Because it's not a virus, you moron!

[Ashurah]

Man you guys had me scared. All this talk of an outbreak and such. I mean, there was a report in the paper about some wacco at a hospital, but the police arrived and cleared that up.

Anyways, in my deer stand. Better get back to hunting. Lots of gunshots in the south. There must be a war going on, or maybe they just are getting lucky. Just cant beleve the woods are so quiet.

Looks like a hunter getting closer. His gear is mostly orange, but theres a red stain on his shoulder. Better go check on him.

[Narshalla]

Sorry I've been away so long, guys. I was in the hospital with an inflamed gallbladder. Worse yet, I got out Thursday in time for the Turkey dinner.

I'm still on a soft diet, so that meas mashed potatoes, stuffing, maybe a little cranberry sauce, but no turkey, and no desert -- unless there's jello, which oddly enough, she didn't make this time. But did she listen to doctors' orders? Nope. She put a plate in front of me piled high with just about everything. The only things that weren't on the plate were -- you guessed it -- mashed potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce. She then told me that if I finished my plate, I could have the things that the doctor said was okay. What? I have no idea what is going through that woman's head sometimes, if anything is.

Anyways, just let you know, everybody else told me that I didn't need to go, that I shouldn't go, and I was the one who insisted -- keeping peace with the MIL, you know. They were right and I was wrong. Right after the first round of desert, Pat manufactured an excuse -- pretended to have a migraine -- and drove me home. It was complete bunk, of course, because Pat isn't the one with migraines, Sam is, but Ellen (my MIL) already doesn't like Pat, so it's no loss.

Anyways, I had gone directly from the hospital to Ellen's house, so I hadn't seen what my home looked like. Inside was okay. A bunch of things weren't where I would have put them, but mostly everything was cleaned up and put away.

The fence, though . . . You know how I said that the neighbor directly to the north of us had their house burn down? Well, it's all the way gone now, and the lot has been reconfigured as a parking lot. Apparently, the person who now owns the ten acres -- it's a new person, not the old guy I knew -- bought the lot and is using this as a pedestrian entrance; the cars can par there, but only foot traffic is allowed through the gate. None of the cars and trucks are fancy, either; all appear to be from the late eighties or early nineties. The eight-foot solid fence they put around the ten acres is now around the lot , too, which means that on two sides, we have solid walls that really don't look like walls, at least from the outside. Or from our side, anyways.

The thing is, the fence was built almost all the way up to the sidewalk, and the same height all the way around. Now, we don't have a HOA around here, or we wouldn't have bought this house, but that fence doesn't . . . I don't know, it doesn't fit in with the rest of the neighborhood. The local code Nazi came around yesterday, trying to agitate a petition to get it taken down. Now, privately, I might have a tendency to agree with her, but there is no way I am going to support any petition that she starts.

[Narshalla]

Oh, and I have to add -- there was something really weird about the hospital.

There were at least six security guards on my floor, and they were armed with real handguns -- not those tasers that just look like guns, but the real thing. They also roamed around constantly, and none of them were portly, if you get my drift. I'm not saying that they were all sleek and muscled with six-pack abs, but they looked like they could run quite a distance easily, if that makes sense.

Also, the nurses talked about "working on the ninth floor," but they said it in such a way that it meant something. Higher pay and huge bonuses, from what they said, but the way they talked it sounded as though they didn't think the risk was worth it.

Now, the county jail has its own medical facility, and when the problem is too much for them to handle, the prisoners get sent to the hospital, but not this hospital.

And here's the weirdest part -- this hospital has three towers, which are connected on floors one through three, and then on floors six and nine by walkways, like a couple of great big flying triangles. The construction is finished, and has been finished for over three years, but from my room, I could see that the walkways to the East tower were gone, stripped down to the supports with no way to cross, but the walkway between the North and South tower was still there.

Like I said, weird.

[Ryder358]

Bump

[Narshalla]

Bump

"Bump"?

Just that?

How are things going over where you're at?

[Narshalla]

The fences are up here, btw. Our cul-de-sac decided to get heavy-duty fencing along our back fences, and add two gates to the entrance of our street. It only blocks one driveway, but that house was foreclosed on months ago, so the bank can go punt. The outer gate is open during the day, but closes before the inner gate opens if you want to come in. After dark, you have to wait until the outer gate opens before you can get in. Right now, we're using flashlights to check under cars; pretty soon, though, we'll be getting some floodlights -- eight, to be exact. Four mounted high, at the corners of the gates, and four mounted low, to allow visibility under vehicles. That was my idea, btw, and I still am rather proud of myself for thinking that up.

Less than a mile away from us is St. Mary's Home for Boys. Or it was, anyways. It's closed now, and the boys have been farmed out to -- farms, really. Not that there's much to pick right now, but there's always work on a farm, and not living in a dormitory is so much safer.

We would still be stacked in my house like cord wood, but our neighbors to the south decided that they wanted to go back to Arkansas, and they didn't want to wait for the house to sell. Now Sam and Pat and their kids are there. More importantly, their darn cockatiel is there, too -- that bird really hates me.

So far, Daisy is turning out to be the best watchdog in the neighborhood. She'll back at strangers and squirrels, but when something is really wrong, she lets out this high-pitched whine that's just awful. Oddly enough, it's high enough that most of the other adults can't hear it, though kids and teens don't seem to have that problem. Yin and Yang are barkers, though, and unfortunately, they don't have a special bark for 'friend,' 'stranger,' or 'squirrel,' so other than for intimidation, they're not much use.

Tammy and Greg -- Yin and Yang's owners -- aren't back yet, and there's been no word on where they went. They didn't pay their rent in December (obviously) and they aren't going to pay it in January, so we figured that they would rather have there stuff stored over here than out on the street, so we hauled it all into the garage of the house Sam and Pat are renting. Turns out, they were really into the whole 'minimalist' thing. They lived in a four bedroom house, but all their stuff fit easily into one parking space in the garage.

Their meat-filled freezers came to my house, though, since I'm the one feeding the dogs. I've been canning all I could for the last week, in case the power goes out again. Turns out, they had quite a bit of freeze-dried meat in their attic, enough to feed the dogs for over a year. Nothing else, though -- not even any extra TP. Odd, but it could have been worse -- they could have been hoarders, instead.

The shelves in my garage are set up now. That was my Christmas present to my husband; he got me some ten gallon barrels to hold water, enough to fill the bottom shelf all along the south wall. The shelves above them are only about half full of food, but we're getting there.

The north wall, though -- that makes me rather proud. The wood shop is set up with storage for all the tools and hangers for the sawhorses on the wall. When everything's put away, it all fits withing twelve inches of the wall.

The only thing left to do is to finish plumbing the sink and run the gas line out to the burner so my husband can brew his bear out there and I won't have to share my kitchen; it's hard to make dinner when there's wert stewing on the stove! Also, there's enough ventilation that we can actually cook in the garage, so if they go through with that power rationing they've been talking about, we won't heat the entire house just to be able to eat.

Other than the fence and the gates