This sounds amazing!

Nobody expects the Spanish inquisition

‘es pining for the fjords

My understanding is it will be a symbol, kind of like the USDA Organic symbol. Not necessarily similar in design, but just that the organic symbol means it’s met USDA criteria for being organic

I’m glad you’ve recovered! They did say it was more likely for my spouse to have a lung collapse again, which is scary.

Luckily my spouse’s employer has someone whose whole job is to fight with insurance. She got insurance to admit that in an emergency we didn’t need pre-approval which brought our bill down some.

My spouse had their lung collapse. Insurance denied it because we didn’t get advance approval for their lung to collapse.

I was in the store the other day and saw they now make electric ones

Along the same vein, if there’s a meal that always brings back good memories, make that. And if you’re comfortable sharing, invite some of your friends to eat it with you.

The same goes for activities - is there a game or something you did a lot back home? Could you teach some friends in NZ how to do it?

Finally, if possible, can you set up a regular time to play games online with friends or family back home?

Several years ago we lost power for 4 days after an especially bad storm. We don’t have good enough cell service at our house to usually use data or run a hotspot. Mostly it’s like camping except we get to sleep in our beds.

Prepare: We keep filled water jugs for both drinking and flushing the toilets.

We have a small generator to run our fridge, so once a month we run it for about 10 minutes. We keep gas and spark plugs for it handy.

We have a weather radio that’s solar powered with battery back-up.

We have a solar-charging battery bank (to charge our phones) as well as lanterns and flashlights that use AA batteries and a stash of extra AA batteries. Winter here can be quite cloudy, making solar lights harder to use sometimes.

We have a camping stove and extra fuel, as well as some easy to prepare foods. We use the food when we go camping and get new ones to store for emergencies, making sure the food doesn’t expire. We cooked outside (it was summer but even in winter I would do the cooking outside).

For winter we have a kerosene heater and extra fuel and wicks.

Entertainment: I would guess you’re especially asking about evenings, as during the day when our power was out we’d go outside if the weather was nice. In the evenings we played board games and card games, did puzzles and crosswords, did art (drawing, coloring, and painting), did crafts, and read.

If we know ahead of time bad weather’s coming, I’ll download some shows and movies to my tablet. We also have a DVD player to connect to my laptop while the battery lasts.

At-home laser tag game? When we were kids my brother had one - 2 battery powered chest plates you wore and 2 guns. We’d turn the lights off in the basement and play.

Baked potatoes, mashed potatoes, pasta, yogurt, steamed veggies, lots of rice dishes, pulled pork, chicken, venison, Thanksgiving turkey breast when it’s just the 3 of us

It’s extremely helpful when I forget to thaw meat for dinner (which is more often than not)

There is a trick to the pasta, but it saves me from panic dashing into the kitchen when the pot boils over because I forgot to check it

I cook most of our meals in it. We even have 2 so I can cook the meat separately since I’m vegetarian

But wait! There’s more! (not really, I just know I sound like an infomercial)

Cherry for me. Common flavor in lots of fruity candy mixes but not my favorite. I do like cherry sours on their own though

Canid and canine generally mean any of the dog-like animals: domestic dogs, wolves, fox, coyotes, dingoes, jackals, wild dogs

Parrot applies to members of the Psittacine family: parrots, macaws, parakeets, cockatiels, cockatoos, parrotlets, lorikeets

Herps and herpetofauna are used to collectively refer to amphibians and reptiles: frogs, salamanders, newts, lizards, turtles, snakes

Bear means all actual bear species but is also often used in reference to pandas and koalas (just don’t say it in front of my scientifically accurate kid)

Waterfowl is ducks, geese, swans

Depending on why or how you’re using categories, you can also group by characteristics: Do they have fur, feathers, or scales Do they lay eggs or give birth Are they predator or prey Do they eat meat, plants, fruit, pollen, or some combination

Shows from my youth I’ve watched with my kid: The Muppets Full House Animaniacs

$0.13213 per kWh plus a $0.58915 per day “customer charge”

Freezing your credits means you (or anyone else) cannot access your credit report to open new lines of credit. No credit cards, mortgages, car loans, nothing.

English word: curmudgeon or cattywampus

French word: hippopotame

Blue. No, yellooOOOOOOOOW

We couldn’t be happier. And if you can afford to pay for a year up front, it’s only $15/line per month for unlimited data ($180 for the year). We just switched to that after using US Mobile for about 2 years. I wanted to be absolutely sure it worked before prepaying for an entire year.

Edit: Clarifying the price

Look into US Mobile. It runs on Verizon’s network (I think T-mobile too actually, you pick one or the other when you sign up). We have 3 phones sharing 12gb for $41 per month. You can also do a “top-up” of an extra 5gb for $10 if you’re running low one month, and it only charges for that month - meaning the next month they only charge you the 12gb plan.

Both rurally and in large Midwestern cities we’ve never had any issues with a connection. Which I did worry about them making us low priority since we’re piggy backing Verizon. But so far at least I haven’t seen it happen.