This isn't the first time I've said goodbye to my car.  I did it 30-some years ago and I lived.  I'll get through it again.  And I'll always have the memories.

One of the gas stations near here is being torn down. I guess they've realized that you don't need a gas station every block and a half anymore.

Here's some video of my buddy Tony at the neighborhood garage sale.  If anybody's going to do all right during this crisis, it'll be Tony.   He's a good guy to have in the community--helps everybody and always has the good ideas people are looking for. 

Well, I've mentioned it before.  Work is a mess.  The union is fighting with the company.  The company is fighting with the union.  Before, they were both playing nice.  That's over now, I guess, and I'm sitting here in the middle.  I'm a union rep, so I'm supposed to represent my guys.  I want to do what's best for all of them.

The problem is...I'm also the guy in the safest position right now.  I've got seniority.  My job will be there until the company closes its doors.   The company still has some time before that's going to happen.  So these guys I'm supposed to be representing are still depending on their jobs.

Here's where I have to make a decision.  I heard that next week they're going to have to lay off a couple of guys if things don't change.  The newest guys will be the ones to go.  They've got kids... wives... people are depending on them.  I've got less than a year before I can retire with full benefits.  I can retire today and get less--a good amount less--but we could probably make it if we tightened our belt even more.  If I stick around though... somebody else is going to lose their job.  Soon.   I've got to make the decision.  Soon.

Well, I picked up my daughter in Milwaukee.  When she called me on the phone, I could barely understand what she was saying she was crying so hard.  She tried to be strong and never let on that she was struggling.  She didn't want to worry us.  Every time I talked to her she said, "I'm doing fine Dad."  I sent her money a few times even though she never asked.  I knew that she wouldn't ask for it.   She's alot like me.  I guess everything finally got to be too much for her and she just wanted to come home. 

She doesn't have a car and couldn't bring all of her things on the train, so I told her I'd pick her up.  Lucky thing I had a full tank of gas.  It takes almost exactly one half of my tank to get to her place.  That meant we were driving on fumes when I pulled into the driveway here.  She's worth it though.  I'll be able to get more gas.  I'm lucky that I know every gas station owner in the area.  I've been delivering to those places for years.  Hell, not that it matters.  I'd still give up my last drop of gas to get her home safe.

I will admit though - it sure was nice to just get in the car and drive.


I was surprised how many people were heading north.  I wonder if they know something I don't?  Or maybe they're just hoping they do. 

Our neighborhood get-togethers have proved to be pretty darn successful.  That first one was a BBQ and I think it was a good new beginning for this community.  We get together now at least once every week or two--even if it's just to talk about what's going on. 

Yesterday, we had a neighborhood garage sale.  We didn't plan it thinking that any of us were going to get rich selling old paintings from the attic.  We thought it would be a good social event where some of us could barter or sell some of the stuff we didn't need anymore.   The local men's club set up a makeshift hot dog and hamburger stand on the street (don't ask me how they found all that meat).  The kids played in the sandbox.  Everybody got to relax a bit.  It almost felt... normal.



One guy even brought out his accordion so people would have something to dance to.  He had alot to say about the gas prices and batteries too.



I was pretty surprised when people from the neighboring communities started rolling in on their bikes.  I guess word spread pretty far and fast.  Some of them even brought some of their own stuff to barter with.  Some of them brought their (sometimes strange) opinions too.


The night ended with a call from my daughter--the one up in Wisconsin.  I guess things have been worse than she's let on.  She's gotten herself in a little too deep thinking she could make it up there by herself until she graduated.  If I would've known I would have helped her more, but she's like me, I guess.  Doesn't want to ask for help when she doesn't think she needs it.  I'm leaving now to go get her.  I'll finish uploading the video jootbooner and I got at the garage sale when I get back.

Is this sort of thing we should be focusing our energy on?  Rather than using the top minds in the world to find more ways to get oil, shouldn't we use them to find other energy sources?  I appreciate the fact that they're trying to find ways to get their oil without destroying the local environment, but does it really matter if that oil is burned and harms the environment as a whole?

New fence panels: $300
New food to replace what spoiled: $200
New siding to cover hole in the side of the house: who knows?

I'm sorry for the silence. The power has been out for days now. It took me a whole day just to figure out how to post here using my phone. All the food in the fridge has gone bad. We have no hot water. Thank god the weather has been decent since we have no heat.

All it took was a little rain and wind for all hell to break loose here. People around here have been on edge for weeks. Months. We've been holding it together though. No riots in the streets. No gangs of anti-Hummer terrorists. We have food shortages and a struggling economy just like everyone else, but I thought this community had somehow managed to hold it together. We've been on edge, but we've remained pretty calm considering. Maybe I'm getting naive in my old age? Maybe I should have seen it coming? Everybody has their breaking point, right?

While my mother is no longer with us, I did celebrate with my wife and daughters.  They each made my wife a lovely gift. 
Jennifer brought along a big bouquet of flowers she picked herself.  Leslie drew a picture of my wife and I.  Rachel baked a beautiful cake with flowers and "Mom" on top. 

By the way, yeebee29 found a nice oil-free gift for her mom on Mother's Day and check out Bodi's photos and poem.  What did you do for you mother?  Did you accept the mission?

So in my post about the BBQ camping party, I mentioned a serious talk between my wife, Mary, and I.  We were sitting by the campfire when she said, "you can't take on everyone else's burdens and pretend you don't have some of your own, you know."  Mary knows me better than anybody.  She knows that I'll put on the brave face just to make my family feel better.  I guess I'm doing a little bit of that here.

We're doing ok money-wise.  Like I said before, I have a good hunk of cash saved up to buy an RV.  The neighborhood is coming together.  I'm learning how to grow food.  I'm tightening up the house.  I'm making changes and they're good changes.

There's just one bad apple that's spoiling the barrel.  Work.  The first couple of weeks of the crisis everything was fine.  People were still buying our product.  Trucks were still rolling out of the depot every morning.   Then they laid off the part-time guys.  They mostly did pick-up or covered for guys on their vacations, so us full-timers weren't too worried about our jobs.  We've all had to take on a few more deliveries--mostly on the weekends.  It wasn't a big deal though.  Most of us felt pretty secure in our jobs.  We're union guys.  We're protected.  They can't just fire anybody they want to without "progressive discipline".  If they have to do a mass lay off they've got to follow the rules set up in our contract.  We never thought it would come to that. 

Now things are starting to look bad.  Diesel prices are up.  It's still available, but it's costing alot more to run a fleet of trucks.  And people are cutting out unnecessary foods.  Foods that we deliver.  You know what happens when profit goes down and costs go up?  They cut costs.

There was a union meeting last week.  The company and the union reworked the delivery routes to "maximize efficiency".  That messes with guys'  paychecks.  Most guys are mad, but know that they can't do much about it.  If the union fights the route changes they risk forcing the company into layoff mode.  With the threat of layoffs looming in the future, I've got some big decisions to make.  I don't have much time left before I can retire with full benefits.  I can retire right now with less benefits.  I don't know.  I've got some thinking to do.  What I do in the future will affect the other guys at work. 

When I mentioned that I probably wouldn't be able to take the grandkids out camping like I had planned, peakprophet suggested that I have a campout in my backyard. So I did.

I ended up inviting more than just the grandkids. I knocked on every neighbor's door and invited them to the party. Their admittance fee - one food dish and their brain. If they wanted to camp out after the BBQ and the discussions, they'd have to set up their tent or camper in their own yard though. I've only got so much room. Almost everyone thought the party was a great idea. The few that didn't were eventually convinced to come after a little proddin' and pokin'.

I had planned to just use my backyard, but the neighbors on either side of me opened up their fence gates to expand the party. The guy next door let the kids swim in his pool. We had a little fun. Joked around. It almost felt like there wasn't an oil crisis going on.

After BBQ, beer and balloons (don't ask) we all sat down to do some real talking. We talked about the crisis and what it was doing to us. The pepper guy next door and I told everyone about how we're going to divide up the garden work this year so we could get a better variety of stuff. A couple more people signed on. The morel guy was happy to find out that quite a few neighbors had morels growing in their yard that they were willing to give to him. We talked about all sorts of stuff. We talked about putting together a neighborhood watch. We talked about getting a list of everybody's skills for the neighborhood to use (and teach each other). Most importantly we just talked.

We found out alot of useful stuff by just talking. Like this guy from the next street over found out that he works practically next door to where another guy on my street works. They're gonna start carpooling. Marge found out that two other ladies in the neighborhood make quilts. So they're going to get together too. I don't know how much we accomplished in a day, but we got a good start.

When everybody else went home, we all sat by the campfire a while longer. The kids fell asleep. Then the wife and I got really serious. More on that later. I need to fess up. 

Meanwhile, see here for more party pictures.

Here's the article about the buses since the text ended up being so small in the video...

I've added my sticker.  Have you added yours?

I woke up this morning to a flat tire.  There was a slit in the valve.  Great.  Well, at least I have a tire to make some of lead_tag's sandals.

Since Mother's Day is coming up soon, I thought I'd pose a challenge.  Money is tight these days, but Mom still deserves to have a special day.

Buy your mom something that is oil-free--nothing that is made from oil or an oil byproduct and nothing that's been shipped halfway across the country.  And remember, it doesn't have to cost money to be special.

Be creative.  Pick her some wildflowers.  Reuse something you already have and transform it into something new.  Draw her a picture.  Write her a song. 

Be sure to post your ideas!

Whether it's rational or not, it's still bugging me...

Even Hollywood is making changes.  Take a look at this ad campaign for the movie Evan Almighty...

http://getonboardnow.org/index.html

I guess we're lucky that our furnace went out a couple years back.  We were paying $285 a month for gas and electric combined--on the budget plan.  So sometimes in January our bill was really  over $400.  I don't know why we didn't replace the thing sooner.  I guess there were other things that seemed more important at the time.  The new furnace brought our bill down to about $170.  I thought that was great until now.  I need more. 

I've spent the last week tightening up the house.  I used up a couple of tubes of caulk filling leaks around our windows and doors.  I added some more insulation up in the attic.  I found a couple of entry holes that some critters must have made up there this past winter, so I stuffed them full of Great Stuff (that stuff is like the duct tape of home insulation).  I used up a couple of cans of that filling in any other place I could think of that might leak.  I heard from a guy at one of my delivery stops today that they have this thing you can rent--a thermal camera or something.  You go outside and look at your house through the camera and it'll show where heat is leaking out.  What'll they come up with next?  I think I'll have to find me one of those. 

Last night I went to the hardware store and looked at electric tankless water heaters.  I'm still trying to decide if it would be worth it at this point or if I should look more into solar water heating systems.  I just, well, don't know what I should be putting my money into at this point.  

While I was there, I picked up a chiminea that was on clearance--figured it would come in handy at some point.

More later, the dinner bell's ringing...

Here's another thing I've been looking at - a living roof.  I'm not talking about making one of them Hobbit houses or anything.  I was just wondering, I mean, I have all this flat space on top of the garage just being wasted.  Why can't I use it for something?  At the very least, I think I could maybe have a potted garden up there or something.  It might stop people and little critters from stealing my vegetables too.  I wonder if I could put some ofpeakprophet's hay bale gardens up there?