6/20/21 Happy Father's Day?

    Well, I did it.  Yesterday we were bored and went to Lowe's to probably get a generator.  Wife and I talked about it all day and it came down to thinking about it like the freezers before Covid-19 started.  Once we decided we wanted one, we had a hard time finding one and got lucky by taking a chance and buying a floor model from Conn's, which is a store we never shop at.  Better to have a generator and not need one than to need one and not have it.  When we got to Lowe's, I saw that they had 2 of the Blackstone grills I had wanted the day before, this was a different Lowe's.  I asked the guy if we could buy the "floor model" and he said yes.  They had been assembling them because today's man is not really good at stuff like that, not his words, my interpretation.  I asked if there was a discount for it being open and he said I could have it for $100.  Not bad, from a price of $129.  This was the smallest version they sell, at 17 inches.  I think it is perfect because we do have the pellet grill and a charcoal grill, this is to play around with the stir fry idea, possibly smoke a pizza, and maybe even try some pancakes outdoors.  Like I said it runs on the little green cylinders and I bought the last 3 they had.  I will be stocking up with a bunch of these as time goes on.  After all this conversation, I ran out of steam for the generator, plus I didn't really see that they had but one and it wasn't one I had looked at online.

    We left, dropped off the grill at home then said screw it and headed back to the Lowe's at Kyle, where we had seen a bunch of different generators.  We did notice they had sold about half of them, so they are selling, but luckily, they had two of the ones I liked online.  We got a 6500watt Generac and wow, was it heavy.  I managed to load it in the back of the Excursion, but it was a back breaking 200 pounds.  Now we have it at home and I was figuring out how best to connect stuff to it.  We bought a few heavy duty extension cords, but this morning I was reading that the generator can be hooked up to the electrical grid in your home (technically, it might be illegal, but if done correctly, it works) through the dryer connection.  The important thing if this is done (I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND THIS TO ANYONE, JUST SAYING IT CAN BE DONE) is to turn off the main breaker so the power does not go up to the street and possibly electrify a lineman working on the power being down.  If the main breaker is turned off and only the smaller power things are used, then this can work, in an emergency.  You wouldn't use the dryer, washer, stove or other high energy devices, such as pool pumps in this configuration.  Some youtube examples show the central A/C being used, but I would rather have a smaller window A/C to prevent overwhelming the generator.

    Still, we do have a unit in the house, I need to unbox it, but if anything, I could save my cold food now.  My folks and my brother all had to throw a whole freezer's worth of food and I'm sure that was a couple hundred's dollars worth plus then they didn't have food and were stuck by icy roads during the freeze.  I want to protect my people in my house from stuff like that.