In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Monday, September 7, 2026 11:50
VIEWED: 338648
PAGE 818 of 834
Lucky you!
It's 102°F ATM.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Jack is back, baby!
12 days. 12 freakin' days without power this time.
I don't even know where to start.
Let's just say that I asked myself "How am I going to be an optimist about this?", and it turned out to be the most productive 12 day streak of work I've done in possibly forever.
Honestly? I almost miss not having power right now.
No flooding in my house. Less damage than the last storm outside, unbelievably, since we were in the center of a low-key tornado for about 15 minutes and you couldn't even see 1 foot outside the window the entire time. I haven't talked to my step-dad in a long time, but I think I need to call him and thank him for that generator. We had people stealing generators all over and there were people waiting in line all day for one at Costco. I camped out on the back porch and killed my back sleeping on that old futon with my gun under my pillow every night. I drove 20 miles to buy gas the 2nd day and couldn't find a single working gas station... every stop light was a stop sign for days. It took about 5 days before any gas stations within 5 miles of me were back up.
My dad saved my ass and drove all the way out from Chicago with his 5 gallon can. Now that it's all over, my generator is full, my car's tank is full, and I have 17 gallons of gas on hand. I drive so little that at least until I get a job my plan now is to only rotate those and fill them up and I'll fill my car with them and go fill the can back up when I need gas for the car.
Did I mention my neighbors finally cut that tree down? If they didn't do that about 4 days before we got hit this time, we might be having a very different conversation right now. Maybe they were more angry than I was about the power being out, but the wife isn't talking to me now. Fuck 'em. I got what I needed.
My only casualty in the power situation seems to be the cheap mp3 player radio I bought to put my Grams' music on when she was in hospice that I only recently got around to repurposing for my own use in the basement. Bummer, but it was only $10.
I'll have to catch up on your lives. I hope everything is going well except for those nasty 100+ days you're getting, Sigs.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Let's see... What did I do....?
Everything is out of the attic except for a box with my VCR and some personal movies and my chess board, and a 2nd box of computer cables and stuff I probably don't need since I won't likely ever be building another computer any time soon and at least half of that stuff is probably outdated now.
Threw out or gave away about half of the non-tech stuff in the small bedroom including all of the clothes except for the 6 really nice suits that I likely won't ever wear. 
My entire property looks pristine... The best it's looked in at least 3 years.
My hunch on those cut off pipes in my crawl space was correct and with a bit of ingenuity and work I was able to get a new dedicated line from the box into the crawl without having to bust down a single square inch of the finished wall. It only goes into a box about 6 feet in there right now, but I also ran hard pipe to the old switch box and added a new switch that controls that circuit from outside the room. I still need to test for open ground/neutral or reverse polarity, but I'm pretty sure it's all good. I know my electric is good, but I can't see what was done behind the walls. I'd love to say that was the hard part, but it was just one of several hard parts left to go.
My neighbor told me about his setup with an inverter and marine batteries and he and his wife were living the high life on his Costco Special generator about 1000watts less than mine because he was milking every spare volt of power out of that thing while mine was mostly just burning gas for the sake of burning it. I did manage to at least get my laptop on it and was able to watch movies on a thumb drive at night. I've watched more movies in the last 2 weeks than I have in the last 5 years, and feel like I could go another 5 years now without ever watching a movie again. Didn't have any internet until the power came back up though, even though it wasn't a power issue and it wouldn't connect while on the genny. I think the poles were just really messed up.
Completely took apart my shelving system that I built in place years ago in my garage after taking everything off of it. Now it's all on the back wall where I should have built it in the first place, and the new owners will be inheriting that as well as a massive tool bench. And now they'll be able to make use of all of that while still being able to park 2 cars in the garage. I'll take the small bench and the giant top of a 2nd unfinished bench my step-dad gave me when they moved that needs legs and a bottom shelf with me when I move. I managed to throw out 5 cans of trash so far, and I've left a ton of good stuff on the curb and people have been taking all of that over the last few days. Still going to have to make some tough decisions, but I'm really proud of that progress so far and can't wait for my old man to see the new garage next week.
Found out my receiver was bad after 10+ years in the attic, so I threw that out and put all of my speakers and about what is probably now $300 worth of copper speaker wire out there too. That's in the past. I'm perfectly content with my two cheap soundbars. Another 4 massive boxes out of my life forever.
I know there's more I'm not thinking about but that was the slowest 12 days in recent memory for sure.
Oh yeah... I fixed my $250 leaf blower I bought a few years back that only ran twice before never starting back up again. Still haven't been able to fix my dad's old lawnmower though, so after trying a few things I wanted to research online I'm going to pitch it if I can't get it running again. I did get it running 3 separate times to run cleaner through it, but once you stop it, it just does not want to start again.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Heya SIX!
Glad you're OK!
12 days without power? That's ridiculous! But thank goodness for the genny! We keep toying with the idea of battery backup but a generator is probably a much cheaper and better bet.
I can't imagine why your neighbor isn't talking to you. Taking down that tree saved both of you from a lot of damage. They should be THANKING you. Sheesh!
So, gotta say ... NOW do you think global climate change might be a real thing? Just bc TPTB treat it like a "get rich quick/ consolidate even MORE power" opportunity doesn't mean it isn't happening.
Anyway... the heat this summer has been relentless. I think we had all of three or four days in the past two months below 88. So I've been doing work inside, decluttering and holding dear daughter's feet to the fire and the house does look visibly better. Still quite a ways to go but happy with the results so far.
So relieved that you're OK!
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Glad to see you're back SIX. Also glad your house didn't flood.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Lucky you!
It's 102°F ATM.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
Oh, man that is rough.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Heya SIX!
Glad you're OK!
Hey Sigs. You too. I trust you're staying out of that heat as much as possible.
Quote:
12 days without power? That's ridiculous! But thank goodness for the genny! We keep toying with the idea of battery backup but a generator is probably a much cheaper and better bet.
Yeah... Insane, really. But the crazy part about it was after 3 or 4 days it just became my new normal. That first night I was setting my alarm every 2 hours to check on the generator, and I know I didn't get to sleep until at least 4AM the first couple of nights. By around night 9 I was falling asleep watching movies well before midnight. Part of that was I was pretty sure by then anyone who needed a generator either bought one or stole one and I was in the clear. NWI is probably now the most prepared portion of the country for the next storm in the history of the nation. Not just because of this event, but the one that knocked out 1/3rd of the same customers for 3 to 5 days just 6 or so weeks ago. If they didn't learn their lesson the first time, they sure better have the second time or they get what they deserve the third time.
Get yourself a generator first. It's a no-brainier. But don't forget you need a few extension cords that are up to the task too. I probably went super overboard when I bought a 100ft cord that came out to more than a buck a foot after taxes for my sump well, but I'll never lose sleep worrying that it's going to melt on me. Until day 2 of the last power outage I would never have even dared to try to hook up the fridge on a plain orange 100ft extension cord, but I had to save the insulin and found it it wasn't a problem.
This time I was able to rotate that orange plug and do quite a few things with it. First and foremost, making coffee is no longer an issue whether my power is up or not.
I had it powering my laptop and charging my phones and my Ryobi batteries on my 6-battery charger every 2 or 3 nights just to keep everything topped off. No more sitting in my car reading a book for a few hours while the phone and my diabetes monitor charged up. No more worrying about what I was going to do when my 12 batteries for my flashlights inevitably ran out of juice long before the power came back up.
I had my Dad take all my insulin in an iced up cooler back to his place for me and just kept my existing bottle and the one I'd be opening soon, and I didn't have all that much food so I just threw out the stuff I couldn't cook, ate what I could eat and had that thing shut off after day 2. I'm sure I could have run the fridge and sump and still do everything else I was doing without overloading the generator, but with only 2 A/C outlets on the thing, it would have meant taking the fridge off of the plug for hours at a time, and I probalby wouldn't have watched any movies and would have had the plug split in the kitchen charging everything up overnight while feeding the fridge if I didn't give the insulin to Dad.
They're not cheap, but if you get yourself a nice one and follow the maintenance instructions, you will get years of use and piece of mind out of it. JUST MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH GAS ON HAND FOR A FEW DAYS!!!! Ask me how I know.
Mine isn't huge or an especially large energy export at only 3 gallon capacity and 2900 watts, but it was a DeWalt that was built 24 years ago and still kicks ass to this day. I've gone several years without ever firing it up, and it always starts in a few pulls if not the first pull.
And once I install that house generator R/V style plug with the interlock kit on the box to make sure I never feed the grid on accident by forgetting to turn off the main before plugging in the generator, I'll be able to feed anything I want inside the house. Lights aren't a problem at 9watts a piece when you've got 2900 to play with. You'll see my house from spac
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Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Glad to see you're back SIX.
Thanks Brenda.
Glad to be back. Was looking forward to when I could finally let you both know I was fine.
And I'm really glad my house didn't flood too.
Hit or miss there that first two days, but after that it was smooth sailing.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:How To Convert Your Generator to Natural Gas or Propane (The conversion kit was $125 as mentioned at 20 minutes into the video.)
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
They're not cheap, but if you get yourself a nice one and follow the maintenance instructions, you will get years of use and peace of mind out of it. JUST MAKE SURE YOU ALWAYS HAVE ENOUGH GAS ON HAND FOR A FEW DAYS!!!! Ask me how I know.
Mine isn't huge or an especially large energy export at only 3 gallon capacity and 2900 watts, but it was a DeWalt that was built 24 years ago and still kicks ass to this day. I've gone several years without ever firing it up, and it always starts in a few pulls if not the first pull.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Glad to see you're back SIX.
Thanks Brenda.
Glad to be back. Was looking forward to when I could finally let you both know I was fine.
And I'm really glad my house didn't flood too.
Hit or miss there that first two days, but after that it was smooth sailing.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
I bet it was. The reports coming up here looked really bad.
Good. I'm glad you did. I know I didn't say it but I was worried about and thought your power was gone.
Safe and being prepared is all you can do with these storms becoming worse.
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