Reports from the OP, June 8, 2022

On the health front, I’m pretty well recovered from the bout of the Wuflu, especially in terms of energy. Unfortunately, the blasted “Covid Cough” is an annoying stay-behind that I’m having a hard time beating.

Gas prices are $4.49-$4.69 for 87 octane and $5.09-$5.20 for 93 octane. Diesel is $5.49-5.79. We are carefully trimming our driving by combining trips (today we hit 7 places while we were out, not including lunch) insofar as possible. Sometimes you have to make do with one or two places, such as a doctor visit last week. The RV and its prime mover are parked for now, although the prime mover does get driven from time to time, because allowing vehicles to sit is a bad idea in terms of longevity.

The trips out today revolved around grocery shopping. Prices seem to have stabilized, at least for a week. Aisles are stocked, with the exceptions of pet foods and peanut butter. While prices have been stable, they’re still up a lot since the end of February. For example, milk was 79¢/half gallon, now it’s $1.79. Eggs were 89¢/dz, now they’re $2.39. Butter was $2.50/lb, now it’s $3.50. Sausage was $2.50/lb, now it’s $3.15. Do you sense a trend there? Let’s all give Brandon & Co. a big rousing wet raspberry for relieving us of all that extra money we didn’t really have.

While on this subject, I need to give a big shout out to Southernprepper1 on YouTube, whose “boots on the ground” series has had the effect of shaking Mrs. Freeholder out of her normalcy bias, at least for now. I’ve just been listening to them with her in the room, and she’s went from ignoring them to paying attention.

The summer fishing trip with Son is probably not going to happen. No matter how we do it, it’s going to cost at least $750 each for the trip, and that’s if we go by the end of June. Neither of us is feeling that kind of money, plus there’s my concern of being 250 miles from home if things should go south on us. Plus we wouldn’t be taking the RV, which means a lot of stuff I could take to cover that eventuality would have to stay at home. I’m disappointed, but playing it safe seems to be a good idea at this point.

Old Friend and his wife want to take a trip this summer, and it’s again looking like “probably not”. None of us can really think of a place to go that works for everyone, and then there’s the money.

One piece of good news. Son’s employer, who makes skidsteer attachments, has orders booked 5-6 months out. They’re having no problems getting raw materials or spare parts. What they can’t get is enough workers-they’re looking for 9 hourly ones now, and they pay good, with benefits. I keep threatening to get my forklift certificate and get a job shuffling parts for them.

That’s it for now. Not a lot, but when you stay close to home you don’t see much of what’s going on in the wider world. If things get as bad as I’m suspecting they will, we’ll all have to get used to the diameter of our world shrinking, probably even further than it is at the moment.

Out here.