I recently got the opportunity to review a very interesting book from Kermit Jones Jr.
This military Chaplain and father of 4 young children needed to figure out how to introduce the concept of personal preparedness to his daughters without scaring.
In this book Kermit uses the old prepper analogy of prepared ants to explore the concepts of prepping through the life of one particularly smart ant named Pete.
In Pete’s travels he and his family decide they need to prepare and in a simplistic and non-judgmental way they store food, learn skills, and prepare for a variety of unknown and known disasters.
What I like most about the Prepper Pete series is the message. Prepper Pete says “Some people prepare because they are afraid. Our family doesn’t have to be afraid… because we are prepared!”
This is a fun way to introduce kids to the work of preparedness by showing them that preparedness is based out of common sense and love rather being a crack-pot thing to hide.
I have read this book to my Son, and I look forward to discussing it with him as he gets older, but right now all he wants to talk about is “me milk” and “down please”.
My wife is very interested in figuring out a way to get me to eat healthy; apparently she wants me to be around for a while.
She figured out the novel approach that if she wanted to create a blog about healthy eating and start doing videos about it, then I would be more inclined to help her. I hate to admit it, but she is probably right.
Today’s video is her first video of an idea she found to make salads in mason jars.
I am not sure where my wife found this tidbit (I would guess either Facebook or Pinterest), but when she shared it with me I was excited.
My wife and I now make our lunches in bulk at the start of the week and store them in mason jars.
This helps with portion control, time management, and it keeps me eating my vegetables.
This is a pretty flexible way to get work lunches, but you need to beware of moisture.
What we have found is that if you layer your foods in the Mason jar according to moisture level and resistance to moisture you can get by with some creative ideas.
We start with the dressing, and then add things like chopped chicken, olives, and/or cherry tomatoes. We then add some cheese, then lettuce, and lastly any croutons.
These store easily in the fridge, are distinguishable in the break room fridge, and you can eat it directly from the jar.
However, I find that if you pack the jar full it can be heard to get a good mix of dressing and greens, but if you leave some room you can shake the jar and mix it up that way.
Like most things, I got an idea from somewhere and then took it farther, for the last couple of weeks I have been carrying one of these salad jars with a Mason jar of chili or other leftovers.
Score one for the wife.
Do me a favor and leave her some nice comments so she keeps positive about both her new videos and her struggle to get her family to east healthier…
I take a lot of leftovers to work. Normally I use plastic containers or plastic bags to carry them. However, the convenience this gives me comes with the cost of buying the containers. Additionally, I have concerns over BPA and other chemicals in the plastic.
While neither of these concerns alone are great enough (to me) to necessitate a change. I am interested in learning what to do in the event I would not be able to easily buy plastic sandwich bags or cling wrap.
It did not take me very long on the internet to find beeswax cotton food wraps. There are several commercial sites that sell the wraps. I also found numerous websites that also showed how they made the wraps.
Since I did not want to dig out the ironing board or my iron (I have an iron for projects and the wife has a clothes iron. Having two saves on divorce lawyer expenses) I choose to use the oven method.
Equipment
100% cotton cloth (about the thickness of sheets) – I imagine muslin would work but I used a quilting square cut up.
Beeswax -I used some from my own beehive, but you can easily find either beeswax ingots or the easier to use beeswax beads in craft stores in the candle making supplies
Cookie Sheet – Once you get hot wax on the sheet it will forever be useless for baking cookies on – once again I have project cooking utensils and food cooking utensils because I do NOT like being hit about the head and neck with a rolling pin…
Grater (if using solid beeswax ingots)
Procedure
Preheat oven to 170-190 – Beeswax is highly flammable and melts between 143 and 151 deg. F so don’t try to overheat it to speed up the process (unless you want to call the insurance adjuster)
Cut your cloth to the desired size – this is up to you – you can hem the edges or use pinking shears to make a nice edge, but I just wacked at it with an old pair of scissors and was done.
If using ingots, grate them using your cheese grater. If using beads you can skip this step
Set your cloth in the cookie sheet and lightly dust with the bits of wax – you want an even coat. In the video you see both how much I used, and how stiff the finished product was. In my opinion the amount I used was perfect for wrapping food (sandwiches, vegetables, and the like) – if you plan on using it to replace cling wrap, then you may want to use more wax.
Less wax will let more moisture pass though, more wax make a stiffer cloth.
Put the cookie sheet with the cotton and wax into the oven. 5 minutes will do just fine. Longer may cause problems, so if it is not all melted at 5 minutes keep a very watchful eye. (In the video not all of my “wax” melted – some of it was junk left over from the hives – you should not have this problem using store-bought wax)
After you take the cloth out of the oven – immediately remove from the cookie sheet and hang to cool. It should appear darker – any light spots did not receive as much wax so be on the lookout for this.
Once cool you can use immediately.
If your wrap gets dirty, you can easily clean it with cold water – don’t use soap or hot water as this will impact your wax.
I want to not only talk about what a shot timer is and why you need to use one in your firearms training program. Additionally, I wanted to review and demonstrate the Pact III Club timer.
If you are already familiar with shot timers you can skip the introductory paragraphs.
A shot timer is a chronograph that measures elapsed time
What makes it of use is that instead of having a button to start and stop a shot timer responds to the pressure wave of a gunshot. Most of them have a countdown timer attached to a buzzer. This buzzer allows for solo training. You can activate the timer and then wait until it buzzes to begin firing.
I think shot timers are invaluable to good firearm skill advancement. They give the shooter a way to measure the second half of the accuracy/speed equation.
When working with shooters that are trying to increase their defensive capabilities with a pistol I like working with a 9 inch paper plate at 7 yards. We work on being able to quickly draw and put multiple rounds in the plate without missing. If the shooter’s target shows a tight accurate group then it is time to speed them up, if they miss the plate then they need to slow down.
A Timer is Objective
Having a shot timer lets the shooter get objective and measurable times. You can then compare them with past exercise times. It allows fact based observations. Being able to say “by changing my grip I shoot an average of .06 seconds faster” is more useful to a shooter than “this feels faster”.
To get full use you need to know the difference between split and par times.
Split time is the time between shots. This is useful if your exercise involves multiple rounds in a scenario.
Par time is total time, and is similar to the par at golf. If you set the device with a par of 7 seconds (which is a very respectable time for an el president drill) the buzzer will sound to let you start. Next then buzz will sound again at 7 seconds to let you know you hit the limit.
Timers, especially the Pact III are simple to use and only have a few buttons.
On this model you have four buttons; Go, Rvw (Review), and Up & Down arrows.
To use, simply press the go button and wait to hear the buzzer to initiate your training scenario.
If you look at the picture at the top of the article you will see the face of my Pact III timer.
At the upper left is the total number of shots fired in that string. You can see I fired 5 rounds.
The 41.16 is the total time measured to the hundredth of a second.
It is also the time that I fired my 5th shot.
At the bottom left, the .82 is the delay between the beep and my first shot.
Finally, the 39.43 is the split, the time between the 4th and the 5th shot.
Using the Review function will show you when every shot was fired. It will also show the splits between them.
In this case you can see that the delay between the fourth and fifth shot was almost 40 seconds. This left me with about one second to fire the first 4 shots.
Since you can also see it took me 8 tenths of a second to fire the first shot, the second, third and fourth shots were fired extremely fast.
You can correctly deduce from this, that I was just trying to make noise and was not firing very consistently or accurately…
The review button and the arrow keys to cycle through the shots. You can see the splits between each shot to get an exact picture of what happened.
In my opinion as a firearm instructor, I think that a shot timer is a vital piece of training gear. When used to evaluate your shooting and identify trends, progress and plateaus can make you a better shooter.
At around 125 dollars at Brownells. This piece of equipment can definitely make your training dollars more effective and help you become a better shooter.
To order a timer, or see one of the thousand of other great gun related items please visit Brownells from the link below.
My wife is very interested in figuring out a way to get me to eat healthy; apparently she wants me to be around for a while.
I take a lot of leftovers to work. Normally I use plastic containers or plastic bags to carry them. However, the convenience this gives me comes with the cost of buying the containers. Additionally, I have concerns over BPA and other chemicals in the plastic.
