Food for thought

I’ve done a little research folks. I’ve been looking at survival sites for a couple of years now. What I have found interesting is the propensity for the favor of the Mormon sites. Oh sure, they are great for food storage advice. People need to understand that there is a reason behind that. It is not because they are just smart, good natured, and think it’s a good idea. It’s manly because they are just sure they are going to be the majority of people left after the apocalypse, or whatever you want to call it. Geeks, think Borg…
This is not a good thing. Look it up. Unless you want to assimilate, you may be right in keeping and stock piling your guns. And you thought the Government was after you...

Sunshine and some rain!
The sun has finally come out and is trying to melt the snow. Yea!
Christmas is over. It’s time to get back to thinking about what’s ahead. I find myself in a bit of a conundrum. I want to get serious about collecting and stock piling food, but I also have this constant nagging thought in my head. We are going to have to move sometime in the near future. Everyday I check the mail expecting there to be a letter giving us some number of days to get out of here. I’ve described our situation before and I’m not going to get into it again. Anyway, we’re going to be moving. I don’t know if it will be the big move to Texas, or if we’ll just move to a local RV park. Either way, we are not going to want to haul a bunch of extra stuff. I guess I just answered my own question. Bummer.
Now, I’m thinking we should focus efforts (and $) on the pod and the tow vehicle. Here’s what I think we’re looking at in that area.
First and foremost , put the suburban back together.
Tires for both
2 new batteries for the pod
Check and fill propane tanks
I need to sell some stuff to lighten the load as well as create another influx of cash for the move and the afore mentioned expenses. I really don’t care for trying to sell stuff on E-Bay, just haven‘t had much luck. Craig’s list isn’t much fun around here either. People in our area don’t want to pay anything for your crap, but want a butt load for theirs. I guess I’ll just have to change my attitude, and be as hard nosed as they are. Maybe, just maybe people are getting in the mood to buy used stuff. We’ll see. I’ve considered selling stuff on a new blog. I’m still working on that idea. Any suggestions on that idea would be great. Put them in the comments or send me an e-mail.

Merry Chiristmas

Merry Christmas! We made it!
I cooked a turkey last night. I don't normally eat meat, but Randy got a free turkey last week at the company Christmas party. It was my second time cooking a turkey. I'm telling you the only was to do it is in one of those cooking bags. I even made giblet gravy. It was my first time on that one. There are only two of us, so we've got left overs to last us a couple of weeks. Anyway, that was about all of our excitement yesterday, other than a little more snow.

Oh yeah, Randy's friend down in Hood River, WA gave Randy some brilliant advice. He suggested that maybe we should start stock piling food. Hmm... No, that just sounds crazy! I'm kidding. Randy let him know we had already started doing that. We need to keep stocking up though. I've been whittling away on the beans, rice, and a few other things. On that note, we really need to get appropriate storage containers. I've looked around a little locally with not much luck. Dog and cat food containers don't really excite me. I guess I'll have to get some on line.

Well, have a good Christmas!

Oh great, more snow...

Ok, we don’t have it as bad as Busted. However, we were without water today. Randy went back to work this morning. So, I had to wait for him to get home and help me figure out where the frozen spot was. He took off from work a little early and we found it. He had a pretty good idea of where it might be. Long, wet, dirty story short, we can flush the toilet, and I can wash dishes and clothes! We’ve got a pretty good supply of drinking water, Three 5 gallon jugs. Anyway, time to take my wet shoes off and change my socks. My feet are wet and cold!

Cabin Fever!
It has been just too damn cold to do anything outside. So much for getting the heads back in the truck. I've been writing stuff for this blog, but I didn't put it out there and now it's out dated. Maybe I should just write here, and post like everybody else seems to. Anyway, I wish I could say that we've been working on the truck. Although, I can say that we found a good use for the snow...

Holy crap! We got snow! yippee…?
And it’s friggin’ cold! Down in the teens during the day, single digits at night! It’s about the same as Busted knuckles. Romeo, our native Texan cat, is pissed! He likes to be outside and this weather is just not working for him. So, he’s in and out, and that’s not working for Randy and me. The other cats are smart enough to stay inside and only go out if necessary. We’ve got Thomas, the neighborhood cat, set up pretty sweet. He’s got an old couch cushion, w/ a heating pad, and an outside chair cushion on top of that. We also rigged up a little shelter for him with an old foldable lawn chair. It must be the best digs in the neighborhood, because he was in it all day. (He won’t come in the house and we don’t have a garage.) Warm, dry, shelter from the snow, and free food, now that’s surviving in style! Spoiled bastard (relatively).


This is Thomas yesterday afternoon. He bailed when it got dark. He must have another spot more secure with a wind block.

The Befores

This is the living area before.

The dinette before.

As you can see, by taking all of it out we gained quite a bit of space. We, however, lost most of our storage space. You might think that's bad. But, with more storage space comes more stuff, and more weight. I've mentioned weight before. It's a big deal. We also did not need the extra sleeping space. The little doors that open up from the outside can now be used as cat doors. We will most likely get a cage or something that they can open up to. That way the cats can go outside somewhat safely if we have to stop somewhere for a while(ie: an rv park). That plan is still in the idea stage. The openings are too small for the dog much less humans. So, no worry there. It will also be pretty easy to seal them up if we want to later.

The suburban heads are in the shop. We should get them back next week, and get started putting Humpty Dumpty back together again. Just one more exciting part of the adventure!

I know I promised pictures of the pod renovation some time ago (Oct.?). I kept waiting because I wanted to make everything perfect. I decided that was a dumb idea. I'm always changing stuff around, so I decided to just take some pics and post them.

This is the new pseudo couch with most of what is left of our christmas stuff.

Dining/sitting area with foldable table. That's a little heater on the floor.

Here with the half fold.

If you look real close you might see the pvc pipe curtain rods. We haven't fixed that yet. You get the idea though, that we were going for light weight. This is also stuff we can take out later when a cabin or something gets built. The table folds up all the way, but I figured that was enough of the dining area. The chairs were on sale(closeout), plus another 50% off for a little damage. They came out cheaper, lighter, more comfy,and nicer than foldable chairs we had looked at. The cushions were an Overstock.com puchase. Set of four for less than the cost two. So we've extra in case of spills. We didn't do so great on the couch thingy(double papazan sp?). But, we couldn't find anything light weight enough in a reasonble price range. Color was also a challenge for us, and limited our choices. I'll bring in some pillows or something to pull it all together, eventually. But, for now, that's what we've got. If it didn't take forever to upload pictures from our crappy dial up, I'd post before and afters. The befores are somewhere on a previous post. Check 'em out.

Productive day?

Wanna know what I did today? Sure you do. We’re all voyeurs in our own little ways. That’s why we blog, and that’s why we read blogs. That being said…(not necessary, I know.)
My day started off productive. I once again started with the second bedroom full of crap. It is mainly full of stuff to be sold and packing materials. Ahh, the best laid plans and such. It’s much easier to buy on the internet than sell. So anyway, I found myself gleaning through the cluster of crap, throwing out what wasn’t even worth giving away. I don’t really know how it manage to stay in there the first few times I went through it. Then I find yet another batch of video tapes I have to go through. Oh joy of joys. I get to watch Randy’s brother in law’s attempts at catching nature spirits on video tape. Hey now, I have no problem with nature spirits, fairies and the like. What I have a problem with is watching his videos of a whole bunch of nothing. Ok, I could go on and on about that, but I’m not. I also got the joy of watching more than one video my mother left with us of her husband singing country songs, via karaoke. Everybody wants to be superstar in one way or the other. Ya’ll know as well as I do, most of the real superstars are the ones we don’t hear about. So, there's still stuff I’ve got to go through. Most of it really is junk. I’ll figure out what to do with the rest.