Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Didja see that this bout of Mexican swine flu is being renamed so as not to cause undue negative perceptions of pigs? True story. This is re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. There’s actually people in .gov somewhere being paid to come up with memos urging officials to refer to the swine flu by a non-pork identifier. Amazing, isn’t it?

Personally, Im not doing much differently except being more of a Nazi about handwashing. Oh, I did pick up a couple extra bottles of hand sanitizer to keep in our packs and vehicle. Other than that, Im just gonna keep a close eye on the news and see how things develop.
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Was in my local gunshop yesterday. They had a couple used Glock 17’s for sale…a 2nd gen. with 2 mags for $400 and a 3rd gen. in the box w/ 2 mags for $459. While I certainly don’t need more pistols right now I would like to have more. I have a figure in my head of how many I can reasonably expect to get me through the rest of my life and I haven’t gotten to that figure yet. Close, but not there.

On the bright side, my order from Stag that I placed in December is going to, I think, ship this month. When I placed the order I added two carbines at the last moment. I figured that by the time they showed up Id have figured out a way to pay for them and that theyd be worth a lot more by that time. I was right on both counts. I could turn them around for $1200+ ea. But I’m not going to do that. They’ll get test fired, zeroed in, accessorized, and then packed away for long term storage. Again, because I have a figure in my head about how many AR’s I can reasonably expect to get me through the rest of my life and I’m just not quite there yet.
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One of my vendors finally got in some more fired brass… I picked up several thousand .38, 9mm, .40 and .223. When it shows up I’ll load up a few thousand rounds on the big Dillon and tuck ‘em away for that upcoming rainy decade. Bullets have been trickier, but everything is available if youre willing to pay the prices. I’m cheap, so I hold out for better deals. But sometimes you gotta bite the bullet, so to speak, and pay if you want something. I do, though, derive great satisfaction from our stash of ammo. Here’s something to think about – imagine that it wasn’t ammo that was so hard to get these days, imagine it was something more critical like food or fuel. How would that change your life?

“Ammo will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no ammo.”..saw that elsewhere and thought how apropos it might be.
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On the personal side, this is my fourth week of going to CrossFit. No its not some christian-based workout program…although I suppose theres some bible-thumpers somewhere that have a workout regime based on ‘biblical teachings’. No, CrossFit is simply an exercise workout developed using techniques from former Nazi’s, Bataan death march coordinators, and ancient texts from the Inquisition. I can’t say my attendance rate has been 100% but its pretty close to five days a week. I’ve gone from an intense dislike of going to more of a mid-range burning hatred. It does, however, seem to work. The scale says my actual weight isn’t very different than it was before but my general shape and structure seems to have improved. I bring it up because if I ever do have to start hauling five-gallon fuel cans on an ALICE frame, quickly load/unload cases of food and ammo, or carry a pack and rifle for a good distance it would be nice to be able to actually be able to do so without having a heart attack or failing miserably. (Although having a heart attack in such a situation would probably de facto count as a miserable failure.)