Ino ran across an oil convoy one day on his way to work. It was huge, like one long train of tanker trucks. The trucks didn't have a lot of security, they didn't need it. There is one vehicle at the front of the convoy with just a few sensors is all they needed. Determine threats, then blow them up, then keep driving. Repeat. To be honest the whole convoy could be destroyed and it didn't matter, most enemies would keep the convoy going to simply find a reserve.

"Sorry I'm late," Ino apologized to his supervisor.
"Not even an issue." Came the expected response.

Ino like his job. He had always played around with radios as a kid, so he fit right in at a development firm for radio technology. A lot of his work was creating ideas that are unrealistic, and making them realistic. Many people also contract him to fix their radios and/or be oncall to fix their business radios. When television was labeled red, and people realized they shouldn't be watching it, the business boomed, the government took an interest and things changed quickly.

When Ino first laid eyes on the envelope, there was no doubt what it was for. He didn't even open it. He didn't have to. His life was now devoted to his country.

Sarah and Joey re-write:

Joey sat down to the supper they had prepared and they played. The way they liked to play;
"How was work honey?" Sarah prompted him like an actress reading a script.
"Tough, my boss is riding me to get a project done..." the charade stops as they erupt in laughter. The mockery was over, their lives continued. The truth is that Joey quit his job. Sarah had already quit hers too, but not of necessity.

It didn't take long for two clean-minded people to realize that the best source of energy isn't something you can burn, buy, collect, save or earn. Humans. The Matrix was right, humans are where the real energy is. To grow and raise food, to clean and build and burn; requires backpower combined with knowledge and experience.

Before the wars were out of control, the two spent one night a week at the library doing research on living and learning applicable trades. There are endless resources online and lots of ancient books from workshop dads who love nothing more than their wives, but if they did it would be there hobby of woodworking, or solar power, etc etc.

So Joey quit his job. He didn't care, it's not like he truly loved it.

(no more time tonight)

Joey and Sarah subplot in "petro wars"

joey sarah

"What if we turned off the electricity in the house?" That's how my husband proposed this self-sustainable lifestyle. Can you believe that? Talk about tact. That "boy" of a husband had the audacity to sell the harshest idea with the most basic of questions. Well, looking back, I'm slightly embarrassed at my response. Something along the lines of "hair, alarm clocks, freezer, cell phone, laptops, reading at night" etc etc.

Two weeks later the idea had rooted in my brain to throw the question back at him by marching downstairs and turning off the main breaker. When he got home and the garage door opener didn't work, we got our first taste of what we weren't even thinking about. He came inside, whispered "thank you" and we made love a good three or four times before passing out.

There is more to life than the distractions we force into our own.

Don't get me wrong, there are times when we used power from the grid initially. We love to entertain and many forms of entertainment require power. So we basically used it until our entertainment took different forms. Instead of playing console video games, we have a bonfire and play backyard games.

Eventually our power saving and power creating devices were saving too much energy. So we took some old car batteries (not too old though) and converted a shelf or two in the yard-shed-thing to an energy outpost. So now we're able to charge our cellphone (which we share) laptop (which we rarely use) and even bake in an oven, use a dryer in the winter or if we're really feeling wasteful, turn on a light.

The hardest part for us wasn't the energy loss. It was the daylight. What time does the sun set? What time does it rise? If you can't answer either of those you are still a slave to the lightbulbs in your house. Our schedules match the natural rhythm of the daylight, and I have yet to miss seeing a sunrise or sunset.


________________
notes: I don't like this format... she's preaching... I'm going to create a more storylike method of revealing these points, but it's nice to have them written down.

insert for "blah blah" on Chuck substory

just a sketchy idea after re-reading the petro wars entries...
--
talk of dog fight, owner being furious, chuck teaching him a lesson. Chuck defending himself. Chuck and Winter run. Lost, suburb of Chicago south. Keep heading south oilfield? Job?

Off the grid

There were two really bad decisions we had made before we even started. The first was that our house was huge. Twelve hundred square feet for two, maybe three people? The second was the location. Minnesota. Land of 10,000 lakes and sub-zero winter temperatures.

We wrote these two obstacles into our plans and decided to deal with them as best we could and then just improve on them as we needed. In retrospect, my husband Joey and I should have started from scratch to save money, but tearing down a house in the middle of suburb wasn't our best way to garner support from our neighbors.

"Sarah's place always smells like caramel corn..." I caught our neighbor saying one day. They had forgotten we don't close our windows in the summer because don't have air-conditioning. I actually took the time to explain it to them too. We had fired up our corn stove early summer because that night it was supposed to get below freezing and we couldn't risk bursting any water pipes. It was also nice to have really hot water that morning.

If you hadn't gathered it yet. My husband and I converted our suburban cookie-cutter house into a self-sufficient energy producing home. We are completely "off the grid." We haven't paid an energy bill in years and we don't ever plan to. But it wasn't easy to get to this point.

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notes: This is going to be a side-story to the petro wars. The narration format doesn't really leave a lot space for lexicon, or prose, but I think it might be a great mix-up to be able to switch styles during the writing and reading....

past the past

Today I biked home past a cemetery. Outside, a 1950 Schwinn bike was leaning against the oldest oak I could see. As I passed further on I could see just beyond the fence an old man strolling... past his friends? Past the past.

It's nine-o-clock at night, the neighbor's bonfire roars so loud I can hear the snaps in the furthest corner of my house. All the dogs in the neighborhood are on edge and sensitive to the slightest snap of a twig.

My wife comes home from chaperoning the football game with stories of mosquitoes and smelling of high school. ers.

"6 to 40, visitors" And I'm done for the night.

Long time no post...

Sorry it's been so long since I last posted... I don't think anyone reads this anyway...