What a Man Wants....

according to the Soldier/Spouse is a good single person netting do-dad, a tomahawk (traditional style for my Native man) and a good survival style knife that will do some serious damage in hand to hand (note: the above links are examples only, not certain).

So we hunt, read reviews and now ask for suggestions...give me pros, give me cons, give me links!!

(and yes, I can totally blog it here because someone might stumble on this post and find a survival item they've been missing!!)

Learning a new skill...

yeah baby!

The Spousal Unit wants lanyards, the clothing and sales NEVER has them...so what's a wife to do? She learns a new skill so her sweetie (who has no crafting skills) can have what he wants. Yep, I'm learning how to make lanyards, lol.

Enter Stormdrane. With all the 550 cord we have around here, Stormdrane's is the perfect place for me! Knots is knots you might think, but nope...some of these babies are a bit on the difficult side, lol. So I'm looking at getting this (along with some others that have caught my eye) to have on hand and will be most assuredly keeping Stormdrane's place in the bookmarks.

Next Major Purchase...

for the household is something similar to this (link in English 'cause I like ya). Along with some totes and such...why? Because we have a serious lack of storage for the oodles of canned goods that I "hoard" here. Oh and the cases of shelf stable milk (not exactly the same, but close enough...and not half & half) I keep buying. Hey, it's only 41 cents (Euro) on the economy per carton...can't pass that one up.

After that a new bed for the Spousal Unit and myself may be in order but I'm thinking that new mattresses and slats would be way, way cheaper (and I'm right there). Of course there is always the continued purchasing of food items and other such things as would be needed to make it through several months of no fundage in the event of an extreme emergency...so I've been keeping an eye on the ever flucuating pay (thanks non-stable COLA rate) and have decided that the most logical turn for a budget would be not to include said COLA. We're also going local (sorta) and switching our spot for main pay deposit...our little bank back in MO makes it a little bit of a pain in the rear to work with ATMs (fees and whatnot) which drives me batty as hell.

Just a little update from across the pond...a little trivial in light of current events, but an update none-the-less.

Watching CNN...

International (of course)...not so much controlled, imo.

I don't know what's top news there, but here the headlines are insane. Israel, Egypt, Gaza, the Koreas, China, Japan, the Euro and the German Presidental resignation and of course, BP and the Gulf...I'm exhausted just trying to keep up with that. Throw two little wild men into the mix along with school work (papers, presentations, etc) and the house...yeah, I'm tired.

But enough of my exhaustion...I want to know how your gardens grow? As I have no yard, no balcony and no place but some fairly narrow window sills in which to grow veggies, I am having garden withdrawals. I could totally grow tomatoes or something in the window sills, but the weather around here has been so freakish that I don't know how well they'd do. Very wet and pretty doggone cold for late May-going into June. So the sills are filled with petunias (bonus of having a ground floor).

Of course, all this really means is that I won't be canning this year unless the fruit/veg at the local market is so spectacular that I simply cannot pass up buying bushels of it (I have yet to be impressed but know I could be so if I took the trip to Frankfurt). Okay, fine...give me more time to explore the local locale and get to know the locals better, lol.

So, go on...brag on your gardens!