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?

A Little Help From My Friends

A few weeks back, Ms. Tye sent Miss Gokey a text message informing me about a series called Doomsday Preppers that she thought I would be interested in watching. Here's something you either know, because you live with and/or in close proximity (within 30 miles) of me, or you never would have guessed because my posts are of the couch-potato variety:

***I don't have TV.***

I have Netflix and the internet, and that is all that I will ever need for the remainder of my life. Gosh, I hope both of these things survive the destruction of the Grid. (Hahaha.) The Doomsday Preppers website is a goldmine of fascinating stories about people who are succeeding far more handily than I am at preparing for  various disaster scenarios. You can find out which disasters are trending on the website, as well.  At the time of writing, pandemic is the favorite, although personally I hold with the 15%. You can watch video clips from various episodes, etc. What a wonderful feast for our eyeballs! Many thanks to Tye and Gokey.

In other (but similar) news, I was happy yesterday when Jodi announced that Anderson Cooper was doing a show on how to survive the end of the world.

Seeing as ***I don't have TV,*** I had to do some digging in the webospheres to find any information about the show, but my mad googling skills eventually landed me here. Oddly enough, he interviews cast members for...Doomsday Preppers! It's a small world after all.

As you can see, Anderson starts out in a mobile earthquake shack. Sadly, you can only buy a mobile earthquake shack if you are a government agency or part of some other special organization. However, it seems to me like you can hire people to fasten all your stuff down so that it can survive intact in an 8.0.

To sum up the remainder of what I was able to gather from the website, you should just go here, to the American Red Cross website, which will give you information that you already know from your real (if you're Miss Gokey) or vicarious REI classes: Prepare an emergency kit. Have food and medications on hand so that you can get by for a while (Red Cross suggests two weeks, others including James Wesley Rawles prefer much longer) without outside help. Know what disasters are likely to occur where you live.
Make and practice a disaster plan, and my personal favorite: take a class!

I resolve to count my blessings. I thought, "How splendid would it be to get my 8th grade Explorations class trained at CPR?" My own CPR certification was *FREE* from the School of Which We Shall Not Speak. The school nurse just threw a dummy down onto the floor and the next thing you know, I had a little card. (I want to challenge my current school nurse to do the same.) Once a quarter, I was able to leave my co-taught class to practice my CPR skills on a dummy in a drill! Yeah, the class costs $90 IRL. Boo!
But there are plenty of PDFs to laminate and other free resources through the Red Cross website.

As I leave you to enjoy the best night of the week as I watch Ken Burns and knit, I recommend that you take a minute to watch Anderson don his chemical and biological weapon suit, a less potato-chip-baggy version of which was featured in Phase 7, which I mentioned earlier this week.

Here's the link: http://backstage.andersoncooper.com/post/18094282206/chemical-biological-warfare-training-suit

Oooh! I almost forgot! There's also a GIVEAWAY! Good luck!

And many thanks to my friends (including Na'he for the flintknapping...coming soooon!) for the tips and recommendations! Keep 'em coming. >:+D