Monthly Archives: February 2019

Another day, another buncha dollars…going out

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The nice thing about living in a 100+ year old house is that things were, generally, built much nicer than they are today, there’s a certain sense of charm and style, and each house is usually rather unique. Drawbacks? Ask my plumber. My kitchen is outta commission until tomorrow when they come back to graft a new section of waste pipe in where the old one was. :::sigh::: I was looking forward to using that tax refund to pay the house down faster.

In other news, Im getting my moneys worth out of the snow blower this season. It isnt that we’ve gotten huge snowstorms. Rather, we get an inch here, two inches there, and after a couple weeks of that it starts adding up. Getting around town isnt too much of a challenge, but you gotta watch those California-plated cars.

And then theres gun news. You know it had to be coming, right? I traded off that Marlin 39A for a very nice, older pre-Rem, pre-safety .336 in .30-30. Now, A lever action does nothing a .308 won’t do faster and more accurately…but, its a handy little carbine.

But it can be made handier…….

To that effect, I ordered up a nice set of protected Skinner sights to replace those virtually useless buckhorns. There’ll be a replacement protected front sight as well. After that, the stock goes byebye to be replaced with a Boyds laminate in forest camo. Once thats done, I’ll inlet one of these into the rear stockto give myself a side-mounted sling, and call it a day. Should be a wonderfully useful gun by that point. Sure, I’ll have a few bucks in it that I will never recover but thats fine…this will be one of those guns I have no intention of selling.

A snowy night, where it’s a good idea to stay indoors, can be expensive when you have an internet connection, a gun habit, and low impulse control.

 

Post for a winters night

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Some genuinely winter weather going on here. It isnt so much that there is much snow, its that the wind and cold accompanying it makes it interesting. Ever go to a beach and watch the sand blow across everything and create dunes? It is exactly like that here but with powdery snow. Since it’s so cold, there’s no moisture int he air…the moisture becomes ice, right? So the snow behaves as dry grains of sand.

Its blowing and drifting pretty heavily…I took the snowblower out about four hours ago and it looks like I never even tried. Being ‘that guy’ ‘I just had to break out the snowshoes and go for a walk around the neighborhood. Then, removed the snowshoes and tried the same walk. Short version: Spend the money and get those snowshoes.

This is an outstanding night to test winter gear. I’m tempted to break out the military sleep system and go crawl into it and see how it fares. Of course, I suppose its possible I fall asleep and the snow drifts over me and the GoreTex and I suffocate in my sleep. Hmm.

Excellent night to stay indoors though. Tomorrow morning will be all about snowblowing and travel travails. I’m not planning to go anywhere by vehicle tomorrow, and I may not go anywhere by foot either if this keeps up. I cant imagine snowshoeing to school.

But, I have food, heat, lights, hot water, and a king-sized down comforter on the bed, so i feel pretty cocky and full of myself at the moment. Watching a moderate snowpocalypse outside my door from the comfort of my warm and well-stocked abode does tend to promote the smugness.

You people in the southern states who panic when 3/4″ of snow falls and turns your highways into parking lots? Yeah, you’d crap your pants if you saw what we’re driving in.

For those of you in the region, skip the traveling about… a trip to CostCo for Brita filters and inkjet cartridges is not worth messing up your vehicle, your insurance rates, and your tibia. Why buy trouble? Stay home, enjoy your preps, and tell the spouse “I told you so”.

That Tapco deal

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Sadly, will not come to pass. While I was able to get a good deal on the mags themselves, the vendor wanted, and I kid you not, $314 to ship. Now, I ship stuff for a living so I know how much it costs to ship things and it does not cost that much to ship a couple hundred plastic magazines across the US. So, with the shipping charges wiping out any gains from the discounted mags, it’s pretty much a non-starter. But….I’ll keep my eyes open.

Trading stock

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I was talking with someone today and they asked me about whether I stockpile things like cigarettes, booze, or coffee for bartering purposes.

I actually do not. The biggest reason, for me, is that I simply do not use any of those products. Whether its inventory for resale or items for my own personal stash, I never acquire anything in bulk that I cannot use for my own needs. To do otherwise would risk wasting resources on something I can’t use.

However, there are things that I keep a rather large quantity of that is so large it could double as a supply of barter goods if it had to. And, if I got stuck with them, theyre things I use anyway. Such as? Well, medical supplies spring to mind. Same for food, batteries, toilet paper, silver, some ammo and guns, clothing, fuel, etc.

Bartering assumes that there is something I need or want that I do not already have. After all, no one exposes themselves (and their goods) to the risk of some sort of post-apocalyptic marketplace if they don’t need to. Would you? Would anyone? Why advertise to the world that you not only have something but you have enough of it that you can actually use it for trade?

Of course, we can’t think of everything. And something may happen that forces your hand. Maybe floss weevils got into your dental floss stash and you’re completely out of the stuff eve though you had stockpiled cases of it. Things can happen.

For my interests, I figure the things I already use (and have) in large quantity will have plenty of value. Will there be people who would kill for a drink? Or a cigarette? Or coffee? Absolutely. And thats why some poeple stock up on that sort of stuff. But there’ll also be people who’d kill to have food for their kids. Or themselves. And since I already am a user of food, it makes sense have that on hand as trade fodder if I decide to have a reserve of some kind for trading.

I suppose it wouldn’t kill me to throw $20 on the counter at WalMart and grab a couple dozen single-serve packets of freeze dried coffee. Or a couple airplane-sized bottles of Jack Daniels. And I might do that. But, for me, it simply makes more sense to stockpile things I can use since a) if I can use it someone else can too and b) if i wind up keeping it then I only wind up improving my situation.

Let me put it another way: which makes more sense..buying $100 worth of an item that may have some barter value but has no use to you individually, or buying $100 worth of an item that may have some barter value AND can benefit your stockpile if you wind up keeping it. Hmm.

Anyway, your mileage may vary but, no, no hoard of cigarettes and Mad Dog in the bunker.

Guns guns guns

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I’m starting to wonder if the guy who texts me the messages about new guns that have come into his shop for sale is really doing me any favors when he does that….

I get the usual “Some guns came in. Come on down and take a look” message.

What I didnt get were two 1940’s era Model 70 Winchesters. One in .30-06, which was nothing remarkable…zillions out there, and the other was a .257 Roberts. Hmmm. I would have bought them with an eye for resale, but the prices were higher than I felt comfortable gambling on. What did I get?

  • A Marlin 39A which I am hoping to trade to a buddy for a very clean, very pre-Remington 336 in .30-30
  • Yet another Remington 870 12 ga.
  • A lovely 6″ S&W 17 K-22 from the 70’s
  • A 6″ S&W 686

Price? Well, I think its a good deal. $1100 for the lot. The 870 goes in the rack with the rest, the 39A gets traded for a .30-30, the K22 is probably going to GunBroker, and the 686 will get flogged around to see if I can trade it for a GP-100.

:::sigh::: I was so sure I wasn’t going to make this as gun-heavy a year as last year.

Re-reading some books

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Ok, sure I’m prepared for the zombie apocalypse, and to a degree, everything else. But, my particular apocalypse is economic. It could be a general economic apocalypse like a new(er) depression or massive trade war, or it could be a very personal economic apocalypse like an extended bout of unemployment or a huge undelayable expense like a hernia surgery or something.

A while back I came across this book. That link will take you to my review of it. While the story may not have enough gunplay and cannibal armies for some peoples tastes, the character sketches were what sold me…the everything-will-be-all-right characters, the it-cant-happen-here-characters, and the we-adapt-or-we-die characters.

But for me, what I found most compelling was the descriptions of extended families forced to share one house, people crammed into every space, dinners of bread soaked in grease, homes being squatted in and owners forced out, take-by-force food fights, etc. All he scenarios that seem plausible in a societal collapse. As a result, it makes me wanna go double-check my food supplies and squirrel away more cash and metals. And guns.

Anyway, I picked up a used copy on Amazon for six bucks since I loaned out my other copy and never saw it again. I don’t mind not getting the books back if I loan them out. If it bothered me, I wouldnt have loaned them out in the first place. But to me its worth the cost of a ten dollar book to share it with someone I like if I think it will nudge them towards a more preparedness-oriented lifestyle.

Where would I go?

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Nope, still here. Just busy this weekend. Remember when we had Lincoln’s Birthday and Washingtons’ Birthday as federal holidays? Then they combined them into this one holiday in order to free up a day for a federal holiday for Marty King day. But, when I was a kid, I remember getting two different holidays for the president’s birthdays.

Weather here went from a summer -like 38* to about 10. But, like some sort of displaced Donner Party member, I wandered up on to a hilltop hike on the edge of town where the wind, no lie, was coming down hard enough that I coulud jump straight up in the air and land about 8″ away from where I started. It was the kind of howling, relentless wind that you see those idiot hurricane reporters leaning against. But..If I want to test winter gear some time that was easily the place to do it.

Regular posting, such as it is, will resume towards Tuesday. In the meantime, fellow bunker-dwellers, keep doing what you’re doing.

Swine dining

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I don’t mean to blow my own horn here (and, really, who amongst us is flexible enough for that anyway?) but sometimes I do like to brag…. thus:

So..I’m in Albertson’s and I do my usual patrol through the meat department. Sitting on the shelf are four pork whole tenderloins, marked down from $4.99/# to $2.99/#. Now, that’s all well and good, but Zero can do better. Those four (and keep in mind that number ‘four’) tenderloins are also marked down an additional 30%, knocking it’s per pound price down to about $2.09/#. Thats not bad for animal protein. But…Zero can do better.

Me: “Hey, you’ve got these pork tenderloins marked down 30%. If you mark them down to 50% I’ll take ’em.”
Him: “They’re already on sale at $2.99 from $4.99.”
Me: “I know, but Im the kinda guy who needs to feel like he’s really getting a deal, you know? Mark ’em down to 50% and I’ll take all of them.”
Him: “All of them?”
Me: “Sure. All of them.”

Here’s where the wheels flew off my grand plan. Remember that number four from earlier? Well, there were, in fact, four pork tenderloins sitting on the top shelf marked down to 30%. What I did not notice, were the other twenty packages sitting below it, also marked down to 30% off. And…I just committed myself to taking them all.

Uhm. Well.

The happy ending is that in the final analysis I wound up paying $1.50/#. The more interesting part is I wound up with almost 60# of pork tenderloin. The really interesting part is that I had one hell of a time re-arranging the stuff in my already overloaded freezer to accommodate it. I literally cannot fit any more food in my freezer. And, yes, I’m thinking about purchasing another freezer.

Can NOT be re-assembled to make a complete pig.

My normal procedure is to line a baking tray with foil, season one of these things with some sort of spice blend (Old Bay is actually rather nice), cook it up, slice it thin, and snack on it cold. But, lately I’ve noticed that glazing it with sweet chili sauce is actually pretty darn good.

Anyway, I think this counts as a pretty sweet score. I could literally stop buying meet for the next several months and be just fine. Oh, and mind you, there are two tenderloins in each of those packages. Yum.

I’m not driving in that

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So it’s about -2 outside, which is bad enough but the wind is insane. And the roads are slicker than Mikhail Baryshnikov at a Wesson oil party. No real reason to risk limb and lira out there on the roads. BUT….I’m trying to clean my kitchen and while I have plenty of fuel for the flamethrower I am out of dish soap. So…do I risk losing momentum and halting my kitchen cleaning? Or do I go driving on the frigid skating rink and risk everything for a $6 bottle of Dawn? Well, neither…

One simply trots down to the basement, peruses the shelves, and finds a half dozen jugs of the stuff sitting patiently on the shelf.

In this particular case, about eight years ago I tucked this guy away in case I needed it. And that foresight is keeping me from skidding through intersections and into traffic this very evening.

The point? Well, we stockpile things against that uncertain future when the zombies rise or the economy crashes. But those same preps have a happy way of coming in handy at opportune moments. In this case, I can completely eliminate the risk of heading to CostCo on a freezing, icy, winter day.

Because this stuff is one of the things I stocked up on (mostly for economic reasons), I can wait until the weather is nicer before I have to go up there and replace it. Sure, stocking the usual guns & freeze-drieds is important, but stockpiling the incredibly mundane day-to-day stuff pays off too.

I have literally not left the house all weekend and I can be perfectly content, fed, warm, clothed, entertained, and secure without exposing myself to ‘The Vortex’. Prior planning pays off, people.

ETA: Since I’m cleaning my kitchen, and scrubbing the floors for the first time in…well…ever. I decided to resort to some…force multipliers. Check out this BAMF:

Man is a tool-using animal, baby. And this tool was AWESOME. My bathtub is so smooth and clean now that I might actually slip in the tub now. And this sucker did some major work on my kitchen floor. Recommend.