Recycled

Since we see the future and it's not bright, Barb has been in search of more land. We've had a three day marithon discussion about realistic expectations - can you imagine an old redneck and a research scientist with two PhD's talking about anything for 3 days. Never the less the bottom line on my part is that, even though I am not dead yet, she may well kill me if she expects me to fully develope the property here and build three more houses after the one we started. Her bottom line is to be prepared for any contingency. You see when she says stuff like that I need to try an understand what she means, it took 3 days for me to get a grip on this contingency thing.

"A theory is basically an "if - then" statement. You start with available data, the theory is the explaination of the data and through logical induction, which is not deductive like a syllogism, you derive an explaination. The explaination being - if the theory is correct then future events should also be true. Unlike logicians, testing the conclusions serves to validate or invalidate the theory to produce a more accurate explaination. Theories  are never proven, they are supported or refuted." This is the stuff I hear when I want to know what Barb thinks about the future, this was the disclaimer before the answer. You may be able to understand this stuff but when combined with the facts and figures she has amassed on the direction of future events is the reason it takes me so long to even get a glimpse at what she may be saying. At the end of the discussion I say, if we go out and buy a minimum of 10 acres of land, are we good to go? She says -" yes, with conditions." Which is exactly why she is looking, not me. If you get the feeling I am only the labor in this outfit, you'd be right, for a pretty good reason

Reasoning for the stories

There isn’t any one thing Barb and I can do in our personal lives to counteract the moral, legal, political and economic disintegration in this country – moving to another country doesn’t cut it – we’ve tried that and there are way too may unforeseen detrimental  issues. Simpler isn’t always better. Barb and I are getting close to the point where we will be on fixed incomes, physical constraints will soon be on our door step.  What we do now will be what we have to live with until we die; the stories portray the process we go through in making those decisions. Financial security is a function of this country’s financial and economic stability, physical security comes from the political system of laws and regulations, food and shelter from a free enterprise notion of supply and demand. If you think about it for a minute you realize, we may really be in serious trouble. The fact is we are past the point of no return, things will never return to what us old folks consider normal. The new Coke is the old Coke that was changed until someone noticed which became the old Coke when the real Coke disappeared. Sometimes we analyze things to death and it becomes impossible to track the individual components but it does lead us to realistic expectations. The last 4 years have lead us over the tipping point – no longer can we as a people travel through life oblivious to the political system, keeping our collective noses to the grind stone and when we are physically and mentally spent, cash in. That won’t do the trick anymore; our pensions and investments won’t keep up with increasing taxes and inflation, especially in health care costs. We will be thrown into the heap of used up assets along with the unproductive, piled in the corner after being stripped of any useful parts ( our money ), waiting for collection to be buried deep in the political muck. Over 50% of the population has already signed on to this outcome, of course they are so consumed by the moment they don’t know what’s coming, even when it’s pointed out to them, they are simply not smart enough to see the reality. This is what Barb and I see as realistic expectations, there is no turning things around we’ve gone too far, we have to deal with what we perceive to be the inevitable outcome of the direction society has taken. This is the basis of what I write about, it can’t be put into a nice neat little package and there is a lot of background and details and some of the things I say are wrong, partially wrong, partially right but mostly it’s right on the money and can be tied to facts and figures not some idealistic rumor of conspiracy theory.

I will continue to build the house here in North Carolina and maybe one more somewhere else but I am an old fella and I don’t hire anything out. I wait for weather and supply chains and budgetary constraints, I time out for other issues of interest to me and I get side tracked. I am not on a schedule and I have no deadlines. My work is first rate and my knowledge base is pretty extensive, so if you want to see a house built by a one man show – stay tuned. You’ll have to filter through a bunch of other stuff though. I will continue to write about the things that are important to me and that I think should be important to everyone and if you like that kind of stuff you will have to filter through a bunch of building stuff to get to it, depending on the time of year and building supply affordability. Building is still the best way I know to at least stay with the inflation rate. Its winter now so I have a lot of excuses not to be busy building, mostly weather related, so the blog is dominated by economics and politics, the rest of the year it will be building related; maybe.

Barb and I still have ties in Ecuador that may need to be tended to, a rental property to deal with and of course Barbs direction for retirement, she can actually fully retire at some point, I am unwilling to do that; I think she is too but I think we will go down that road for awhile anyway.

I took down all the batter boards for the foundation this week and decided to recycle them into a little work table for Barbs birthday. I guess it's pretty sad that I never buy her anything but I really have no clue other than guns or tools.

A finish coat on the legs and another coat of varnish on the top and it will be ready to deliver.