DANCING ON LAW'S GRAVESTONE

It may look like a party here in California, but it's really a wake. 

Regardless of what you feel about gay marriage, Californians, and Americans everywhere, should be sorrowing greatly: the rule of law died on Wednesday. In its place Anarchy was birthed official life.

Make no mistake about it: what REALLY happened on Wednesday was that the US Supreme Court ruled that you don't have to honor the law if you don't want to. By doing so, it wiped out exactly what made America great: we honored and sustained the law.

For over 200 years, Americans have revered the law. Don't like the law? Work to get it changed. If SCOTUS really believed that the proponents of Prop 8 lacked standing, they would have refused to take the case in the beginning. How exactly is it, that you agree to hear the argument of a case, inviting them into your court as it were, and then decide AFTER the fact that they don't have a right to be there?

What SCOTUS did was say, literally, that the law does not matter, only your feelings do. Prop 8 didn't fail on the point of law (not even SCOTUS said it did), it failed because our elected officials, who swore to uphold the law refused to do so. (And by the way, that's a feeling not even the liberal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was willing to allow.)

So when Jerry Moonbeam gets voted out next term (or God willing, impeached), he doesn't really have to leave if he doesn't want to, he can just stay in office if he feels like it. If/when we pass a medical marijuana law in Los Angeles (and we did), the Chief of Police can still bust people for selling pot, because he feels like it. When Californians amended the 3 Strikes law, the prison wardens or prosecutors don't really have to free or not prosecute 3rd strikers for something inane if they don't feel like it. 

Don't get me wrong: if Jerry Moonbeam had done his job and defended the law in California 4 years ago and Prop 8 had been struck down on its merits, and SCOTUS had agreed with the strike, I might not have liked it, but I'd have lived with it. 

BUT THIS IS ANARCHY BORN, BRED, and RATIFIED WITH AN OFFICIAL STAMP.

For those of you who think this is a great day regardless, remember this feeling. Because the next Governor or State Attorney General can REFUSE to allow gay marriage if they want to. 

After all, the United States Supreme Court said so: it's okay to "refuse to defend the law," no one is going to make you do any different.

We're so busy partying out here in California, we fail to even notice the body and soul of America in the coffin. It's time to sober up and quit dancing on the gravestone of the law.

KELLY KETTLE

(Debt has been updated with my latest grocery deals.)

SUPER excited to share the latest addition to our preps: the Kelly Kettle !!

Just YouTube the name and you'll get a ton of videos showing it in action. We made a video as well: http://youtu.be/Asq4ZVibht4 . We didn't spend a lot of time describing how it works et cetera, there are many other videos which do better than we could.

What we ARE excited about, is the reality that our prepping life can become so much easier. Being able to have clean, purified and hot water using very little energy is phenomenal. It means we can move to lighter, freeze dried or dehydrated foods for our preps, which not only simplifies but literally also lightens the load.

I was first introduced to the Kelly Kettle through a group of prepper folks I "met" living in the U.K. (that's England to us Americans.) They kept talking about this thing called a Kelly Kettle so they could have hot tea and soup when they bugged out. When I investigated further, I knew I had to have one.

A Kelly Kettle primarily does one thing well: heat liquids fast, and do it using a minimal amount of biomass (wood, leaves, pine cones, animal dung). Ours boiled a 1/2 gallon of water in 3 minutes, 8 seconds. Experiments have been done using other forms of fuel, such as alcohol burners, hexamine tablets, charcoal. 

Can you cook on it? Yes, but think re-heat rather than cooking a full course meal, it's not a dutch oven after all.

Kelly Kettles come in two materials: aluminum and stainless steel. Since we bought the Base Camp model, we chose SS for durability. In the U.S., the price point between SS and Aluminum is like $10 (it's a bigger gap in Canada and Europe.) I hope someday to get the Trekker versions for each BOB. It boils two cups which equates well to those Mountain House type freeze dried backpack meals. If I was buying Trekker size, I might be tempted to go aluminum.

Really looking forward to getting a lot of use out of this. We need to invest in a better piece of steel for our flint and steel fire-starting. The piece we have puts out sparks omni directional. You really want one which puts a spark straight out. Royston Upton did a great YT video on this subject: http://youtu.be/7C1u9u_kAmc

Bit by bit, row by row, that's how we make our prepping grow !

The Importance of Color in Plastic

I have a friend from my baseball world whom I admire. Geoff is one of the good guys: loves his family, makes a conscience effort to serve others on a regular basis, solid, dependable, trustworthy. Always seemed to have a lot of time to help others at the drop of a hat. 

Due to this apparent flexible work schedule, one day I asked him what he did for a living. He replied, "I sell color for plastic." Say what? He continued, "plastic in its raw form only comes in a base (such as white.) In order for you to have say, a green hamper, color has to be added to it. That's what I do. I sell color for plastic to manufacturers who make things out of plastic."

Wow. Who'd have thought? I mean really, look around your house or work. Everything you have didn't just materialize out of thin air: someone had to make it. If it's any color other than white or beige (example in fabric, there is naturally occurring raw cotton in beige), someone had to add color to it. Orange plastic drinking glasses? Someone added color to it before it was molded.

It was just fascinating to meet someone whose work is seemingly insignificant. I mean really. Color for plastic. Not rocket science. Not neuro science. Geoff isn't discovering the next cure for cancer, or creating the technology which will get us energy independent for pennies on the dollar. How easy it would be for someone (other than Geoff!) to go about life thinking their life has little to no importance--all they do is just sell color for plastic.

And yet, how bland our lives would be without color for plastic.

A long time ago I read a book written by Becky Reeve entitled The Spirit Knows No Handicap. She was a Mormon missionary who was involved in a tragic car accident and came out of it a quadriplegic. She wrote: "Some time ago I was listening to General Conference" (the semi-annual meeting for the LDS Church held in Salt Lake City Utah). "I heard President Spencer W. Kimball make these remarks:

       'We have paused on plateaus long enough. Let us resume our journey upward and forward.....Seemingly small efforts in the life of each member could do so much to move the Church forward as never before. " (Let us move forward and upward, Spencer W. Kimball, April 1979, www.lds.org.)

Becky continued, "These words sank deep into my heart. I wondered, what could a quadriplegic such as I do? I decided then to share my story, that life can be rich and rewarding if you want it to be, because the Spirit, knows no handicap."

Color for plastic. We take it for granted, accepting the benefits of it without a second thought. Geoff could go around like Eeyore, feeling as though his life's work makes barely a ripple. Yet his work provides him with the time to serve others on a daily basis, where he impacts hundreds and thousands, and changes lives for good. Our life and I'm sure the lives of others, have been richly blessed by knowing him. We learn from his example. Some, then pick up and pass the torch of service to others, increasing the ripple effect.

Your life is no different. The small things you do, done consistently, add up to a lifetime of character. Consistently offering rides to your son's baseball team members. Volunteering. Reading to your children. Dusting the furniture. Weeding the yard. Saying hello to the stranger at the grocery store. Paying off debt one dollar at a time. Choosing to forgive. 

Your actions matter. Your decisions matter. Your life matters. Thank you for all that you do and are. You are phenomenal.

DEHYDRATING

I was intrigued by the concept of making your own dehydrated meals, specifically individual servings which can be put in your bug out bags/72 hour kits. I don't have one of those fancy dehydrators, just an older Mr. Coffee round one. There's no temperature setting like the new ones have, so I've been a little intimidated by the whole idea of dehydrating.

I do have "Backpack Gourmet" by Linda Frederick Yaffe, and have seen a lot of youtube videos  on making your own. I've tried some of those YT videoed recipes, they're pretty good. But I've never tried dehydrating and rehydrating my own, until now.

It was pretty easy: I started dehydrating my leftovers ! 

So for example, the other night we had bowtie pasta with marinara sauce. It dehydrated overnight. Last night we had chicken cacciatore, so I shredded the chicken leftovers and dehydrated that.

I rehydrated both this morning. It rehydrated really well; not enough "sauce" made it back (they're leftovers after all), but enough to be edible.

I plan to reuse Capri Sun drink bags. You cut off at the top, rinse/wash out well, add dehydrated food, an oxygen absorber, either seal with a flat iron curler, an iron, or your foodsaver. Voila! Individual serving of meals.

It's such a great idea !! And it's food my kids will eat!

I'm also looking forward down the road, to buying freeze dried food in bulk, then repackaging it into individual servings. For these I will probably buy mylar bags and cut them down to individual serving sizes.

I'm looking forward to dehydrating tonight's meal leftovers: diced chicken with Louisiana style red beans and rice. Hope we have some leftover (it's a meal which goes fast in my house)!!

Now if I could only figure out how to successfully dehydrate Diet Pepsi.....<grin.>