Uncategorized – Page 18 – The Boring Old Man

A Bird in the Hand…

It has been said by many who know me, and I will admit it’s true, that I am predisposed toward paranoia. Well, that makes me sound like a whackadoo, so let’s just say I’m drawn to pessimism.

I’ve never had a day so bad that it couldn’t get worse.

I guess it all started as a young Boy Scout and my introduction to their motto “Be Prepared”. I took that to heart at a very young age (12, I think??) and it has stayed with me these last 4 decades or so.

After the panic of Y2K (what a nothingburger that turned out to be!) I was seriously lulled into believing that we were beyond catastrophe. Sure, we’d have earthquakes and hurricanes from time to time, but “end of the world” stuff? Pfft… That was crazy-talk.

Part of it, for me personally, was the final nail in the coffin of my religious upbringing and beliefs. I had been so indoctrinated with Penecostal “End Times” rhetoric growing up, that part of me still believed the the Millineum was going to be Game Over for humanity. When NOTHING happened, the weight of the duplicity I’d carried my whole life finally fell away and I felt like life was good and I had nothing to worry about.

Then we had the events of 9/11. Then we invaded Iraq for no good reason. Then al Quaeda. Anthrax scares. George “Dubya” Bush at the wheel was enough to give you nightmares, throw in Cheney and Rumsfield and Holy moly, the Rapture seemed like a WAY better option, but alas! No Jeebus was coming back to save us from those lunatics.

On top of all the swell news of the day, there was also the fallout of the “dot com bubble” bursting and causing untold havoc in our country. I too was a victim of that bubble bursting…lost my job, lost 70% of the value of my investments and had to cash out what was left to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads because jobs were non-existent. But I digress…

So in my life so far I’d gone from lower middle-class as a kid, to “working poor” as a young adult, to borderline destitute when I hit my early 30’s, with a wife and child I was also responsible for.

At some point, the dust settled and I was able to see clearly for the first time in a long time, and I realized the ONLY person that would look out for me and mine, was myself.

There was no “luck” coming my way. Thinking “everything will work out OK” was nonsense. Believing in the Government was beyond fairy tales. No, it was time to make some serious changes and get my family in a better position.

All of this is taking the long way ’round to explain WHY I firmly believe in personal preparedness and why I came to believe in its importance.

Well my friends, at the risk of sounding like a crazy person, some sort of Chicken Little, screaming the sky is falling, I have a feeling, a deep unshakable feeling, that we’re in for a rough ride over the next two or three years.

I’m not speaking about politics (a pox on ALL their houses!), or even a resurgence of the Plague. My biggest concern (that has been keeping me up at night, literally) is the food supply.

I believe everyone, and I do mean everyone, should have – at MINIMUM – 3 days of food in their home. I don’t care if you need a cookbook to boil water, you NEED to have food in your home.

But all that aside, just consider the following:

1. US farmers were paid to plow crops under last year.

2. A significant portion of the world’s wheat supply comes from Ukraine. I suspect this is going to be an issue come harvest time.

3. A significant amount of the world’s fertilizer comes from Russia. Do you think they will want to sell it to the US? Will the .gov even ALLOW farmers to buy it, if they could?

4. Crop yields in the US are expected to be lower this year.

5. Numerous food plants in the US have sustained damage in the last year, closing them down or at the very least diminishing their output. This one is very suspicious. More food plant fires in the last year than in the previous 10 years, combined?

6. Pressure from the .gov to divert grain (corn) to ethanol, to lessen the fuel problems we’re currently experiencing.

7. Millions of livestock fowl have been culled this year, supposedly to deal with yet another “bird flu” epidemic.

8. The clarion calls are already ringing out with news of another Covid surge fast approaching. How many more food plants will we see closed down due to the Plague?

9. The cost of diesel has skyrocketed to unseen levels. “But what does this have to do with food?” you may ask? Well, the tractors that plow, seed and harvest crops all run on diesel. The trucks and trains that get the crops to the processing facilities run on diesel. The same, or similar, trucks and trains burning diesel then deliver the processed goods to distributors who load even more diesel trucks and trains to get those processed goods to your local retailers. Do you really think the farmers, the truckers, the rail lines, the distributors…are all going to simply give away any small chance of a profit by NOT charging more along each and every step of the process to cover THEIR expenses? Not bloody likely. Oh, and just in case that isn’t bad enough, a lot of places use diesel to run generators when the power is out to keep the food from spoiling. Lest anyone tell you otherwise, the cost of diesel fuel is DIRECTLY RELATED to everything you eat that you didn’t grow, hunt or harvest yourself. Period.

10. Weather is wreaking havoc on crops this year. We had flooding that caused problems with planting in the US, then cold snaps/freezes that damaged crops in the ground. I read recently that California strawberry farmers lost 80% of the first crop this year due to a “late freeze”. Eighty percent!?!?! Of course, better we lose strawberries than grains in the big scheme of things, but grains are in serious trouble too, world-wide.

None of these things are fringe ideas or “conspiracy theories”, you can find stories on all this stuff all over mainstream media. And frankly, that what freaks me out. If there were only stories about these things on the crackpot websites, or it was only one “personality” talking about it I might be able to dismiss it, but these things are no secret.

Preparedness has many facets- water, food, medicine, shelter, self-defense… but for right now, it’s all about food people.

If you have nothing in your house, get something.

If you have a little, get a little more.

If I had the space, I would happily store 2 year’s worth of food, but in our tiny apartment we can only do so much. But seriously, anything you can do to put yourself and your family in a better position with food, do it. Now.

Once the harvest season is upon us (just a few short months away!) and the reality of the situation becomes more clear, expect prices to soar and availability to dwindle. Then things will start to get nasty. You do not want to be brawling at your local grocery store over the last bag of noodles!

In all honesty, I hope I’m completely, utterly wrong about all this. I would love nothing more than to have y’all back here in a year, making fun of me over my crappy, outlandish predictions. But look it this way, if nothing happens and all the crops turn out great, Russia, Ukraine and NATO all hold hands and sing Kumbayah, and several million gallons of diesel suddenly appear out of nowhere, you’ve still gotta eat, right? You might as well “buy when the market is low” and try to stay a little ahead of inflation. When people are getting “cart-jacked” in grocery store parking lots or standing in line for hours for a government handout, you’ll be glad you did!

That’s just my 2 cents on the subject. Take it or leave it, we’re all adults here. I’m not trying to tell anyone how to live or what to believe.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Penny Saved…

I freely admit that I’m one of those old fashioned folks that much prefers to use cash rather than debit or credit cards.

The positive aspects of this are that I have a better idea of how much I’m spending, when it is literally -not just figuratively – coming out of my pocket AND it leaves less of a “paper trail”. My fellow “tin foil hat” brigade will know what I mean…

The negative side of these transactions is that I always have coins in my pockets.

A few years back I decided to turn lemons into lemonade and started saving the coins in a couple jars at the end of each day. Since we’re apartment dwellers, we always need quarters for laundry, so they have their own separate tin. When the jars were full I’d take them to the coin kiosk at the local grocery store and trade them in. Usually I’d walk out with $40-50, nothing to sneeze at.

Well, yesterday was the first “cash out” since pre-Plague. My jar of nickels and dimes had filled up, so I tossed ’em in a little wood box I had and kept going. Then I had to dump into another tin I had, then the jar was nearly full again! Along the way I started a second jar for pennies too…

I dumped all the “silver” into one plastic bag, then all the “copper” into another bag. I weighed the two before heading out and to my surprise, the silver coins weighed in at 17.2 lbs. and the copper coins added another 2.3 lbs. Nearly 20 pounds of coins! Now you see why I don’t like to carry them around in my pockets!

The kiosk takes a cut off the top for the service, I don’t recall off hand what it is, I think is was 12% or something, whatever. I’d rather pay that than buy coin wraps and spend the time sorting, counting and rolling them up myself, THEN taking said rolls to the bank to deposit, but I digress…

Now, granted this was the longest stretch of collecting – by a long shot – due to the Plague, but I walked out the store with $190 in “folding money”, with a little collection of coins to throw back in the jars for the next run!

Of course, in reality I just lost a little money with this exchange. But psychologically it feels like I just got a bunch of money for doing nothing but feeding the coins into a machine. Bottom line, I never would have spent the coins as they were, but by flipping them into cash I got the Mrs. and I a nice pizza for dinner last night and threw the rest of it into the emergency “cash on hand” pile.

You DO have an emergency CASH ON HAND collection, don’t you? If not, why not?

If you don’t (and you really, really should!!!), this is a painless way to do it! And did I mention you REALLY should have emergency CASH on hand?

Just my 2 cents…

Thanks for stopping by!

Spare the rod?

Let me start by saying, I am in no way endorsing abuse, nor “beating”. I am also not getting biblical, the title is simply a turn of phrase.

No, what is on my mind today is the state of “our” children.

I myself don’t really have much interaction with yoofs nowadays, as my own child is an adult now. And I work with senior citizens, so my personal impression is based on what I see in public and read in the news. However, both the Mrs. and our daughter are (private) school teachers, so I get a LOT of second-hand information from them as well.

And from my perspective, things are not looking good. Aside from the crazy stuff making national headlines – 14 year-olds car jacking, high school house parties turning into shooting galleries and all sorts of tragic and sordid stuff – it appears that the majority of “regular” kids are turning into disrespectful, surly a**holes.

From what my “sources” tell me, the Covid lockdown BS put the social development of the younger kids behind by (at least) two years. In other words, kids starting kindergarten this year had the development level of a 3 year-old. Fifth grade kids act like 3rd graders, etc.

Clearly, whether you agree with what happened vis-a-vis lockdowns during those years or not, it had a substantial impact on the little varmints.

But I don’t think that’s the cause of the current state of affairs with the kids. I lay the blame SQUARELY on the shoulders of the parents.

I recognize that parenting has changed a lot over the last several decades, and in some ways it has changed for the better. But in MOST ways, it’s not better, it is far worse.

When I was growing up, everybody knew somebody that had a “cool” mom and/or dad. The parents that let all the neighborhood kids hang out, maybe they would tell an off-color joke every now and again or maybe they liked the same or similar music… whatever. There are variations on the theme. BUT, no matter how “cool” these parents were, they were still -first and foremost- PARENTS.

But somewhere along the line – I’m guessing late 80’s/early 90’s – most parents decided it was a better method to be “friends” with their children instead of parents.

Don’t get me wrong, I certainly have a friendly relationship with my daughter and I love her dearly, but there were absolutely “because I’m the parent, that’s why!” moments during her childhood. Her mother, the Mrs., has an even closer, friendlier relationship with our daughter and she had to step up and “put her foot down” even more than I.

And the results of all that “harsh” parenting we did? Well, our kid has never been arrested, never got knocked up, graduated high school and college, has no tattoos or weird piercings, has been steadily employed since high school graduation, has excellent references, a good reputation amongst her colleagues, a solid, long-term relationship, savings in the bank and a high credit score. Above all, she’s a nice, caring person. And she still comes by twice a week to have dinner with us!

I’m not saying this to brag. Frankly, I’m astonished that she turned out so well. My wife and I both struck out on our own early in life, both of us living on our own by the age of 19. Neither of us finished college. Neither of us had strong role models in regards to parenting. To be fair, I had some, but not a lot of parental inspiration. The Mrs. was not so fortunate. She was lucky to make it out of her childhood alive. So when it came to parenting (at the ripe old age of 23), we “didn’t know shit from Shine-ola” as the saying goes.

But we COMMITTED to being good parents. We watched, we learned, we got involved. We read to our child. We limited (severely!) her TV intake. When she got older and computers were becoming “a thing” in everyone’s home, her time on them was limited and we were very strict on what games she could play. My wife and I were both active in our kid’s school, we coached soccer, went on field trips. I never missed a single piano recital. (I did miss one soccer game, over about 12 seasons of the game, but I was also at every practice for YEARS.) When she needed something, we’d do without to make it happen if we had to.

Were we perfect? Not even close. Not by a long shot. But we cared and we tried. Really, really tried. And it paid off.

The parents of young children I see out and about these days may be well-intentioned, but they are doing a disservice by being overly permissive.

When I see a little kid being pushed around a grocery store in a cart, and they’ve got their face in an iPhone, it makes me cringe. And it makes me sad, honestly. I used to have all kinds of conversations with our daughter while trucking through the grocery store and I look back on those days fondly. Whether it was how food grows, to where meat comes from, to economics, or the difference between a refrigerator and a freezer… whatever was on her mind at the time, those grocery shopping days were valued “one on one” time with the kid.

When I see a kid out of control in a public space, and the parent is trying to “negotiate” with the kid to get them to act civilized, I want to kick that parent in the pants. Everyone knows you don’t negotiate with a terrorist.

The self absorption and narcissism of kids these days is abhorrent, but who can blame them when they’ve had no direction or authority in their young lives?

Contrary to popular opinion, children not only need, but actually desire authority and structure. The less they have of it, the more they lash out.

Yes, by all means, use this time to take a pic and post a meme, rather than disciplining the kid…

Kids can find friends anywhere, but they only get one set of parents (generally speaking), so as the parent you need to embrace that role. It isn’t easy, and yes it may cause some disturbances especially early on, but if you think a six year old can get out of control, just wait til they’re sixteen if left unchecked!

But if you teach them when they’re young, you’ll have that opportunity to be “friends” when they’ve matured and know how to be a decent human.

And as I mentioned, this is not advocating violence or abuse. You can be authoritive without being violent or abusive, you just need to be firm in your stance, be direct and above all, be honest with them. It ain’t rocket science, but it’s much more important !

Anyhow, that just my 2 cents on the subject…

Thanks for reading!

Road Trip! Home Away from Home…

The Mrs. and I took off for a couple nights. We didn’t want to spend too much time traveling, so it was back to Half Moon Bay, our home away from home.

The weather was overcast, a little chilly and windy which is perfect as it keeps the crowds at bay.

Aside from soaking in the delightful crashing of the waves, we also took a spin down the coast to Pescadero to visit one of our favorite places; Harley Farms.

Peace and quiet, a deserted beach AND goats? What more could you ask for in a weekend getaway?

We came back Sunday, Mother’s Day, and spent the evening with our girl, and went to a really nice dinner in Saratoga. The perfect ending to a pretty much perfect weekend.

Just what the doctor ordered.

Now, back to the grind!

Thanks for stopping by!

And it’s only Wednesday…

I had a nice weekend and came in Monday morning feeling recharged and “ready for battle”. By the end of the day I felt like I’d been pummeled, but I went home and played my new bass for a while to calm the nerves and went to bed in good spirits ready to have a good Tuesday.

Tuesday came along and was busy as all get out, but around 3pm I’d just finished a grueling, nearly 3 hour meeting on a big project I’ve been working on for months. I sat back and thought to myself, “alright, that was some progress, I’m finally getting somewhere!”

Less than 10 minutes later, one of my most solid and dependable employees comes in and gives me his resignation.

I’ve been short 2 employees for nearly a year now – it started back in June of ’21. Now I’ll be down 3. We still have to have 6am -10pm coverage, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and the remainder of the team is getting burned out and certainly less willing to “pick up the slack”, now that we’re 11 months in to a “temporary” situation. I can’t blame ’em.

Last night talking with the Mrs., I said “just once, I’d like to have a day when NOTHING goes wrong. I don’t need anything good to happen, just nothing bad.”

Well, today ISN’T that day. I’d just pulled in, hadn’t even turned off my car, much less exited it, and I’ve got the big cheese of the place yelling at me about an incident that had just happened.

It took 1000% of my willpower to stop myself from putting the car back in “drive” and leaving. Forever.

Thankfully I happen to have a couple hours booked in the rehearsal studio tonight AND a good friend/very talented musician is joining me for some noisemaking. Sometimes it is the little things in life that help get you through the s#!+ storms.

Hope y’all have a good day out there. If you’ve got dark clouds hanging over you, like I do, find something, anything to bring you a little joy. Self care is necessary, especially these days.

Thanks for stopping by!

Sunday, Funday!

The girls went out today for a girlie appointment so I had a little free time on my hands.

Spent it hanging out in my little happy place, the “home studio”. (It isn’t really a studio by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s where I keep all my noisemakers.)

I gave my new pedalboard a little attention, but didn’t make any permanent changes. Trying to fit the bass rig and the guitar rig into one pedal board due to my lack of space, and it’s a little tight in there.

Now it just needs a little cable management and cleanup and she’s good to go.

Then I sat down for a little e-drumming, trying to keep the reflexes up.

After a little warmup, came up with this little groove…

https://youtube.com/shorts/5-WHEMfONBU?feature=share

Not sure why it won’t upload…

Nonetheless, it’s been a really good Sunday. Feeling recharged and ready for the new week to come!

Thanks for stopping by!

Laughter, the best medicine.

It’s been a LONG week, having trouble getting my head screwed on straight this morning… But, its Friday which is nice and a beautiful Spring day out, so how about a few chuckles to get the day started… I am a Dad, so naturally I have some Dad Jokes for you!

#1. I’m really excited for the amateur autopsy club I just joined. Tuesday is open Mike night!

#2. What kind of doctor is Dr. Pepper? A fizzician!

#3. My boss asked me why I only get sick on work days. I said it must be my weekend immune system.

Thank you, I’m here all week. Be sure to tip your waitress!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great weekend!

Can anybody make sense of this?

Here in CRAZYfornia new regulations went into effect as of January ’22, requiring that all “compostable” materials be separated into a 3rd “waste stream” for collection to reduce methane gas, a so-called “super pollutant”. According to “Science”, “organic material dumped into traditional land fills decomposes and creates methane”.

Ok, I’m no scientist, but as I understand it organic material decomposes. Period. This decomposition process creates methane gas. Period. So, how does separation of the organics from say, old furniture and building materials make it less toxic?

And if this methane is gas is so toxic, and I’m assuming it is, wouldn’t concentration of all this organic material into one place make for a toxic zone? At best a hazardous workplace, right? If my leftover food scraps are decomposing right next to my neighbors’ discarded blender in a landfill, does that make the food scraps produce MORE methane than it would anyway? Seriously, I don’t know and I’d LOVE to have someone explain it to me.

On top of this quandary, I cannot help but wonder how is it that sending out THREE SEPARATE COLLECTION TRUCKS instead of one is beneficial to the environment? Isn’t burning 3x the amount of diesel fuel just as bad as mixing our organic waste with non-orgznic waste? And on top of all the extra trucks on the road, we have oh, so helpful city employees that come by the facility every six weeks to “audit” our trash and insure we’re following regulations. More fuel burned in the name of environmental safeguarding? And lastly, we had to bring in dozens of additional waste receptacles (at a cost of several thousand dollars!) AND we have to use “color coded” can liners for the different waste streams. So yeah, how much “energy” went into producing all the extra bins and having them shipped out by truck? How does a “translucent green” or “tranlucent blue” trash bag help our ecology? Inquiring minds want to know… How much extra will we have to spend to comply with the color coding nonsense, day in and day out? What do we do about the real work that now doesn’t get done because we have to shift our limited resources to extra waste pickups daily?

I started dealing with this stuff back in November of ’21, so roughly 6 months I’ve spent trying to get our facility “compliant” and dealing with the city. It’s preposterous. If it were for a good cause, I’d have no problem with it, but honestly I cannot see the benefits of all this extra expenditure of time, resources and energy.

Now, before your undergarments get all in a twist, I am not anti-conservation. Don’t go all Greta on me! I was into recycling way, way before it was “a thing”. All the way back in the mid-70’s my Boy Scout troop was doing monthly “paper drives”, going door-to-door throughout the entire neighborhood collecting old newspapers to recycle. Back then I was also always collecting aluminum cans and glass bottles for a little extra walking around money. I had a nice little side hustle in the 80’s recycling giant toner cartridges from commercial grade printers, and later when printers got way smaller and toner cartridges way cheaper, I filled the cash gap recycling old CRT monitors and computers. When we had a house, we always had our own compost pile in the backyard for use in the garden. Nowadays we even use glass straws and waxed cloth wraps instead of plastic ziplock bags for lunches and whatnot. Basically what I’m saying is while not exactly a “tree hugger”, I’m definitely a “friend” of Mother Nature. (Oh, is it still OK to say that? I’d hate to presume Mother Nature’s gender! /sarcasm off)

But this latest “green initiative” doesn’t pass the smell test. All I can figure, and believe me I’ve spent a LOT of time thinking about this, is that it is nothing more than the .gov “creating jobs”. They put the “green” tag on anything these days and if you question it or deny it’s value, suddenly you’re nothing more than a mouth breathing eco-terrorist.

This is what happens when people with no experience in anything get to make up rules and regulations for the rest of us that they themselves don’t have to follow. Or pay for.

Don’t get me wrong, I think as a society we’d be far better off if everyone composted AT HOME and used said compost to bring life back to our horribly damaged soils and grow at least some of their own food. But that isn’t what’s happening. We’re burning precious fuel to collect this stuff, charging the citizens and companies MORE for the privilege of complying with their mandatory services and in the end I don’t believe for a nanosecond that this will accomplish anything of value. Except of course, filling the coffers of politician’s election campaigns and the pockets of the grifting labor unions that salivate over these new regs that promise more revenue to their organizations.

I hope I’m completely and horribly wrong about all this…but I have yet to have it explained to me in a way that leads me to believe it’s anything but feel-good nonsense being shoved down our throats AND (above all else) a considerable cash grab disguised as “doing the right thing for our planet”.

This of course is just my 2 cents on the subject. I welcome any and all discussion on this topic, anyone that can make it – in a language we all understand – make sense.

Thanks for reading!

Monday Memes

‘Cuz I got nothing today…

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week!

A Day in the Park

After missing the festivities for the last few years, today the Mrs. and I ventured out to Kelly Park in San Jose for the 37th Annual VVCA (Vintage Volkswagen Club of America) Spring Meet, and what a great show!

I’ve been mad about VWs, since long before I could drive. My first car was a 1973 VW type III Squareback, later I had a Superbeetle and a ’71 type II bus. The first and only new car I ever purchased was a watercooled VW golf in 1990. So you could say my relationship with, and love for, VWs goes way, way back! I haven’t had one for a while now, but the craving never really leaves. After today the craving for a new aircooled plaything is especially strong!

Today we lucked out and had beautiful Spring weather and an awesome turnout of vintage German automobiles with some great restorations and even more custom, creative rides.

Here are a few highlights: