Rocket City Bloggers: Year Long Blogging Challenge Week 8

This week's topic: What staple foods stay stocked in your fridge?

Clearly I've been slacking a bit on these, but there's no time like the present so I'm jumping back in.

On any given day you can open our fridge and find:

Rocket City Bloggers: Year Long Blogging Challenge Week 3

This week's topic: The apocalypse is upon us! What do you stock up on?

I always tell people that when the zombie apocalypse hits, my inability to slaughter an animal means I'll be going vegetarian. Which may also be a problem given that my understanding of gardening is pretty much "shove seeds in ground, water". And I won't have google to advise me.

So my survival plans comes down less to stuff than people. I have friends who can hunt (and butcher). Friends who can grow things and heal things. Friends who can make things and fix things. I figure if we band together, we'll have a fighting chance, but we'll need a few things.

• Lots of stockpiled food to carry us through while we set up our own resources
• Hand powered tools, rope, nails, and screws for making shelter and traps
• Iodine tablets to purify water
• Backpacks, space blankets to allow for moving and sleeping outside
• Knives, sharpening tools, guns (with ammo) to hunt and (if necessary) for protection
• Notebooks, writing utensils to keep records of things like growing seasons
• Needle, thread, fabric to make/mend clothes, tents, etc
• A reliable set of pots and pans, a bowl, cup, and spork for each person, a dutch oven
• Mason jars and large stock pots to allow canning
• Seeds and fertilizer to grow food
• A large cart or wagon to store supplies/serve as a shelter
• A cow/ox/horse to pull the cart
• Books on any of the above subjects

Of course, it would probably also be best to get into shape and learn a few things first. So here's hoping the apocalypse is a long way off yet.

Rocket City Bloggers: Year Long Blogging Challenge: Week 2: Why Huntsville?

This week's topic: When did you come to Huntsville and why?

We moved to Huntsville in April of 2007. (Six years this month!) I had recently graduated with my masters and was looking for work. The hubby and I knew we wanted to look outside of California, so I was crawling job sites with very little regard to location, focusing instead on the kind of work I wanted to do. (Very few companies were advertising for product design engineers) Tucked away in a corner of the internet, on a small head hunting website, I found a listing for a job that looked just about perfect. Located in Huntsville, Al, a town I had never heard of.

Convinced by City Data that this was a real town and buoyed by an excellent phone interview, I flew out for an in-person interview and looked at rental houses. I received an offer and 3 weeks later, the hubby and I pulled up in front of our rental house to wait for the moving truck. (For the record, moving across the country, sight unseen, so your spouse can start a new job? That's love folks.)

So, in a nutshell, for my career. But also for the low cost of living and the excellent future job opportunities (two engineers do just fine in this town). We fell in love with the lush greenery, the lively arts community, and the cows who live just down the street. We're here for the long haul and we love exploring our new hometown.

And to answer the question that always comes up: We miss the people we left behind in California, but not the lifestyle we would have had there (high cost of living, no real hope of home ownership, long commutes).

Rocket City Bloggers: Year Long Blogging Challenge: Week 1

It's funny how inspiration runs in circles. My 31 Day Blog Challenge inspired Carol to create a daily challenge for April, in the form of an editorial calendar for her blog. I didn't want to commit to another daily challenge on the heels of the one I was completing, so I started thinking instead of a weekly challenge.

I put the idea out to the Rocket City Bloggers, our local blogging group, and was met with some interest. So I did what I do best (sign up for All The Things!) and created the YLBC. (I never said my strengths lay with naming things.)

Each week for the next 52 weeks, we'll be posting a topic over at the Rocket City Bloggers site along with a Mr.Linky for people to share their posts on the topic. I am squeaking in under the wire this week since my laptop was out of commission courtesy of immense amounts of dust and cat hair in the air intakes. (No idea how that could have happened...)

Without further ado, this week's post...

This week's topic is: What do you need more of?

There are easy, off the cuff answers to this: sleep, weekends, large quantities of quality chocolate. But the thing I most need more of in my life is patience.

• The patience to listen to what others are actually saying instead of assuming I already know.
• The patience to pause and put aside how I thought things were going to go and see instead how they actually need to go.
• The patience to be kind even when I am grouchy, tired, or hungry.
• The patience to give myself space (and time) to learn new things instead of wanting to rush ahead.
• The patience to put some effort into weeknight dinners instead of falling back on the same few things (or giving up and going out.)

In short, the patience to live up to my ideals and be the kind of person I strive to be.