Daily Pill

It's been a year

2010-01-09T07:08:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been over a year now since my last post. Reading back on my earlier posts, things have pretty much followed their predictable paths. The economy is doing exactly what it needs to do - shrinking and going through changes. There is no economic recovery, just less people left to lose jobs at a record pace. With unemployment well above 10% now (which is really more like 22% if you use the original method of calculating unemployment) we've arrived at the new norm. The massive layoffs have slowed down dramatically, but you don't (and will not) see a massive recovery of corporate jobs. New company start ups will not likely replace the big company layoffs. The current situation is the new "normal" and the faster we all realize it and accept that this is it, the faster we can begin to make intelligent decisions about the future.

I still feel I don't have the answers to all of my own questions, but I am a bit closer to coming to grips with all that is going on and that has helped me to start to make decisions on what needs to happen next.

I see more and more underground economies emerging around me as time goes on. Double bookkeeping and under the table jobs are the way that an otherwise dire situation of joblessness gets dealt with in the real world. There is a lot more acceptance in the local economy of small start-ups and individuals that only deal in cash or cash equivalents. Here in my new home town, the dope business is booming and there's really no question in my mind what the economy here is based upon. "Legitimate" businesses are run with a "look the other way" philosophy that allows them to ignore the law when it suits them simply by pretending that they don't know better, or at least didn't notice anything wrong. So, the economic problems that we all face become a little less critical when there's a trickle of income that Uncle Sam has no knowledge of and no resources to investigate.

The problem is that the real role of our original government - to take care of problems that are too large for cities and counties to grapple with - has been replaced with a corrupt government that takes care of only the problems of the wealthy. While education, infrastructure, health care and welfare get less and less, the banks, investment firms, insurance and otherwise wealthy get more and more. The Trillions of dollars poured into the economy have simply gone to bail out those that took all of the money from the lower and middle class and invested it in pyramid schemes that were literally designed to make the top 5% insanely rich. Wall Street has done exactly what it set out to do. Take Main Street money and make it "dissappear" legally. You and I don't write the laws and Lobby... They do.

So, things are happening in a very predictable manner. The rest of us watched and learned our lesson from the rich. If you refuse to report your financial dealings, invent your own form of financial reporting, you aren't held accountable for your questionable financial dealings. In fact it seems that even if you are caught red handed being totally unethical and deliberate in your theft, you can re-arrange your wealth and hold out your hand and get more money from those you robbed in the first place. Especially if you are too big to fail.

Personal bankruptcy is now more difficult than corporate bankruptcy thanks to some perfectly timed laws that took effect in 2004 (right as the housing bubble began to raise eyebrows)... I don't believe that was just a coincidence. Banks were aware of what was going on and flooded capital hill with lobbyists fighting for personal bankruptcy reform. We can learn from that situation too. We need to start lobbying for ourselves - to wipe out the credit reporting agencies that now have HUGE control over our everyday lives. Try renting an apartment, buying a house, getting a decent job or opening a checking account without having a credit check done on you to "evaluate" your credit worthiness. More and more of our lives are tied to our income and financial status and the banks now have the power to blacklist you in more ways than you can imagine. There's no buffer protecting your credit reports from abuse and you have no real rights to the information contained in them. Try getting anything changed in the reports (even if it is an obvious error). It takes months of effort just to get a response, but only a few keystrokes for a financial institution to destroy you and your ability to get financing.

It's time to start looking at alternatives to the current system. Thankfully the seeds are already planted. People becoming more distrustful of the government, banking system and current legal system as time goes on. Justifiably so. We all see that their are two sets of "books" in the real world. The insanely wealthy don't live under the same laws as the rest of us and they have an inner circle of knowledge on how to loophole right by the rest of us. Look at the recent foreign bank account slap on the wrist that the filthy rich got... They were required to "come clean" or face possible jail time for income tax evasion on their overseas bank accounts. I doubt that more than a small handful of wealthy outcasts will ever even see a courtroom. Meanwhile, the rest of us fear total financial ruin and garnishment of any future wages if we fudge our tax forms in the slightest (not that we really can anyway - as most of us have straight reported income and don't receive "other forms of compensation").

Still Searching

2008-12-30T15:55:00.000-08:00

I came back from the Holiday with a lot on my mind. I guess I am a bit sorry for the previous post. I do feel that money has too much value placed on it, but that feeling comes from an point of view that 90% of the rest of the population does not hold. I forget that it's VERY hard to see things from my point of view and everyone (including myself) likes to avoid bad news even if it is absolutely true. We tend to spin things and find fault in them if they don't jive with our core beliefs - and that is just as true for myself as it is for other people and theirs. It doesn't help that I don't have any answers or even comprehend our situation to the level where I can see the big picture and make long term decisions based on what I think is happening or will happen.

The reality is that most folks are still doing just fine as far as they are concerned. They don't feel too much pressure and don't really understand how close we probably are to the end of our current way of life. Most don't understand what seems to have been going on for the past 30+ years and I only caught on about 4-5 years ago myself. Even now I barely grasp the enormity of the problems ahead of us. The previous generations have no reason to understand what is happening because nothing like our current situation has ever occurred in our world history. To most there is still a lot of our world out there left untapped (a polite way of saying "un-used-up"), but never before in history did we have such a huge population entirely dependent on so few resources.

The Baby Boomer generation is likely to be the next big catastrophe - they outnumber the next generation by a lot - and as they retire and expect to cash out their investments in property, stocks or whatever, the fact that there's nobody behind them in a position to buy their accumulated wealth is going to come as a shock. The current economic situation just exacerbates the situation for them. Since the generation(s) behind the baby boomers do not have access to the resources the baby boomers had and the numbers of retirees coming up in the next 15 years is huge, we're going to see an overabundance of houses and other investments on the market that need to be sold to pay for retirement and health care costs. At our current rate of inflation and the devaluation of the dollar that is likely due to the trillions of newly printed (unbacked) copies, even if they are able to cash out, they will likely have to continue working to support themselves until they no longer can. The wealth split is greater than ever - and most of that wealth is held by the baby boomers themselves, so there's nobody there to pay it forward.

To expand on the subject and really get a good grasp of the current situation, I think this video chapter series from ChrisMartenson.com does a better job than I can of explaining what the hell is going on right now and why the current economic problems make perfect sense once you get a clearer picture of the problems. He's a hell of a lot better at articulating the problems I believe we are facing than I can.

The main angst I have stems around my lack of faith that we will continue to survive as we have been for any length of time. It's not just the oil/coal depletion, overpopulation or even global warming that has me tossing and turning at night - it's the fact that all sustainable and peaceful societies eventually get wiped out by more aggressive and resource hungry ones. As much as I wish for a society that is sustainable, the likelihood that those that are the most resource hungry will allow a society in balance (one with no growth and with sustained resources - allowing it to go "underutilized") is nearly zero. I can't think of any time in history where the peaceful/balanced/sustainable society has not been conquered by an aggressive/waring/resource hungry one. We are the product of thousands of years of those very societies. The winners. Peoples that have conquered and killed or enslaved everyone and everything in our path. Our very society is based on continued growth and prosperity and a sense of entitlement and ownership of everything around us. We have created a culture where we are born into debt and entitled to nothing - and we are rewarded for pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps and beating out the competition for jobs, status and property throughout our lifetimes. Society rewards us for "success" - the more we consume, collect and conquer, the more respect and admiration we gain. We need a big home to be happy, to consume our desires and to reproduce with abandon... but not if we're "Poor" - then you are a problem, looked down upon, pitied or ridiculed. We pass this message on to each generation almost without fail.

We have lost our ability to sustain ourselves in our own environment right now. Back in the late 1980's we HAD to import our main energy source to keep growing. If we were to close the boarders of the US today and not be able to import anything - we would see massive collapse immediately of everything we hold dear as a society. We don't even produce enough energy to sustain ourselves within our own countries borders so we need to "borrow" from other people around the world - and by borrow I mean trade for printed money, steal, kill and otherwise take control of those resources by any means necessary. The problem is that the globe as a whole is running out of our energy source, so we're having to go into areas that were previously thought of as too risky to deal with... We're the biggest "fake" society in the world right now and the truth is finally beginning to come to light and now that I understand it I feel like an ass.

Just the fact that you are born onto this planet with no rights to any part of it is hard for me to grasp. I was lucky to be born into this greedy social structure - I feel guilty for the way we all consume so much and do so little for the rest of the world, but it is better to be behind the guns than looking down the barrel of them I suppose. None the less, it is still painful to realize that the things I consume daily come at the cost of others less fortunate than I am and that I will likely leave this planet in much worse shape than when I was born into it despite my meager and pathetic personal efforts... It all goes with the continued growth of everything - it would be silly for me to expect the earth to be ours to share and take care of and pass along to future generations in better shape than when we got it... That we would have the maturity to keep our populations sustainable and provide everyone with everything they need from birth on. We don't even extend that courtesy to each other in the present, so there's even less chance that we'll extend it to future generations, so in a way I feel disgusted and doomed at the same time.

I have no faith that Hummers will turn into horses or that McDonalds will become Old Mcdonald's Farm. Not by choice - perhaps by forced and painful necessity... I see a glimmer of hope in some areas - somewhat sustainable lifestyles are emerging here and there - but they are far outpaced and outnumbered by the resource hungry and the pseudo-sustainable lifestyles that are much easier to adopt, rewarded by society and backed by 80% of the wealth of the nation. The ethanol cars, the biodegradable bottles, the new organics that are shipped even farther around the country than the non-organic brands. The hybrid cars and florescent light bulbs that take more energy to produce than we would lose using up the current gas guzzling cars or burning out the incandescent bulbs we already have. It's nearly impossible to know what to do - the information machine is playing both sides and trying to make money in the process, so finding the truth is tough - and you can't blame people for trying even if it is misguided.

The problem is that truly sustainable lifestyles are ridiculed and looked down upon as "backwards" or even dangerous by society despite it's "Green Movement". So I sit here struggling and searching for answers to the questions of what should I be doing. What should I be doing for my family, friends, neighbors, myself? Not knowing the outcome of the current situation or how long it will take is the hardest part of it all. Why try to save up money for land when the future of money and land itself is so uncertain? Will the dollar collapse under the weight of so many trillions of worthless printed copies? If so, what do I do with the money I am saving up to keep it from becoming worthless too? Will the economic situation lead to a total collapse of all social safety nets? Should I be arming myself to protect what little I have done to prepare for an uncertain future? The news says that firearms are selling in record numbers these days - what does that mean for those of us that don't want to ever have to own a gun - are we foolish for being passive? The answers are not easy - especially when I want a better future for my family... ...and then there is the social outcast feeling I get when I try to explain myself to anyone. It's tough and I am still searching...

I will try to post on things as I decide what to do next.

I don't know what to do

2008-12-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

I don't really know what to say these days. Life has lost it's luster for me the past few months. There's not much to look forward to and the answers to the questions I have do not provide me with any comfort... The people around me now seem so out of touch with what really matters in the world. It's all about money, possessions and social status for them. Somehow that brings them purpose and they are the very reason that we are the most unsustainable of species on the planet.

Christmas is here. That means obligatory gifts and spending despite my whole hearted hate for the entire holiday now. My true friends don't need gifts from me to know that I charish them. The rest expect time, energy, money and all with a smile.

I wish at this moment that I could run away from this world. Run away to a place where peace, love and humility were the worshiped in place of the all mighty dollar. Where there was something more important to share with each other than sports highlights or chit chat about our current level of success (money, fancy cars, big housesand fake personalities that everyone wears like a set of fake tits in order to impress each other). I want simplicity and truth and transparency in life.

I can't say anything more specific about the way I feel right now. It's just a deep depression and hopeless feeling about everyone. This is the world of greed & glutttony and I am feeling very alone again.

The falling price of gas is about to hit bottom

2008-10-22T06:35:00.000-07:00

One of the positive aspects of the economy going down the toilet is that people are spending less, especially on gasoline and diesel. People are car pooling and skipping those quick trips to the fast food joint down the road to save a few dollars here and there, which has lead to less demand for oil, which in turn has brought down the price of gasoline. Never fear though, OPEC is getting ready to meet this Friday to discuss what to do to keep oil prices higher so that they can continue to rake in the cash even as the economies of most of the free world crumble around them. My guess is that they will cut back on production so that there is no surplus of gasoline and prices will level off or go back up again relatively soon despite our lack of demand. It's a monopoly, so the "free market" is only free to move within their boundaries.

This is the roller coaster ride that lulls the masses into thinking that things will return to "normal" again... Prices fluctuate wildly as demand and supply are unable to find a balance in an unstable market. Here's where people fall into a trap - seeing that the price of gasoline is falling, they put off all of the energy saving alternatives that they were looking at while prices were high. They go back to driving the big SUV instead of letting it rot in the driveway where it really belongs. Ford, Dodge & Chevrolet saw this coming many, many years ago. It's time for them to either re-tool while it affordable or go the way of the dodo bird for not bothering to heed the warning signs. Unfortunately, we the taxpayers will likely end up paying for their greed and lack of planning as I doubt that the US Government will step aside and let more than one of our major car manufacturers feel the full effects of their stupidity.

Those of us with nothing to lose (no 401K, 403B or huge sums of money in any bank), no real expenses (no mortgage, no property tax, no interest payments on anything) could really care less if all of the banks and mortgage companies suck themselves and everything that they touched down the proverbial black hole they created. We've been living within our means and being responsible for our own actions. We've been dying to buy a piece of property with even a modest home on it, but we don't have the savings to buy outright and knew that housing prices would have to fall from their nearly 100% markups...

Every dollar that the US government pours into saving the banks and mortgage lenders (which will not pay the mortgage for you or slow the falling price of housing one bit) just means that more government social service programs will be cut, taxes will be increased and more rules and regulations designed to keep track of our spending (to insure that we're not making any money under the table) will be put in place. You might be thinking to yourself (but they can tax the rich instead of the rest of us)... Yeah right - the rich have all of the options and loopholes. They can afford to move their money around at will and have the inside track on where to invest to shield their money from taxation. Any attempt to increase taxes for the rich that succeeds (i.e. taxing banks at a higher rate for example), will just be passed on to the rest of us as an increase in the cost of borrowing money, or a new type of fee tacked on to your home loan. Trickle down economics only works in reverse - money always trickles up - never down, which is why the 1.5 trillion dollars pouring into the banking sector will not return one thin dime to the average Joe. Joe will have to continue to work to "earn" that tax break or refund check while the banks continue to earn more money simply by making Joe their "customer".

If we all stop borrowing money and instead save for the future, all of these problems become just problems for the banks instead of problems for the entire world.

Obama can't save us

2008-10-17T05:45:00.000-07:00

Guess what folks, neither Obama, McCain nor Ron Paul is going to save our assets. The Bush legacy has yet to be fully known. Our great, great grandkids will still be flipping us off for not doing a damn thing while the wealth of the world was transferred to the hands of just a few select families. I'm not just talking about money here - the real wealth of the world is our natural resources. The natural resources that make life on this planet worth living. The money is just an indicator of how fast we're depleting those resources.

If you had gone into a coma at the beginning of the Bush administration and awoken just yesterday, do you think you would believe the number of shocking changes that have taken place in just the past 8 years? A war, the failure of emergency services post Katrina, a near total collapse of the banking system, record joblessness, major corporations on the brink of Bankruptcy, nearly double the national debt (from 5,674,178,209,886.86 to 10,326,055,380,264.11 - spending more in an 8 year period than all other administrations combined), the lack of personal freedoms and loss of privacy. You would find that you can be taken in the middle of the night, held prisoner indefinitely and tortured - all without a warrant or any kind of trial - just for being suspected of any form of state terrorism. You would hear that the president has the power in an emergency to circumvent all other branches of government, take control of private businesses and any other action he/she determines is in our best interest at the time... and on, and on...

All of these changes will not be reversed or repaired by the next president. With nearly 11 trillion in debt, the next president faces double the debt. More of our taxes will have to go to paying interest on the debt that our government owes which means less money for social programs. There's no way we can continue to borrow to pay the monthly bills. Something has to give - and I seriously doubt that those with the most resources will be the ones to do the giving...

There is a way out of this mess, but it will not come from the top down. Changes that do the most good for society always come from the bottom up. Those that do the work have the real power, not the ones at the top that just redistribute the wealth. Just imagine what would happen if you were to work directly for the things you needed instead of trading your work for a piece of paper that continually buys less and less...

Kiss your assets goodbye

2008-10-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

If it hasn't hit you over the head like a sledgehammer yet, just wait. The "experts" are saying that this whole thing is in our heads. Apparently it is all our fault that the economic situation is so bad. Because you put off buying that new pair of shoes or stopped eating out at Red Lobster last week, the economy is doomed to be in a recession for at least the next year or two. Unless you get back to spending your money like never before, we're all doomed... It's your fault that the banks are in trouble - if you had gone on with your life - business as usual - despite being upside down on your home, cars and credit cards, things would be just fine. Basically, if you would just shut up, go back to your cubicle and make your minimum payments, the banks would go back to making money and be happy. But no, you stopped spending. You saw your down payment disappear. You saw that you would be handing over most of your paycheck to the bank for 30 years while the home they sold you depreciated faster than you could have ever imagined. Now the banks are pissed off and going to get your money any way they can. If they can't get it from you directly, they're going to get it through your taxes. Which is what they would prefer anyway - less chance of default that way...

We are the idiots that handed over 1.4 trillion dollars to the banking system so far. It looks to me like that is about the amount that the stock market has dropped... So, your assets are nearly directly being funneled into the banking system. It's sort of like putting out a fire with gasoline isn't it? The more money we funnel into the banks, the faster we burn through our future resources. We're already looking at a 500 billion dollar budget shortfall for next year. What government programs will be cut this time? Something has got to give and it certainly will not be the banking sector. Will it be education? Healthcare? Social Security? State funding? Bridge maintenance? Non-profit organizations? Welfare? Food subsidies? Right at the height of the unemployment & housing crisis - wouldn't it be the worst time to cut back on any social safety net? But something has to give, and it historically has never been the ones that took the most, so it will not be the banks, mortgage companies, investment firms or the Fed itself.

You are unlikely to see relief for the next 10-15 years, and even that is a bit optimistic considering all of the other critical things we've neglected. All it will take at this point is a relatively minor catastrophic event to push us past the point of no return - and by no return I mean you will never again have the opportunity to live life as you have grown accustomed to. Short of us retracting back into our borders and bailing on our debt obligations around the globe, we're pretty much looking at the kind of things that will plague us for the rest of our lives.

The US is in debt far beyond anyone's wildest expectations. Oil is past it's peak and there is no real capital available right now to go poking around in the bedrock of the seismic hot spots off our coasts anyway. Even the government is too broke to pay for an oil program now. We've systematically destroyed our farmland, oceans and most critically our fresh water supplies. We've screwed up the atmosphere and permanently changed the climate of our planet. We've distanced ourselves from the many allies that we once had and re-established old conflicts. We've screwed up our educational system and neglected our best and brightest. We've shifted all of our assets into the hands of a few and given up our freedoms under the guise of safety and security, and that's not even the worst of it all...

Keep your head out of the sand and pay attention - one of the largest rapes of society is taking place right before your eyes and the media is too well behaved and too busy making money off the campaigns to bother with something that doesn't make them any money and might make them unpopular (at least in the short run)...

Sigh... We're screwed

2008-09-30T18:26:00.000-07:00

Well, here it is in a nutshell...

The economy is at a turning point. We've already headed 700 Billion dollars down the wrong road and the reality is that (unfortunately) I think we're headed even farther down the same road. It's scary as hell when the Fed can print it's own money and basically buy out private companies for pennies on the dollar with that "printed" money (really it's just a couple dozen keystrokes on a computer at this point), but it's Armageddon for the economy when we try to make something that has no value into an asset. Major investment firms and banks were caught with their pants down around their ankles and now we're seriously considering giving them the ability to clean house and scrub records so they can continue to make more money.

Is it in our best interests for us to borrow money from the Fed (the one that owns the printing presses) to bail out our banking system? We're basically giving our tax dollars directly to the private banks now whether you own a home or not. The debt we now owe to the Fed will be coming out of our paychecks in one form or another from this day forward. I for one don't like the idea of working and paying taxes to make the funny money they are currently printing for free turn into an asset for them.

Home mortgages are not the biggest issue here. The IOU's from the government are. The dollars that you and I carry in our wallets are about to become a lot less valuable. Unfortunately it's all about killing time and placating people so that those that already have plenty of money will have much much more... If the stock market rebounds, it will be just long enough for the backroom deals to happen and make things much worse. The number of CEOs that resigned in 2007 & 2008 and cashed out their stock options and severance packages is astounding to me. The take for these CEO's appears to be between 15-50 million dollars each. That money came from your invenstments.

Now we're talking about 700 billion more in bail outs to "stabilize the economy". The reality is that you can't borrow more money to solve a massive debt problem. It seems that basic concept is completely lost at this point. They're going to say that the american people will get this money back as the problem clears up and business returns to normal and that the bad debt will sometime down the road magically turn into profit. That is EXACTLY what got us into this mess in the first place - banks sold bad debt to investors as good debt. Debt is debt - it's not the same as profit because it doesn't exist as an asset yet... The profit doesn't arrive until the debt is fully paid - and then we're just back at zero, yet we bought and sold debt as if it were an asset already. Worse than that, the debt was created with printed money in the first place - the banks didn't have the money that they loaned out - they didn't even have a small percentage of the money they loaned out - they borrowed it through debt and called it an asset. So, we all finally realized that there is absolutely no real asset backing up all of this debt and we're seeing the results...

Why would anyone believe that buying up all of this bad debt with even more printed money would make the debt less toxic? How is printing more money backed by debt going to solve the debt problem? We don't have 700 billion dollars to bail out the financial institutions. We have to borrow that money from somewhere (or borrow against something of value). China, India and the other world investors are not all that keen on what is going on right now. We're printing money like there is no tomorrow (for the war, for the economy, etc.) and that money is not backed by anything, so it's just devaluing the already weakening dollar. Remember when the Canadian dollar PASSED the US Dollar in value? That was a crystal clear mile marker over a year ago that we were headed in the wrong direction.

When the value of the dollar goes down it is EXACTLY the same as someone reaching into your bank account, 401K, investment portfolio, wallet, cash box or coffee can (anywhere your dollars are) and removing a portion of your wealth. Your savings that you earned and paid taxes on is slowly being taken away from you a few pennies on the dollar at a time - to the tune of nearly 9% per year for the past 7 years. It's only because the rest of the world economy is also being watered down with funny money in the same fasion that we don't see the true speed with which our dollars are shrinking over time.

Wow, what can I say

2008-09-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

Another $700,000,000,000.00 bail out. Have we reached a trillion dollars yet bailing out the banking and investment industry?

Is there any reason that of the roughly 300,000,000 people in this country we couldn't find anyone that had some education, wisdom, courage and moral values to act as president? Why are we stuck with this two party bullshit system - and the right is acting like the left and the left is acting like the right... What a mess.

Here we are in the worst financial disaster since great depression and the puppeteers are still pulling all of the strings. Where does this trillion dollars go once it gets borrowed? Who's going to oversee the spending of it? Who's going to figure out where every thousand of that money has been spent? It's an impossible task given months of planning and oversight, yet we're going to make that decision over a weekend...

We're just seeing the very tip of the iceberg I'd bet...

There are too many perfect storms out there now to think that we'll cruise right along without making huge sacrifices... I suggest all of us start paying attention to daily needs and make sure that they are covered before the infrastructure collapses too far. It's a very slow train wreck. It's hard not to get bored with it and stop paying attention, but it's critical that we all look at where we are and not expect that things will remain the same. What will you do if your paycheck starts bouncing while at the same time inflation is rising at an exponential rate? There is a lot of evidence that things will get a lot worse than that. Quite a few of us have been following the collapse of the economy since before the housing boom. I was skeptical it was as bad as reported back then - I am not the conspiracy theory type of person - I prefer tangible evidence. Unfortunately, we can only see the physical evidence long after the crime it seems. The housing bubble was the only thing that saved us from a recession after 9/11, and there were big problems before that event set the ball rolling. Get on the internet and read what the experts report on their blogs - it is quite different from the excerpts and minute by minute reporting by the media. They all act like it's a big surprise. All of this could have been dealt with nearly a decade ago if we had some good leadership and the people of this country were willing to work hard again and make some sacrifices. Unfortunately, we live in a time where people think that money invested in the stock market is the same as money invested in real things. Small businesses can't get off the ground because the banks control all of the money - your money - your investments! The economy and world situation is deteriorating all around us. If you want to invest, invest in something you believe in. Invest in people, businesses and community projects you support or see doing good locally. Trust me you will need all of the local support you can get and it can't hurt to help out your local economy. Act locally. If you don't have money to invest, volunteer your time to help out. Build lasting relationships with your community now and you'll have the support you need later. This is just the beginning.

More troubled financial times ahead

2008-09-18T08:37:00.000-07:00

The central banks decided to pump another 180 BILLION dollars into the system. One again printing money like there is no tomorrow - a move that they have resorted to several times in the past 7 years. The first entity to trade those new dollars gets the benefit, but as the dollars move farther and farther down the line they water down the economy and cause inflation. Printing more IOUs so that people can trade them as if they are worth something will not resolve the problem in the long term. The insiders at the central banks know that their being called on their big bluff and are doing their best to flood the market while they make back room deals to cover their own assets. Now is not the time to listen to the investment firms. They are in the business of making money and they certainly don't want everyone coming to their senses at the same time and pulling the plug on Wall Street.

Bail outs are good?

2008-09-17T07:43:00.000-07:00

Our corrupt system of banks, insurers and other banking "services" don't produce anything at all. As far as I can tell the banking system is only good at producing more debt for the future. I realize that all the bailouts are going to do is put off the inevitable crash for just a bit longer, but it really pisses me off that these businesses are being bailed out when new laws were passed making it harder for individuals to declare bankruptcy. Let's make all of these failing companies jump through the same hoops that individuals have to with the new bankruptcy laws. Make these companies work out a payment plan with everyone that they owe money to for the next 3 years and attend debt counseling - before they even qualify for bankruptcy. Then let them keep 1 car worth less than $2,500.00, some clothes and less than $200 in any bank accounts. Then kick them to the curb and ruin their credit for 8+ years making it impossible for them to just switch company names and resume business. That would make me feel a bit better about my dollar slowly buying less and less - if at least I knew that these multi-billion dollar corporate heads would have the same crappy IOU's from the government that I do... In fact - that might be your answer - strip them of everything but dollars - no other assets allowed. Then perhaps they'd be more likely to protect the value of the dollar instead of pushing credit (AKA debt) as the new money.

Not one product is produced in this country by banks, mortgage lenders or insurance companies. Their job (as far as I can tell) is to sing a siren song of wealth, opportunity and security to the middle class while slowly eroding the value of the dollar and shifting funds to the most wealthy 5%. Whoever got the biggest payrolls and made the decision to print more money to fund the housing boom should be paying the ultimate price right now. Unfortunately, the golden parachutes have already been deployed and the only news will be about how the economy (AKA the rest of the working class) will pay the price for them. Watch as your savings, retirements & property values get sucked in by the perfect economic black hole. If you are on the upper end of the income spectrum, you might be able to weather the coming crisis for a decade or more, but for the rest of us - even those of us that saw this coming years ago - we'll be making hard decisions and learning to *do without* more and more frequently until this corrupt system of banks and insurance companies finally get stuck with their own worthless paper.

The good news. The bailouts can't outlast the greed. Sometime down the road someone will cry out "the emperor has no clothes" and a house will just be a house on a piece of dirt and have a fixed value again. Currently a house is a "home" that continues to increase in value despite the fact that it's actually depreciating every year. A home sitting on a piece of land is a fixed asset that once built and left alone depreciates over time just like an automobile does. Yes, you can argue that the land increases in value, but the home does not. Somewhere, somehow someone convinced the middle class that "homes" are the cornerstone of "making it". Some even argue that they are the best investment most people will make in their lifetime. In the past that may have been true - back when homes were equal to 2 years wages. Today, it's all total bullshit - and if you feel the hairs on the back of your neck starting to stand up with that statement - just shows you how deeply ingrained in our own belief systems that meme has become.
When a government already in debt bails out a company to the tune of 85 BILLION dollars, the value of the dollar (the one that you get paid in) goes down. Just call your dollar an IOU from the government - and your IOUs are no longer tied to anything tangible - in fact they're tied to the increased value of everyone's houses - which is made up entirely of more borrowed money...

Some day someone will notice that wages are losing ground with expenses at a rate of over 9% per year since 2001. Not kidding. If it hadn't been for the housing bubble, the war(s) and other great reasons for the US to print huge amounts of money and artificially inflate GDP, we'd get a nice clear picture of the problem. Unfortunately, you have to look at things like the price of gold and other mediums of exchange that have common value around the globe. If the price per ounce of gold is a good indicator of what your dollar is really worth. In 2001 $1.00 worth of gold is now worth $3.25 (not including the record setting pace that gold has jumped in the past 24 hours - that is world wide BTW, not just US - hang on to your hats...). That means that your $1.00 in 2001 is now worth about $0.31 on the world market compared to just 7 years ago. Many more banks, savings and loans and related financial insurance companies are going to go down or will be bailed out in the near future - both of those options mean that our dollars are going to be worth a lot less, so be prepared to work a lot harder for less... It's about time... Someone has to get stuck with the check - I just wish it was the ones who ate all the food and not those of us that did the cooking for them.

A weekend without the kids

2008-08-17T08:17:00.000-07:00

It's been really nice having some time to spend with Becky and not have the girls around. We went and checked out the Brookings Art Festival where I met some other carvers. I didn't realize how much of my time was occupied with taking care of the girls. Between breakfast, lunch and dinner, the laundry & dishes and constant battle to keep their stuff from migrating from their room to the rest of the trailer I don't have a lot of time to just enjoy myself. The past few days have been quiet & relaxed which is really nice.

I am looking forward to the kids going back to school so at least I will have some part of the day where I can have some time to myself. There are a lot of projects on the back burner these days and I am anxious to get one or more of them started. I have a Halloween website that needs to be migrated and updated, a book to write, this blog needs to be overhauled and many new carvings to create.

The Halloween website has taken off over the past few years. Traffic is pretty astounding and I really need to take it in the direction I've been meaning to go for many years now... I have quite a few home built prop plans that need to be written up and brought up to date so I can post them for sale on the site. I also want to move away from Microsoft FrontPage. While it was a very easy (i.e. lazy) way to build the website when it was smaller (and FrontPage was cheaper), it's grown to many hundreds of pages and far to complex for FrontPage to manage. With my new Windows Vista computer more of a pain in the ass every day I have decided to no longer use Microsoft products and have switched over to open source (and free) replacements. I have a dual boot machine now running my old Windows XP Pro and Linux in addition to my new Vista machine, so my move has been to software that is supported on both Windows and Linux whenever possible. Instead of shelling out hundreds of dollars to upgrade my Microsoft Office Pro Suite, I switched over to OpenOffice. While it does not come with a direct MS Publisher counterpart, it does come with a replacement for Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access and a program called Draw that does flowcharting and graphics. Best of all, it reads and saves in all of the MS Office file formats as well as being able to publish documents in PDF! No buying Adobe plug-ins anymore. Anyway, I have not yet done the research on the best HTML/PHP editor, but I want to find one that runs on multiple platforms and can replace my FrontPage websites with as little work as possible.

I am working on a book. It's about the changes that take place when you go from living in the world of debt and full time corporate "life" to total freedom. It's a tough journey and involves a lot of internal struggle and compromise. If I had had a book to help with the sometimes scary situations and feelings that come with living a lifestyle that takes you away from the majority of societal expectations... Well, I couldn't find one. There are scary religious, anti-society and or survivalist style books that tell you how to be afraid of the world, hide out & stockpile weapons, food and ammunition. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any books that help you integrate into society and yet keep your individuality and independence. So, I am writing one with a working title of "Getting out of line - a guide to personal freedom in a society built on conformity".

This blog has been an outlet for some of my feelings and thoughts on life and the world around me. Unfortunately, it's quite often taken the wrong way as I do not see life from the same angle as most people. Which is why 75% of the posts I write are either drafts and will never be read by anyone other than myself or I have simply deleted them to save myself the bother of replying to hoards of emails and comments. So, I have decided to make this a fully public blog (AKA boring) covering the day to day things that might be interesting to close friends and family, but will not stand out and attract unwanted attention in any way...

Going to the arts festival this weekend I saw a lot of nice work. I intend to have my own booth at next year's event. The work I saw there was nice, but OMG overpriced! I saw pieces that I can create in a day with little expense going for thousands of dollars. I don't think that is reasonable (or even ethical), so I plan to compete directly. I might not make any friends, but then I am not part of the exclusive "artist" crowd. I'm just a guy with a few chainsaws and some free time to play around with ideas and dreams... We'll see how it turns out in the long run.

Ride a bicycle

2008-07-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

Becky and I have been riding our bicycles a lot more since we moved to our small town along the coast. It only takes about 10 minutes to ride a bike into the center of town and about 15 or so to ride back with a full load of groceries. I bought myself a lightweight trailer so I could take the days on-line orders to the post office and bring back groceries without having to wear a backpack (which a lot of stores don't like to you bring inside). I notice a lot of fellow bikers wave or nod at me. I like to think it is because they know what I know - that it is yet another key to freedom to be able to loosen the noose a bit...

It's still more convenient to take the car when I have to take the girls to swimming lessons or someplace where dealing with several bicycles is kind of a pain in the butt. There are only a few bicycle friendly destinations in town and only one bike shop. I still can't just get rid of the car as it is... Hopefully that will change over time. I see a day when the bicycles outnumber the cars and we fill parking lots with bicycle racks instead of SUVs. It seems a lifetime away, but I still see hope for it in our future...

It's funny how real social change comes from the bottom up. Most of the people I meet on bicycles are doing it because they are fed up with the cost of owning a car or just can't afford it anymore. Some are riding home made electric bikes and building trailers out of scrap wood and wheels off of toy wagons. The poor folks will be the ones that do the inventing and road testing. Then we all know what happens... Money is as money does (and always will).

Finally clean clothes

2008-07-04T07:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we received our 4th washer/dryer unit (yes, that's right - fourth). It arrived looking better than all of the other units we had received so far... I pulled the cover off and sure enough, it had been dropped some time during shipping as well. 2 of the bolts securing the drum for transport had been broken completely out and the other 2 bolts were bent quite dramatically.

I decided that I could live with the damage if the unit actually worked this time, so we plugged it in right on the spot and tested all of the different washing and drying modes... No problems, so we had the driver make a note of the damage just in case.

It took us less time to install the washer/dryer this time. I guess installing one before helped us with our technique. Within 20 minutes we were running the test cycle and watching the drum rotate and splash soapy water all around inside. Becky and I could have cried... After all the problems and disappointments, we finally had a washing machine and dryer installed in the RV. No more laundromats!

It's installed just under the microwave in the old refrigerator cabinet. We've washed about 7 loads in it already and it does a fabulous job of getting things clean. It also gets out the smell that the laundromat washers put into the fabrics. I am just thrilled that we have a way to do laundry in the RV now.

Camping and canoeing on the Chetco

2008-07-01T18:30:00.000-07:00

We decided to camp out for 3 days at the Loeb campground on the Chetco River. Yesterday all of the family arrived and set up camp.

Today we took off down the river in 2 canoes and a kayak. Having scouted the river in advance I knew roughly how long each leg of the journey took. When everyone said that they only wanted an hour or two at most on the river I knew just where to put in. I forgot the camera, so I don't have any pictures of us floating down the river, but I did manage to take my fishing pole and catch a very beautiful little trout.

The girls and I put together a little game where we hid my bear carvings all throughout the campsites. When the rest of the family arrived they searched around to see if they could find them all. It was a lot of fun for the kids. I took a few pictures of the bears in their hiding spots - they're easier to spot in the photos obviously...

The girls left with my parents to go camping at Redwood Creek over the fourth of July weekend. We'll be hiking in to the river and packing them out for the return trip home. That means Becky and I get a few days to ourselves to relax and spend some time together without any children.

A day at the river

2008-06-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

Today I went kayaking down the Chetco River. It took me about 3 and a half hours to make the trip from the South Fork bridge down to the Loeb campground. I paddled almost constantly in order to keep Becky from waiting too long at each of the checkpoints that we had set up along the route. It was overcast and drizzling as I started out my journey, but as the trip continued the sky cleared up and turned into a really nice day.

By the second hour I wasn't sure if I could make the entire run. It was really windy and my hands were pretty blistered up from holding the paddle, but I was determined to make it. As the afternoon wore on the wind died down a bit and there were a few minutes here and there where I would just drift and listen to the sounds of the forest and river around me. This place is so peaceful.

I did manage to finish the entire trip. There were quite a few spots where I had to get out of the kayak and guide it across shallow or tricky spots in the river. I didn't find any real surprises. There were no spots in the river where you couldn't see far enough ahead to avoid any problems.

We decided to go ahead and spend the night at the campground, so we set up a couple of tents and went about making a campfire. The "fire gnome" kept watch on the fire and made sure that the smoke went his direction instead of toward all of us.

I am pretty surprised at the lack of mosquitoes this close to the water. So far I have only seen a couple of them. That's a big change from our stay in the Minnesota lakes area where as soon as the sun goes down you have to head indoors or be prepared to be eaten alive...

River scouting

2008-06-29T07:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I bought a Tarpon 100 kayak. I found one used at a local sporting goods store for about $220 off retail. Today I make a 8-10 mile journey down the Chetco river here in Brookings. I plan to start at South Fork and paddle my way down the roughly 4 hour stretch of river and scout for anything that might make the river too dangerous for a bunch of canoes loaded with kids.

I'm a bit nervous. I don't like making runs alone when I don't already know what to expect, but all of my attempts to find someone to make the first run with me didn't pan out. I am torn between my fear of the unknown and my desire to do what I set out to do despite any obstacles. The fact that it's currently drizzling outside doesn't make the decision to go today any easier...

I've done what I can talking to locals and checking on-line for information about the river. I've also driven the entire length and looked at any spots that I could see from the road (which is a small portion). I've been told that it's not a dangerous river from the South Fork to the coast and that it's about a 4 hour trip between the put in and take out points that I am scouting. I worry most about missing the campground and ending up going too far down river. I'm going to see if I can set up a flag of some kind along the shore near the campground to warn me in case Becky isn't around.

More delivery woes

2008-06-24T17:16:00.000-07:00

Well, today we received our 3rd washer/dryer... It arrived in relatively good shape unlike the first 2 that showed up here and I refused to accept. This one had only been dropped on the front of the box - pulling the back of the washer in about 1.5 inches. The driver made a note of the damage while I inspected the inside for any damage. It looked like nothing on the inside was out of place and a few minutes pulling on the back panel had it looking good enough, so I decided to accept it... After all, this is the 3rd delivery in the past month and I can't stand not having a washer/dryer for yet another week and a half waiting for another one to ship. You have to understand that part of me wanted to refuse the thing since it should arrive in perfect condition - not mostly OK with some minor denting - but paying $3.00 per load (not including gas and some of the clothes that have been ruined at the laundromat) has driven my standards down a bit...

Becky and I spent the last 45 minutes working the washer/dryer up the stairs, through the RV and into the space that I had built for it. Everything hooked up like a dream. The water lines don't leak, the dryer vent is absolutely perfectly aligned and I ran a temporary power cord to it from the RV park hookup (which tested good). Becky read from the manual and we set out to run a test load - big smiles on our faces...

The washer/dryer doesn't work. We followed the instructions perfectly and it skips all of the cycles except the dry cycle and then goes into some kind of diagnostic mode (lock button flashes - sometimes with the dryer light). We've tried the troubleshooting tips in the back of the manual that recommended that we unplug the unit for 1 minute and then restart the entire cycle from the beginning. When we hit start, all of the lights flash once, then it just goes into dryer mode. If I set the dryer to off (0 minutes) and start the unit again, the door locks, all of the lights flash, the dryer light flashes for a split second, the door unlocks and then the lock button flashes and the unit stops. Same story no matter what cycle we choose. I'm trying letting it finish a 20 minute dry cycle on the lowest heat setting to see what it will do when it gets to the end - hoping that by some miracle it will "reset" itself and go into wash mode...

Unfortunately, I think we have yet another return on our hands. I can't call the manufacturer or technical support until tomorrow, so we get to spend the next 14 hours or so in the same room as our $1000.00 dead washer/dryer.

I'm really discouraged and beginning to wonder if we'll ever manage to get a non-dented, perfectly working unit delivered to us. I hate to get pessimistic, but 3 strikes has put me in one of those moods...

Tomorrow I'll be on the phone with the seller, technical support and probably yet another delivery company scheduling a pickup... Wish us luck - we're in some need of it at this point...

A sad day

2008-06-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

One of the few people in the entertainment business that I actually respect died yesterday. George Carlin was somewhat of a hero to me. He said the things that I have always wanted to say. He made fun of the things that so many people take way too seriously.

I am reminded once again how short our lives really are and I am glad that I was alive to share some of the same time with him. I will miss his presence in this world.

Canoeing the Eel

2008-06-17T08:43:00.000-07:00

My parents host a couple of annual canoe trip on the Eel river in Northern California and we try to make it whenever we can. This year was no exception and we made it for the first one in mid June. Despite the fact that the river was the lowest I had seen (in the 20+ year span that I know of) everyone seemed to have a good time. The girls started out in an inflatable canoe, which turned out to be more work than expected. We started out too late in the day and ended up fighting the afternoon wind. We ended up tying the girls inflatable to our canoe and pulling them down the river. That made the rapids a bit tricky since the girls were so light that they basically passed us whenever we scraped bottom.

We started down the river on the 14th and camped out on one of the river bars for two nights before finishing out the trip. Becky and I flipped our canoe twice during the trip and managed to get quite a bit of our stuff wet as well as losing our pirate flag... I broke my fishing pole on our 2nd spill which put a bit of a damper on my spirits. I ended up getting a loaner pole that belonged to one of the kids and managed to still catch 2-3 fish (sadly pike minnow - an aggresive species that has all but wiped out the trout/salmon/steelhead population in many NW rivers). Still I find it very relaxing to spend time alongside the river and practice my fishing skills despite the lack of good eating fish.

We were treated to live music and excellent food in the evenings. The girls had a whole group of kids to play with and they spent the entire 2nd day running and playing in the sand. On day 3 we packed up and hit the river again. We deflated the kids canoe and they jumped in one of the regular canoes for the rest of the trip. My sister Maria basically ended up paddling solo for most of the trip with all the girls (and sometimes her dog) in the canoe - I was really impressed - it was a lot of work even with 2 paddlers in our canoe fighting the wind.

Everyone was a bit tired and ready for a hot shower by the time we made it home to Brookings.

I really want to start a tradition of kayaking/canoing the Chetco river in Oregon as well. The setup for the trip is near perfect. There are several campgrounds and river bars along the way that make for a variety of possible trips. The Chetco River Inn is located right near the put in point and you can potentially run the roughly 18 miles of river all the way to Brookings Harbor if we want to make a multi-day trip out of it. The weather up the Chetco is almost always nicer than on the coast, so even when it's foggy at the Harbor it's sunny and warm up the river.

I really enjoy being on the water and could see starting a river guide service here someday. That all depends on what happens over the next few years of course, but I can still daydream...

Delivery woes

2008-06-11T16:21:00.000-07:00

Our new washer/dryer arrived today. The delivery company called at 10 AM to make sure that I would be home to sign for it. By 12:30 the truck arrived and I got my first look at our $1000.00 washer... Not good. Right off the bat I noticed that the bottom of the washer was smashed in about 6-8 inches. I took off the piece and looked inside to see if anything important was damaged. It looked mostly cosmetic and being on the bottom I figured that I'd just bang it out and ignore it. We unloaded the unit and I started taking it out of the box. All of the Styrofoam on the left side was broken into small pieces. There was a small dent in the back, but I didn't notice anything major. The driver made a note of the damage on the delivery bill and started around the loop of the RV park to head off. I found a couple of bigger dents on the left side that were dented out instead of in... The driver made a note of the dents and got back in the truck. I figured that someone had dropped the unit on it's side hard enough to dent out the sheet metal, so I decided to take a quick look inside before the driver took off. Sure enough, all of the shipping bolts that hold the internal drum solid during shipping were literally sheared off. Someone had dropped the dryer from quite a height to break all 4 of the 1/4 inch bolts. I ran down the driveway and stopped the driver just as he was heading out of the parking lot. I had him take a look at the broken internal parts and then said what I should have said from the beginning. I refused it. The delivery guy loaded it back up, wrote "Refused" on my copy of the deliver slip and then headed out... As he was closing up the back of the truck he commented that it might be several weeks with the unit sitting outside the delivery company as they are quite back logged...

I spent the past hour on the phone with the company that I ordered the unit from. They wanted me to wait until the unit was returned to them with a claim number and then credit me back. Then I could order another one at that time. Optionally I could pay for yet another unit then wait for my credit. I argued that I should not be paying twice for something that already took over a week to be delivered and then arrived in pieces. After 1/2 hour of back and forth "let me check with the operations manager" kind of stuff they agreed to ship another unit right away so I wouldn't be charged twice or have to wait weeks for another one.

So, another week or two of doing laundry at the laundromat instead of in our own cozy home. I have my fingers crossed that it won't get as messy as the bike trailer incident...

Two trailers are better than none

2008-06-09T16:03:00.000-07:00

Got the trailer thing figured out. Apparently I have 2 trailers on the way... I can't do much of anything about it until they arrive and then I have to decide if I want to pay to ship one of them back to the company. I think I'll just sell the extra one and cut my losses.

Good news is that I went in to the bank with cash to cover the overdraft. When I explained what had happened and that I wouldn't get it worked out until the trailers were delivered and shipped back etc, the teller talked it over with the bank manager and they erased the $27.00 overdraft fee. Now I just have to figure out what to do with the extra trailer that I didn't want...

Becky and I have been riding our bikes into her work in the mornings and I go back and ride with her back home... Part of the reason I wanted to get a trailer is so I can haul the groceries and Post Office deliveries into town without having to carry them on my back. So far it feels really good to ride again. The only complaint I have so far is that my ass is sore and the back of my neck hurts badly from the riding position... I'm looking into a recumbent bike, but they are (so far) out of my price range.

on-line order troubles

2008-06-08T18:42:00.000-07:00

I ordered a bicycle trailer on-line back at the beginning of the month. What a pain in the ass. All of the cheap on-line checkout systems now require your credit card billing address to match the delivery address or they won't ship to you...

I ordered the trailer and used their checkout system. I got a confirmation saying that I had placed an order and it was pending. About an hour later I got an email saying that the card was declined because they could not verify my address. They said I needed to update my credit card address verification to match my shipping address or provide another card... I grabbed another card that I had updated a few days earlier with my new address, verified that I had the necessary funds in the account and ran the transaction through. Same story - declined stating that the address didn't match. I called my bank and verified that the address was correct... No problem there.

I got another email later in the day stating that if I did not provide a new card or correct the verification problem that the order would be cancelled within 3 days... OK, so I called the company directly and said that I was trying to order on line but none of my cards would go through on their on-line check out system. They said no problem - that was a common issue for them and they would run it manually. So they did. I got a verification email saying that my card had been charged for the trailer. About an hour later I got an email saying that the trailer had shipped. Great!

Fast forward to today. I want to make another purchase (a solar oven) so I check my bank balance... I'm $165 negative! Turns out that I was charged twice for the trailer. The second charge was paid by my bank even though I didn't have the funds, so of course they whopped a $27.00 overdraft fee on top of the double charge... It's Sunday, so I can't get through to anyone. What a pain in the ass.

The price of laundry

2008-06-08T17:49:00.000-07:00

It's getting more and more expensive for us to do our laundry at the laundromat. Just this past week the cheapest place in town raised their prices $.50 per load. We're currently spending around $80.00 per month just on laundry.

Finding a home for the washer/dryer combo took a bit of compromise, but we found a spot for it where the refrigerator used to live. It was an inch or so too narrow, so I modified the opening so we could slide the new machine into place when it arrives.

For the washing machine I needed to install a drain & supply lines. For the dryer I needed to install a dryer vent.

The drain line was fairly easy. Right under the platform that will support the washer/dryer there the drain lines for the kitchen sink ran through. I just installed a "T" and added a trap.

The supply lines for the washer were a bit more difficult... I figured that I'd just tap into the hot and cold lines under the kitchen sink, but it turns out that the lines for the trailer were a bit more complicated to work with than normal house plumbing. After buying about $60.00 worth of fittings and water lines I managed to get the hot and cold lines run to a couple of washer valves.

There was already electricity to the cabinet for the refrigerator and since our new washer/dryer combo runs off of 110V and under 13 Amp we can run it of the existing circuit.

Last of all I needed to install a vent to the outside for the dryer. That should have been a piece of cake, but mid way through cutting the hole through the aluminum exterior of the trailer, the main breaker tripped. I reset it and moments later our 1000 Watt inverter tripped. I plugged the saw into the RV park electricity thinking maybe my saw was too heavy a load for the inverter or something. Turns out that I had hit not one but 2 110V wires. I didn't cut through them, but I stripped off some of the wire housing - hence the short. A few wraps of electrical tape and everything was back to normal. I didn't have the option to move the vent - The clearance is so tight that it needs to line up with the back of the dryer perfectly. The picture to the right shows the new dryer vent just above the old refrigerator access cover (which is off in the picture)

Expanding the garden

2008-06-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

Becky and I put in a second row of pots, tied them into the drip system and planted half a dozen herbs that we picked up at the nursery. We also put some water curtains around the corn and tomatoes to try to extend the heat of the day into the evenings a bit. We've been told that it's hit an miss to grow hot weather plants here. Up on the hill we're a good 10 degrees hotter than in town and we seem to have sun even when it's foggy along the highway. Our fingers are crossed that we'll get something out of them...

Mobile Garden

2008-06-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

One of the big problems with living full time in an RV is that it's a bit of a challenge to get a garden of any decent size going. It's not like I can just pull up a section of grass, mulch in some compost and get my seedlings in - which would be the least expensive way to go... Instead it's all about container gardening...

Over the past month or so Becky and I have been growing seedlings in mini-greenhouse containers. Unfortunately, we had a record breaking heat wave that came through and we hit temperatures of 107+ in the sun. Determined not to have the whole family suffering, I spent the day hooking up our portable air conditioner and tried to keep everyone cool. I forgot about the plants in the greenhouses sitting outside... Just about everything died as it cooked in the non-vented greenhouses. There was some corn, a few tomatoes and some chives that kind of made it through, but nothing else was recoverable.

This past week we had been collecting heirloom plants from local nurseries so we can get a first crop in while our next batch of seeds get sprouting. Yesterday we planted the purchased plants in their larger containers along with the few survivors of our accident. We bought organic soil from one of the nurseries and mixed it with some miracle grow and steer manure mixes we had picked up earlier at the local department store. The containers came both from the department store and some recycled ones from a nursery that I bought for $0.50 each.

For watering I decided to go with an inexpensive drip irrigation system. I drilled holes in top edge of the pots so I could lock the lines in place since we plan to move the pots around as the plants get too crowded. The plan is to keep the garden simple and easy to care for as well as easy to move around if necessary. I left some slack in the water lines to make moving them around easier. The whole system is hooked up to a manual timer so I can just dial in the number of minutes I want to water each day. I could replace that with a completely automated timer, but the weather is quite varied here and I don't want to be watering on a foggy or rainy morning.

If it works well, it should make it a lot easier for us to have fresh vegetables and herbs right outside the RV door during the growing season.

Today we're expanding our container garden to a second row of pots so we can plant more vegetables. We'll have a whole batch of seedlings to put into containers in a few more weeks. If I have the timing right, the harvest time for the various vegetables should be spread out enough so we won't be stuck with too many of one variety at once. We'll see...