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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • Several years ago we lost power for 4 days after an especially bad storm. We don’t have good enough cell service at our house to usually use data or run a hotspot. Mostly it’s like camping except we get to sleep in our beds.

    Prepare: We keep filled water jugs for both drinking and flushing the toilets.

    We have a small generator to run our fridge, so once a month we run it for about 10 minutes. We keep gas and spark plugs for it handy.

    We have a weather radio that’s solar powered with battery back-up.

    We have a solar-charging battery bank (to charge our phones) as well as lanterns and flashlights that use AA batteries and a stash of extra AA batteries. Winter here can be quite cloudy, making solar lights harder to use sometimes.

    We have a camping stove and extra fuel, as well as some easy to prepare foods. We use the food when we go camping and get new ones to store for emergencies, making sure the food doesn’t expire. We cooked outside (it was summer but even in winter I would do the cooking outside).

    For winter we have a kerosene heater and extra fuel and wicks.

    Entertainment: I would guess you’re especially asking about evenings, as during the day when our power was out we’d go outside if the weather was nice. In the evenings we played board games and card games, did puzzles and crosswords, did art (drawing, coloring, and painting), did crafts, and read.

    If we know ahead of time bad weather’s coming, I’ll download some shows and movies to my tablet. We also have a DVD player to connect to my laptop while the battery lasts.




  • Find out if your local county or municipality has a required timeframe. By us it’s every 3 years.

    As far as how to tell in the short term, is there a tank between your house and the drain field that you can access (has maybe a round metal or concrete cover or a plastic riser with lid)? If so, lift the lid and see if you can see the top of the pipe going in the direction of the drain field. If so it’s likely draining fine. If the liquid is near the top of the tank and you can’t see a pipe, you’ll want to get someone to look at it sooner rather than later.












  • Look into US Mobile. It runs on Verizon’s network (I think T-mobile too actually, you pick one or the other when you sign up). We have 3 phones sharing 12gb for $41 per month. You can also do a “top-up” of an extra 5gb for $10 if you’re running low one month, and it only charges for that month - meaning the next month they only charge you the 12gb plan.

    Both rurally and in large Midwestern cities we’ve never had any issues with a connection. Which I did worry about them making us low priority since we’re piggy backing Verizon. But so far at least I haven’t seen it happen.


  • I have another example from work. Most if not all of the people I work with have personal boats, ATVs, etc, and so in their free time tow trailers pretty regularly. We also use trailers at work. Some college interns start working with us, and no one bothers to check their trailer knowledge because (you guessed it) it’s common sense. Which resulted in the college interns trying to drive a vehicle into the trailer when it wasn’t hitched up.

    What the interns didn’t know is you want the trailer to be hitched to a vehicle so the front of the trailer stays in place when you’re putting weight on the back. Otherwise the trailer becomes a seesaw and the front end jumps up into the air.

    My general rule is if you’re about to say something like, “That’s just common sense,” you should stop yourself. Common sense to whom? In my experience people call something “common sense” when it’s something they’re used to doing and they forget not everyone is used to doing it.


  • I’ve been on 2 cruises and enjoyed them, which still kinda shocks me because I’m generally an introvert who doesn’t like going to crowded places. However there are a few reasons I liked the cruises I took and would consider going on one again:

    1. The first cruise only had 1 “at sea” day (out of 7). The rest of the days we were in a port. The 2nd cruise did have 2 at sea days but they were at the beginning and end of the cruise. I’d probably stick with just 1 at sea day if looking at a cruise in the future.

    2. To me the ship is just the hotel. It’s where I sleep, and the food is decent with the added bonus that I don’t have to cook or wash the dishes. With the cruises I went on, we got deals where it was cheaper per night than sleeping in many hotels. And we never had a problem finding some quiet corner to hang out if we didn’t want to be in our room when we were on the boat.

    3. I didn’t take any tours offered through the cruise. Instead we would get off the boat and use public transportation or a cab to take us to where we wanted to explore for the day. This let us avoid the cruise crowds.

    4. I didn’t feel much sales pressure. Yes they mentioned a couple times about getting a deal if you book your next cruise before the one I was on finished, but I knew I wasn’t interested. I just ignored it and no one bothered me about it. I also didn’t have any presentations I had to sit through either.

    It’s definitely not the only way I’d vacation, but I’d take a cruise again under certain circumstances.