09:59 – I took a rare day off yesterday from posting here. I ate too much, and wasn’t feeling very well. Today I’m back to normal.
When I took Colin out this morning, it felt more like early spring than early winter. It was 53.6F (12C) with bright sun and birds chirping. I’m sure we’ll pay for that in the not-too-distant future. We’re doing regular stuff today. Cleaning up the house, filling chemical bottles for science kits, and so on. We also need to wash and dry another batch of 2L soft drink bottles to fill with LTS food that’s still sitting in its original packaging. Not that I’m too worried about shelf life. Even in its original plastic bags, this stuff has a best-by date a couple years out. Once we get it transferred to 2L bottles with oxygen absorbers, it should be good for at least 20 or 30 years.
Speaking of which, I keep seeing articles like this one about droves of people abandoning prepping, presumably as a result of Trump’s election. I don’t doubt that a small percentage of serious preppers have in fact stopped prepping on the foolish (in my opinion) assumption that Trump’s election will make a difference in the long term. But I think most preppers are smart enough to realize that nothing has really changed. The long-term outlook is just as bad under Trump as it would have been under Clinton. Things may–and I emphasize “may”–not go downhill as quickly with Trump as President, but expecting Trump to magically fix everything is wishful thinking. At most, I think some preppers are taking a break after prepping frantically during the run-up to the election. And the prepping on the right is now prepping on the left, and the beards have all grown longer overnight. All along, there have been prog/lefty people prepping, but they made up a small minority of preppers. With Trump’s election, many leftie/progs have started prepping seriously in the expectation of a Trumpocalypse. They’re even going out and buying guns. Many people expected gun sales to fall off a cliff after Trump was elected. In fact, after a momentary pause, they’re soaring again. Black Friday was the biggest day for gun sales in history, and many of those buyers were almost certainly first-time buyers who voted for Clinton. Which is fine with me. Even progs have the right to defend themselves.