Frank Herbert...

...is the author of the Dune Chronicles science fiction books,
which I have never read and so won't hyperlink. Frank Herbert says, "There is no real ending. It's just the place where you stop the story." Mr. Herbert and his quote were revealed to me when I ran an internet search for "quotes about endings," since it is the one-year anniversary of the apocalypse. I intended to shut down this particular blog until well after the start of 2014, when a new theme will reveal itself and I will do research about it and report my results on a URL different from but similar to this one.

Hopefully that theme will be something that lends itself well to a rock-climbing class.

Suggestions are welcome. In fact I will post a call for suggestions on my facebook page. Perhaps something nice and simple like, "I do things." It has been fun pontificating about the end of the world with my few loyal readers. I enjoy the fact that I have an internet archive of apocalyptic hysteria that hopefully some students of the future will be able to use when they look back on the beginning of the 21st century.

In the meantime, Happy Anniversary of Narrow Escape.

I am confident that I will be alluding to this blog on any future URL that I might use, and I look forward to seeing you there.

I'll keep you posted.

And if you happen to be in Northwest Indiana, I hope to see you at the Shiloh show tonight.

Bout time!

Now that November is over...

I'm going through all of the random photos I took. These are my carrots. This proves that it is possible to grow things in the ground, although not quickly enough to feed you if you wait until the apocalypse to plant your veggies.

Today's work

I am working on finishing my NaNoWriMo novel, which features a hurricane. I've never lived through a hurricane, so I took advantage of geometry class today to do some research.

This, for example.

Read it.

Hiatus

The blog, as you may have noticed, is on hiatus for the month of November while I cover a wide variety of classes across a range of grade levels and subject areas and while I also fall hideously behind at National Novel Writing Month.

If, in the course of my ramblings, I come across anything applicable to the topics of apocalypse, survival, renewal, etc., I will share it instantly using the app. Keep your eyes peeled.

And this...

Also this

Campfire - Warren Dunes, October 12

Photo of our partially-2x4 fire, which was unbelievably awesome once we got it going.

to be uploaded here, for the wood-and-feathers challenge.

Did someone say AARP magazine?

Nope, no. No one did, but I'm about to. That's right: my magazine problem is so severe that I'm now reporting to you on a story in the October/November issue of the magazine mailed out by the American Association of Retired Persons. At least I think that's what it stands for. I can't find it on the website. AARP is, incidentally, the nation's largest lobbying organization. Clearly, AARP votes on issues of importance to retirees.

Here are the hints from the magazine's "Reimagine Your Life" guide, which it seems is an advertisement for this book. I'm not saying that my readers' lives need to be reimagined. But I've been trying to reimagine mine, including making some flying leaps out of my comfort zone - you may have noticed all of the math problems I've been posting on facebook! AARP is talking specifically to their target demographic, retiring baby boomers. However, I found that the tips they offer are general and applicable to a wider audience. Namely, me. Maybe you, too.

Step 1: Reflect on the path that has brought you to where you are, and set goals for where you want your path to take you.
2. Establish or identify your "feedback panel," or your inner circle of people you can use as sounding boards. Unlike other systems that suggest setting up an inner-circle team, AARP also assigns roles to the team just like a good teacher assigns roles in a collaborative group. The roles are: catalyst, connector, taskmaster, and mentor.
3. This step is my favorite: open yourself to the unknown (in my case, SAT math). The magazine states that you can separate what you've always done from what you do in the future. AARP suggests "change your standard route home from work." Pretty tame. But it goes from there to things like opening a business. If you are a certain type of person, like I am, you can keep track of your feelings about your explorations in a "possibilities journal."
4. Next, choose from one of your newfound passions and follow it. Here's my favorite quote from this part: "Multiple paths lead to the goal of reinvention." I agree.
5. Remove the obstacles that are keeping you from reaching your goals, including everything that is part of who you used to be, but is no longer part of who you are. (I'm sorry, AARP, but I'm just not ready to dispose of the gigantic plastic tub labeled "World History teaching materials"...yet.)
FINALLY...
...drum roll please...
...more ellipses just for fun...
6. take action. "Take a step," says the magazine, "in a new direction. ANY direction."

Sounds good to me.

I have also learned from this article that retired people have an awful lot to think about. I guess we all do.

Good luck on your quest. If you are inspired, as I was, by the advice from our forbears (as I assume my readers are mostly members of my generation), let me know in a comment what new and scary activities you are participating in.

Did Someone Say Popular Mechanics?

Yes, someone did. It was me. As part of my magazine problem, I noticed the bright orange cover, the ring buoy, and the large-typeface words "SURVIVAL SECRETS," and I couldn't resist.

I had flipped through the magazine previously and noticed the horrible idea of smearing a peanut butter pattern on your jack-o-lantern and letting the squirrel carve it. Below, by the way, previously seen by you on twitter if you follow me (@OriginalGeoTrix), is the image of the muffins that I made from Whipped the Blog. I planned to make the muffins during the writing of my previous post.

Anyway, I read the cover story during my prep hour while subbing for world history class at Griffith High School. The "Survival Secrets" article was basically a list of 20 superweirdo* ways to die, some of which I'd never heard of (low head dams, shallow-water blackout, "cliffing out?"). I decided I would share with you my personal top 10 favorites, and then you can decide for yourself whether you would like to buy the issue. 

Superweirdo* ways that people die, and how to avoid them

1. vending machines/don't let them fall on you. You may want to avoid them all together. 

2. jumping off a dock into electrified water. / Don't swim. Ever. (I call impractical on this one.)

3. riding ATVs on pavement, flipping over, getting crushed./Ride ATVs only on ATV trails. Personally, I will not be riding ATVs. 

4. lawnmowers./while mowing, do not mow sideways across a steep slope. Mow up and down the slope. 

5. falling from ladders and scaffolds/THREE POINTS OF CONTACT applies here, as well. Remember.

6. crossing a stream/DO NOT CROSS if you throw a stick into the water and it moves faster than you can comfortably walk. 

7. cutting down trees/do not chop trees that stand at an angle. Personally, I will not be cutting down trees. 

8. getting hit in the chest by baseballs./don't get hit in the chest by a baseball. 

9. falling out of a tree while hunting/use a harness. Personally, I won't be hunting. At least, I'm not planning on hunting. Never say never. 

10. generators./Don't use generators indoors or overnight, keep generators at least 20 ft from the house so that carbon monoxide doesn't seep in through the windows. 

Also...avoid riptides. 

#6 is my favorite. I never knew that (ok, I never knew any of these things), and I think it's the one I can apply most directly to my life. Well, #6 and #1. Which is your favorite? Do you have any other superweirdo* ways to die? 

*"superweirdo" is a word I either just made up, or just reclaimed. If anyone you know and love has perished in any of the ten ways listed above, I sincerely apologize. I do not mean that your loved one was a superweirdo, just that the way s/he died was out of the ordinary, or atypical, if you will. 

I am now preparing to go camping. As always, although I believe I have prepared and prepared for survival scenarios, when arriving at a campsite I become aware that I've forgotten something vital. 

Like the marshmallows. 

Hopefully that won't happen this time. Wish me luck. 

Help My Pumpkin!

I lacked the foresight to take a photo when I arrived home Saturday afternoon to the sight of an overturned styrofoam plate on the sidewalk. As I closed the gate and inspected the package, I saw that a hole had been chewed through two layers of plastic bags and the plate. I flipped it over to find...

...a batch of my Granny's homemade brownies. Ruined! Now, if you know anything about my Granny's cooking and/or baking, you know that a ruined batch of brownies really is tantamount to a national emergency. I saw the culprit running for his life and screamed at him as I waggled my fist in the air and he bounded up the tree. I warned the evil, evil squirrel that Buddy (the border collie) was going to kill him on my behalf.

(Upon hearing about my reaction to the disaster, Granny promptly delivered another batch of brownies.)

Critters. Another little secret of the Midwest that seems benign until...in addition to the brownies on the back sidewalk...there's this in the front:

Also the work of the demon squirrel! I even BLEACHED the pumpkin before sitting it outside, but the squirrels don't seem to care. They keep coming back for more, and before you know it my pumpkin will be rotten and un-usable.

Thank goodness for the internet:
http://www.food.com/recipe/crock-pot-curried-pumpkin-soup-181975
http://whippedtheblog.com/2009/01/11/vegan-pumpkin-chocolate-chip-muffins/
http://hellyeahitsvegan.com/vegan-pumpkin-bread/
http://www.vegetariantimes.com/recipe/vegan-pumpkin-pie/

I say "thank goodness" because the pumpkin I'm going to rescue from the front porch and butcher WILL NOT BE THE LAST PUMPKIN!

It is my first October in the Midwest in 11 years (because the mid-Atlantic doesn't count as the Midwest), and durnit I will have a perfect pumpkin on the porch.

In the meantime, this is a truly apocalyptic scenario. It is truly unforeseen and rather devastating. This is why we must prepare, people! So that our food that we set out for ourselves will not fall victim to fluffy-tailed rats. I need your help, loyal readers:

How the heck do I keep my pumpkin away from the squirrels? 

Popular Mechanics (more about Popular Mechanics in an upcoming post) actually advocates this as a carving solution:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!? Ugh. 

I will leave you on a brighter note, however, my dear readers. Some new and different Halloween decorations that I haven't seen for years have surfaced in my parents' house. Check out this mummy that I painted when I was in middle school. 

Don't hate. Appreciate. ;)

Stubbornness Averted

Well, I was trying to delay posting until I managed to find the aforementioned Capitol Collection in a store near me. Luckily for my readers, something happened in the meantime, and I received a new survival kit in the mail, which I'll tell you about in this post.

Many months ago, my parents went to test drive a car to get a gift card. They actually wanted to test drive the car, but the dealership was busy, so they got the gift card and were sent along their merry way. The gift card was for an outfitter that happens to sell a Deluxe Survival Kit unlike any I have ever seen before. Now it is in my collection of survival kits, and all it cost was like an hour of my parents' time, and $3.50 in RT fuel cost according to mapquest.com.

I will tell you what it includes. It includes a signaling mirror. A map compass (I have other compasses, but this one has a base that you can set down on your map for more accurate orienteering), and a magnesium firestarter because a girl can't have too many of those. But that's not all! It also includes 12 fire sticks. Well, I already have the best fire-starters ever, which I made myself with Miss Gokey, but I'm very glad I looked up the contents of the kit, because I very seriously believed the fire sticks were some kind of high-energy protein bar-type snack. I was mistaken. I'm glad I didn't bite into one.

Further, the kit includes one poncho, two towels that are shrunk to the size of quarters (once unleashed, those towels are NEVER going back into the bag), and one tiny roll of duct tape, presumably enough to tape you up if a branch rips a 1/2" gash all the way up your forearm.

The best parts of the kit are two things that I don't have in my previous kits: glow sticks (! YAY! I let glow bracelets from the dot spot suffice for my homemade kits) and...

drum roll please...

a bug net. Which my dad immediately put on his head. I didn't get a photo of him, but here's a photo of ME wearing it.

It's cammo! Perhaps you'll see me wearing it in the woods of Michigan some summer soon. Just for the bug net, the packet was totally worth the absolutely $0 and 0 effort that I personally put into it. Thanks, mom and dad! 

In other news, I have FINALLY finished reading 1491. You can find my rather abrupt review on goodreads here. I think. Now, since it's October (my favorite month), I'm reading Libba Bray's The Diviners. 

Official Entry

You will recognize some of the images below which I have previously uploaded onto past posts. Put together, they form my September contribution to the Artastic Challenge Blog here on blogger. The criteria were that the entries be happy, colorful, whimsical, and/or fun.

Much better than SAT practice questions. :)

What fun and happy experiences are you having this fall?

Rants and Reviews

I spent my morning joyriding around to every store in a ten-mile radius looking for some Cover Girl promotional nail polish for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The movie will come out on November 22nd, and I'm very excited about it. After hitting 3 Walgreens stores in 2 different states and coming up empty-handed and bare fingernailed, I came home and googled the collection and saw this ad. Now I'm convinced that the collection has been released, that I saw it in the store and didn't know what I was looking for. It's called the Capitol Collection, and I don't care that Cover Girl is part of a big international corporate conglomerate. Now I know from the ad what to look for, so I'll hit the makeup trail again soon.

How do I know about Cover Girl's evil corporate status? My new previously-mentioned buycott app. I took advantage of my time in the stores to shop for some cruelty-free facial scrub for after my Neutrogena runs out. I absolutely love Neutrogena products, but according to buycott, Neutrogena contributes large amounts of money to Scott Walker. (Pay attention to the "transform education" priority.) I know this because I joined the "Boycott Scott Walker Contributors" campaign. I also joined one of the cruelty-free campaigns, one of the anti-GMO campaigns, and the "We Own You" campaign. In conclusion: I can't ever buy anything at any store ever again.

That's an impractical plan.

I will try to choose the lesser of the evils. I literally scanned EVERY brand of facial soap on the shelves. (Yes, I know Walgreens contributes to Scott Walker, too. Baby steps!)

Pictured below is the only cosmetic product that was cruelty-free and didn't give Scott Walker money.

Look at those prices! I have contacted my friend Chris to see if his wife Angie's company, YB Urban?, features facial cleanser. In the meantime, I found a web page that lists 6 recipes for how to wash your face with food. 

When you can't trust Walgreens, who can you trust? Pinterest. That's right. Inspired by Kristy Phipps's Pinterest Sunday photo, this was breakfast today:

Pumpkin french toast FTW! Frying apple slices covered in pancake batter wasn't half bad, either.
Ms. Whitaker will note that the taffy apples have appeared at the grocery store, as well.

Coming soon: the actual artastic challenge entry for September, and me expounding on my local hometown libraries.

Just another grocery trip

Autumn in the Midwest art challenge preview

I'm only calling this "art challenge preview" because as I downloaded the photos for it, I realized I want to use them in the September Artastic "whimsy" challenge. We'll see what happens. In the meantime...

One of the great causes for celebration in my life at the moment is the fact that it is fall. This past week, the "Adam @ Home" comic strip, run in the Northwest Indiana Times, has featured an Adam obsessed with all things pumpkin. I kind of feel like Adam.

Don't get me wrong. The desert has seasons. One of the things that used to bother me about non-desert-dwellers was their denial of the fact of seasons in the desert. In the fall in the desert, temperatures during the day and evening fall to the dry, comfortable 90s, and the nights cool off. They don't cool off enough to cause hoodies or hot chocolate at football games, but there IS a distinct change. It's not like fall in the Midwest, though. Not at all. Many was the year that I toyed with the idea of flying back home just for some fall foliage, and my friend Caryn once mailed me some leaves from Buffalo, NY, because she knew how much I liked them. Last fall, on Halloween weekend, I had the opportunity to fly home for Jodi's wedding shower, and I'm pretty sure that that trip had A LOT to do with my decision to ultimately move back to the east side of the Mississippi River for the foreseeable future.

I know all you (two) readers out there in the desert are missing me, but I see daily in your facebook updates that life is going on just fine. Please see below still more justification for my transcontinental relocation.

I'm anticipating having gainful and meaningful, if only part time, employment any day now. One of those opportunities required a pre-employment drug test. After the drug test, I decided to hunt for some geocaches on the nearby bike path, and this is what I found. This photo, at least, is legit. It's very near Hammond, where I live. The remainder of the photos are from southern Michigan, where there are, like, farms and stuff. So the rest of them don't really reflect where I live, just like my photos of Zion NP back in the day didn't reflect WHERE I lived, but I believe they capture the spirit of the season here in the Midwest pretty well. 

Yesterday was my dad's birthday, so we went apple picking with Uncle Michael and Aunt Ruth.

The apple trees

The barn at Shafer Orchards. 

I call this guy "jack-o-head," and I'm pretty sure that you'll definitely see him on my challenge blog entry. 

squashes

The resident farm dog, Ivy.

Perhaps a future blog post can celebrate autumn HERE in Hammond and the surrounding towns. In the meantime, this begins a season of apple-and-green-tomato-based diet for me. Please feel free to send me links to your own blogs, where you have posted photos of what fall is like where you are. 

Bon appetit. 

Beware the Internet!

This brief post is a warning against all things online.

Please understand that I would NEVER discourage you from using the internet, because if you use the internet less, you are less likely to read my blog!

Speaking of reading my blog, I noticed that I had a phenomenal number of hits on Tuesday after posting my Opportunity Cost post. Surprised at my newfound popularity, I examined the traffic sources and found that the majority of hits were from vampirestat. Notice it's not hyperlinked.

Guess what else exists? Zombiestat. That's right. There's a bot site with "zombie" in its name that seeks to give your blog a virus if you click on the traffic source.

So, I am here to perform the valuable public service of warning my fellow bloggers: DO NOT CLICK ON THE TRAFFIC SOURCE FOR ZOMBIESTAT! Or vampirestat.

I learned this intel from a google search that led me to a blog right here on the Blogger platform, Spam Spoiler.  Sadly, Spam Spoiler's most recent post went live the Monday after the supposed apocalypse during December 2012.

Poor lonely zombie bot.


The "Happiness is Fleeting" zombie by Kerry Callen illustrates the "lonely zombie bot" point.

What else happens on the internet?

Buzzfeed. iOS7 causes the apocalypse.

In other news, I have a new app for my ancient android. It's called Buycott. I'm obsessed with it. I now know how many of the ingredients in my lunch of Green tomato + fakin bacon BLT were produced by companies that use GMOs.

You can choose whatever causes you want. But if Buycott tries to get you to click onto Zombiestat. Don't. I'm off to the store now, to scan barcodes with my phone.

Opportunity Cost

"The word 'opportunity' in 'opportunity cost' is actually redundant. The cost of using something is already the value of the highest-valued alternative use. But as contract lawyers and airplane pilots know, redundancy can be a virtue. In this case, its virtue is to remind us that the cost of using a resource arises from the value of what it could be used for instead."

David R. Henderson

Opportunity Cost

The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics

Library of Economics and Liberty

2008

This will be a post about my cousins, and about opportunity cost. 

If you are a loyal reader, you already know that 1.5 weeks ago, I spent the weekend with my BFF and her family down Indianapolis way, for the purpose of celebrating Alex's birthday with him for the first time in his life. He turned 11. While I was walking out the door, I got a text message from a cousin inviting my family to a barbeque. I declined for myself (obviously), but my parents attended the barbeque and came home with this:

This is a disaster clean-up kit. It's so official that it says "gift" in two languages. Besides an unfamiliar-to-me bottle of surface cleaner and degreaser, the contents are a hard-bristled scrub brush, a bottle of bleach, rubber gloves, and some plastic bags. It came with a box with the same logo on it, which contained a broom and a mop. 

I would not trade playing Fruit Ninja on a larger-than-life screen, geocaching with Alex, or grading papers with my BFF for anything. Even for this bucket. That's not to say that I don't wish that the barbeque (which I keep misspelling, but now I'm attached to my own special spelling of barbeque) had happened on a different weekend. I can assemble my own bucket, albeit without the super official logo. 

In case you don't remember your basic Wealth of Nations (free for Kindle!), the official bucket and the time spent with my cousins is the opportunity cost for my miniature road trip to Indy. 

A different cousin of mine recently posted the following wisdom on facebook:
"The reason why nothing ever happens is because people are too worried about what might be better." Pasting his quote from his facebook timeline totally messed up my font, but is legal because it is less than 10% of his facebook timeline, and I am also going to encourage you to support his photography business by inviting you to like his facebook page. 

As I try to find gainful employment, this concept haunts me because I may be passing up the opportunity of a lifetime and substitute teaching hoping for a call from elsewhere that may or may not ever come. I have the sudden urge to watch Sliding Doors and read Gut Symmetries.

However, as you know, I still have upwards of 200 pages left in 1491. 

What are the opportunity costs in your own life?

It's A Disaster

This post title is the name of a movie that Amanda recommended to me.

It is available to watch on Netflix. Netflix freaks me out. It's like, "Who are you? Where are you? What is your name? Do you have a profile?" These are things Netflix doesn't need to know about me. It already knows too much, like I've been enjoying watching season 1 (the only season Netflix has) of The New Girl. 

You know what's NOT on Netflix? 1492. It's not ANYWHERE. Not even at Video Escapades, where I'm considering applying for a job. LMS if I should apply for a job at Video Escapades. I'm concerned about 1492 because I'm having a hard time getting through the book 1491 (decided to take a photo so you can see my artistic blogging process, but mostly to have a nice thumbnail for the FB post), just like I had a hard time getting through 1493, which was by the same author. So, I figured...movie...1492. I remember that it came out for the 500th anniversary of the fateful voyage. It was then apparently swept under the rug so that future generations would actually have to read 1491 and 1493.

None of that is what this post is about. I am hopped up on expectorant.

It's a Disaster.

A group of friends meets for a couples' brunch. While they are getting ready to eat, events unfold and interpersonal drama is revealed. Then the lights go out, and the neighbor Hal appears in a HazMat suit. Hal only appears in the film for about 20 seconds, but he's the character I relate to the most. He informs the group that some dirty bombs have hit downtown, and everyone is going to die. The remainder of the film chronicles how the friends deal with this devastating news.

Amanda says, "Fairly entertaining ideas for the end of the world. Not sure how realistic, though."

I would agree with that. It's the kind of quick banter-y humor that reminds me of Sideways. I don't know why I think this, but I think that if you liked Sideways, you'll like It's a Disaster. I did not regret spending 1.5 hours of life watching it.

Do you have any more film recommendations for me? I will be happy to watch and review them, and to shout you out on the Memoir of Narrow Escape. In the meantime, I shall be engrossed in the drama that was ... 1491.