My Mycelium Journey

What is more noble than getting water to people? 

So... the floor didn't stick. Nothing like that feeling of setting foot for the first time on freshly laid tile and hearing that hollow sound. Ouch! The bright side was that they really didn't stick, so pulling them back up again wasn't too terribly difficult. Only the fancy "J" cut piece broke. Thankfully, there are pictures of this tile before it was destroyed.  There were a few things that didn't go as well as they could have. Entire floor had to be pulled up. Some of the highlights of the failure...  All tiles need to be fully back buttered Mortar needs to be super thick especially for large format tiles.  Upgraded to a 1/2" trowel.  More pressure for initial tile setting. No voids! Mortar selection wasn't correct. Even though it said it was for large format tile, the cheaper stuff still didn't work. Who needs $7 mortar when they sell it for $32!? Had to get the polymer blended mortar for  stone tile (using a porcelain tile). The tile guys on ...

Last tile into place at 2200 hours today.  Getting supplies: A total of 4 trips to get 69 boxes of tile, from Floor and Decor. This spanned 2 days and also involved 3 trips to home depot. Over 3,500 lbs of tile hauled in a Honda Fit.  Painting: First step was painting the room Nano white. This took about 2 gallons of paint due to the significant color change from dark yellow to white. Wall patches due to the messy curtain rod install. So happy that curtain is gone!  Setting up the tile, measuring, making cuts. Laying out the tile, determining orientation. Laying the first tile was not as exciting as laying the last.  During a cut around a door frame, the tile saw bent. This was a sign that the right tool was out there! James took a trip to home depot and found the perfect tool, a hand held wet saw. Worth every penny.  Made the job go much more quickly and precision cuts that would have been near impossible with the table wet saw were possible with this handy gad...

I remember when being stubborn was good. Resistance to religions that had no logical sense. Oppression and thought control where it wasn't needed. Resistance to peer pressure, being popular, being involved in clicks (the ideology of segregation). Remember High School? How far the wealth of knowledge has come. I can look up how to take apart a laptop to fix it, cultivate and start a mushroom business, grow microgreens, create a website and manage multiple domains. It wasn't until recently I had ever searched for or attempted any of these things. Everything is low hanging fruit. Lazy abounds. Is the human condition looking for an excuse to be sick and tired? Is that the origin story for Covid? What if parents only allowed their kids to drink the alcohol they fermented or smoke only what they grew? The kids would have potential tradesman skills they could use to make a living, start a business.  what if this desire to party could be used to drive entrepreneurship? What if the payc...

Navy beans after reading some navy bean soup recipes. Finally used the sautee function on the instapot for the first time - Carrots, onions, garlic. Added veggie bullion and pressure cooked the beans, after it finished cooking I added the kale. paired with quinoa with walnuts and a salad topped with fresh beets and carrots. Approved.

Progressing and looking fantastic! 

this is the first day of gluing down tile! 

The tile project has been going really well and every night has been a culinary celebration of a hard day's work!  Dinner highlights! Tuesday Dinner:  This meal was inspired by fried rice from Maung Thai. The sauce was a mix of almond butter, maple syrup, braggs,  and sriracha. Tofu was pressed and marinated in braggs, ginger, and garlic chili sauce and then air fried. Onion, Carrots, cilantro, and Tofu were main part of dish. Garnished with cilantro, green onions, and cashews.  Monday Dinner: This was inspired by a meal I had in Guadalajara. I used Starlite vegan taquitos  and the sauce is a black bean sauce I made from scratch (garlic, onion, cumin, salt). Next time I'd like to remember to use a veggie bullion cube. The rice was organic masori rice with Mateo's salsa. 

Found a few years worth of clown pictures... Some of the best were out on the town where there aren't any pictures to commemorate. One of the best was twisting balloon flowers at a bar... hitting up all the guys that were on dates and bartering balloon flowers for beers. Oh how many balloon penises I've made over the years... So many hours of watching Michael B Floyd at www.balloonanimals.com. Been so long he's lost his domain. That is a bummer. I remember in the height of ballooning I had balloon vision. I'd see everything in balloon twists.  Going to be a while before balloonists are back in demand...

Before:                                                                                                First Layer Nano White: The Garage: 69 boxes of Tiles, 800sqft 4 trips to pick up all the tile. In addition had 2 runs to Home Depot for all the paint and outlet replacements... Hoping for no surprises!

Where does the sense of power originate? What controls are connected to power? How do you become powerful? Why would you want to? What is more empowering than growing your own food? Money has always been tied to power. The more money you have the more powerful you are. But what is money and where does the sense of value come from. Money is printed on paper that has no inherent value,  aside from the trust that is placed in the government printing it. This is backed by gold which is at least shiny. Not only the trust in the government, but there's a 3rd party involved that has no other function than to keep your money "safe" for you and that's the bank. Why do I need to pay for that service? And how does the bank make this service appear to be free? This all plays in to the distaste for fiat that is leading to the cryptocurrency revolution.  Are we ready?

Getting Tiled!   It's officially started! The tile project begins! This was the first load, 20 boxes. I have 2 more loads to get enough tile to get all the carpet in the house replaced.  Thanks, James!!!

I have pink oysters inoculated into rye grain. Also in a dextrose liquid culture recipe i found online. The entire syringe is consumed so I'm hopeful that I will have a viable non-contaminated source.  I'm thinking the next syringe i get might be lion's mane. I've heard pinks go bad pretty quickly and that kings can last up to 2 weeks. Everything will be potentially dehydrated if it doesn't sell. Pinks lose their color when heated, so maybe i can go really low and slow for their preservation. I plan to drive to a feed store that's an hour away or so next week to pick up soy hulls and sawdust pellets. It's a co-op and they were really nice. they ordered 1 50lb bag and he didn't even laugh too much at the low order quantity. Ordered grain storage bins on Chewy.com. Those deliver today.  I ordered mushroom bags, but they are not the size I thought they were going to be. I have 50 of these. These could be cute grow your own mushroom kits. Maybe? Have quite a...

Outside Texas summer nights. It could  be intolerable non-stop blah or uncomfortable silence. the silence you create is your own. Don't surround yourself with the blahs. Breeze This is a paradise.  Don't let me forget I'm experiencing this right now. 

I just tracked down soybean hulls in a feed store in New Braunfels. A co-op... that's what the kids are  calling it these days.  Going to use the master's mix as my initial substrate. Should be able to grow quite a variety... from Oysters to Lion's Mane. As of right now, I'm thinking the Garage will be the fruiting room and the front room will be the lab after the tile project completes. Fortunately, the producers co-op also has pelleted shavings too so I'll only have to make one trip (all the way to the pits of hell). For right now during feasibility... I'm only going to get a bag of each, 100 lbs substrate.  That should be about 20, 12lb bags. Have rye grain for the grain spawn. Will see if they have rye grain at the c-op too when I make my first trek down there. I'd imagine it's much cheaper.  Bubba's Barrels  House of Hydro PVC piping thru 2x4's for shelving Area for power washing, bleaching, draining

Just had what I interpreted as a really bad job interview. About an hour after crying and feeling bad about how horrible it went, the recruiter calls and says they want to move forward with hiring me. No additional interviews... and for how bad I thought it went... To leave a job I don't like that has been documented as not going well for a contract that expires in 6 months...  What is failure? What is success? How do you tell the difference?  I want to start a mushroom farm. This contract job is not a mushroom farm. 

I noticed the neighbors outside for the 4th of July celebration. Multiple neighbors. Next door mentioned that they had come over and knocked to see if I was home to come out and watch them shoot off fireworks. At a distance, handed me a sparkler. Not quite sure what to do with that. Wave it about and enjoy the contrast against the night sky but there's really not too much exiting about a sparkler. Infinity symbol pattern by default. I noticed that I don't have much to say. I listen to the neighbors interact and understand everything that they exchange. There is no new information and I'm not sure that anything I have to say would be of interest based on the conversation. I'm quietly observing for some time. Next door engages and asks how the job hunt is going. I can't say that it's going great as there aren't any jobs that seem remotely interested. Even the recruiters that I give my resume to don't seem to be reading it or aware of what it is about. Then...

"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious" - George Orwell, 1984