Okay, the sauce certainly smells good. What with the butter.

Of course, if you buy the flashlight well in advance of the disaster, you could be like me, and forget where it is... or find it, with dead batteries in it.

One year for Christmas I asked my dad for one of those flashlights you shake to charge. It doesn't get incredibly bright (at least not with MY puny shaking), but it works. Also, our weather radio is a crank-to-charge dealie, and it has a flashlight built in that works off the crank-to-charge thing.

All of this presupposes we know where the flashlight and the weather radio are.

Ooh! I have a crank-to-charge flashlight, I think with no radio, but it also charges cell phones.

but it also charges cell phones

That's useful. I need to get one of those.

If stuff goes crazy, don't expect cell phones to work for a while. Basically, what it was like after the earthquake. Texting will be easier than calls.

Ooh, I pulled it out, and of course it is a radio! And I sort of knew where it was! t /prepared

My radio is my car.

I had one of those shakey flashlights and it stopped working. Although this may be because I shook it more or less nonstop for the first month I had it. Well, I and my kids did. Okay, mostly me.

I still need to get a good quality solar/handcrank emergency radio, but in my head, I want it to work with, like, AMFMVHFUHFNOAAHam but there aren't any that do everything. So I have to choose. And you know me and choices.

My complacency is now somewhat driven by my neighborhood. Between all of us, we can pretty much take care of it. Though I will buy extra snackies for the hurricane party tomorrow night!

I'm actually able to keep crackers and stuff that I don't nibble on for impromptu deck and porch parties. Even building up a wine stash with their preferences in mind.

Does anyone drive a Honda Odyssey? Do you like it? Or any other fairly recent minivan? They don't make mine anymore and it has 300,000 miles on it, so I'm thinking we're due.