I’m something of a prepper. Not one of those, mind you, but I grew up in the shadow of the Cold War, and the thought of having supplies ready should the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan has always been on my mind. Coupled with being poor and being in fucked up situations a lot, I’ve got a tendency to keep my pantries and larders full, just in case.
The problem is I’m also hugely disorganized, so that leads to me inevitably failing to rotate stock and having to toss out stuff that’s gone well beyond the use-by dates. So it’s this constant whiplash struggle of buying a bunch of stuff to stock up and then getting furious with myself for not managing it and having to clean the place out.
That is until fairly recently, when I was wandering through my local Wal-Mart and passed through the camping section. The freeze-dried food caught my eye and I was momentarily tempted by the good ol’ astronaut ice cream. And then I eyeballed one of the meal pouches and noticed something.
“Best by 2056.”
Do what now?
After doing some research, it seems that Mountain House is now rating their meals for a fucking 30-year shelf life.
So yeah, nail, meet hammer. The stuff’s kind of expensive, but now I’ve got boxes of honest-to-god iron rations put up that have a longer lifespan than I have left. Kind of nice knowing I don’t have to even think about it anymore. (Water’s another issue, but frankly it’s easier to buy a couple of flats of bottles every year or two than it is to try to stock up those two-decade Aquablocks water supplies.)
The topic came up because of all the bedwetting online about the news; I realized it had been a little while since I added to my stock so I extended my supplies by about five days. Do I expect anything to happen? No. But the odds of a major-league fuckup that drastically affects the supply chain is growing day by day, with how dumb everyone’s getting (I think COVID and AI are frankly going to drop IQs well into the double-digits before too long). And nobody ever said “Dang it, I wish I hadn’t prepared.”
Okay, really I’m just glad to have something else to talk about other than the job shit. The meeting between the headhunter and the company takes place tomorrow, so I should hear something in the shape of a final offer soon. My gut feeling is it’s all too risky to gamble on, especially considering I’d have to spend at least four months of next year on a Marketplace health plan and holy shit what I’m seeing for next year is horrifying and the remainder of this year is already like $200 a month above the shitty insurance I have now.
I just have to keep telling myself that a) I’ve got no major gripes with the chair I’m in at the moment and b) I don’t necessarily need to leap into the first remote role I’ve seen, as tempting as it is. Going to retool and start applying in a couple of different marketplaces to see if I can up the ante, since I’m actually past the whole “instantly ghosted” phase of my career search.
Hope springs eternal.