A New Year Approaches...

according to the calendar at least.  Don't know about you, but my ever increasing sense of "whoa, wait a minute there bud" is...well, ever increasing.  Having spent the last few months in a slightly further removed from the rest of it bubble (physically at least) and sort of watching the downward spiral from a different view, then proceeding to allow my love of history and a modern culture ADD-fueled comparison to take over...things are most definitely ticking toward BOOM vs crash.  Implosion of the loudest kind, I do believe.  No, I do not look forward to it...my German is not good enough just yet and that skill is one that is necessary for surviving in a land where German is the language spoken.

Of course, one collapse will string along others in this modern interconnected world of ours.  Who will be left standing unscathed?  None.  Even the most closed countries rely on some other country for something, not a one is self-sufficient.  It's the domino effect in full force...I wonder if it would look similar from space...a bunch of countries tilting one after another until the last one clatters to a halt.  That would be a design worth looking at.  Frightening, yet still intriguing.

As it stands, I've decided that no one is ever fully prepared.  No one.  While our stocks and supplies will last a goodly time and my sketchy German is enough to squeak by, we will never be fully prepared for the unpredictability of the future...that's why it's called unpredictable.  Heck, even the meteorologists (once pretty good at predicting weather) are getting a workout lately.  Ma Nature is showing them all who is boss and refuses to fall in line with what is "average" lately.

Example:  The lovely European snowfall that tangled up Holiday travelers.  Yeah, light snow expected my ass!  (see previous post for "light snow" pictures)

Further Example of the unpredictability of the future:  Last night a sewage line burst in our building at about 10 p.m., flooding over half the basement and community laundry room with raw sewage.  Storage for each apartment in the building is located...can you guess it?...in the basement.  No fewer than 8 of our neighbor families have spent some part of today trying salvage what can be salvaged from the poo.  We got lucky...the pipe was at the other end of the building.

Now, as one that makes some sort of an attempt at learning from the past, Further Example has prompted me to do what I had merely talked about doing all spring/summer.  Fork over cash for the purchase of shelving units for our storage area.  Will it keep stuff from being damaged in the event of another poo-fall or (as I've found out recently) spring thaw flooding?  No, not all of it...but it'll buy us time.  Time to get to the non-poo covered items and bring them to safety.

Any recent events in your day-to-day prompt you to action lately?