Damor

My favorite is Cadenhead's Old Raj with saffron. 110 proof, so be wary. #2 is (oddly enough) No.3. Lots of citrus.

Thanks, troph. I remembered you and your gal loved it, but couldn't recall if y'all took kids. I was trying to track down the place you and @Hollywood stayed, do either of you mind sharing? Looking at either a couple hotel rooms or doing the Airbnb thing. I inevitably over-agonize when trying to pick a place to stay, but it looks like there are a lot of good choices within easy walking distance to the fun stuff.

Yeah, we're gonna need you and @hornbri to go ahead and start a Maldives thread, OK? Thaaanks. /lumbergh

Planning the rest of this year's vacation, and I've got a week in late Oct/early Nov for me and the wife, and a little over a week for us and the boys (will be 14 and 16) after Christmas. After a great family trip to IM last go-round, I'm thinking about Holbox for one of those trips. We (including the boys) are pretty low key, so I don't think they'd be bored on Holbox, but would those of y'all who have been say it's a better couples or family trip? Or...

It's our anniversary. My wife likes Sinn. After 17 years, I don't argue with her. [emoji16]

Decreasing beach erosion. The concrete is also a convenient place to encase the severed heads of missionaries, cartel families, and American tourists. I love coming down here, but the beaches are not the selling point. We're flying Southwest back today. Interested to see what kind of a shitshow it is with testing documentation.

I got my second Pfizer in January, wife got her second Moderna a couple weeks ago. We're in Mexico this week, and I had a little anxiety about the pre-return test, but no issues. Incidentally, a lot of people down here have had (or claim to have had) at least one injection, many of which I would not have expected based on my biases (as a bad person). I think lifting travel restrictions when vaccinated could be a valuable carrot when we try to boost numbers, like company bonuses. It feels good to take steps toward the new normal.

aesheeebee

Salida is awesome and we all need to stop talking about it. We're going back there and to Gunnison (which is also great) this July. The whitewater park downtown is great for kids. They can rent boogie boards/SUPs and goof around all day. You and the wife can go get a river view table at the Boathouse Cantina and eat/drink while nominally keeping an eye on them. The downtown area is very walkable, and last year they had the main drag closed to vehicle traffic so restaurants could have outdoor seating, basically turning it into a big pedestrian zone with shops, bars, and restaurants. I hope they left it that way. We took our boys' bikes last year and they loved riding around town. This year we'll check out the trail system. There's also an arcade there with new and classic games, which they enjoyed. All kinds of outdoor stuff is within a short drive. Amicas is great. Moonlight Pizza is also good, and I like their beer as well. Soulcraft is a great brewery. Benson's tavern has good fish and chips and other pup grub. Patio Pancake Place for breakfast. Boathouse as mentioned is decent food and great view/atmosphere. The only thing I don't like about going up there is that my wife shops for real estate.

Yep, my Cincinnati policy clearly states that frozen pool equipment is excluded. I contacted an advisor who said if I took some mitigating steps there might be some coverage, but not to count on it. By some miracle my equipment seems to be holding together, so I haven't pursued it. That did teach me that if this situation comes up again, I will take photos of everything I do (wrapping pipes, covering equipment, documenting freeze guard running, etc.) for documentation.

Maybe you're not keeping up on current events. We just got our asses kicked, pal!

Rupp is only a little under 3 , and this thread is already making me dread the day (mixed with early melancholy as I watch the time with my almost 16yo at home dwindle). "Goodness will find the puppers. It always has. It will again." In the meantime, here's Rupp derping in the weather and humping a snowman. Good boy, Crosby.

From what I've read, ERCOT shut them down for nonpayment. That makes sense as they probably incurred massive charges and had to float a lot of customers who either hit their credit/account limits on recharges or deactivated their funding accounts. And that's entirely justified in my opinion -- if you don't pay, you get cut off. But it does seem weird that Griddy likely represented a relatively small portion of customers/outstanding charges and a disproportionate amount of sensationalist press. I also don't quite know why I'm so fascinated with it, other than I think it was a good idea that tried to be too simple and transparent while being built upon an underlying arcane hot mess. And @tokamak, did you get your service transfer figured out? Might be helpful info for others in the future.

If you were still on Griddy somehow, you'd better find a new plan immediately, because ERCOT switched you to the Provider of Last Resort (POLR) who is likely administering you a smooth buttfucking right now (probably upper teens to over 20c/kwh). What's darkly hilarious to me is that, if I understand correctly, these POLR plans are variable rates based on hourly spot prices. In other words, the same thing that Griddy was, but with significantly greater additional charges and fees, and no price monitoring to adjust usage. It's also interesting to me that thus far ERCOT has only shut down Griddy, although I think they only had around 10k customers left. Seems like that since Griddy dominated all the negative headlines that ERCOT is throwing them under the bus for show. It's sure not going to make a dent in the actual cost overruns.

Thanks, y'all. Tonneau cover and superfluous brush guard/bull bar are the leaders in the clubhouse. Any recommendations on local installers or online dealers? It's otherwise quite nicely equipped, should have included a pic. Yeah, I do deserve some shit for letting a 16yo drive this (and I am tempted to steal it for myself), but: -- I was really proud of him because he bird-dogged this thing himself. Found it, contacted the seller, asked all the questions, went with me to get it checked by a mechanic, basically ran the whole purchase process aside from cutting the check. He did a good job. -- The guy we bought it from put a ton into it and took great care of it, and basically it came hugely upgraded at a price not much different from other Tacos on the market. -- Either he'll drive it for the next 15 years, or more likely will get passed to his younger brother and then it will be mine when they are done with it. This is my first Yota since bouncing around in the back of the 55. I'm very impressed.

@Biff Tannen Yep, I spent my summers growing up in a cabin outside of Pitkin at ~10,800 ft. Glorious. Off the grid before that was a thing. Last summer Frenchy's in Tincup was closed. Hope that's not permanent. Here's one of the Airstreams at the Amigo in Salida.

Y'all stop telling people about Buena Vista/Salida. @crash_davis Check out the Amigo Motor Lodge in Salida. Stay in one of their airstream trailers for about $100/nt. Cool place in a cool town. Gunnison also checks a lot of your boxes. Don't tell anyone about that, either.

The boy is turning 16 soon and getting a Taco. For his birthday he wants something cool for his (well, my) truck, but he's not sure what yet (rack, bed cover, remote start, something with teenage high school parking lot cred). Any recs for online or local (north Austin to Waco) shops to check out? I'm ignorant. And one day I hope to find one of these for myself. We had one when I was a little kid and it still kills me that it was sold. Probably still rolling around somebody's deer lease, or making drug/severed human head runs in Central America somewhere.

I haven't had the courage to uncover my pool equipment yet (inside the house has thus far thankfully been spared), but if somehow I get away with minimal damage, I am seriously considering putting the money I have already mentally committed to repairs toward a big Generac system. I plan to be in this house for the long haul, and I figure if it saved me a couple of insurance deductibles over its lifetime it would have gone a long way toward paying for itself. And having PTSD from a previous water remediation, the peace of mind would go a long way, particularly if something like this happened while I was out of town or not able to prepare. I'll tag @C-Man yet again and wonder if any insurance carriers give a discount for having these systems? A couple other things that came in handy that I missed or haven't seen yet: -- Rock salt. I bought 4 bags of salt crystals, used 3, and gave one away. Probably prevented a wrist fracture or two and helped getting into and out of the driveway. I don't know how long it would keep with any moisture around, but I can just use it in the water softener and replace. --Heat lamp with 250W bulbs: When I had power, this was great for thawing outdoor faucets, and I put one in the cabinet under my outdoor sink. Hanging the cage over a frozen faucet and walking away for a while was way more effective and pleasant than standing in the ice and snow with a hair dryer (I may also get a heat gun to have on hand). --Disposable bathing cloth packs: Mostly a creature comfort, but I got stuck at work a couple days without linens, and this at least helped, especially if you can warm them up. Not very expensive, and it doesn't sound like anybody around here got lucky once power and water went out. Let's do better next time, Surly. Lots of great ideas in this thread, thank you to everyone. Especially the ones keeping me from making stupid mistakes.

Oh, and evidently Griddy has/had some kind of price protection plan set up to introduce next month. I'm curious to know how that was going to work. And since I still have the app, I have seen several hours of either $0 or negative pricing now that it's spring outside and the plants are all online. Not going to make much of a dent in $9.99/kwh, though. And kudos to @luke duke for crushing his energy consumption. One of the many things that using Griddy has taught me is that I use a shitload of power, even when I think I'm not.

@tokamak Check your contract. I'm almost sure that you cannot get dinged for an early termination fee if you are moving. It's also possible to have two accounts with the same provider overlap when moving, but if you can't get to them that probably doesn't help you. And if they're unresponsive now I'd personally just look at a new REP.

Yep, hopefully this is what I did. After spending some time looking around on powertochoose and the myriad other websites that masquerade as it, I found a good price from an REP I've used before and know has been around for several years (Southwest P&L). Like @luke duke, I think that Griddy customers were kept in the loop by the company, and they have operated with remarkable and refreshing transparency. That's why I hate to see the big headline stories fail to mention any of that or point out that most of these customers failed to understand what they were getting into. It's a bit of a different story if they were unable to switch to another provider (although that may mean that they waited until disaster had already struck over a holiday weekend), but again that's a risk of using Griddy. I honestly don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to switch. It might have meant trading a big-ass electric bill for a big-ass insurance deductible and possibly weeks out of the house for repairs if anything broke even despite taking precautions. And I wouldn't be shocked if a crappy insurance company (not mine, @C-Man) would try to deny coverage if you switched off your heat during an historic freeze.

I switched teams midstream (no pun intended). Started as #teamnodrip with a mix of foam insulated covers and thinsulate pouches. I checked them after the first night in single digits and all had frozen. After eventually thawing them all (see longcat saga here), I switched to #teamstream. Didn't have any further freezing despite even colder temperatures afterward. I'm hesitant to say no damage at this early point, but so far so good. I think that unless I can find something more substantial than what I used for covers, I'll stream my hose bibs any time it's going to drop below the mid-teens. Anyone have the frost-free bibs and want to report their experience? I'm also going to look into having these installed if possible (I wish my builder had let me know about these).

@Nice Guy Eddie Be cautious about that. I was able to get out on Friday, but it got interesting. I tried Reliant, but they said that they could not do a same-day switch because Oncor was not showing that I had a smart meter (I do, they're fucked up). They said there was nothing they could do. I then tried TXU who said the same thing, but then offered to do a "priority switch" which will backdate my usage once Oncor came out to do a manual switch (you know, a manual switch on my smart switch that they say I don't have). They will then pass the $150 or so fee from Oncor for the (unnecessary) manual switch through to me (which I will not be paying). (By the way, I contacted Oncor to get them to correct the error regarding my smart meter, because the last thing I wanted was for them to unnecessarily send out a tech to switch my service in the midst of this mess. I'm still waiting to hear back.) Since it was a long weekend, no REPs were going to be processing any service transfers until Tuesday (I thought it was nice that Griddy pointed this out clearly in the email they sent on Thursday essentially suggesting that customers bail). So if I hadn't pulled that off until Monday I would have had astronomical bills over the weekend. I also understand that a lot of REPs decided not to accept new service switches for several days. I really do the think the Griddy concept has a lot of merit if you understand how it works, are willing to be proactive, and accept the risks. If you read the negative reviews, 99% are from people who were too lazy or stupid to understand what they were getting into, although I really did feel like the company was as transparent as possible during signup and afterwards. I'll say that I was overall very happy with Griddy despite some bad spikes in August 2019. It taught me a lot about my usage and about how to be more efficient, and I think it made me a more responsible electric consumer. That said, this catastrophic event and the upcoming turbulence I expect from the fallout make me skeptical that it's sustainable, not so much because it's a bad concept, but because it operates on top of an irrational shitshow.