Douglas E. Berry

This pretty lady guards the front door to Offhand Manor. I'm hoping to identify her, and so long as she remains outside, we're all good.

( Cut for the arachnophobic )

kshandra and I were doing a little clearing out of stuff in the kitchen and came across a Box of MYSTERY on a hard-to-reach shelf. Being the Designated Tall Person, I got it down. It was filled with survival food from Patriot Pantry. Which is the best crazy prepper site ever.

We went through them and decided that we could use most of them for Burning Man. A couple are going up on the local Buy Nothing group. This simplifies the food planning aspect for both our dinners as well as for the camp Thanksgiving. The others? Well, I bought that travel pack of hot sauce for a reason.

We will still be doing some stuff on the food saver and freezing it because it's always good to have options. One thing we will bring is a can of beanless chili to add to the Mac and Cheese because chili mac is good Army food. Campmates are welcome to join us for that culinary delight.

So as of right now, we are pretty well-sorted for the food plan. We have breakfast stuff, dinner stuff, and even a few desserts. Lunch will be leftovers, if we eat lunch, because who wants to eat midday at Burning Man?

Now we're just waiting to hear about our camp dues and the resolution of the trailer mess.

As I said in an earlier post, today is the first day of Santa Clara's annual city-wide clean-up campaign. This is the weekend where people in Zone 1 (which includes us) can haul all sorts of crap to the curb and it will be gobbled up, no questions asked.

As always, this event brings in hoards of scavengers looking for examples of the "one man's junk. . ." axiom. One of the things we hauled out was the bag holding the old cover for our trailer. This cover failed so fucking hard. It shredded in what was a mild California winter. We actually got called by the storage lot owners to come and take care of it.

We were still cleaning out the carport when scavengers grabbed the bag. Congratulations, assholes, enjoy your bag of fabric confetti! If only we had thought to add glitter to the bag. . .

Accomplished today:

Recycling taken to Danny's Recycling, we got nearly $50.

A BIG bag of old clothing was dropped off at Goodwill.

Picked up a prescription at Rite Aid.

We did a small weekly shopping that turned into a big weekly shopping.

I'm in the process of doing two loads of laundry.

. . . I think I've earned a beer.

We also saw flowers being offloaded at St. Justins and slowed to a crawl in Safeway's parking lot to determine what kind of flowers. Bouquet sighting confirmed, happy floral arraignments in process.

We are so easily amused.

As the recycling money is generally considered to be my fun money, I'm going to deposit it in the credit union and use it to order a POD Runequest book.

We have culled the bookshelves, the DVDs, and the gaming shelves and box. Tomorrow we're heading up to Half-Price Book to sell all of it.

My standard was "am I going to read this again? Is this actually going to gey used for something? Do we ever want to watch this movie again?" kshandra applied the same standard, and we've both made heavy cuts into some sacred cows...

There are a couple of things on the gaming shelf that I'm still staring at, making those calculations. I fully expect to add a few more things before we seal the boxes and load them in the truck.

We've also thrown away a ton of crap. Luckily, we still have some trash bag tags so we can put the extra trash bag out with our regular bin.

It's really amazing how satisfying reducing clutter is.

Had two errands to run today, the first was dropping off my last timecard of the school year at the station with a whopping six hours on it.

Then I took Darby the Ford Ranger over to Precision Tune Auto Care for his 60,000 mile service. I love my little white truck and want to keep him for as long as possible.

They were short-handed, so the "courtesy shuttle" ended up be me driving home with the manager. Got picked up the same way. It was nice, as we had a chance to talk about any issue I've been having. I like these people, they're good, efficient, and honest.

About two hours after I left Darby with them, I got a call. They were suggesting that my sparkplugs and wiring should be replaced. As I was still on the original set Darby came with, this made sense. Expensive, but it made sense. This is why we have an emergency credit card.

After picking up Darby, and making a run to Rite Aide because -miracle of miracles - my Xarelto was in stock when I put the refill order in this morning (usually I have to wait a business day or two as it's an expensive item that they don't stock a lot of) I decided that Darby really needed a bath and I needed an excuse to just drive for a little while. Our preferred car wash is the Rotten Robbie near kshandra's office. $13 for a touchless, quite thorough was, wax, and dry.

Back home and chilling in anticipation of Payday Pizza. A hallowed tradition here at Offhand Manor.

One of the more annoying sayings from my Army days, but very true.

It's the day after Earthquake Day (April 18th) but I'd thought I'd share our emergency kit. We got the bag with a coupon deal from REI, and it has everything you can think of to ride out a few days after the big one.

Because I drink a ton of water, we added six one-gallon bottles to the stash. A couple of the older headlamps and a flashlight will be added.

Because the Big One might not hit in a hundred years and could hit before I finish posting this. Readiness counts.

• Kit includes emergency items: 2 food packages, 20 water packets, tube tent, 2 waterproof ponchos, 2 rescue blankets, 4 hand warmers and 2 dust masks


• Also includes hand-crank flashlight/radio, multifunction tool, work gloves, 2.5 gal. collapsible water jug, whistle, 4 light sticks and 2 emergency candles


• Also includes pencil, paper, 50 ft. nylon rope, waterproof tape, 2 cold packs, latex-free medical gloves (2 pairs) and 6 antimicrobial hand wipes


• Also includes bandage scissors, tweezers/forceps, 2 finger splints, digital thermometer, first aid manual, 2 facial tissue packages and 2 biohazard waste bags
  Treat wounds with five 3 x 0.75 in. bandages, five 3 x 1 in. bandages, 5 knuckle bandages, 5 fingertip bandages and four 2 x 2 in. gauze pads


• Also includes two 3 x 3 in. gauze pads, two 4 x 4 in. gauze pads, 4 yd. x 2 in. stretch gauze, two 9 x 5 in. ABD/combine pads, eye pad and 5 butterfly closures
  Treatments include 3 sting relief wipes, 9 antibacterial wipes, 2 triple antibiotic ointment packets, 2 burn cream packets and 2 eye wash bottles


• Medications include 4 Cetafen® acetaminophen tablets, 4 Nutralox® antacid tablets and 4 Proprinal® ibuprofen tablets


• Also includes 2 Diamode® loperamide HCI antidiarrheal tablets


• Easy-to-read first-aid guide is written by Dr. William W. Forgey

All pieces fit neatly into the 3-compartment nylon backpack with adjustable shoulder straps—stows neatly in a closet or trunk of a car

For the first time in the ten-plus years we lived here, we had to call for a repair. This triplex is old enough that grounded outlets are only found in the kitchen.

Well, one of them had something blocking the ground slot, and another one had one port stop working. Told the landlady, and today we had two very nice electricians come in.

There was a bit of confusion because there doesn't appear to be access to the crawl space under the building. What I think happened is that during a renovation the carpet layers put down carpet in all three unit closets, covering up the access point. I am half-tempted to try to find the plans for the place in the city records because at some point someone will need to get down there.

The senior electrician noticed my framed Black Jacket from Hell's Kitchen, and we had a nice chat about Gordon Ramsey. I was good and sat quietly in my chair and didn't kibitz. We now have two new grounded outlets in place of the ones installed by settlers in the 1880s. We were also warned to avoid over-using any one outlet, which we do already by using the plugs around the kitchen for different things.

15:37! That's how long I kept "Pete" from Cardmember Services on the phone!

What was best was when he started threatening to come kill me.

"OK, where do I live?"

"United States."

"That's about 330 million people and roughly a third of North America. I'll give you a hint, I'm in California."

"Sacramento?"

"Nope, another hint: It's where the 49ers play."

*silence*

"We're tracing the call right now and I'm going to come and kill you."

"I'm on my cell phone, dipshit. The closest that will get you is one of three cell towers."

"Fuck you."

~fin~

For some reason, I woke up with a lot of energy today. It's not like I slept nine hours, or had a caffeine IV running during the night, but I just woke up ready to go. So I got going.

First off, we had a lot of laundry to take care of. It ended up being four loads and I could do another but the towels can keep another day. This is another time my Army experience helps. I got very good at timing my loads when I was sharing two washer/dryer sets with 60 fellow soldiers. Kirsten handled a couple of loads, which was a nice break.

I washed all the hoodies and hung them up. We're heading into warmer weather, so my need for them is going to be limited in the coming months. I also started storing all me work rain gear and the cold weather stuff. Come Wednesday, I'll hanging it all up until school starts again. I still want to get storage bags to protect them from the ever-present dust here in Offhand Manor. Living about 100 feet from a heavily used rail line means a constant shower of dust.

The laundry well underway, I had to run out and take care of some errands. Two of my vital medications needed refilling and after that, I stopped to pick up the one thing we missed in our shopping yesterday, and I popped into O'Reily's for a new sunshade for Darby. Little chocolate donuts were snagged.

Driving around meant being able to listen to the Giants game. Today was a good one, the Giants ended up winning 8-1. Admittedly, it was against a really weak team, the Baltimore Orioles. But a win is a win. We need more of those.

Once back home, I finally put bags into the outside recycling bins, where I collect things for eventual turn-in at the local recycler. Filling them with recycling followed. Since I also collect the recycling from Kirsten's office, my runs usually net me between $20-30 a month. A little extra never hurts.

Somewhere in there, I did a final edit of the piece I'm bringing to my writing group tomorrow. This is the final set of meetings before the summer break, and I'm really starting to question what I'm getting out of it. I may look into South Bay Writers for a more professional group. Two of the panels I attended at Baycon made it clear I need a serious group focused on real development. I also learned that our tax return is probably going to go to a professional editor.

For all this hard work, I'm being rewarded with steak for dinner. Deciding to start ordering from Omaha Steaks was one of the best ideas we ever had. Amazing quality and great prices if you play their sales and special offers right.

In other news, a kilt has been ordered! I'm getting a cargo kilt from Scottish Kilt Shop. I now have something to wear every day at Burning Man. If I can talk my boss into it, I'll order one in black and wear it to work. As you can imagine, kilts are very popular on Playa for both comfort and utility. I still need to get good hiking shoes and break them in. The day after school ends I'm going to unfold the bike and start riding. My goal is to be able to do five miles comfortably before we leave.

We've also begun doing our food plan for the burn. Our usual Food Saver and frozen spaghetti and taco meals, and we're planning to maybe try something Indian. We have learned that this plan works best with ground meat. So we may call it butter chicken, but it will not look like it. We still have eight million camp food breakfasts stored. The funny thing is we both agree that our food plan includes giving up and going to the commissary (Kirsten gets in for working the event, and I am allowed to come in with a pass. It's always good stuff.)

There is still some stuff we need to acquire. Top of the list is a tarp big enough to cover the Free Trailer Beowulf. Our double-tarp kludge didn't quite work. Which means we're going to be spending time scrubbing mold this summer. Thank Halford I thought to insist on a full mattress cover for the trailer bed. Which reminds me we need to set aside two rolls of quarters and a Saturday to wash the sleeping bags, and where did I put my greatcoat? It needs to be drycleaned . . .

Ah, life. A busy Sunday and I still have so much to do. But for now, me and a fake beer are going to fire up the DVR and catch up on The Name of the Rose.

Peace, y'all!