World Without Oil- Week 7

(This is a fictional account from the fantastic alternative reality game World Without Oil join in! )

June 18-24, 2007

Summer Vacation! What better way to kick-off summer vacation than with a big barbeque?! Because of some long black-outs, we're getting worried about the meat in our extra freezer. We consolidated to 1 freezer/fridge since the power has been spotty- unplugged the extra freezer & fridge & took out the massive stores of lamb, chicken breasts, steak & ribs and fired up the grill! We called friends and invited them to come & hang with us-- bringing whatever sides they might have to contribute, firewood/charcoal, drinks, or just their hungry tummies.

The kids played in the backyard on the swings. and we just hung out, ate and visited. Of course, then I saw the "worth its weight in gold" post and wish we had thought to preserve some of this meat instead of blowing our stash. We still have a "normal" amount left and we might look at preserving that meat. Luckily my mother-in-law is a culinary instructor with lots of experience in smoking and making lox... maybe it's time for a "SMOKE-OUT" next week! She had been ramping up for a doomsday event for a while now and does have many useful survival skills. I'm wondering now if it would be better to try to get our family into the same area and work more together.

We even hung out with our neighbors-- whom we tend to avoid because of their idiosyncracies, but between Rodrigo's mechanical skills & Mark's massive store of "junk" from big garbage day and his ideas & passion for making things, it's been good to connect with them. They even started talking about what kinds of generators & windmills they could build from old car parts for our 3 houses to use. We might put something up on Marks' tree house (that we hated because it looks into our backyard) with cables that go to our 3 houses for "emergency" energy if we keep having long black-outs.

How serious is this thing anyway? Some areas of the country sound like some kind of Mad Max scenario-- and then there's rumors about some kind of "incident" with Canada. I don't know what to think. Here, it's just black-outs. People helping each other where they can... but it's pretty low-key overall. Black-outs we can handle. High gas prices (in this part of the country- significantly higher than other parts), we can also handle. I used to wait in line with gas at $3.70+/gal BEFORE the oil shock.

We've been reading more. The library is a popular hangout, as people take advantage of their cooling system when it's available. They've been offering puppet shows & animal experiences as part of their summer reading program for kids. They usually have family movie night, and a concert on Sundays and this week, the performers did an acoustic performance because the power was out... not really a big deal.

I'm glad our cranking flashlights also charge our cell-phones. Now if only I had better coverage at our house! Glad we have a landline at the house, though-- some of our friends couldn't receive calls during black-outs because they only had cordless systems. Most people are buying at least 1 phone with a cord... see- sometimes it pays to hang on to the same phone from the 80's! -grin-

Next week, I'm holding the kids' summer album-making camp and have a very full house. They are all excited and have a lot to write about. I can't wait to see how it goes. It's also nice to have a meaningful activity for kids that doesn't require power.

I've had a lot of people approach me about sorting & organizing their photos. It seems that with the slow-down, many people are starting to get around to stuff they had put-off for a while and they are looking forward to meaningful, quiet activities. Sales are up. I just hope that there aren't crazy delays in shipping products...

My husband's long-time friend in Berkeley has always had a corn-oil-burning car. I'm wondering if that would be worth implementing just to save some $$. It seems like a good idea- but is it practical? I mean- I don't know how long this will last and it is a lot of work and we didn't even drive our car the last 4 weeks (amazing what you can accomplish when you set your mind to it). Of course, we would probably save a few hundred dollars just during our trip to Southern California next week. That might be something worth looking into. I just wonder-- if everything really does go totally doomsday... I don't grow corn... and I certainly don't make corn oil... or safflower oil or any of those things... and if we need to transport corn oil from the midwest... does that really save anything in the long run? Sure, *WE* stand a lot to gain as a family suimply because it's cheaper & of course it's better for the environment as a whole, but does it really solve the problem? I dunno- I'll have to think about it...

The kids & I are planning to do a little project after the summer album camp-- we found plans to make a small windmill to learn about power. We have the crank radios & stuff & they wanted to see how it worked, so we're going to try some different ideas just to see how things work (because I don't dare let them take apart the ones that are working!) and because we're starting to run-out of batteries for the "regular" flashlights and with all of the black-outs, I'm not going to keep buying them. So we're going to hook-up these little gadgets to little flashlights & stuff to see if we can get them to work-- who knows... maybe we can build a BIG windmill this summer if it really does go all doomsday on us!

PS-- I LOVE the solar lights & alternative energy gadgets that we got last year-- they've been really helpful and we've even started bringing them in at night to use as lights-- putting them out before we go to bed so they catch the morning's rays in the back yard (because we just worry about people taking them since they are so useful.)

A long post again-- I've been saving up for a week after all! (I figure it's better to post it all at once than to do daily updates).