10/21/21 No More Toys For Christmas?

     Times like this, I am a little jealous maybe not the right word, but in our quest to be good productive citizens, I think we have overlooked the baby making process in our family.  I don't think we have had a new kid since my brother had his son and he is 8-9 years old and about the same on Wife's side.  One of my biggest fears a few years ago was Boy getting his girlfriend pregnant at a time when they weren't quite ready and he was still going to school.  I guess that fear has subsided now that he is about to finish college and has a good job.  He is still not married and I don't think they are even talking about it, but I am starting to think it's about that time.

    I know it sounds stupid, but we need a kid around for the holidays.  Christmas time isn't as much fun without the bright eyed wonder of an innocent kid who believes in the magic of Santa and all that goes with that.  I really enjoyed the idea of shopping and delivering for my boys, trying to surprise them on Christmas morning.  At this point, I was even asking Wife if we are even going to buy any toys this holiday.  I don't think any of our nephews are at an age where they play with "toys".  Like Wife said, she has only seen them playing with phones and Ipads and stuff, so the idea of a bag of marbles isn't going to go over well.

    So that leads to the next thought of "what kind of gifts do we get people?  Are we even going to bother exchanging gifts, we really haven't gone all out but that is part of the problem, when kids get older, it's not really fun.  Maybe a nice gift card to Best Buy, that is the holiday spirit in full bloom.  I have thought about maybe a nice handgun for Baby A since I consider myself a prepper now and that is one of the basics, a person should be able to protect themselves.  I mentioned the idea to him and he is not Boy, he could give a shit about guns.  Boy would gladly take another gun, pistol or rifle.  I might do that still, it is still early in the holiday season, I mean the stores just barely knocked down the Halloween stuff and started replacing it with Christmas trees and all the extras, so we got time.

    This time of year gets a little crazy with the shorter days starting, football season getting close to ending, once Halloween passes, it seems like a death march to the end of the year.  It becomes like "alright, two more weeks to Thanksgiving break, then another 2 weeks and we get two weeks off for Christmas break and New Year's.  I am really looking forward to slowing down here for a bit.  Wife has been non stop since April when she took the new job, I don't think she has missed more than a half day for one of the football games that was going to be out of town.  She really needs some time off.

10/20/21 To Be Young?

     I got in late last night, but Boy came down to get his lunch ready and as I usually do, I asked him about his day.  He said he got contacted by an old coworker who wanted him to apply for a job with his company.  He had mentioned this company before, they are making electric bikes and possibly other mobile devices.  On the surface, I wouldn't think leaving his "grown up job" with the giant semiconductor company in the area is a very smart thing, specially that he just got a promotion and is now an exempt engineer working in what I assumed is a good to great matching job for him.  He is considering the idea of leaving, he said he sent his friend his resume, they have two jobs for engineer and one for a higher level engineer that he thinks he could do.  The temptation is great, and the fact that they are offering a higher pay than his current position is certainly going to make it interesting, but should he?

    As much as I like the stability of where he is, I am looking at things from the eyes of a 50 year old who wants a job that will not go away.  He is 27 and very much trying to make moves to further his career.  I have told him that if he wants to throw caution to the wind, this is the time to do it.  He is still living at home, so if he ends up losing his job, he won't have to worry about his mortgage payment or car payment as his SUV is currently paid for.  If I look at it from his vantage point, it does seem exciting to be "wanted" by another company and he says he would be doing more of what he finds interesting and he is more passionate about, something about working with circuit boards and stuff.  Right now he says he spends his days assembling wire harnesses for large systems that need to be wired and all that is done in house, but he says it is rather boring.

    I would have thought he would be enjoying his current job more since his close friend from high school is now working in the same department with him, but they are both nonchalant about their endeavors.  I guess for me, I wouldn't be stirring the boat too much and I would just be happy to have the job he has, but he seems to think he should strike while the iron is hot.  If it does mean another $15,000 raise, I say go for it, I mean he can always re-apply with his current company if it doesn't work out, maybe.  That is part of the journey, we don't know what tomorrow brings, but they do say "fortune favors the bold."  Maybe these are the moves that will lead him to a more successful path than I have had.  I wish Mijo the best of luck.  With the current house prices, he needs to be getting paid a lot more money than I make.

10/19/21 How Did "Defund The Police" Work Out?

     I find it absurd that we had to actually do the exercise of "defunding the police" to see what the net result would be.  Every major city that had the loudest supporters for this strategy is suffering from its effects.  Chicago is on pace to lose 1000 police officers this year, some of it is of course from the Covid mandates forcing them to get the vaccine that does not guarantee protection, but a lot is from the constant battle of what looks like a third world country atmosphere where the criminals proudly rule the streets.  Austin tried to impress its northern liberal cities by cutting 150 million dollars, something 1/3 of its funding only to see the highest number of assaults, homicides, and all the other things criminals shine at doing.  What I don't understand is why do they need a ballot initiative to increase taxes for the 150 million dollars they want to return to them, we didn't get a refund at the start of the year, that money was already in their (governments) hand.  With "defund the police" we also got the added bonus here in Austin of being told that police will no longer respond to non-life threatening situations, like if your house is burgled.  

    I saw a story yesterday in which a fine New York citizen caused a fender bender, three city workers, the story mockingly called them social workers (that has been the joke, that they could do the job of the officers) approached the car only to have them get beat up with no provocation on their part by the gentleman that caused the car accident.  He then just casually got back in his dented car, flip flops and all, and took off.  We see time and again stories out of California and stores are closing because of this, but since they outright say they are not prosecuting anything under $900, thieves are walking into drug stores, filling up literal trash bags and walking out, nobody is standing up and stopping them.

    I like how New York is trying to brag that overall crime is down, but violent offenses are up.  It's easy to say that crime is down when it is no longer getting reported because there are no cops to do the reports.  Stories out of Seattle are still as ridiculous as ever.  After defunding the police there, now the city council is blaming the police chief for crime increasing and the police force not taking care of business.  The idiot mayor, Durkin, has taken a lot of these police officers that were laid off and hired them as personal security.  Nice for the officers to still have a job and great for her highness to still be protected 24/7, but what about the people of that city?  Well, they did vote for this after all.  They were out on the street in full force chanting "Defund The Police!"  I guess the motto be careful for what you wish for still applies.

10/18/21 Weatherman Needs To Shut Up?

     I was confused last night when I saw a weatherman snap back at a Tik Tok video I had seen a couple weeks ago about a lady warning about another polar vortex situation and to expect another freeze like we had at the start of the year.  He was being a little smug and came across as kind of an asshole laughing at her suggestion we would have another freeze like we did, that she was mostly just trying to cause mass hysteria and scare us.  It seemed a little out of line for him to insinuate us preparing for something that might not happen is a waste of our time.  My takeaway was "why does he laugh at us for wanting to be prepared for an emergency event", it almost seemed like he is bothered that if we do have another freeze, we have ruined it by getting propane heaters and generators to avoid the suffering.

    I personally told Wife I did not want to be in a position where we are at the mercy of the weather and we must then be totally reliant on the government to provide all of our basic necessities, like electricity.  By March, a couple weeks after the freeze, we bought a generator, then when they mentioned to prepare for rolling blackouts, we bought a small air conditioner so we could at least cool one room in the house.  Now that the colder weather is starting, I started preparing by buying a few small propane heaters that are safe to use indoors, along with candles, lanterns, and I started buying 5 gallon water jugs and just storing them in a closet, along with the freezer that we bought at the start of Covid which we keep stocked with meat and stuff.

    Growing up, we have always been warned to have some emergency provisions, I still remember my grandma making a big deal about having water stored in the house when we were changing over from 1999 to 2000, it was a scary time for some.  A lot of people were also scared in 2012, when the Mayan calendar ended which signified they knew the world was ending.  Based in science or not, as the weatherman suggests, how does it hurt to have some emergency supplies?

    Worse case scenario, she could very well be wrong (the Tik Tok lady), but so what, we are better prepared for and when an emergency does arise.  Is it bad to have a generator sitting around your house?  Is it bad to have any other number of supplies if the need arises?  We probably have a 2-3 month supply of toilet paper, who cares, we will continue to use it slowly to wipe our asses, it will get used, we just won't have to be panicking because we are down to our last roll anymore as used to happen quite a bit before we thought stuff might run out.  Same with bars of soap, shampoo, conditioner, deodorants, these are all things we can buy that can sit on a shelf at home for a long time.

    If anything, this weatherman struck me as yet another person in power trying to shame us into complying to their whim, we managed to get a little control over something we can't control and he is trying to convince us they (big government) know better and we shouldn't worry.  Waiting for your warning two weeks before the freeze arrives means only a handful of people were able to buy generators, there are only so many on hand at any given time, Idiot.  Waiting for you to warn us leads to stores getting ransacked and the regular person not being able to get food at the last minute.  This is just an instance where, "Fine!"  You may be right, but who cares.  What if you're wrong, yet again?  Then what do you say to the people that decided not to buy that propane heater and their baby freezes to death?  I remember my Mom telling me my Dad (in his 70s) was lethargic and not even wanting to get out of bed or move when they were on their 4th-5th day without power during the freeze, where were your words of wisdom then?

10/17/21 Baby A Finally Had A Proper Boy's Weekend?

    I kind of miss how Boy always had friends over and they would hang out here all weekend, pretty much every weekend it seemed.  Baby A has been so different, he might have a friend or two over but it is always for one might, either Friday or Saturday and maybe only once every two months or so.  He has never spent the night at any of his friends, not that Boy did much of that either.

    I don't know why, but this was the weekend for him to finally break down that wall.  He has been at it all weekend, starting Friday after school, he stayed on campus for a bit, and walked over to the Dairy Queen located across the street to hang a bit and gather the crew to go watch the girls play volleyball at the Ann Richards School.  My job was to go pick them up and deliver them to the game since I am available at that time.  I picked them up and took like 5 boys over, they all were able to leave their backpacks in the Excursion and go enjoy the girls in their little shorts, I mean who really wants to watch actual volleyball?  They had a good time, Wife got home and we went and picked them up around 9:00pm.  At that hour, the only thing we could think of was to pick up some pizzas, which we did, after we dropped off one of the boys who did not spend the night.

    I like the mix, it's Mijo, two football players on the team, a band kid, and one of his original friends from like 2nd or 3rd grade that has always come over.  After we got home, we put the pizzas out for them and we went to our bedroom.  They spread out in the living room, and ate while watching scary movies, then at 1:00am he came in the bedroom asking if the hot tub could be used.  I told him, it needs about 2-3 hours to heat up and I would have had to clean it, so no.  He had told me in the morning they were going to jump in the pool, so I had cleaned, shocked and got the pump running even if I thought they would chicken out since we got a cold front.  They were out there for awhile, must be nice to be young, you couldn't pay me to go fool around the cool water with the cold front arrived, I was vary nice and warm in bed.

    They then slept until almost noon, and we eventually made pancakes for them, followed by more scary movies, I think they were also playing on the PS4 and Mijo even set up the wrestling mats in the living room, so they did wrestle a bit.  A couple extra boys showed up Saturday, and all of these guys have said they are joining the wrestling team, so it might be a lot more fun having so many more boys on the wrestling team this year.  Wrestling is set to start in about a month, as soon as football finishes.

    Saturday night, we got them tickets to the House of Torment but their times weren't until 10:00pm.  We dropped them off, but the line was crazy long and was not in the best place.  The curbs were full for what seemed like a mile in either direction and the line to get in was about as long.  We dropped them off at maybe 9:30pm and they were not done until after midnight.  They said it was ok, all of them trying to be cool, but then they talked all the way home about the different ways they all got scared.  It was fun to hear them having a blast.  We had fed them Bill Miller tenders before we went out there, but after we got home, we figured they might be hungry, they are boys, so we threw a couple of frozen pizzas in the oven and they attacked them, with chips and sodas.

10/16/21 Joe Rogan Vs. Dr. Sanjay Gupta?

     I am a fan of Rogan and listen to his podcast clips a lot on Youtube.  I don't really listen to the whole show, they just go on too long, same with Adam Carolla, I love his content, but I don't always have time anymore to bog myself down with a 2 hour show.  This past week, Rogan had Dr. Gupta, who is the big medical guy on CNN over for a discussion and I thought what came of it was very interesting.  They discussed everything dealing with Rogan getting Covid19 a couple weeks ago and recovering extremely fast, something that did not sit well with the CNN people.

    I find it a bit disturbing that even in the face of proof that something they find hard to support, CNN still undermines and tries to downplay other options of surviving Covid19.  Rogan is a big anti-vaxxer guy as those on the side of caution for the yet to be FDA approved vaccines have now been dubbed.  Instead, when Rogan got Covid19, he went the route of taking medicines that aren't approved but through some trials and word of mouth, seem to work.  One of the big ones and one I have been on full support after seeing several studies by other doctors on Youtube, notably Dr. John Campbell, is Ivermectin.  He took other medicines, but the net result is what matters, isn't it?  He was better within days, and said he was back in the gym working out within six days.  He tested negative for Covid19 five days later, so he managed to get it out of his system entirely, or to none detect limits.  CNN had a ton of fun at his expense as all the talking heads had a horse medicine joke to use.  It is a fact that Ivermectin is a human medicine used for parasites but also one used for diseases in horse and other livestock.

    It was freaking awesome to see Rogan corner Gupta and ask him "why didn't you clear it up that Ivermectin is also used by humans?"  Dr. Gupta looked like a 3rd grade who forgot his homework and had nothing remotely intelligent to say to Rogan other than agree with him.  He was then on CNN the next day back to agreeing with the other mental midgets on CNN, it was a bit disgusting to see someone turn complete 180 degrees in agreement.  Then he did what all good liberals do and play the victim that he feared Rogan would attack him in the studio, like this man-child who calls himself a doctor has never had a discussion with people who disagree with him, WTF!!!

    My point here is why take a stance and stick to it?  Fine, CNN believes the vaccine protects you, Rogan believes what he did is good for him.  Why can't we live in a world where both are good solutions?  If you are vaccinated for measles, do you worry about people who don't get a measles vaccine?  No, you just say good luck to you, my ass is protected.  How come with Covid19, you want to be protected by having your neighbor take the same vaccine you took?  If it doesn't protect you, why will it protect him?  And worse, we don't know what the after effects of taking an experimental vaccine will do to the human body in a couple years, hope nothing too traumatic.

10/15/21 Advice From Other Preppers?

     I have been all proud of myself and being more vocal than normal about my new hobby/passion, not sure what it should be labeled at this point, lifestyle?  This idea of being a doomsday prepper and having supplies at the ready in case we do come upon some emergency.  My thought is not to brag about it, but I want people I care about and that are in my life to be prepared.  I have mentioned it to coworkers, family and the few friends I still talk to, but even at some stores, I have caught myself talking about buying things for if it ever gets bad out there, mostly while looking at guns and considering what would be best for home defense.

    Well, after seeing a couple more videos, I have pretty much been told to shut up.  It actually does make sense, to some degree.  Their idea is that you don't want the neighborhood to know that you are fully stocked because in the event of society breaking down, they will know you have things stocked and although people are lazy and don't buy things to prepare, they will do whatever it takes once their loved ones need something to survive.  It is a very shitty human trait, they won't prepare, but when they need something, they will consider taking your stuff, to make their life better.  The preppers on Youtube suggest it is better to be a "grey man", don't do anything to stick out and make you a target.  Instead, wear generic clothing, nothing fancy, just what will make you blend in and not make you get noticed.  this way, you don't put a target on yourself.

    I don't personally believe an emergency situation will be worse than another freeze, it might even last longer than last years, but I am not ready to accept that we will have a societal breakdown and we will resort to violence upon our neighbors.  My preparations are to simply survive a 1-2 week "stuck at home" situation, either because of a freeze or because our idiot president thinks it will help Covid19.  

    At this point, I have most of the basics covered, I would want a couple more gallons of lamp oil to run my hurricane lamps, and maybe buying a couple 20 pound tanks of propane and storing them somewhere in the backyard or garage, if it is allowed, not sure.  I need a couple more 5 gallon containers of water, for good measure, but we have Lifestraws, we could technically suck water from the creek and drink it or probably from the pool with them.

    I will keep pestering my family members though, like I have said, we are not poor and the modest cost of these basic supplies should not be the reason you weren't ready this time around should another freeze arise.  Maybe it doesn't happen, but how foolish will you look if you are caught another week without power and you have to tell people "I didn't learn anything from the first time this happened, now my kids are freezing, mostly because I am an idiot."  I saw those Mr. Heater units at Home Depot and Academy yesterday, they are easily available right now, and cost $79.  Amazon has some for $95, but it gets delivered to your door.