Saturday, December 19, 2009

MOSTLY READING

Greetings to my fellow preppers. I hope you are doing well. I got a few preps in Thursday morning and I am very happy about it. Every little bit helps. My computer has been completely uncooperative these last few days. It it is frustrating for me because I want to blog.

I have been reading a lot these past few days. I read a very interesting article on wood burning stoves. Wood heat stoves are heavily regulated and can get you fined if they are not up to specs. But there are no EPA regulations on cookstoves. You can cook on any damn thing you wish. Your cookstove is called your heath. That is an old English term. The cookstove was the heart of the home. One English King got low on money and decided to tax the hearths in the kingdom. The way it worked out was that the bigger the family the bigger hearth. Makes sense to me. But if you are thinking of installing a wood burner remember about the cookstove being exempt from federal regulations. Of course regulatons can change and do, but for right now your cookstove is exempt. And if you live out in the hardwood forest like I do you can cook fairly cheap. There is some labor involved but you get what you work for in this case.

I wonder about our pets. We keep a couple cats out on the porch. It is really a balcony but they can jump if they wish. The male has done it but the female seems to be satisfied with just the porch. But the male is meowing all the time. And he has water and plenty of food and his litter box is well tended. I can't think of why he would be meowing some damn much. I wonder about the powers of animal detection. When that big Tsunami hit over on southern Asia there were no animals or birds around. They had hit the road and gone inland. They KNEW what was coming. They didn't tell the humans, or at least the humans couldn't understand if they did tell them. But animals have a perception of these kind of events and I watch them and try to see what they are doing and my male cat is meowing all the time. Really makes a nuisance of himself. He gets fed about eight o'clock in the morning and about four o'clock in the afternoon. He likes canned cat food but there is always dry food out for him and the female. They have a den which they use infrequently, at least in his case. He mostly sleeps out on a canvass chair under a blanket my wife uses to cover him. He loves it. So with all the goodies he gets in life I wonder why he is meowing? A mystery. From about one o'clock in the afternoon until about six o'clck at night he meows like crazy.

I just read a novel by Lorenzo Carcaterra called Street Boys. It is about a true story of a couple of hundred kids who lived in Naples, Italy, and fought a German tank division to a stand still. There are a couple of adults written into the story but they are purely the fiction of the author and he says so in his introduction to the novel. Though it is a work of fiction the street kids really did fight those Germans. What a group of guys.

There is something supposed to happen that will be noised abroad in the land that will have the American public asking just what the hell is going on. It is supposed to happen today. So far it has eluded me, but I ain't got TV and I go to bed early. Maybe I will get something on it tomorrow. It would have to be quite shocking to get the general public to notice and take to the phones and the Internet to talk about it. I think Israel attacking Iran is most likely the event but I can't say that with any surety. But Israel wants to do it and they probably will sooner or later.

Gotta go cause my computer is telling me that things are not looking too good for publishing this post. Stay alive.

Michael

3 comments:

Western Mass. Man said...

Hi Michael.
I've been meaning to ask you how your cook stove was working out for you. I had an ex-coworker had bought an older home in RI in the fall, that had 3 cook stoves in it. One wood, one kerosene, and another kero converted to nat gas. I was going to do some work for him in exchange for the wood stove, but he found someone who pays top dollar for them and converts them to gas. I think he got something like $1500 for all 3. You came to mind when I found out he had them. Alas, guess it wasn't meant to be.

In regards to Israel attacking Iran, that will be a large tipping point. It will tie up the Gulf for months and oil will skyrocket. You think summer of 07 was bad, wait till this happens.
Last time it was investors buying oil futures, not lack of supply that drove the price of oil up. This time it will be lack of supply.
Although, I still hear occasional reports (rarely lately) of tankers being parked offshore waiting to unload, because the US reserves are full to capacity.
It makes me wonder, why we can't put crude into old dried up wells her in the US. Kinda like natural storage.
Probably some EPA regulation prohibits it.
Any rate, good luck on the computer.

Mayberry said...

I think those Israelis are at the point where they're tired of screwing around with "diplomacy". They've been humoring their left wingnuts, but now they're gonna quit fooling around and get serious. They know there will be little help from us, if any, they're rightfully nervous, and suspicious about Iran's intentions. Hope you get that computer soon...

Jacob Gittes said...

Hang in there... will call you regarding a computer fix.