10/14/21 Wiring For My Back-up Generator?

     We bought a generator back in the summer sometime and it is now paid for, but I have not finished preparing for its usage as I would want it.  The idea when we bought it is that we would run multiple cords to it as it sat in our patio in the back.  My thought, if the summer rolling blackouts did come was to keep the fridge and freezers running and then if we could, also run the portable A/C to keep us comfortable.  To me, that sounds like a lot of wires running all over the floor.  We did buy a handful of heavy gauge wires, if the need arose.

    Another way to wire it would be to connect it to the power box somehow, but with the solar panels, hot, pool, and the normal crap, I honestly don't have any more empty slots to add more circuits.  I saw a couple videos on the idea of "backfeeding" the house and I think that is how I am going to do this.  We have a 240volt supply our back for the hot tub heater and I know for sure that in an emergency we would not be thinking about firing up the hot tub, so it stands to reason if I could borrow the power lines, it makes sense.

    Of course, I could get an electrician to come and wire a new connection, but that would mean it would be over close to the power box, and there is no way I would leave my generator out there on the side of the house, exposed for some a-hole to simply drive by, see it and decide he needs it more than us.  To run yet another set of lines to the backyard would be expensive.  When I wired the power for the pool pumps and stuff, Fox charged us $2500 or so, I don't want to pay something like that again.

    I had been thinking of the best way to do this and yesterday I saw a connector over by where they sell the generators at Lowe's and I bought it.  I was thinking it would be complicated to make a Y connection with the wires to feed either the heater or be fed by the generator, but after looking through Youtube videos it looks to be pretty easy.  I just take the wires coming to the heater, make a splice inside the new generator connection box with a pigtail, that is when you add a short ~8-10 inch third line to a connection and then use this to power (or in this case, take power there in the generator connection box) and then send the new set of wires out to feed the heater.  I know, if I ever do "backfeed" power to the house, I must FIRST AND FOREMOST make sure I have turned off the main power breaker, so the house is not backfeeding power to the incoming power lines.  This could be dangerous to the line workers trying to bring power back up.

    The last hurdle to getting this done is figuring how to open the heater and removing the wires that Fox installed, but I'll try to do this weekend, now that it shouldn't be so hot.

10/13/21 Toilet Paper Tablets?

     Wow, I didn't even know these existed.  In my search and viewing of videos to give me ideas for survival stuff if and when we have our next power outage or disaster event, I came upon a video showing toilet paper tablets.  They look like big Alka Seltzer tablets about an inch in diameter and maybe an inch thick.  I am not sure we would need them for the house, but they make so much sense, I will still probably order a box.  The box on Amazon goes for about $35 for a box of 500, which seems cheap to me.  It is essentially a wipe that has been pressure pressed into the shape of a chubby coin and a little water loosens it and releases it into a big square cloth.

    It doesn't seem to make much sense when one is at home, but for a bugout bag, or camping, these would come in handy.  The guy showing them in the video says he uses a match tube (tube where one would normally carry matches) and he can fit as many as 8-9.  If we step back from the idea of it just being toilet paper, having a paper wad like this can be helpful in many situations.  It could be kindling to start a fire, it could be used as a layer of filtering to get drinking water, somebody suggested it could be packed in a nose to stop bleeding.  Because they take up so little space, they just seem like a good idea.

    I can't say they would be my primary paper source here at the house, but how about if they are carried in an empty mini M&M tube (somebody in the comments suggested 16-17 would fit at once) and kept in the car?  You never know when you have an emergency and have to pull over to "go" or even if a liquid is spilt in the car.  The more I think about the possible uses, the more I feel like I need a box of these.  I just went ahead and ordered a box of 300 for $22.99.  They come packaged in 30 tubes which are all sealed and waterproof.

10/12/21 How Long Does It Take To Become A Responsible Adult?

     I constantly have the discussion with Wife about some of these youngsters we know and how she frets and fumes when she sees them making bad decisions.  I agree with her, but I also understand that it takes time to get to the point of being mature enough to make the right decisions.  We constantly notice on her  Snapchat or Girlie tells me that she is going on yet another trip and we are always wondering "where does the money come from?"  This weekend for example, she is flying to California for some bachelorette thing, some friend of hers is getting married.  It all sounds great, but she was unemployed for about a month, just started a new job, is taking a full load of classes, and has told me she is behind on most of her bills.  Still, she finds a way and it has nothing to do with me, I am not supporting that lifestyle, I don't even agree she should be traveling, she should be focused on her classes and internships, she is down to a handful of classes to finish and graduate.  That should be her only priority.

    As much as that bothers Wife, and it bothers her because we have known her since she was like 3-4 and we do honestly care for her and want to see her succeed.  I then tell Wife it is not much different than Boy, who yet again was off to Dallas this past weekend because another friend of his bought a house and they were having a house warming party.  Again, great!  I don't have a problem with Mijo doing whatever they do on the weekends, but he should be saving his money for the more important goal of trying to buy a house.  He has a two week trip planned for Japan in March.  I think it is stupid to be doing this, it is going to cost him several thousand dollars, even if the plane tickets were only $250.  But again, he is in his 20's and he is allowed to make his own decisions.  The only thing I did bring up to him is "Don't tell us moving out is a priority if this is what you are doing.  This will most certainly slow your plans of buying a house another 6-12 months."  I am not in a rush for him to move out, but he likes to mention it once in a while, that he wants his own place.

    Shit, we can look at ourselves and we are no better.  We managed to get ourselves well over $100,000 in debt from the time we got married until about 4-5 years ago when we decided we needed to make some changes.  We are finally set up to go in the right direction and even have surplus money to put away in our savings, but none of our journey has been easy.  We all want to do the fun stuff, we all want to be free, we want to travel, I miss going to Disney every summer like we did for about 7-8 years, but that trip cost us close to $5000 every year.  I want new trucks and boats, but stuff like that will certainly not help put money in our savings.  The only reason I haven't just gone out and gotten a new truck is because I can finally take a breath and think above my wants.  It is hard because my ego says I am a man and I should be driving a new truck, but to what end?  A younger me would have said "Wife shouldn't be the only one with a new SUV, I want my new vehicle too."  With maturity, I can reason that the Telluride is ours and not just hers.  We are a team and working together is how we will get ahead.

10/11/21 Butane Stove?

     Like I said a couple days ago, I have gotten into prepping for the worst and that means we have had to buy some items so we can survive in the event we become disconnected from society, such as we lose power or our city water supply becomes contaminated.  I know these things sound far fetched, but this did happen last year during the freeze, so it is possible that it happens again.  We have been warned that because Texas is independent of the rest of the country in how it operated its power sources, we can more easily end up without power as we did during the ice storm.  This was a mixed a bag of situations for many.  My parents were without power for more than four days, and they were just too far away for us to help in any way.  We were fortunate in that we lost power for maybe 30 minutes total, I don't know how.  We heard even here in our community, houses on the other side were without power, but we were mostly good.  That is not to say that will always be the case.  On top of that, we did have to resort to boiling our water for a couple days, so that is something I have prepared for now.

    I just went on Amazon and ordered a small butane fuel stove, which I would recommend everyone to do.  I have been all proud of myself for buying a bunch of bags of charcoal and dozens of propane cylinders to run small heaters and a Blackstone griddle, but the reality is if it is freezing, I don't really want to be messing around outside.  I was listening to some doomsday preppers on Youtube and they did suggest getting a butane stove.  The big caveat is it must be rated to use indoors, they are not all the same.  I am also not sure why butane is preferred to propane, but when in Rome...

    Either way, we are still months away from a first potential freezing event, so now is when y'all should be preparing.  The stove I ordered was $60 from Chef Master and even comes with four 8oz butane cylinders.  The notes say the stove will run for up to 4 hours on one cylinder at the lowest setting.  I went ahead and ordered another four cylinders to have at least 8.  I don't know what is the right amount, but I figured if we have the space, I will just put them on the shelves with my little propane cylinders.  Better to have something and not need it than need it and not have it.  It is not an expensive item and could make life a lot easier if we find ourselves without power for an extended amount of time.

    Thinking things through, I have already bought a carbon monoxide detector, so if I ever start using these gas products in the house, I will have that to keep us protected from the unseen dangers of burning gasses in the house.

10/10/21 Pizza Stone Works Great?

     I am not usually blown away or impressed with things once I have them in my house, many times the hunt for the perfect item is more fulfilling than actually buying the thing and bringing it home.  This was not the case with the pizza stone.  A couple weeks ago Wife and Boy both mentioned I should invest in a pizza oven for the backyard and it got me thinking, why can't the grill do that?  It provides heat and the pizza would cook just as well.  After going back and forth for a bit, I looked online and another oven/grill would eat into the space we have in the backyard patio plus it would be another thing to maintain.  I then was looking at Youtube videos on the matter and noticed some people use their grill and just add in a "pizza stone".  I was intrigued, looked into how much they cost and figured that we could try this for the reasonable price of $30-$40 bucks.  I tried thinking about the pizzas we eat and usually they are the large or extra large, but I couldn't really find stones bigger than 12x15.  There are bigger ones but they go all of a sudden from under $50 to over $150.  I figured this would just be more of an experiment, so I ordered a set that comes with the cool little paddle used to carry the pizza on and off the oven, and the one I ordered even had the big pizza cutter that rocks back and forth from end to end.

    We actually received it last weekend but I never really got excited to open it because I started reading about cleaning it and using vinegar and all this little ticky tacky crap.  This weekend I decided I would just wipe it and the heat would kill anything on it, 400 degrees is pretty hot.  For Friday night, I bought some cheap technically flatbread pizzas at Walmart, I don't ever shop at Walmart, but they have had some of my doomsday stuff, so I am becoming more open minded about them.  I figured the pizzas were cheap and if they didn't work out, it wouldn't be a big loss.  Originally I was thinking of making my own dough and all that stuff.  Wife convinced me not to kill myself and just try it on some Papa Murphy's pizzas that are already prepared.  I thought this would be an even cheaper option.  We did talk about going out to eat, we were going to go to Carraba's Italian Restaurant, but the traffic congestion just sucks the energy out of me.  Baby A was also rundown from the Thursday night game, so we stayed in.  We made some spaghetti with shrimp inside, incase the pizzas didn't work out and then I grilled the pizzas.  I will admit it requires a learning curve.  The instructions said cook 13-15 minutes at 350.  The grill was at 400, and when I went to check on it about 8 minutes in, the bottom was completely charred and burned to the stone.  I used the Blackstone metal spatulas, which work perfectly for this, and scraped them off, without damaging the pizza.  I still found the pizza to be great, even burned like it was.  Baby A complained, but ate as much as I did.  I burned the other two pizzas less and less and even Wife enjoyed them to the point of suggesting we do it again on Saturday.

    I went got a couple of round pizzas Saturday morning, along with some more of the flatbread pizzas, this time from HEB.  I am still "burning" the bottoms too much, maybe I need to bring the temperature down, but about 4-5 minutes is working pretty good.  With the thicker pizzas I then put them on the top rack to give them more time for the cheese and stuff to melt and really heat up without burning the bread completely.  As good as these have been, I can only imagine they will get better with better quality pizzas, which I will be buying next time we do this.  I totally recommend buying one of these stones.  By stone, they mean a ceramic plate about a quarter inch thick.  I am sure a big brick or other thing that will absorb heat like that would work, but it places that heat right into the bread and does something different that the oven just doesn't do.

10/9/21 Buying Into The Doomsday Prepper Idea?

    I have found a new thing to focus my OCD on and that is preparing for another stretch of bad time.  I suddenly find my Youtube inundated with different "doomsday preppers", I guess I started seeing a few videos and now I am hooked on the idea.  This idea has become more relative and realistic since the Covid-19 crisis that saw our schools shutting down for the first time ever, keeping us at home for longer periods of time and then the freeze which was a first for many of us ever that did actually keep us locked in our homes for almost a full week.

    With these two big lifechanging events in our rearview we can't be dense and just say they were once in a lifetime occurrences.  Like I told my family, we are not poor, we can afford to buy some things in case SHTF (shit hits the fan) and not be caught waiting for the government to put things back in order.  My family, for example back home was without power for more than four days, the first time that happens is a big surprise and the fault of outside forces, but if it happens again, then I have to conclude it is partially your fault, you had time to prepare between incidents.  No one can predict what will happen tomorrow, but what if we have another freeze like we did in January?  Hopefully, people have done some preparations.

    I had mentioned earlier in the year that I bought a generator which is my back-up power to keep my freezers from becoming useless with all of our food, then bought an A/C to run off the generator, when talks of rolling blackouts started.  Although that never materialized, I want to say we would have been prepared.  Now that we are approaching "winter", not that it gets real cold here, we have been warned that we might get another cold snap, so I have now bought some portable heaters that can run off propane tanks and are approved for indoor use.  This, along with some candles, batteries, flashlights, lanterns that run on oil (approved for burning indoors) started my preparations.  I don't see why everyone shouldn't have these things in their house anyway.

    Yesterday, I went and cleaned out the smallest closet in the house and bought a rack that fit perfectly.  This will be where I stock food and other emergency supplies.  Until yesterday, we had two big packs of toilet paper, for example, just on the floor outside our bedroom, I went ahead and added two more of these 48 rolls per pack to the basket, so now we have close to 200 rolls of toilet paper, which should last awhile even if we stop buying it because stores run out.  I had been leaving the big cases of water bottles by the entrance, now I have a rack and can start actually stocking it as an emergency, not just so the boys can take some on the way out the door.  My newest idea is to start getting a water service going, like Culligan water, that drops off bottles of water at the house, so if our water from the tap becomes contaminated, as it did during the freeze, we have back-up water in the form of those 5 gallon bottles.  Water, food, and power are the big three to survive, and at this point I need to start focusing on stocking more food that will keep on the shelves for longer periods of time.  I bought some bins which I will fill with beans and rice, which all the preppers seem to recommend, I also like peanut butter and that keeps for a long time too.

    There is an unlimited amount of preparation one can make and I don't want to go crazy, I mean we can plan for a week or maybe even two, but if the government really collapses, then that is another game plan altogether, and being overly prepared in a big city might just make you a target, so there is that to worry about (this is where the guns might unfortunately come in handy).  In that case, Mom, make some space because we would be scampering down to the small city.  All the doomsday folks do seem to say over and over that the only way to survive long term is to have alliances with people you can trust, and I don't know how long that would work here.  The reality is you can tell people over and over and most won't even listen and buy an extra can of peanut butter for storage, so preparation is being done by too few people, in my opinion.

10/8/21 Waited A Year For This One?

     This was the team they fell 6 inches short of scoring a year ago for the win, and revenge was not as sweet as you would think, but a win's a win.  I hate to harp on it, but last year the Coogs had plenty of chances to pull out a win as time expired, including a 4th and about 6 inches as time expired and they could not get in the end zone.  In a way, the same thing happened to the other team, Northeast last night towards the end of the game.

    I guess I should back up, they had a Thursday game this week.  It was frustrating because Baby A had gone to bed Wednesday night with high hopes of demolishing this team, I got home from work as he was already in bed, so I poked my head in to ask him how his day was and he was already in bed but excited saying that they had seen game film from the other team and felt very confidant that they were going to win.  I said good but you still have to perform, nothing is ever given to you.  The morning was then fun in that he decided to get in the Homecoming spirit and took his varsity jacket to wear for spirit color day, the first time he officially wore his jacket that he got at the end of last year.  He had even asked us if he could miss his History class to go to the Pep Rally.  Because he takes college classes, he has not been able to attend any of the pep rallies but I told Wife "come on, we should let him go, he's still a kid and with these college classes, he is going through high school acting like a damned grown up all the time!"  Wife agreed and he went, only to find he did not like it because it was held outside and there was no microphone so they couldn't hear anything, but still, he was part of it.

    The game itself was sloppy in the first half, penalty after penalty the whole first half.  They could not get out of their own way, any positive play was negated by a holding call or an offsides call, it was downright annoying.  One way or another, they managed two beautiful bombs in the 2nd quarter that got them two touchdowns, so at the half, the score was 13-13, both teams missed their 2nd extra point attempt.  The other team did not look like much, they were down to less than 30 players on the sideline.  When their team was on the field, there were less than 20 other guys on the sideline.  Still, they played as strong as they could, and they did move the ball on a couple of occasions all the way into the end zone in the first half.

    The Coogs must have made some half time adjustments, they came out playing much better, it is also possible the other team just got tired because after the half, both their demeanors changed.  The Coogs went most of the 3rd quarter without a penalty and the Raiders couldn't stop committing stupid penalties that hurt them like jumping offsides and moving before the ball is snapped.  Our boys managed a beautiful drive in the 4th quarter, and managed to produce a score, even taking a couple chances on 4th down and going for it.  They went for it after the touchdown and even scored a 2pt conversion to make the score 21-13.  They then kicked the ball and the Raiders went to work with about 9 minutes.  They were very efficient or the Coogs were playing very conservative because they quickly moved the ball all the way inside the 20 yard line.  Then their problems started, with multiple false starts from the line, including a critical one on 4th and inches, they got a false start and were moved back 5 yards, making it 4th down and 6 instead from the 4 yard line back to the 9 yard line or so.  They went for a pass in the end zone and luckily, one of our boys intercepted the ball, so we got the ball back at the 20 yard line, with about 7:25 left.  This reminded me a little too much of last week when we looked at the time and then the other team scored 20 points in 6 minutes.  This time, the Coogs kept the ball on the ground and as Baby A said, they kept running off his side, and he kept opening the hole so the runner could get the yardage to keep making first downs, I love Mijo's cockiness sometimes.  It got a little nervous after a huge penalty that negated a long 11 yard run back with a holding call, so the ball went from the like 29 yard line back to the 50, but at this point there was only a minute and 20 seconds or so and it was 2nd down and the other team ran out of timeouts, so we were able to just run the clock out.

    It was awesome watching the boys finally celebrate like they did, dancing and hugging on the field.  Mijo said they sang on the bus the whole way back to campus.  He said he was most surprised that most of the kids don't know Queen.  Someone put "We Are The Champions" which everybody loves for the chorus but before the song gets there, people were like "what is this? and "turn this shit off!"  He even said the coaches taught them an old school chant and they were dancing to that, this boy never shows us his goofy side, and there he was doing a little dance, it was nice to see him happy.

    His shoulder is almost healed, I think, he said it doesn't hurt anymore, but he did manage to rip a third of a nail off, so the finger looks all raw and painful.  He said his finger must have got caught in a jersey during practice and he tried to fix it, but it got snagged on a player during the game and there was even blood on it, it looked like it hurt and he did say it was tender.  Mijo is certainly playing harder this year and the little injuries are piling on, he also had a little area near his palm where the skin was peeled off and he had a sort of raspberry burn where the skin looks tender.  I guess those are all part of the game.