Divemedic

Six Courses

My wife and I have been together for a decade. She decided to take us to dinner as a celebration. We went to a six course meal, which I had never done before. The meal was prix fixe, and consisted of six courses, each paired with a wine selection by a professional sommelier. Each course was small, which was a good thing, since there were six of them.

We arrived at the appointed time and were served a welcome cocktail while we waited for the other diners. The cocktail was simple syrup, mint leaves, and champagne. It was intended to be a light, refreshing palate cleanser.

We sat down at the appointed time and were served our first course. It was the appetizer course. Scallop Carpaccio paired with an Italian Pinot Grigio. The scallops were sliced thinner than a sheet of paper. It was fairly good. This is the plate:

The soup course was second, and it was a Smoked Tomato Soup that had been cooked for six hours. It was paired with a white wine from Napa Valley that was pretty good.

The third course was the salad course. It was made from butter poached lobster, hearts of palm, pineapples, and cilantro with a vanilla dressing. The wine pairing was a Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand.

The fourth course was the fish course. It was a roasted branzino with zucchini, peppers, lemon, and a pesto. It was hands down the tastiest course of the night. If it had not been such a fancy restaurant, I would have been tempted to lick the plate. This course was paired with a Chardonnay from California.

The fifth course was the beef course. A grilled filet mignon with truffled potato puree, asparagus, and bordelaise sauce. It was delicious, but I have to admit that I was getting pretty full at this point. This course was paired with a Cabernet from Napa Valley.

The last (dessert) course was a chocolate sphere that they poured hot caramel over, revealing a peanut butter ganache, chocolate mousse, and a caramel gelato. It was good, but I was so full at this point, I only ate about a third of the dessert. It was paired with a Salted Caramel Espresso Martini. The martini was so good that I had two of them.

The meal was superb, but I have to admit that I ate so much that I didn’t eat at all the following day. I had two of the martinis, and that turned out to be a mistake. First, there was so much alcohol served with this meal, that I was pretty drunk after the three hour dinner experience. Second, I woke up in the middle of the night to pee, and my heart was racing at about 120 beats per minute. I am guessing the espresso had something to do with it.

We had a great night, and this meal was an appropriate celebration of ten years together.

By Divemedic, ago

Prepping

Preparing for disasters is important, but too often people who are into prepping spend lots of money on the sexy things like expensive firearms while ignoring things like sanitation or infection control. Far more people will die of dehydration, hunger, or even diarrhea in a widespread collapse than they will by civil unrest.

Remember that, if we are prepared for the big disaster, we are more likely to survive the small ones.

At the end of the day, we need to prioritize our preps to take care of the basics before we drop $4,000 on that new Sig Blastomatic Model 19 in .50BMG. I have deployed to dozens of disaster sites and travelled to nearly 50 foreign countries. Here is, from my experience, how our preps should look:

At its most basic, the three most important preps that we can make are food, water, shelter, and medical needs. Once those are established, only then should we worry about security and energy. Finally, surviving an event isn’t enough. We need to survive and rebuild our lives so that we aren’t just refugees, but are able to live our lives, not just count more days.

I am going to spend more time over the next several weeks explaining my thoughts (and the thoughts of others that I will shamelessly adopt) on the matter. For today, I am going to talk about the top of the pyramid- records.

Making it through the disaster will be much smoother if you can safeguard your life and not be living as a refugee for the next few years. There are a number of things that you need to safeguard:

  • Our vital documents: scans of birth certificates, professional licenses, certifications, transcripts, credit cards (front and back), medical histories, credit records, diplomas, bank account information, and any other important documents you can think of. Keep a copy of those documents on several password protected, encrypted thumb drives and update them at least once per year. Keep a drive in each vehicle, in your locker at work, and one in your gun safe. You can buy a 16gb encrypted thumb drive for as little as $32– for as little as $170, you can have copies of all of your most important documents with you no matter what happens. The encryption doesn’t have to be perfect, but good enough to deter common thieves.
  • Photos you don’t want to lose: Pictures of your kids, your family, and other memories that are irreplaceable if they are lost. Thumb drives are cheap- you can keep them with the others.
  • At least $300 in cash, with $1,000 being even better, locked in your gun safe. You can have more, but $300 should get you through a weekend disaster. YMMV. Just don’t be tempted to “borrow” from it for non-emergency reasons, because you won’t repay it and it won’t be available when you really need it.

The other thing to consider here is rally points. That way, if you and your family are separated, you can meet up, even if you aren’t in communication with each other.

  • You should have one within sight of your house- for us, it’s the fire hydrant across the street.
  • One within walking distance. For us, it’s the entrance to the neighborhood.
  • There should be one far enough away that it will be outside of a large disaster like a HAZMAT spill or a wildfire. For us, that’s my wife’s parents’ house. They live an hour away. This rally point for us has the advantage of offering emergency shelter, food, supplies, and support.

Also make sure that you have a plan for deciding when to evacuate, when to stay put, and don’t hesitate when it is time to go. Include your significant other in the decision. Nothing is worse than trying to evacuate or shelter in place with a bitchy, pissed off wife who disagrees with the decision. Worse yet, evacuating and becoming a refugee because you didn’t plan for the evacuation.

If your plans are robust, flexible, and comprehensive, you should be able to do well with anything from a loss of employment, another lockdown, your neighbor’s house burning down, your spouse’s heart attack, to the zombie apocalypse.

Can anyone else come up with other ideas along this line of thought?

By Divemedic, ago

Picking a Fight

According to the Biden administration, today is an important holiday. No, he isn’t talking about Easter Sunday. That, the Whitehouse refuses to celebrate and has banned from the Whitehouse grounds because they want to transform Easter Sunday into a secular holiday.

Children of the National Guard are prohibited from submitting religious Easter egg designs for the 2024 “Celebrating National Guard Families” art event at the White House. 

OK, so that’s bad enough. My Atheist self is offended for my Christian friends. However, the President didn’t stop there. He followed that up by declaring that March 31, 2024 is the official day that the government will celebrate a Transgender Day of Visibility. Thank goodness they have a day of visibility, or I wouldn’t know that they exist.

What a direct goober being spit in the face of every Christian in the country.

This is so brazen and “in your face” that I can’t help but think they’re trying to cause a violent backlash on purpose. They are trying to pick a fight, so they can excuse the crackdown that will follow.

Fuck Joe Biden with a rusty chainsaw.

By Divemedic, ago

Not Yet

I keep getting comments to the effect of “They are cheating, the election is a guaranteed loss, so why bother?”

I disagree. It isn’t in the bag. If it were, they wouldn’t be trying so hard to put Trump in jail. Since they are still doing so, they still consider him a threat. That tells me that there are weaknesses in the system of cheat and the vote isn’t as sure of a thing as they would have you believe.

If the system were in the bag, gun bans would already be in place. SCOTUS would already have 23 justices. The electoral college would be gone.

They don’t have it all, yet. They want you to think that they are unbeatable and simply roll over, but it is plain that they aren’t that powerful, yet.

Don’t give them more power than they already have. It takes just a few minutes to vote, and you make it that much harder for them to cheat themselves more power than they already have.

So you ask why I should bother? Because I will do everything that I can to make their lives and their lust for power more difficult.

Even if it is in the bag, I am going to make it as difficult on them as I can. Be a pain in the ass.

By Divemedic, ago

Spin

Read this:

This is tipping, but by calling it a “service charge,” it is no longer optional. Then comes the virtue signaling about benefits.

I don’t have an issue with this. I would like to see tipping become a relic of the past.

By Divemedic, ago

Vote Harder

Wisconsin is registering thousands of illegal immigrants as voters.

In Wisconsin, for instance, there is a Form EL-131.Form EL-131 says if you are homeless, check the box. You can register to vote with no supporting ID.For you election deniers, and Republican types – read this slowly so you can comprehend this madness.

I am still going to vote. Why? Because it costs nothing but a few minutes of my time. I am just not counting on it making a difference.

Be ready for what’s coming.

By Divemedic, ago

Finally Rented

It took 5 weeks to get my rental home repaired from the damage done by the previous tenants. The total repair bill came to over $9,000, and I still need to replace the flooring in the entire house because their dog ruined it in spots by peeing on it.

Anyhow, we listed it 28 days ago, and our new tenants signed the lease to move in soon. That’s one project off my plate.

Now I have to work on selling our old house. It’s always something, and I am always busy.

By Divemedic, ago

Resiliency

The things that you need to survive and thrive in an emergency fall into broad categories:

  1. Records: Documents, photographs, and other needed items. I include a moderate amount of cash on hand ($300 or so) in this category.
  2. First Aid: Medications, drugs, bandages, disinfectants, etc. Nothing elaborate. Simple is better here.
  3. Heat and cooking: You can live on cold canned goods and MREs, but they are simply not tolerable for more than a day or two. Hot meals are best.
  4. Light: Flashlights, lanterns, fire, batteries for them, chemlights, and other ways of creating light.
  5. Tools: People are tool users. Screwdrivers, knife, hammer, hatchet, etc.
  6. Communications: There are many ways to communicate. Cell phones, radios, flags, spray paint, chalk or grease pencil markings left on buildings, signs stapled to telephone poles, etc.
  7. Food and water: Obvious. From half liter bottles of water to reverse osmosis, MREs to farming, we need to consider short and long term food and water needs.
  8. Shelter: Tents, homes, hotels, tarps, even your vehicle. Any way to get out  of the weather.
  9. Security: Weapons, cameras, sensors, rotating watches.
  10. Energy: Solar, fire, electric, generators, etc. Anything that helps us power our equipment or our selves that is not cooking or heating related.

My latest endeavor is to secure a source of backup power for the new house. I originally was looking at a standby generator. The problem is fueling it for more than a couple of days adds to the logistical complexity of preparedness. The cost of installing such a generator (including buried propane tanks) is in the neighborhood of $10,000-15,000. Then you have to fuel it, and you only benefit from it when the grid is ,down.

Then I looked into solar. An 8kw solar setup with a Tesla wall to get you through the night or cloudy days will generate about 1200 kilowatt hours a month. The system will cost about $20,000 after taking the Federal tax credit into account. There is no fuel needed, and when times are good, you sell power to the electric company which zeroes out your electric bid, thus subsidizing the cost.

So I think that solar is the way we are going to go for our backup power needs.

By Divemedic, ago

National Red Flag Center

This morning, the US Department of Justice (ha) announced the formation of a “National Extreme Risk Protection Order Resource Center.” This center is intended to provide training and technical assistance to law enforcement officials, prosecutors, attorneys, judges, clinicians, victim service and social service providers, community organizations, and behavioral health professionals responsible for implementing laws designed to keep

Make no mistake, the Feds are going to issue red flag orders to anyone that is not politically reliable. My recommendation is for you to maintain several caches of off paper or untraceable weapons for insurance against a red flag order that will see police coming to seize your firearms after some liberal asshole manages to report you to the Stasi.

The war on the right continues.

By Divemedic, ago