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Easter Weekend Plans
Good Friday is here, finally. This means that we get a three day weekend – well, most of us anyway. My wife and I are both off for Good Friday, by my step-daughter has to work.
Last weekend my 2 youngest kids and I were talking them coming back to my house for Easter, but it looks like that is not going to happen. My daughter has plans, and my son wants to go visit his brother, my other son.
So what is on the schedule for Good Friday? Not much of anything.
My package of mylar bags and oxygen absorbers are supposed to be here today. The UPS tracking page says the package is out for delivery. Hopefully I will be able to start on some homemade superpails this evening.
My wife is going to wal-mart to pick up some stuff. I asked her to pick up a motor flusher for my boat. The motor has not been cranked in a few weeks and it needs to be ran. Some people might use a trash can, but I do not want to deal with the can, so a set of flushers it is.
Well rounded survival plans
I think there is a tendency to focus more on preps, and less on being self-sufficient. Who “really” wants to check on the rabbits, goats, chickens and pigs after working 8 – 10 hours? In todays urban sprawl, finding land to have a small farm is rather difficult as well. For a survivalist to be self-sufficient, their not only going to need fruits and vegetables, their also going to need meats, protein, eggs and fat. The problem is, for most people living in the city, having farm animals is not an option. So its a win-lose situation – people move to the city to get a job, but have to leave their farm life behind.
Here in Texas, its estimated that the average people has been removed from farm life for at least 2 – 3 generations. If some kind of long term SHTF situation happens, people will have a lot of learning to do. Those already living on a farm might adjust well, but those used to urban life and instant satisfaction might be a little disappointed.
In the rural areas where I live, its not uncommon to see rows of pecan trees from the first settlers. But now, we are more worried about planting pine trees to sell for timber, then planting fruit trees.
Its not enough to just buy preps, without developing a well rounded long term survival plan. Stockpiling rice, beans, pasta, powered milk and pancake mix in mylar bags is not a long term survival plan, its a temporary survival plan. Buying superpails, making homemade superpails, stockpiling MREs, storing food in mylar bags just prolongs the inevitable, and that is running out of food.
Another weekend has passed away
Have you ever had a weekend that you never wanted to end? Well, that is the weekend that I had this weekend. Things kicked off Friday with getting ready for Relay for Life here in Jasper County. TJ went to Beaumont to pick up my kids from my ex-wife for the weekend, so that saved me a LOT of time. After lunch I washed my truck, hooked up the pit, loaded up some stuff, left home about 5pm, drove to the Jasper County court house square, and setup for the relay.
The thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about Friday was washing my truck. Because it was more then just washing off dirt, it was washing off memories. The majority of the dirt on my truck was from driving to the lease during hunting season. So the dirt had built up like memories, good memories. Like when my son got his deer for the 2010 – 2011 deer season. For the deer hunting story, visit this article – our first deer of the 2010- 2011 season. As I was washing the layers of dirt off, I was also thinking about the memories built around the truck over the past few months.
Around 4pm my wife and my step-daughter show up and start loading stuff into the truck. We loaded up the canopy, ice chest, tables,,,,, and other stuff. they left a little before 5pm to go get ice. I left for the court house around 5.
Got to the court house square, backed the pit into place, and started setting everything up. The event started at 7pm, and within minutes we had a line at our table. We were selling hotlinks – on a bun, stick, or flatbread.
In all, we raised a little over $600, which was donated that night.
I dont think there were as many people at this years relay as last year. The weather was great, so I dont know what the issue was.
Fitness update Arpil 13 2011
Did not do my workout last night (April 12, 2011), was in a 3 hour meeting from 6pm until 9pm. Not only that, but I was sore from the previous workout.
This 30 minute workout seems to make me feel better then the 60 – 90 minute workout. I am spending less time on the treadmill, but the time is more intense, and more time on the weights.
Tonights totals:
Total workout time – about 31 minutes. I was shooting for 30 minutes, but oh well.
1.401 miles on the treadmill
2,901 steps
23:18 minutes on the treadmill
110 curls with 50 pounds
220 military presses with 8 pound weight
I am a little disappointed that I did not hit my 1.5 miles + 100 curls within 30 minutes. But what can I say? I will try harder next time.
Fitness update April 11 2011
Tonight was my first workout in 3 minute intervals in a long time. For the past couple of months I had been doing 5 minutes on the treadmill, something, something, back on the treadmill for 5 minutes, something, something, back on the treadmill for 5 minutes,,,,.
Tonight I did this routine – 8 curls with 50 pounds, 3 minutes on the treadmill at 3.5 degree incline at 3.5 mph, 8 curls with 50 pounds, 20 military presses with 8 pound weight, 3 minutes on the threadmill 3.5 degree incline for 3 minutes, 8 curls with 50 pounds, 20 military presses.
The problem is, to reach my 1.5 miles in 30 minutes the treadmill had to be sped up to 4.0 – 4.6 mph a few times.
2 times in a row the treadmill was at 4.0 mph, but my sides started to hurt a little bit, so during the next treadmill it was slowed down to 3.5 and caught my breath.
Even though the target as 1.5 mile sin 30 minutes, I had to fudge it just a little bit and went around 33 minutes for my 1.5 mile goal.
Conformist
Facebook has this feature where the site will suggest people that you may know, and you will have the option to add the suggested people to your friends list.
While I was scrolling through the list of suggested friends, I came across a name I wish to have never seen or heard spoken again for the rest of my natural life. While we were in school (junior high and high school) the guy and some other people like him were complete assholes. One person in particular taller then most of the other kids, so I guess he thought his height gave him permission to be mean to the other kids. His height just meant that he was a tall asshole instead of an average height or short asshole.
I don’t know if the guy was abused, maybe raped as a child, saw his dad push his mom around, saw his mom push his dad around,,,,,,, who knows. But one thing was for sure, he seemed to have a lot of built up anger. That anger manifested itself in the form of harassment towards other kids.
One of the reasons why I was picked on at school was because of the music I listed to, which happened to be metal. While most of my high school class was listening to 80 pop rock garbage and loving it, I was listening to metal and loving it. To the other kids, since I listened to metal, then I “must” be dong drugs, because you can not listen to metal without doing drugs – or at least that was their mindset anyway.
When other kids do not understand someone, they usually pick on the strange kid. And that is what happened to me. I listened to metal, which meant I was “magically” a drug head (which I was not), so the other kids made it a point to torment me about my alleged drug use and my taste of heavy metal.
Culture of entitlement
After Hurricane Katrina made landfall in 2005, I helped out at a refugee center in East Texas for people from New Orleans. We were preforming services for evacuees, such as trying to find them temporary housing, if they needed to see a doctor,,, general stuff like that.
One lady really stands out in my memory. She steps off the transport bus, walks into the reception facility, is handed an application to fill out – ask for her name, address, race,,,, other information so family members can find her – she hands the application back to the person behind the desk (she did not even look at the papers) and ask where she can sign up for welfare and public housing. The lady was not interested in filling out any “extra” paperwork, she just wanted her benefits.
What really got to me was the I am entitled to receive free stuff attitude the lady had. She did not fill out the application until it was handed to her a second time. The lady behind the desk said that she would have to go to the welfare office, and the center did not so that kind of stuff. We were there just to find her temporary housing, and any immediate needs, like if she needs heart medicine and did not have any.
Throwing away computer parts
Its time to do some spring cleaning. As I was going through some of the stuff in my sons room, I found the boxes from the last time my sons computer and my computer was upgraded. It was one of those good points in points in time that just you wish you could back to and visit.
In December 2009 my mom asked me what I want for Christmas. I told her what I “really” was to upgrade my computer and my sons computer. My mom asked me how much I needed, I told her around $400. This is what I got for $400.
I must have read reviews for a whole week trying to figure out what the best CPU and motherboard for a given price range was. For my son, I decided to go with a dual core MD 245 that runs at 2.9ghz. For myself, I decided to go with a quad core 620 that runs at 2.6ghz. I do video blogging on youtube and wanted the extra horsepower of a quad core cpu.
The parts were ordered December 12, 2009 – according to my Tigerdirect account.
2 – 2 gig sticks of Corsair XMS2 PC6400 DDR2 800MHz, total price $99.98
ASUS M2N68-AM SE2 GeForce 7025 Socket – $56.70
AMD Athlon II X2 245 2.9Ghz AM3 CPU – $68.29
ASUS M4A785-M AMD 785G Socket AM2+ – $80
AMD Athlon II X4 620 2.6Ghz AM3 CPU – $99.99
Springfield Armory Employee Recognized with National Honor
Press Release from Springfield Armory Geneseo, Il— At 9:00am April 8th, 2011, Robert Schwieder, a volunteer for the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR), presented Larry Collinson, Springfield Armory Production/ QA Manager, with a certificate of appreciation for his role as a “Patriotic Employer.” (ESGR) is a Department of Defense agency that seeks…
Peanut butter sandwiches
Personally, I think peanut butter sandwiches can say a lot about someone. More exact, the way someone fixes their peanut butter sandwich, what ingredients that someone puts on their peanut butter sandwich, what they drink with it, whether or not they read the labels,,,, it all adds up to say a lot about someone.
Just for the fun of it, lets talk about peanut butter sandwiches.
How do you make yours?
Peanut butter on both pieces of bread?
Whole wheat bread?
Jelly, jam, honey, or something else?
Milk with that sandwich?
Natural peanut butter, or with partially hydrogenated oils?
Crunchy or creamy?
1, 2 or 3 pieces of bread?
Banana or extra stuff?
Fold over?
Do you buy peanut butter mixed with the jelly?
Spread with butter knife or spoon?
Personally, this is the way I see some of this:
People that add extra stuff like bananas may like spice in their life.
Buy peanut butter premixed with jelly, might be a little on the lazy side, or like things easy.
Straight peanut butter and jelly may like tradition.
Read the labels may be health conscious
I like mine with creamy natural peanut butter (no partially hydrogenated oils), on both pieces of whole wheat bread, honey instead of jelly, and a tall glass of milk.
Post your comments in this forum thread about peanut butter sandwiches.
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