most of my errands are in the Northwest metro area today.   I try to “clump” errands to save driving and time.  Can’t always, but I do try.

Thanks to whoever recommended the Alex Verus magic books, both my wife and I enjoyed them a lot, and are looking forward to the next one.   Harry Dresden and Alex Verus both have new books in the series out this Fall.  That seems a long time away at the moment.

Dinner was mostly leftovers.  A bit of ham steak rounded out the meal.   In times of hardship and privation, throwing out food is very undesirable.   Cooking portions that all get eaten is a learned skill.  Eating the leftovers just takes doing it.  So much easier, and yet I know people who don’t and won’t eat leftovers.  I hope they can continue to be so choosy.

In other news, I had a long conversation with Frances about Barbara’s condition and status.  Good news.  They are transferring her to a rehab facility.  That means that outside of the picc line, she’s off of IV meds, and the infections are taken care of.  The exception being the one in her spine that is causing the pain and disability.  She’s looking at 6-8 weeks of treatment for that, hopefully with prompt and continued improvement.  They are not setting a schedule for when or under what conditions she can return home, she needs to get more mobile, get daily living chores under control, and get the pain under control before then.  However, she’s making progress, and getting out of the actual hospital.   Once she’s settled into the new facility, I’ll pass along contact info for cards or treats.  She’s aware of and grateful for the concern and support from our community.  I should have another update in a day or two.  (and Colin is doing fine with Al as his personal body servant)

And that’s it for this morning.   Keep stacking.

 

nick

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Mon. July 6, 2020 – turn down the suck…

Hot and humid.  Probably overcast with a chance of storms.    I guess we’ll see.

Yesterday was hot and humid.  Not as terrible as Saturday but still unpleasant in the garage and outdoors.  Wife and kids spent the whole day inside.  I did some outdoors stuff and worked in the garage.  I’m pretty much going to have to make time to put the A/C into the garage.  Otherwise, I won’t get much use during most of the year.  I will tell myself it’s better for my food storage too.

Projects.  I got ’em.

Did get some small progress done yesterday.  Found some more stuff for the auction.  Sold a speaker on ebay.  Bought a bunch of stuff in the housewares amazon returns auction.  Watching those bids took a lot of time in 15 minute slices.  Did some small cleanup in the garage.  Fixed a fan.  Read a few chapters of a book.  I was a  bit wiped out after Saturday.

Dinner was brats and fixin’s.   Brats were fresh from the last Costco supply drop, onions and potatoes from the one before that.  Corn and ice cream were from the HEB grocery drop.  I’ve said it before, but it’s a damn peculiar zombie apocalypse when you can have food delivered to your door.

Another peculiar thing was transitioning from “prepping” to “using”.   After a while, I realized I need to go back to buying stuff to replace stores as they are used.  I don’t NEED to get toilet paper right now, but if I don’t there will come a time when I’ve run out.  Hoping to resupply at some future date is not a prudent or practical plan.  So far, we’ve been mostly eating out of current shopping with additions from the long term stockpile.  I’d like to build up some extra protein storage, and adjust some of my long term canned food.  I’m heavy on canned corn, just as an example, and I’ve only used up one case so far.  It’s going to be more expensive to replace the stuff I’ve used, as I bought it only when it was on sale, and there are few sales at the moment.  I’ll call it ‘dollar cost averaging’ for food and stuff instead of investments.

On the plus side, being well prepared for something that was nowhere on my wife’s radar has built up a nice store of goodwill toward prepping and some of my more ‘out there’ preps.  Having the stuff and having it at hand has made a big difference.  When you hit on a long shot, some of your other long shots look a little more reasonable.  I’ve also gotten a nice bump in tolerance for auctions now that she’s figured out that I can buy the stuff SHE wants…  now, if I can get my sales up, I’ll be golden.

I’m going to advise accepting that this is the beginning of how things are going to be for a while, and that we’re probably not going back to “the way things were.”  The sooner you accept that as reality, and start adjusting to it, the better off you’ll be.   A lot of the lost jobs aren’t coming back anytime soon.  There is a glut of autos on the market, I’ve seen a local dealer using the dead mall parking lot as storage.  He hasn’t even bothered to fence it in.  I’m sure there are other areas of oversupply too.  Air travel capacity comes to mind.  Shopping malls.  Theaters.  Fitness centers.  Party rental places.  Foreign workers. *

Start focusing on the basics.  You’ll be ahead of the curve and the pack.

Keep stacking.

 

nick

 

*notice how quickly the furor over the H1B visas has died down?

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Mon. June 29, 2020 – another week, Let’s get started!

Hot, humid, but perhaps not so hot as last week.  And in theory, we’re on the edge of a system with T storms and heavy rain.

Yesterday stayed mostly overcast, which helped with the temps.  It still got over 100F in the driveway.

After cutting the grass, blowing the debris, and weeding the gardens, I got some small things done.  I finished changing out the sprinkler heads that were sticking up too far.   I’d gotten 70% of the way done and stopped, so today I finished.  I did a couple of other small tasks too.

Then I thoroughly cleaned the new freezer inside and out.  I’ve got a bit more to do on the door.  The outside is streaky where the clorox bleach cleaner lifted some 28 year old dirt but left the rest.  I’d really like to go over that when I refill my spray bottle.  The inside was in great shape.  It’s been wet in the heat, so anything that WOULD grow in it DID grow in it.  And that was very little.  I plugged it in to start it getting cold again, and to keep it clean inside.

I’ve figured out how I want to change my garage layout to accommodate the new freezer.  I’m taking out an old workbench that did nothing but catch piles of junk.    I’ll slide the old fridge and new freezer to the end of the wall, and move the chest freezer over too.  I’ll have a chance to put a file cabinet and some shelves where the chest freezer used to live.   It will open stuff up a bit.  Hopefully it will be a better use of the space, with less opportunity to just pile stuff on horizontal surfaces.

I need a dry, cooler day, to pull everything out of that side of the garage and move stuff around.   Hope I get one soon.

The gardens are what they are… something has eaten almost every onion I planted.  There are only a couple left.  The broccoli is struggling.  One plant died off this week.  The others might or might not produce another stalk for my dinner.  Probably not.  The grape vine that lived is going gangbusters and has taken over the whole trellis.  I don’t know if that means grapes or no grapes though.  I haven’t seen any yet.  The vine that died back to within a foot of the ground has put out new leaves and grown a bit.  Maybe next year it will be back up the trellis.

Tomato plants are still alive, still setting flowers, and have a couple more tomatoes growing.  I took two last week.  Tomatoes have never grown well for me.  One potato tower is empty of living plants, the other is down to one remaining plant.  No idea if they died or were eaten.  I can’t keep up with the sweet peppers.  I had several rot on the bush.  They are really tasty but I’m the only one who eats them.  The brusselsprouts are finally thriving but haven’t put up the sprout stalk yet.  Cabbages are about tennis ball sized through to slow pitch softball sized and looking good.  Corn is about 2 1/2 to 3 feet high and has tassels.   It LOOKS like it is growing well.  I guess we’ll see later in the year.   The melons/squash are still alive, with flowers, so I’m hopeful they’ll continue to grow.

I harvested 6 more blueberries today- go me!   I was pleasantly surprised to realize I had more green fruits on the orange and grapefruit trees than I thought.  I hope they ripen into good fruit.  The container lime has a fruit or two left.  The Meyer lemon is heavy with fruit.  I had some garlic cloves sprout in the cabinet, so I stuck them in the window box today.  No idea if they’ll root and grow, but the box was empty, and I’m not eating the sprouted cloves.  I’ve got a couple of small cilantro plants started.  I love cilantro and will eat and cook with it if I have it.  It will be nice if the heat doesn’t kill them.  Now if only I had 10 to 20 times the stuff planted, I might get more than the occasional taste… Growing food has a long learning curve, better get started.

Because the world isn’t getting better.  “Protests” and rioting are continuing.  Wuflu is continuing, although as the people getting sick are younger this time around, maybe it won’t kill so many of them.  I’m nervous about it.  My neighbor at my secondary location told me one of his coworkers and his whole family have it.  Several of his other coworkers all have strong exposures now, as they drove around in the truck with the sick guy.  My neighbor said he was outdoors (construction) and wearing a mask, but he’s still been told to stay home until he’s clear.   I spent a few hours chatting with him in the parking lot.   I’m hoping like he11 that 6 feet and a steady cross breeze is enough to keep me well.  My next door neighbor at the house went to the Doctor in a big hurry this evening.  I haven’t had a chance to find out why, but I really hope it wasn’t for a covid test.

Today I’ll be headed out to my client’s house to try to get him buttoned up before the Fourth.  I’ve got auction pickups too (for my wife and her projects mainly, now that she’s discovered how handy and economical it is to have me on the lookout for stuff.)  Since I was going anyway, I got some web gear, gub accessories, and a couple of things for me as well.

The scanner last night had someone in town running a drug surveillance op.   Last I heard, they were watching a group of about 30 people hanging out, having a bonfire in the middle of the street around midnight.  “That’s a really big fire!” says one cop.  Just another weekend night in the ‘hood, I guess.   Not something you’d know about from the news.

I hope everyone is healthy this week.  And working on preps for the future.  It’s comin’ like a freight train….

Keep stacking,

 

nick

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Wed. June 24, 2020 – more of the same, sorta

Hot and humid.  [74F and dripping, overcast. I purely suck at weather forecasting]  It is Houston and summer….

Yesterday was hot and humid, although less of both than previous days this week.  Stuff was actually drying out once I dumped the standing water.  Sometimes we’ll go days with water in every nook and cranny because it just can’t evaporate.  And I was able to work outside for a while, without my vest or my head exploding.  Nice little break.

I took some time and did pool care.  Skimmed off the leaves, swept the bottom, and made a big siphon hose to suck out the debris.  My little siphon hose took too long and used too much water.  And it clogged easily on the half eaten pecans.  The damnable tree rats are chewing the still very undersized and unripe pecans in half.  That makes two marble sized pieces to drop in the pool, since they can’t eat them.  Bigger hose, stronger flow, less choking, and I had that cleaned up in a jiffy.

Then on to pulling some inventory to go to the local auction.  I’ve got two big black bins full, and more to go.  SO MUCH MORE.  The auction isn’t appropriate for all the sort of stuff I have to sell, more for the household/estate stuff than the industrial stuff, but I’ve got plenty of that too.  In the process, I was going through stuff in the house, on the patio, and in the garage.  Miles to go before I sleep, but every journey starts with a single step, right?

Dinner was Taco Tuesday.  Canned chicken, canned beans, tortillas and fixin’s from the fridge.

Daughter one has a visit with the orthodontist this morning.  We were doing a retainer to move some teeth around so they didn’t get damaged before we could do the braces.  She lost the retainer.  It’s been months, so it’s time for a reassessment.

Daughter two is complaining of a mild headache and feeling “pukey”.   No actual vomiting, but no appetite either.  I’m wondering where she picked up a bug, and the only answer is ‘swim practice’.   That is double plus ungood as it points out how easy it would be to get something else.  I’m not feeling great either, with occasional coughing, and some mild headache.  I’m blaming mine on allergies and doing too much reading with my cheap ‘cheater’ glasses.  We might stay home from swim today.  We’ll see.

As part of my cleaning up and moving stuff, I moved some rice from bags in the black bins to buckets with O2 absorbers.  I filled two buckets and could have filled a third and fourth with rice and another bucket with flour.  30 pounds per 5 gallon bucket, 2 cups a day, and each bucket is good for approximately 30 days.  That’s a nice tidy number and easy to see at a glance what inventory looks like in ‘days’.  I find it much easier to think in terms of ‘meals’ or ‘days’ when looking at my stored preps.  I absolutely never think in terms of ‘calories per day per person.’  Bob and I had some discussions about our different approaches to thinking about food, and I’m convinced that mine has fewer built in barriers to action, lower friction for the prepper, while his has the advantage of having math and science behind it.  Like a lot of prepping, it’s easy to go off into the weeds and to find reasons not to start.  “Oh, I have to figure out how many calories are in a bucket of flour before I start storing it.” “are mylar bags really necessary?  What about oxygen absorbers?  I don’t have any.”   Stuff like that.  My method feels a little more haphazard, but really, do you think in terms of making a pot of rice or of cooking 1700 calories of foodstuffs?

However you think of it, get started if you haven’t already.  I’m eating rice stored very haphazardly in 2014 and it is delicious.  (stored in a black bin, limited airflow, no vermin, constant comfortable temps.)  I didn’t use O2 absorbers, or repack into mylar, or any of the other things.  I saw a case of ebola in Dallas and panic bought a bunch of food.  I packed it tightly in bins at my secondary location, and ignored it until this year.  Because I moved it home, I’m repacking it into buckets as they are more air tight, and easier to move when full.

I’ve rotated the 2014 stuff to the front and put the 2019 and 2020 in the back.  If I move some back to my secondary storage, I’ll move the 2019 and 2020 food.  My point is, you don’t have to do it perfectly, or in any particular way at all.  You don’t NEED all the rest of the stuff or to spend a lot of time.   Rice is cheap.  Flour, sugar, salt, and even peanut oil (my stored fat) are cheap.  If you have some spoilage, it’s a small price to pay vs. NOT having any food.  To the staples, add canned food- meat, veg, and beans to start, fruit, pie filling, and ‘weirder’ stuff as you can.  The cans will do just fine for years if you keep them cool and dry without any other work on your part.

You can and should build off that food stockpile, but at least you won’t starve to death in the first 3 months of a disaster, whatever that might be (prolonged unemployment being the most common, sick spouse or kid being the second.)

So, get started, or keep going, but keep stacking.

 

nick

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