I built and tested an alcohol stove. It is a fancy feast type stove with a carbon felt wick. The stove is really lightweight, fairly easy to build and works fine for smaller cups and pots.
I was surprised how fast it brought the water to a boil.
Considering that I have only two Trangia burners, three gas burners and a MSR multifuel stove that was a totally justified and desperately needed expansion of my gear and not playing around with a new toy.
GF had no objections to me testing it in the kitchen.

I bought a pair of shoes and a pair of boots, two spare pairs of sunglasses, comfort food items and three bottles of store-brand liquid Tylenol. I did look for a new EDC bag that would look more "grey man," but I didn't find one.

My goal is to get everything I need before September.

Jeanette Isabelle

Today I used a home-made multi-socket cables to connect the laptop charger to an outlet of different type.

In my corner of the world, we have 110v as well as 220v , and we have numerous socket systems. Shifting to a standard but will take time.

Those multi-socket extension cables came handy while working in my house or dad's house cuz there are different types of sockets.

I have already made a dozen of those power extension cables to use in DIY projects. They have saved my sanity many times.

Good reminder on staying ahead on things; gotta order new shoes and glasses and top everything else off.

Considering how slow everything is right now, considering ordering my Fall/Winter stuff now.

TRO

am thinking about upgrading my night vision capability... can anyone furnish any first hand anecdotal comments... anything from Sionyx Aurora to AN/PVS14 white phosphor?

I have a couple of pretty good light gathering gun sights (4x32 ACOG)with 8mm exit pupil on my most likely used rifles as well as some pretty good weapon mounted lights, but would like to be a little more covert... regards..

This week we've had heat,
and smoke from fires,
so we had the AC running at night for the first time,
and it was pulling in some smoke

the outside AQI was 160 for PM2.5 last 2 nights
which is about 7 cigarettes per day worth of PM2.5

the air was leaking in through the front door
and furnace door , so both had to be gasketed with garbage bags,
using a credit card

I started sealing with ducktape around the outside of the door frame,
but that wasn't gonna last,
and it was kinda clumsy and slow to deploy


front door had weather stripping gasket job from years ago,
which worked good enough against occasional winter time high winds,
but it was never tested against the AC like this week

EMP
Check to see if your furnace has a fresh air duct , if so block it off only for using the AC

with tropical storm Laura projected to turn into the eastern Gulf of Mexico... just had a large mostly dead camphor tree as well as a tall palm removed....

in the past I've relied on frozen water jugs to cool my 5 and 7 day coolers if power goes out for an extended period of time... this year I think I'll get one filled from a commercial ice kiosk

most everything else is ready to go... will fill the 30 gal plastic trash can placed in the tub if we are in the projected path, used for flushing toilet... I've been lucky in the last 20 years of so and have not lost city water service... not so in the early years living here

good luck, and stay safe

Heh

Furnace is in a small closet.
Behind the furnace are 3 registers,
one opens to the outside,
the other two open to the 2nd story crawls space,
which also vents to outside.

The AC is portable , attached to window.

Sealing the closet/door is working out .