Thursday, August 24, 2017

The real survival guide for hurricane Preparedness.


Disclaimer I am an Amazon Affiliate and I have posted some links to products I wish I had invested in Pre-Hurricane Katrina
.... Oh I hate this time of year!Hurricane Season.

This is not the story of someone who stayed behind during Hurricane Katrina. I was a total scaredy cat but I lived so close to the coast only 3 blocks when hurricane Katrina hit. Although it hit Waveland Mississippi at the eye of the storm. I was living not to far away.........
.... Yes my nephew dropped some syrup on my keyboard so just deal ok..................... I know most of you probably thought the eye of the storm hit New Orleans because they had such a bad time. New Orleans is actually 2 hours from the eye of the storm and I lived in Gulfport Mississippi. Waveland is about 20 min from Gulfport.
In reading about hurricane Harvey I saw this. " where an official had warned those who opted to stick out the storm to write their Social Security numbers on their arms for body identification. " I was at work at the local Hotel we had people calling in from every direction trying to make reservations. The worst thing about a hurricane is you have no idea what is going to do. So my boss said no reservations because they did not want people making reservations and then canceling them or forgetting to cancel as the storm changed directions. I was telling people that they needed to go north but if it is projected straight for us they dont really want to evacuate to the north.
Most people evacuating don't have time to really prep but as long as the electricity is on its best to make ice and dehydrate foods so you will have something cold to drink and something sustainable to eat...........

Here is a solar dehydrator that is great for camping or more serous prepping.\No you dont have to be a doomsdayer to prep. My step Mom loved to dehydrate bannanas ans My mothers favorite past time was to make beef jerky so back in New Mexico we did this alot I am not too sure how well this would work in southen MS I mean it is hot but the humidity is so high just not to sure it would dry out.


Hurricane Prep Kit
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If you live in high humidity you may have to use this

Although it is not too great if the power is already out I can give you an option for saving your meat rather than letting it spoil in your deep freezer because the smell of a an entire deep freezer that has gone bad is no bueno!!!.... And cleaning it out takes a certain kind of gas mask Lol



What the Hurricane preparedness guides wont tell you. If you decided to run for it LORD please don't wait till the storm is upon you. There is a good chance you and your vehicle will not make it to safety and it really does not take that much rain to really mess up your car. Also the Gas stations really get Gouge happy, Hiking all the prices to 3-4 bucks a gallon and often times run out of gas.

I am completely serious when I say fear is one of those things that does not hit people until it is upon them then there really is not a lot you can do once the storm is upon you. Why should you go Hurricane winds probably wont blow your house away but a tornado might and you can not flee if your car if flooded in.

I literally Pawned everything I had computer laptop and speakers monitor. It only got me 300 bucks then I had to cry , beg, plee to get my Mother to leave too. Well, she was pretty upset that she evacuated and that the house was still there when she got back.I thought that was funny she was mad about it.

If you still live in NOLA you prob need to invest in one of theses Kayak's just in-case !!

When we finally made it to my aunts I called my Grandma and told her happy Birthday because it was her birthday on Aug 28 2005. We got a pretty rough sleep on the floor but it was better than in the hurricane torn home back in Gulfport. There was a 30 foot surge and that means that the water rose 30 feet over the normal seal level about just over the first story of the hotel I was working at at the time the walls in that hotel were built to collapse easy so as not to allow the whole structure to come down with the walls.

You should have seen the looks on my sisters faces after Hurricane Katrina Christmas Gifts and birthday presents I guess I had a smidge of PTSD because I got them emergency car kits lol with all the first aid needs you could think of.
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Oddly I did not catch too much flack but they were pretty expensive and no one really has any left after that hurricane season was over.
We spent a lot of time sitting in the car charging up the phone and listening to music and news. Fat Cat Preparedness kit has chargers flashlight and all the techie goodness you will need to be all prepped!

The news would not say a dam thing about the conditions in my home town because New Orleans looked sooo bad..................
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/23/us/hurricane-katrina-statistics-fast-facts/index.html of our home town because of the levy's breaking in NOLA and all of the horrendous things that went on during and before Katrina. The police came in and took everyone's weapons to ensure the safety of the people left unfortunately that just left the elderly and those that could not outrun the police defenseless to the ones that could and did hide better.

When we came back we stayed at my Mom house for 2 almost 3 days before the power was restored while it was still overcast it was not that bad but once the sun came out it was sooo hot and oddly I still wanted my coffee in the morning. We used the old school boil and pour it over a filter method with one of those old school coffee makers from the 50's we were lucky to have propane at Moms. But if you dont you may want to get one of these.

As soon as the storm is over you will probably taking pictures of the damage and moving limbs while you are out there you can forrage for foods of the natural variety.


Once you dry them you can grind them up and add them to your personal apothecary

It is better to be safe then sorry if you are in a rural area you will need this to keep the snakes and other rodents back while you are clearing a path out to the shed and back yard you may notice all your trees are leaning heavy in one direction the storm winds can really do a dooesy on your plant life. Here is my fav tool for tall brush and scarey areas. Well if your in the city you may need it for other reasons like pesky vandals but dont bring a knife to a gun fight lol


My Mom (RIP) lived right across the street from the fire department so we went to the fire dept to get MRE's and anything they had to offer because unlike this scaredy cat all the rest of the family stayed and we had no idea if they were ok or not. This was my first time to try and MRE and it had some kind of activated charcoal in it that automatically heated itself up lol so even thought there was no electricity and all our food was gone we got some hot meals.........


It was nothing but vandals run a muck when I got back Gulfport to my house the one closet that was in the center of the house I decided was the best place to put everything of importance that I could not fit in the car like the vacuum and all my school books purses and coats Unfortunately when that wind and rain and 30 foot surge came down on the top of the house my painting that were WIP and everything old love letters , pen pal letters were all destroyed. Well that is not completely true ..... My ass hole land lord took it upon his self to go ahead and come on in and start throwing out my things. All my high school letters and pen pal letters were gone I dont know if he just threw them out or if he saved them for a rainy day.Well that's ok what some people consider trash is other peoples treasure and family air looms.

Camille was pretty serious people had no way of knowing just how bad it would be back in the day SO sometimes the storm would come in and it was a lot worse than it had anticipated.

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/hurricane-camille/

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("Katrina - Waveland, Mississippi. Hurricane Katrina came roaring towards the Mississippi Gulf Coast on the morning of Aug. 29, 2005, bringing devastating 120 mph winds, a nearly 30-foot storm surge and 55-foot sea waves.") https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/hurricane-katrina-ten-year-anniversary-mississippi/ reference for photo and quote


All of the furniture was ruined and not just ours but all of our neighbors had all of their furniture out by the road to be dragged away and it took us a week to get back to our home. Even then they said we could not go and well we could not wait any longer even after waiting 2 days the day the storm hit and the day after when we got back there was not electricity on so we waited and we all sat on the porch on the porch swing in our bathing suits with fans and trying to stay cool there were all kinds of new bug species that we had never seen before but it had to be 120 inside the house without the AC in southern Mississippi. that got blown in with the storm. All moms candles had melted and my painting that were watercolor had evaporated and just completely melted and sweated away there was only the pencil sketch left.
Months went by and FEMA came though we went back to give the land lord the last bit of rent we owed him and he had given away our broke down car that got water logged at the previous hurricane that we chose not to evacuate for. There in the distance there was my grandmas Orea Cookie jar that she gave me as my first house warming present. She was still alive and he told me he was going to give it to his little cousin and so I let it go. But I sure do miss that now that she is gone. I cry when I see one at someone else's house.





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What a horrible feeling when you have no job no home and everything you could keep fit in the back of your SUV. Every single store on the way back to our house had been completely destroyed from the wind, rain and vandals took everything. These cute cute Apocalypse tv shows have no idea just how fast shit is gone. Without the government there to step in with help I am sure that the reality is that there is only a few days of food in a city to last and if it is not shipped in then you will be starving if you have not prepared.
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/26/us/hurricane-harvey-landfall/index.html Disclaimer I am an Amazon Affiliate and I have posted some links to products I wish I had invested in Pre-Hurricane Katrina

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Should I go to College.


It is a hard decision today to decided if college is for you it is a large amount of money and time that you may or may not turn out successful in the field you choose. Even worse what if you are successful but you just hate your job. Then you are stuck in your dreaded life choice because you have to pay the horrid costs of attending. If you are really smart you will do the research and find a way to pay. If you are greedy You will just jump right in so you can get that extra income every 9-10 weeks. Which can really help but is only a temporary solution. I took the courses and for my associates they were 100% a waste of time every course I took I could have easily taken the courses on youtube for free. Which btw is how I figured out how to pass the courses by watching harvard videos online free on youtube. If it wasnt for those few jobs I had at the foreign owned hotels I could not have even understood the lesson of the foreign professor that helped me pass my courses. Seeing all the racism today is a super downer. Seeing the people who think they know what they are supporting when they go to certain churches as well as organizations I cant believe how blind people are to the truth that slaps them in the face every day. What does this have to do with college well the only real thing I learned in college was the importance of not being a racist and I never have been because I was bullied as a child and I can not stand that kind of hater mentality. But when you work all week and then you show up to the online school board and you have to answer completely stupid ethics questions that you have known the answer to since you were 3 years old and your paying 1,000-1,200 dollars for this course you pretty much are going to say what ever you think the teacher will give you an A for. That is unfortunate but some times your GPA is more important than what you believe. I have some pretty stong feeling about some things. But when you are the last person posting on a ethical question and you know you will have to get 3 to 4 really good comments in to make the grade you may choose to be the devils advocate to step out of your shoes and put yourself in someone elses shoes especially if you know your teacher is going to grade you a certain way. This is why you should go to college because you have to learn to think outside the box. I am glad that sometimes as I was looking at the assignment and seeing what everyone else wrote I decided to take the opposite side. For example although I am completely against data mining and I will not even give a pharmacy my info for a medication price quote when I am in screaming pain. I will and have literally drove 45 min and waited another hour for my medication because I am against data mining. But when no one can see the good in it then I feel the need to share my personal experience and this is where people get really bent. I said, As a sales associate my boss did use data mining to obtain good leads off the internet which helped me make some sales and helped me feed my family. Of course I made it sound like hypothetical famliy of 5 that needed the food not just little ol me that wanted to go buy canvases and art supplies. But if that is what people need to not be so narcistic as to think if my phone rings again by another sales associate bill collecting skag I am going to completely freak out on them. Do you really have to go work as a telemarketer to know that it is not right to scream at people trying to make the ends meet. Well education may not change your mind you may be like the other hags in my class that completely tore me down and ripped me a new one for even suggesting that people need to make money. Now through EdX you can learn many things for free. I am so excited to say that there are many colleges that are letting people get educated if they want to for free. In my mind this is a sign that the people of the higher universities can see that people do not want to work hard anymore they want everything handed to them. So basically they are giving it away for free to those of us willing to learn.... I am ok with that People like me who feel that mediocre jobs can be replaced by robots will make it completely obsolete. If a doctor can be replaced during brain surgery to ensure that your doctors hands are not shaking due to the coffee they drank earlier that day none of our jobs are safe. Thats ok because its just a few years out for completely different thinking sustainable enegy is attainable, TESLA and there are many other ways that we can survive without having to struggle for years before being able to see what we want to do because the course work is free and we can take the courses with no worry of failing out and not having the money to pay to get back on track. In short yes go to school and find what you are passionate about.