09:32 – Barbara is leaving mid-afternoon to head down to Winston. She’s staying at her sister’s house tonight and heading home tomorrow afternoon after running errands. It’ll be wild women and parties for Colin and me. Or it would be, except that Lori, our USPS carrier and fellow prepper, keeps an eye on us when Barbara’s away.
One of Barbara’s friends from the historical society volunteers is just in the process of moving to Sparta from New Jersey. Her husband’s family is originally from Sparta, and she and her husband have actually owned a home here for years. She’s semi-retired from teaching and her husband is retiring, so they decided to relocate here. They have a son, aged 15, and a college-age daughter. They’re doing the same back-and-forth that Barbara and I did, trying to get the Sparta house ready to move into and their house in New Jersey ready to sell. The difference is that instead of it being 60 miles between their old house and the new one, as it was for Barbara and me, it’s almost ten times that far to New Jersey. Right now, she’s living here, camping out in one room, while her husband is living in New Jersey, taking care of stuff there.
She dropped by our house yesterday and visited for an hour or two. Barbara of course gave her a tour of the house. After she’d left, I asked Barbara if she’d showed her our food storage areas downstairs. She had, and of course Barbara got the usual comment about how if things turned bad they’d show up at our door. Barbara said she’d also said that her husband wanted to build their food storage and so on, so it sounds as though we’ll be getting to know another family of preppers. The husband and son are also shooters, and the son is excited about getting started hunting down here.
For future reference:
o A 3-liter soft drink bottle can hold 5 pounds plus an ounce or two of white flour if you tap it well to pack it down.
o A 1.75 liter Tropicana orange juice bottle can hold 3 pounds plus an ounce or two of corn meal if you tap it well to pack it down.