Ryan and I spent more time working on the rabbit hutch, or I guess I should correctly call it our ‘rabbitry’. It’s covered now, the top row of cages are hung, and our does have moved from the garage and are now in their new home. As planned I put it where we can see it through the kitchen window, kind of the “in sight, in mind” concept. This is their second week on fresh grass and clover, we’ve doubled the amount and they seem to be handling it well (poops still solid). Next week we’ll start pasturing them. We told the kids they could name these rabbits (since they’ll be the parents); then Ryan, in his wood shop class, made some nice signs with their names on them for the rabbitry (we’ll get them stained and up this week).

I mentioned, during our last ‘lights out drill’, that we couldn’t get the garage door to open manually when the power was off. We pulled the red handled cord and nothing happened, we shined the flashlight around and tried to figure it out and couldn’t see anything wrong, we pulled harder and still nothing. At that point we gave up and continued with the drill. Yesterday I went out to figure out why it wouldn’t open (as I mentioned, the garage door opener was recently replaced), eventually–it took longer than it should have–I figured out the manual disconnect handle had been tied off to the wrong spot. I moved it over to where it should be and now it works just fine. Look around your own homes and double-check the little things, make sure you not only know how to open/close/shut-off or whatever but you actually do it to make sure it works (except don’t shut off your natural gas, that’s a hassle to relight). If this had been a true emergency there would have been the associated increased stress level already, and the door not opening would not have helped; a stressful blackout emergency is not conducive to calmly trouble-shooting something that is not working properly.

A couple of months ago I went to a friends semi-official/developing prepper group. Mike is doing a good job getting people together on a regular basis and slowly exposing them to prepper ideas and concepts (this month, our second get together, I taught first aid to the group). The first get together, he did a short presentation on home safety items: backup/emergency lighting, fire extinguishers, smoke and CO2 detectors, escape ladders, etc. We had everything thoroughly covered at our home, except the escape ladders. We have two bedrooms with windows that are about 14 feet off the ground, not impossible to hang and drop from but we figured it’d be better to have the escape ladders. We bought two ladders (about $30 each) and will practice with them soon, and then store them under the beds near the windows.

What did you do?

(Monday: NO POST – we’ll be in Las Vegas on vacation with friends)