The 3-Month AAR

In some relationships, the parties in the relationship sit down after three months and decide how it’s going, and in what direction. The Single Girl’s Guide to the Impending Apocalypse and I have existed together for three months, so I figured I would do kind of a tying-up-loose-ends post that tracks where we’ve been so far and where we’re headed from here. In the title, AAR stands for “after action report.”

Time is indeed running out. Whether or not the world ends, as the Maya may have predicted, in December 2012, this blog will either cease to exist or revert to its pre-apocalyptic state. I predict that readership will stay about the same. I think it’s fair to break the posts into a few distinct categories: TV/movies, reading, supplies and skills.

On the TV/movies front, I am currently working my way through season 2 of Supernatural at the advice of my family and friends. This show is delicious in its angst and teaches us next to nothing about the apocalypse. If you like scary shows, it’s good for teaching you the (real) history behind some of our society’s treasured urban legends and monster-hunting techniques. I have a great many episodes of Supernatural remaining to be watched, so I don’t plan on switching to/reporting on any apocalyptic TV in the near future. Lucky for us, I’ve reported on some TV about which I was tipped off at the last minute. I found some fun links on buddytv while searching for Supernatural images and then deciding they're probably all copyrighted, including "Which Supernatural Character Are You?" 

As for reading, I’m about halfway through Alas, Babylon. I don’t like to say “original” anything, because as a history teacher I know that there is always something else that came before. Now that I’ve safely set up my disclaimer, I will say that Alas, Babylon MAY be the original American post-apocalypse novel. MAY be. Written at the height of the Cold War, it envisions the trials of one neighborhood of people who are struggling to deal with the destruction of most of the U.S. at the hands of the Commies. It is fabulous. I hope that it is enjoying a sales surge in this, what may be the last year the world exists. After I finish, I plan to read One Second After at the advice of a former co-worker. While reading Alas, Babylon, I am also casually finishing the James Wesley Rawles books as well as Independence days. I stopped reading The Zombie Combat Manual when I got to the part with the workout. I bookmarked the workout, haven’t done it yet, and left the bookmark where it was. I have nothing new to report on the youth or YA fiction fronts.

Like Randy, the protagonist of Alas, Babylon, I’m stocking up, but I’m not sure I’m stocking up on the right stuff. I have a two-month supply of foods like soup, oatmeal, clif bars and protein powder. I also have an obscene number of first aid kits and an outsized supply of Band-Aids. If the apocalypse happens in summer, I will also have a large number of board markers to contribute to the cause. I have enough light to get me to a store where I can loot more light – I probably need to work on the light situation. At least I’ve invested in good food sources instead of Swiss chocolate.

As for skills, I’ll make a bulleted list. I now know how to do the following things which I did not know three months ago:

-          triangulate my position on a map

-          tie a few various knots

-          make 67 rows in a knit stitch

-          get ready to make pointy weapons out of rocks

I may have said it before, and now I will say it again. I wish I would have started preparing for the end of the world a LONG time ago. But I am happy to say that I am starting now, which is better than not having started yet.

On Friday after school, I casually mentioned “zombie apocalypse” as a student I don’t teach was walking by. She said, “That’s stupid. Zombies don’t exist. They never will.”

I said, “You’re right. But the apocalypse WILL come, eventually.”

I hope she takes my words to heart, but she probably won’t. After all, it IS spring break. 

All and Sundry

More for my fellow couch potatoes/global thinkers, with a shout-out for my cancer activists and campers, and the moment everyone's been waiting for: to see if I've thrown my knitting needles out the window. Haha.

First of all, in case you have not already clicked the link on facebook, National Geographic Education has an interesting post on their My Wonderful World blog about mental maps. Knowing that maps can deliver political messages can help us navigate (#1 on our Ten Essentials, remember) and can inform us about how the rest of the world thinks.

As you know, Americans are the ones freaking out about the end of the calendar this year. Maya themselves are not all that concerned about it. Other cultures have cast their lots, however, and gleaned their profits from the post-apocalypse marketplace. 

Netflix recommended the BBC series Survivors to me, and I enjoyed watching it. As fond as we Yankees are of our beloved conspiracies, this show goes above and beyond with the "it-was-an-inside-job" hypothesis. That's part of its charm. With endearing characters and a short first two seasons, I would definitely recommend it if you have to spend time laid up on your couch with a flu bug of your own. 

In fact, the flu bug seems to be the foreign market's favorite scenario for triggering the end of the world. Amanda was out of town for the weekend, and you know what that means: it's horror movie time! My horror movie choices this year, however, are affected by my desire to soak up as much hysteria as I possibly can. It is in that spirit that I chose an Argentine film called Phase 7 to keep me occupied on Friday evening. Coco and Pipi (who is pregnant) have been locked into their quarantined apartment with their neighbors. 

I appreciate this film because it's funny. More funny than scary. But interesting. One of the neighbors is himself a conspiracy theorist. There are bullets and cuss words and there is blood. There are also badly-translated subtitles and surprising plot twists. Not a bad way to spend an hour and a half. Due to the subtitles, however, it is not a good idea to continue to try to knit while watching Phase 7.

Knitting is more of a Happy Thank You More Please activity.

On Saturday, I suffered an unfortunate total meltdown which ended with my tent being thrown in the trash. Last May, my tent was part of the shelter plan for my (turned around) high school Key Club's Relay for Life event. In the chaos of taking down the shelters, two rain flies got switched so that this weekend, when Miss Gokey and I made a (somewhat) valiant attempt to set it up at Lake Mead NRA, the rain fly in my tent bag was 1/3 the size of the tent. In my haste to disassemble everything and abort the camping mission, I ripped the (admittedly probably partially dry-rotted) tent in at least three places. I proceeded to act like an infant for at least 15 miles after that.

I swore off watching horror movies for the remainder of the weekend. If you don't like indie-film-style EXTREME close-ups during pretentious dialogue, the painfully heartwarming Happy Thank You More Please will not be for you. I award it a Netflix three-star for "I liked it."

Here is my Happy Thank You More Please progress on my practice somethingorother:

It's not pretty, but whatever it ends up being is going to keep me warm, whilst people who have no experience with knitting needles are going to have to either freeze, or find a store that carries cozy things to loot. Just sayin'. On that optimistic note, I bid you adieu until Thursday, when hopefully a more focused post will appear. 

The Skills to Pay the Bills

Here's my theory about buying things: if you want it for a really, really long time and the day comes when you walk past it in the store and pick it up, you will not suffer buyer's remorse. Buyer's remorse is for impulse purchases, like an extra four boxes of Girl Scout cookies. It is in this spirit that I do not regret last Sunday's purchase.

You see, I've been spending a lot of time reading books and magazines and watching tv, when the actual purpose of this blog was to document my building a skill set for the apocalypse. I'm looking for a way to produce trade items and/or things to keep myself alive when the grid goes down for good. 

When I was a tweenager, I taught myself to juggle three tennis balls by reading a book. I was thinking of that, and my longtime desire to have one, when I picked up the Learn to Knit Kit at JoAnn whilst I was waiting for David's Bridal to open so that I could get some swatches as I plan my bridesmaid outfit for Ace and Jodi's wedding. True, if David's Bridal had been open when I arrived at 10:30 instead of keeping its doors locked till noon, I would not own the Learn to Knit Kit. But things being as they are, I was unwilling to spend the $4.16 + punitive damages of driving home and coming back later. 

ANYWAY...The question my loyal readers should be asking themselves now is, "SingleGirl, are you training for the apocalypse or training for retirement, with your aspiring-to-knit ways???" Now anyone who has seen the results of my Super Saturday attempts knows that I am the opposite of crafty. But anyone who knew me back on my 30th birthday, when I kayaked in the Colorado River, knows that I am also self-aware. So I also purchased a book called Learn to Knit in Just One Day. I chose Monday. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and suggest that the title of the book be changed to "Learn to Knit in Just One Year," unless it's a very, very long day!

Good thing I bought that book. The Learn to Knit Kit speaks in knitting language and does not provide translation. It's a very entertaining kit. You know how little kids color with GIANT crayons and write with GIANT pencils to develop their motor skills? Well, the kit includes GIANT knitting needles and GIANT yarn. They are pictured here with Amanda's regular-sized needles because that's right, folks...knitting is NOT just a retirement hobby! In fact, it's all the rage with the my-age DIY/etsy set. I am in fact behind the hipster curve in my demographic.

While watching the Medici miniseries on Netflix, I was able to successfully "cast on" 24 stitches, destroy them, and do it again. Twice. As for knitting and purling, well...

...it's three days later, and I haven't gotten there yet. But I'll try again now. And I will post photos of my sure-to-be hilarious results in an upcoming post on some other day. I anticipate that any income I might earn from knitting in the futuristic dystopia will not be enough to pay for the yarn for more knitting. So, for now I will plan on supplementing my knitting earnings by making deals with people who have fruit: if I can keep three pieces of your fruit in the air juggling them for ten minutes, I get to keep and eat them.

Where there's a will, there's a way!
Wish me luck.