Today is my birthday! I’m now 37 years old, and I have a few friends coming over today to play board games and hang out. Yesterday my husband and I went to the airshow at Andrews Air Force Base, and had an absolute blast. It’s the first time in twelve years that the Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels have been at the same show, so it was really exciting. I used to go (or rather, get dragged to) airshows all the time when I was younger, but haven’t been to one in almost twenty years. I loved the Blue Angels when I was little, so it was really neat getting to see them again. My husband, despite being in the Marines for five years, had never been to an airshow, so it was neat both seeing him at an airshow for the first time, and getting to hear his stories about some of the aircraft we were seeing.

I took SO. MANY. PICTURES. I know I got some good ones. I’ll add some of the best to the end of this post.

After the airshow, we came home, and three of our friends came over to play a few board games, since they probably won’t make it tomorrow. (Mother’s Day and all.) Which means that at midnight on my birthday, I was laughing myself silly. Tears running down my face and everything. It was a great start to my birthday.

I’m a little sunburned from the airshow, despite putting sunscreen on and wearing long sleeves. It could be a lot worse, though. It was actually perfect weather for an airshow – semi-blue skies while the Thunderbirds (white planes) were flying, and overcast in time for the Blue Angels (dark blue planes) to fly against the light gray background. We managed to almost get to our car before the rain started, so all in all, great timing.

Photos!

A shot you don’t see very often. First show in twelve years to have both teams at the same time!

A C-5B Galaxy. The nose cone opens up as well as the gate in back, to allow loading and unloading of massive amounts of freight and vehicles. Like tanks. Husband flew out of Afghanistan in one of these and did a combat landing in Kyrgyzstan. Which is amazing given how MASSIVE these things are.

This was a rocket truck racing a small plane, with pyrotechnics. I wasn’t expecting the pyrotechnics, so this was a really lucky shot!

Thunderbirds against a spotty sky.

Blue Angels against a more overcast sky, three hours later. I thought I got better photos, but it appears some of them didn’t upload to Google Photos. I’ll have to look through my phone when I have some more time!

One of the other performance teams doing a cool scattering maneuver. 

So. Climate Change is happening. There are maps showing the zone hardiness maps (zones across the country to help gardeners know what grows in their climates) changing over the next ten years as the country gets warmer. There are people talking about the twelve years number, and how climate change is actually probably going to happen faster than that. Articles on sea level rise, and temperature rise, and projected food shortages and mass extinctions.

And my low-grade general anxiety is sitting over here making me research permaculture and edible gardening. Because I like to eat. And we just bought this house, with almost half an acre of good, south-facing land. So I’m learning. I’m reading about swales and rain gardens and water collection, and food forests and tree guilds and helpful species. I’m paying attention to what species will continue to be hardy in this area as the climate changes, and how to provide shelter and food for beneficial insects and animals.

I feel a little bit like a Doomsday prepper. Which is…uncomfortable. But like – I’m not planning on building a bomb shelter, or having shelves upon shelves of food in cans and crates of MREs. I’d just like to be a little more self-sustaining. I’m really sad we don’t have the roof space to put in solar power; Baltimore County laws mandate setting the panels in three feet from any edge, and we have several small sections of roof so there’s nowhere big enough to put more than a couple of panels. Baltimore County laws are also preventing me from getting chickens – no chickens on less than an acre of land. People are lobbying to get that changed, so I’ll keep an eye on it.

All this is to say, I’m reading a lot about permaculture, native plants, and edible gardening, so I’ve made a new book list to keep track of Homesteading books. I’ll try to get more reviews up of the ones I own, since I’ve only reviewed a few of those here on the blog. If anyone has suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Even going by the original twelve-year number – I’m going to be 49 in twelve years. And the science says our whole world is about to go to shit. We’re already seeing effects in the number and severity of storms. I’m lucky to be in the position I am – in a fairly well-off country, owning enough land to grow food on. Being chronically ill could really suck, if my medicine supply gets disturbed, but other than that, I’m not in a bad situation to be facing this. A lot of people are going to be a lot worse off. It’d sure be nice if our government took steps to help instead of actively making things worse….