Preparedness Notes for Thursday — August 8, 2019

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August 8th is the birthday of Terry Nation (August 8th, 1930 – March 9th, 1997), who was a Welsh television writer and novelist. Nation wrote two series, Survivors and Blake’s 7, in the 1970s. Survivors was re-made a few years ago.

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Please contact your senators and congressmen repeatedly, and tell them: No more gun laws! The RINO Republicans seem to be caving-in, on this issue. The latest attacks on our freedom are proposed Red Flag laws and Extreme Risk Protective Orders (ERPOs). These are unconstitutional proceedings that deny the right to face one’s accusers, or to attend their hearings, or even know that there was a hearing until after a court order is issued! This grossly violates Due Process.

We can also expect to see bi-partisan attempts to pass “Universal Background Checks”. This is just a polite way of saying: A ban on intrastate private party sales of used guns. This reaches far beyond the intent of the Interstate Commerce Clause. Please call and remind your senators and congressmen of the difference between the words intrastate and interstate! 

As I’ve mentioned before: Our 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendment rights are on the line.  Please repeatedly contact you Senators and insist that they oppose any Red Flag law or any background check expansion — including both S. 42 and the Senate version of H.R.1112. (Those two background checks bills passed in the House of Representatives.)

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 84  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  3. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  4. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  5. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  6. An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  2. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  3. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  5. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances.

Round 84 ends on September 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

Creating a Survival Team Charter, by L.K.R.

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In the event of a SHTF event, my family and friends have long intended to co-locate and pool our skills and resources. While this was a great idea, we never documented how this group would be organized or how we would share responsibilities. Two things motivated us to formalize our arrangement: 1) A new family made it clear that they were committed to mutual support and started a more detailed discussion of how this would work. 2) We came across a new book, The Survival Group Handbook by Charley Hogwood.

Hogwood does a great job of discussing the practical issues we will all face if co-located with a group of like-minded people who nonetheless will have very different personalities and problem-solving approaches. The book covers a wide range of subjects including group leadership, defining your objectives, dealing with social conflict, establishing a retreat location, defining roles for group members, how to use group projects to build teamwork, planning for contingencies, decision making approaches, how to activate the group, communication, meetings, new members, resource distribution and dealing with the outside world / threats.

We used this as a basis to create a Team Charter for group discussion and agreement. The structure of this charter is outlined below along with a description of what content is needed in each section.Continue reading“Creating a Survival Team Charter, by L.K.R.”

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

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SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, we look at a U.S. Navy jet crash at Star Wars Canyon.

Some Gun Purchases in N.Y. Now Delayed 30 Days

Reader H.L. sent this: Gun purchases in New York will now take longer, after gov signs new law. JWR’s Comment: This underscores the profoundly arbitrary nature of modern statutory jurisdiction.  Why 30 days? Why not 30 months? Our elected “representatives” are just tossing numbers around. Welcome to the era of Feel Good Dart Board Politics.

How Hong Kong Protestors Neutralize Tear Gas Canisters

A hat tip to Karen B. for spotting this: The clever trick pro-democracy protesters use to neutralise tear gas canisters fired by police during Hong Kong riots.

Jet Crash at Star Wars Canyon

By way of Whatfinger.com, comes this: Navy fighter jet crashes in California’s Death Valley, injuring at least 7 visitors. JWR’s Comment: The low-level fly-bys there, are legendary.Continue reading“The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:”

Investing in Businesses and Schools as Well as Preps?, by Captswife

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I have been disturbed lately to hear about profitable, mom-and-pop businesses closing because there is no one willing to buy them. The circumstances that bother me the most have been businesses that served preppers and others who wish to be part of maintaining important, traditional skills, such as gun manufacturing and quilting.

I have done my share of prepping and know others who do and have, and I have seen thousands upon thousands of dollars spent on items that likely will never be used because they are supplies for a nationwide, grid-down scenario. Most emergencies — and I have been through a major one myself — are household or family financial, and relatively short-term. In my personal experience and that of others i know, these can be managed with a few well-chosen prepping resources and sufficient cash to cover deductibles or short-to-intermediate term job loss.

But what if committed peppers were to spend a larger portion of the dollars “invested” in material goods on starting private schools, or buying profitable local businesses from retirees? What would the benefits be to you, your family and your community? It’s not the typical approach to prepping, but have you done the math? How much have you spent in the last few years on preps? Hundreds? Thousands? How much have you used? And what is happening with what you purchased 5 or 10 years ago?  How much have you had to destroy because it is no longer fit to use? In fact, when the last time you inventoried your preps?

I am not saying “don’t prep.” I’m saying, think longer term, and outside your own personal warehousing. For example, private schools using the Charlotte Mason methods and philosophies — which are, in my view, the most prepper friendly of all those currently available — are growing rapidly in number around the U.S. and globally. (You can learn more at everythingcharlottemason.com) Organizations such as Ambleside International have an established program for helping start a school. You need some cash and a couple other households to get started, but education is always a concern with those of us in the prepper community. However, you can see how the time and money spent to establish a private school that can run in all conditions creates a long term answer to this need.

So, too, looking for a business for sale that continues an important product or service (or both, in the case of a quilt shop). Consider whether you may have the skills to run it well yourself. What does it take? Well, a few thousand dollars, and knowledge. (The family at one of JWR’s favorite blogs, Paratus Familia, has done this with their successful butcher shop.) But preppers have always been hard workers, so, what’s the big deal? And, again, like the school, you are building something with some staying power that is a benefit to yourself and others in an emergency situation, and establishes you as a vital member of your community.

Here’s a demographic fact: old Boomers fell for the “zero population growth” rhetoric promoted by the mainstream media and churches in the 1960s and 1970s. This means there are not enough Gen Xers to fill the shoes left by retiring and dying Boomers. And, as we all know, Millennials, thanks to their debt loads and a lagging economy early in their adult lives, are behind the typical timeline for home ownership, let alone business ownership. This leaves empty storefronts, and areas lacking in services and products.

So if you are reading this, and have squirreled away a bunch of cash (or were planning to buy a $10,000 generator for  “just in case”), then why not consider putting some of it to another good use. Keep what you need for the most common emergencies, then get to work on building something that — no matter what happens — has created a strong, prepper-friendly addition to your personal lives, to the next generation and to your community.

Dehydration and Rehydration, by Dr. Marc

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One of the great killers in the third world is dehydration from diarrhea and dysentery, due to contaminated water. This is particularly dangerous with respect to the elderly and children.
As your readers are likely aware, having the ability to filter or purify drinking water is critical. Having a high volume and high-capacity water filter can go a long way toward preventing diarrhea and dysentery, with its associated dehydration.
I very much recommend, based upon personal experience, water filters including the Katadyn endurance series and the Sawyer inline series.  Both of these vendors have extremely long lived, large volume and quality filters for drinking water. They have the capacity to filter many thousands of gallons of drinking water and they are appropriate for North America.
Please note that travel to Africa and other areas where the water is contaminated with viruses should entail the use of a water purifier, not a filter, which often has an iodine element. These have lesser volume capacity by necessity, but the water is treated for viruses.  As you know, there are additional options to purify water including UV sterilization, boiling, and so on.
One critically important thing to know is how to treat dehydration from dysentery.  Because dysentery often occurs remote from medical care and IV hydration, the world health organization created an oral rehydration solution. This has been shown to reduce the mortality from dehydration associated with dysentery by as much as 93% .
It behooves readers to learn how to make this solution and how to administer it. The following quote from Wikipedia is informative:

 “The formula for the current WHO oral rehydration solution (also known as low-osmolar ORS or reduced-osmolarity ORS) is 2.6 grams (0.092 oz) salt (NaCl), 2.9 grams (0.10 oz) trisodium citrate dihydrate (C6H5Na3O7⋅2H2O), 1.5 grams (0.053 oz) potassium chloride (KCl), 13.5 grams (0.48 oz) anhydrous glucose (C6H12O6) per litre of fluid.[15] This is 44 mmol salt, 10 mmol trisodium citrate dihydrate, 20 mmol potassium chloride, and 75 mmol anhydrous glucose per litre. This would have a total osmolarity of (44×2 + 10×4 + 20×2 + 75) = 243 mOsm/L.

A basic oral rehydration therapy solution can also be prepared when packets of oral rehydration salts are not available. It can be made using 6 level teaspoons (25.2 grams) of sugar and 0.5 teaspoon (2.9 grams) of salt in 1 litre of water.[16][17] The molar ratio of sugar to salt should be 1:1 and the solution should not be hyperosmolar.[18] The Rehydration Project states, “Making the mixture a little diluted (with more than 1 litre of clean water) is not harmful.”[19]

WHO/UNICEF guidelines suggest ORT should begin at the first sign of diarrhea in order to prevent dehydration.[32][33] Babies may be given ORS with a dropper or a syringe. Infants under two may be given a teaspoon of ORS fluid every one to two minutes. Older children and adults should take frequent sips from a cup, with a recommended intake of 200-400 ml of solution after every loose [bowel] movement.[1] WHO recommends giving children under two a quarter- to a half-cup of fluid following each loose bowel movement and older children a half- to a full cup. If the person vomits, the caretaker should wait 5–10 minutes and then resume giving ORS.[20](Section 4.2) ORS may be given by aid workers or health care workers in refugee camps, health clinics and hospital settings.[34] Mothers should remain with their children and be taught how to give ORS. This will help to prepare them to give ORT at home in the future. Breastfeeding should be continued throughout ORT.[20]”

I strongly encourage your readers to do a little online research into how to treat dysentery, and how to mitigate the dangerous effects of dehydration, through the appropriate administration of oral rehydration solution.

JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:

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Here are JWR’s Recommendations of the Week for various media and tools of interest to SurvivalBlog readers. The focus is usually on emergency communications gear, bug out bag gear, books and movies that have any tie-in to disaster preparedness, and links to “how to” self-sufficiency videos. There are also links to sources for both storage food as and food storage containers. You will also note an emphasis on history books and historical movies. This week the focus is on ambulance conversions to campers . (See the Instructional Videos section.)

Books:

Gardening When It Counts: Growing Food in Hard Times

o  o  o

EMS Field Guide, BLS Version

o  o  o

Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

o  o  o

The Complete Guide to Your New Root Cellar: How to Build an Underground Root Cellar and Use It for Natural Storage of Fruits and Vegetables (Back to Basics Building)

Continue reading“JWR’s Recommendations of the Week:”

Preparedness Notes for Tuesday — August 6, 2019

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On August 6th, 1945 at 8:16 a.m. (Japanese time), an American B-29 bomber– the Enola Gay– dropped the world’s first war-time atom bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Approximately 80,000 people were killed as a result of the blast, with another 35,000 injured. At least another 60,000 would be dead by the end of the year from the effects of the fallout. History is always written by the victors, so the reasoning and justification for this will be argued for years to come. But one thing is for sure: this action officially ushered in the nuclear age in war and has generated mass fear among civilization ever since, even though the firebombing of Japanese cities caused far more damage and loss of life. An interesting side note is Tsutomu Yamaguchi was 3km from the Hiroshima blast but survived. Along with a few other survivors, he made his way to his hometown, Nagasaki, and was again within 3km of the second blast yet survived this one also.

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SurvivalBlog Writing Contest

Today we present another entry for Round 84  of the SurvivalBlog non-fiction writing contest. The more than $12,000 worth of prizes for this round include:

First Prize:

  1. A $3,000 gift certificate towards a Sol-Ark Solar Generator from Veteran owned Portable Solar LLC. The only EMP Hardened Solar Generator System available to the public.
  2. A Gunsite Academy Three Day Course Certificate. This can be used for any one, two, or three day course (a $1,095 value),
  3. A course certificate from onPoint Tactical for the prize winner’s choice of three-day civilian courses, excluding those restricted for military or government teams. Three day onPoint courses normally cost $795,
  4. DRD Tactical is providing a 5.56 NATO QD Billet upper. These have hammer forged, chrome-lined barrels and a hard case, to go with your own AR lower. It will allow any standard AR-type rifle to have a quick change barrel. This can be assembled in less than one minute without the use of any tools. It also provides a compact carry capability in a hard case or in 3-day pack (an $1,100 value),
  5. Two cases of Mountain House freeze-dried assorted entrees in #10 cans, courtesy of Ready Made Resources (a $350 value),
  6. A $250 gift certificate good for any product from Sunflower Ammo,
  7. American Gunsmithing Institute (AGI) is providing a $300 certificate good towards any of their DVD training courses.

Second Prize:

  1. A gift certificate from Quantum Harvest LLC (up to a $2,200 value) good for 12% off the purchase of any of their sun-tracking models, and 10% off the purchase price of any of their other models.
  2. A Front Sight Lifetime Diamond Membership, providing lifetime free training at any Front Sight Nevada course, with no limit on repeating classes. This prize is courtesy of a SurvivalBlog reader who prefers to be anonymous.
  3. A Glock form factor SIRT laser training pistol and a SIRT AR-15/M4 Laser Training Bolt, courtesy of Next Level Training, which have a combined retail value of $589,
  4. A Three-Day Deluxe Emergency Kit from Emergency Essentials (a $190 value),
  5. Two 1,000-foot spools of full mil-spec U.S.-made 750 paracord (in-stock colors only) from www.TOUGHGRID.com (a $240 value).
  6. An assortment of products along with a one hour consultation on health and wellness from Pruitt’s Tree Resin (a $265 value).

Third Prize:

  1. Three sets each of made-in-USA regular and wide-mouth reusable canning lids. (This is a total of 300 lids and 600 gaskets.) This prize is courtesy of Harvest Guard (a $270 value)
  2. A Royal Berkey water filter, courtesy of Directive 21 (a $275 value),
  3. Expanded sets of both washable feminine pads and liners, donated by Naturally Cozy (a $185 retail value),
  4. Two Super Survival Pack seed collections, a $150 value, courtesy of Seed for Security, LLC,
  5. Mayflower Trading is donating a $200 gift certificate for homesteading appliances.

Round 84 ends on September 30th, so get busy writing and e-mail us your entry. Remember that there is a 1,500-word minimum, and that articles on practical “how to” skills for survival have an advantage in the judging.

My Toolbox, by Richard T.

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I’m now 71 years old, and I have had a toolbox ever since my dad helped me build my first one when I was about 12. He cut all the parts on a homemade tablesaw that he had built out of an old washing machine motor and plywood. He showed me how to nail the parts together and paint it. It was a simple tray-style toolbox; one side had room for pliers, a hammer, screwdriver and the other side had partitions for hardware. My mother’s diary records that I liked to build things at an early age, I still do.

My folks moved from the farm to town a year before I was born. On the farm my Dad either improvised the tools he needed, paid a visit to the blacksmith shop or waited several weeks for the Sears-Roebuck catalog order to arrive. That didn’t change much in town where he had a workshop in the basement with the table saw and a wall mounted tool cabinet made out of plywood painted gray to make it look like metal. He had places in that cabinet for screwdrivers, saws, pliers, hammers, etc. He organized hardware, little brads and screws, by containing them in jars whose lids were attached to a strip of wood under a shelf and the jar contents would be accessed by twisting the jar off. This was a very common tip in 1950s and 1960s Popular Mechanics magazines.

Because I was a city boy, I bought my tools from a Sears-Roebuck store several miles away, which at that time was where you went to buy tools. And at first the only tools I needed were to work on my vehicles, therefore wrenches was all that I had. My first power tool was a Stanley 3×21 belt sander for $65 that I bought with my paperboy income when I was in high school. For many years one 16” gray metal Craftsman toolbox with a red handled tray served me well. I didn’t begin to acquire a lot of tools until my job as a cabinetmaker required that I have my own tools. Those were left at work but when we bought a house that was in need of massive restoration, I began to acquire a vast number of tools in various categories.Continue reading“My Toolbox, by Richard T.”

SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt

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This weekly column features news stories and event announcements from around the American Redoubt region. (Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington, and Wyoming.) Much of the region is also more commonly known as The Inland Northwest. We also mention companies of interest to preppers and survivalists that are located in the American Redoubt region. Today, we focus on a widely-wandering grizzly bear.  (See the Idaho section.)

Region-Wide

Reader Tim J.  sent us this: Some great aerial photography, showing life on the Palouse: Ag Pilot/Crop Duster “Day in the life of”.  He operates primarily in eastern Washington and adjoining Idaho.  As you watch this, take notice: The narrow runway (I’ve seen wider taxiways), a very tight turn-round at the ag chem site (note the small gap between the wing tip and the building), and some precision low-level flying with zero margin for error!

o o o

Radio Free Redoubt: T-REX 2019 Countdown and America Love it or Leave it

Idaho

This retreat home property offered for sale is roughly half way between Sandpoint and Athol: Off-Grid Homestead, Cocolalla, Idaho. JWR’s Comment:  Coincidentally, I stayed at this home as a guest, back around 2003. Even then, it struck me as a quite viable retreat. With the many improvements since then, it is undoubtedly an even better retreat now.

o o o

Wandering grizzly still in upper Lochsa River region

Continue reading“SurvivalBlog’s News From The American Redoubt”

The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:

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SurvivalBlog presents another edition of The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods— a collection of news bits and pieces that are relevant to the modern survivalist and prepper from “JWR”. Our goal is to educate our readers, to help them to recognize emerging threats and to be better prepared for both disasters and negative societal trends. You can’t mitigate a risk if you haven’t first identified a risk. Today, I’m starting off with news about a City-Killer Asteroid.

Approach of ‘City-Killer Asteroid’ was Missed

By way of Whatfinger.com (my favorite news aggregation site): Scientists almost didn’t detect approach of ‘city-killer asteroid’. An excerpt:

“Alan Duffy was confused. On Thursday, the astronomer’s phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn’t figure out ‘why everyone was so alarmed.’

‘I thought everyone was getting worried about something we knew was coming,’ Duffy, who is also lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, told The Washington Post. Forecasts had already predicted that a couple asteroids would be passing relatively close to Earth this week.

Then he looked up the details of the hunk of space rock named Asteroid 2019 OK.

‘I was stunned,’ he said. ‘This was a true shock.’

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, roughly 110 yards wide, and moving quickly along a path that brought it within about 45,360 miles of Earth. That’s about one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers ‘uncomfortably close.'”

Land Expropriation Without Compensation

A hat tip to D.S. for sending this from South Africa: Three major criticisms of the government’s land expropriation position.

Continue reading“The Survivalist’s Odds ‘n Sods:”

The Editors’ Quote of the Day:

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“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature which an outside observer notices in the West in our days. The Western world has lost its civil courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, each government, each political party, and of course in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling groups and the intellectual elite, causing an impression of loss of courage by the entire society. Of course there are many courageous individuals but they have no determining influence on public life […] Should one point out that from ancient times decline in courage has been considered the beginning of the end?” – Aleksander Solzhenitsyn

Preparedness Notes for Monday — August 5, 2019

August 5th is the sad anniversary of the Mann Gulch Fire in Montana that took the lives of 13 firefighters (including 12 smokejumpers and one former smokejumper), in 1949. The intense, fast-moving forest fire took place in what later became the Gates of the Mountains Wilderness. The events of that fire were chronicled in the book Young Men and Fire by Norman Maclean and immortalized in the haunting lyrics of the ballad Cold Missouri Waters by James Keelaghan. (Warning: Grab a box of tissue, before listening.)

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Today, we present a product review by our Field Gear Editor, Pat Cascio. But first, we’re announcing the winners of Round 83 of the SurvivalBlog Nonfiction Writing Contest. Round 84 is already underway. If you’d like to win one of these prize packages, then get busy writing!