First, thanks to every­one for con­tin­u­ing to read and sign­ing up for the list to get noti­fied of new posts.  To that end , you have no doubt noticed a lack of new posts, with the excep­tion of a few of my guest authors.  I thank them as well for their dili­gent work.

To my point.  I have been work­ing hard.  Real hard.  It has tak­en me away from this blog for months.  It’s tak­en me away from some of my prep­ping as well.  It has tak­en me away from a lot of things.   The truth of the mat­ter is, that I am try­ing to do a few things I want to share.

First, I’m try­ing to buy a house.  I’m try­ing to save as much mon­ey as I can pos­si­bly save to do so.  It’s the pri­ma­ry rea­son I am work­ing so hard.  Sec­ond, I want to buy an addi­tion­al piece of prop­er­ty as an addi­tion­al BOL loca­tion.  And final­ly, I am mak­ing plans to increase preps in areas where I know I am weak.  As you can see, all are slight­ly inter-relat­ed.  Work­ing hard is a require­ment at this stage to make any of this a real­i­ty.  At the end of the day, lit­er­al­ly, it has been dif­fi­cult to think and write, even with a list of top­ics, it has made it very dif­fi­cult.  And, unfor­tu­nate­ly the writ­ing has suf­fered.  On the flip side, I find myself in the car quite a bit these days, and it may be a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to dic­tate or even pod­cast once a week if the ambi­tion strikes.

I’m not sure which form addi­tion­al ideas, thoughts, and updates might take place, and I’m not sure if I have the men­tal capac­i­ty to con­tin­ue push­ing the blog for­ward.   There are a LOT of great blogs out there, and frankly I’m not sure what val­ue I add in the sea of infor­ma­tion that is already there.   That said, I will do my best, and if you, my read­ers have any sug­ges­tions on what to write or how to stay moti­vat­ed, please let me know…

Now for the gear update.  As many of you know, I live in an apart­ment in NJ.  My place is fill­ing up.  Lit­er­al­ly.  Find­ing cre­ative ways to hide gear, preps, and much more is becom­ing an issue.  Anoth­er rea­son for look­ing for a house to buy, or at least a “larg­er” place to live.  I have thought of try­ing to go the “min­i­mal­ist” route, and purg­ing myself of many of the items I have that I no longer use, and real­ize I do this every few months already any­way.  Yet, as for prep­ping and out­door gear, I am loaded to the gills.  Some is redun­dant, and some is not.  I have men­tioned before I am a ruck­sack junkie, and have sev­er­al in my clos­ets…  And, as I find myself hav­ing gear , I also find the require­ment for the com­pli­men­ta­ry gear.  as an exam­ple, a propane camp­ing stove, there­fore I need a com­pli­ment of 1lb propane tanks to fuel it.  I can­not have just one 20 gal­lon propane tank on premise, because it is “con­sid­ered” dan­ger­ous, there­fore a vio­la­tion of “code” to have it.  It is an ever grow­ing issue, that I need to deal with.  The ques­tion then becomes, Stay, or Move?  Move or Stay?  A big­ger place means putting out more mon­ey, and less to save for a house.  Not to men­tion get­ting locked into a lease for a year, and then hav­ing to move again.  I despise mov­ing.

Maybe, just maybe, the answer is caching some stuff.  But where to cache it?  Do I cache it close by?  Do I cache it an hour away?  Do I cache them at the BOL(s)?  If I do I will have to stan­dard­ize on a fixed amount of food at the apart­ment, and deal with the con­se­quences if there is an emer­gency.  These are the ques­tions I am bur­don­ing myself with these days.  So, I am call­ing on you, my read­ers for some input.  It’s true, and as a thank you for your input I have sev­er­al books I have acquired over the past year or three that I will give away to you, the read­er as a thank you. How do you store your preps when things tart to over­flow?

Give-away Cri­te­ria

So, here is what I have.  I have six books and two videos that I have perused/read in the past, and that are up for give away if you have not already read them.

1. The idea is that I am look­ing for ideas on bet­ter ways to man­age preps based on the state­ments above.  In return I have six books that I am giv­ing away.
2. Each win­ner will receive one book of my choos­ing or the video set.
3. You must reg­is­ter with Livefyre.com in order to com­ment, so feel free to do so to enter the con­test.
4. The win­ners, will be cho­sen at ran­dom (I’m not sure any oth­er way to do it), and noti­fied via email that they have one.  I’ll mail via USPS at my expense to any­one in North Amer­i­ca.
5. The win­ners will be cho­sen at ran­dom, August 15th, 2012.

Here are the books and videos I have for the con­test:

1. Ron Hood’s The Wood­mas­ter, Urban Mas­ter Vol­ume 1 and 2.  This is a two DVD set that I will ship as a set.  Learn more about them here:  http://goo.gl/exKyn
2. John Heather­ly’s book, The Sur­vival Tem­plate
3. Jeff Coop­er’s, Prin­ci­ples of Self Defense
4. Mar­tin Dougher­ty’s, Spe­cial Forces Unarmed Com­bat Guide
5. Les Stroud’s, WIll to Live
6. James Dak­in’s, The Fru­gal Sur­vival­ist, dis­as­ter prepa­ra­tions for under $500.00
7. Wilbur F. East­man’s, A Guide to Can­ning, Freez­ing, Cur­ing, & Smok­ing Meat, Fish, & Game (I actu­al­ly have two of these and not sure how I pro­cured both.  Giv­ing one away).

Good luck and thanks for your input!