08:57 – “Who are you,” Barbara asked me last night, “and what have you done with my husband?” Yesterday was the first day in more than 40 years that I consumed no soft drinks. None. Zero. Zip. Ordinarily, I guzzle Coca Cola Classic from the time I get up through late afternoon, and Sprite starting around dinner time. Yesterday, I drank tea until mid-afternoon, then drank orange drink mix from the LDS store until about 9:00 p.m., and then filled my mug with (gasp) ice water. It was that last that really prompted Barbara’s comment. She hadn’t seen me drink water at home in the 31 years we’ve been married. Ever.
When Barbara asked this morning why I’d done that, I told her there was no special reason. She was worried that I might be ill. In reality, it’s because I’m writing a prepping book, and one of the fundamental principles of prepping is that you should eat (drink) what you store. And we have lots of tea, sugar, orange drink, cocoa powder, etc. stored, but only maybe a month’s supply of Coca Cola and Sprite. So, although I won’t attempt to dignify what I was doing as “research”, I wanted to see if there would be any physical or mental effects from changing a long-standing habit. So far, there’re no adverse effects, but I’ll continue the test for at least the next few days. Maybe permanently. I like sucrose better than high-fructose corn syrup anyway.
I got most of my stuff out of the living room yesterday and helped Barbara haul up boxes and boxes of Saturnalia decorations, including Bob the Reindeer and Bob the Penguin. As is usually the case when I’m writing a book, I order stuff that I know I’ll need later and then just stack it up until I need it. Most of what was stacked in the living room was of that sort, stuff that UPS delivered that I hadn’t had time to process yet.
09:43 – I’m rather surprised at the lack of media response to the cops shooting and killing a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland over the weekend. Perhaps that’s because, from reading the reports, it appears that this was unquestionably a “good” shooting. The boy had a pistol in his waistband and attempted to draw it when the cops challenged him. It was an airsoft pistol, but many of those are so realistic in appearance that the cops had no way of knowing. Making matters worse, apparently someone had removed the blaze-orange paint from the muzzle.
Which reminds me, I intend to daub the muzzles of our firearms with blaze-orange paint. The situation will probably never arise, but if it does and if that orange paint buys me even a tenth of a second, well, that’s all I need. Besides which, a 1″ band of orange paint on the muzzles of our assault rifles and riot shotguns will make them pretty.