Good Morning, again.  The storm that hit the plains and Ohio valley spread a little further north than the weather people originally thought.  However, we have been lucky.  Only snow and, perhaps, only an inch or two.  If it is light and fluffy enough all we will have to do is sweep a path to our patio gate.  It did put a monkey wrench into our plans.  We have to do our shopping and pay rent.  Since the rest of the week looks no more promising we will do that today.  But the trip up to the Harbor for Mexican and tamales will wait.

Thanks for the tip on Pat Catan, Kay.  Unfortunately, from what I see on their web site, they are only in Pennsylvania and Ohio.  And, though they have a web site, they don't have an on-line store.  Too bad.  It looks interesting.

Tripping through the blogs I found another cute coaster pattern at Inspired Crochet Design.

I do hope that our nasty winter is not going to be followed by an equally nasty summer.  I don't want the same kind of weather the Sustainable Self-Sufficiency Blog describes for that Land Down Under.  Australia is bracing for what could be a 100 year heat wave.  I found a site that converts the celsius degrees to fahrenheit.  That 40 degree + temp--that translates to 104+ over here.  For those who don't know Australia has been in the grip of a prolonged and very severe drought.  Some time ago, back when rice and other commodity prices were going through the roof (along with oil),  I saw a news report that claimed that they lost better than 90% of their rice production to the drought.

I found this article at Reuters by way of John Aravosis at Americablog.  I hope that the spokesman for the 'corn refining' industry is right and their cleaning materials no longer contain mercury.  However, I am concerned somewhat because high fructose corn syrup is as ubiquitous as salt in most of our prepared foods and condiments.  And the products can stay on supermarket shelves for a very long time.  I wonder what a new round of tests with products currently on the shelves would yield.  Perhaps the researchers, or the FDA??, will repeat the tests.

This AP article on Yahoo news (by way of Chris In Paris at Americablog) explains exactly why I remain skeptical about any of the bailouts.  What has happened smacks, to me, of hiring the doctor who broke your leg to set it.  It makes about that much sense.  What burns me most is that, in any sane economy, they would have been not only fired but, possibly, prosecuted for failing in their fiduciary duties.  A store clerk whose register comes up consistently short gets fired.  These bozos get bonuses.

How familiar this sounds.  According to the Guatemala Times, the Guatemalan government gave one of their major banks a TARPesque bailout touting the same rhetoric and justifications as the Bush Administration.  And with basically the same results.  What was Einstein's definition of insanity?  Oh, yeah.  Doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.  I don't think their outraged language is strong enough but can't figure out how to say it stronger without getting deeply into profanity. The mug shots of Al Capone at the top certainly set up the article.  Thanks to Bob at PureLandMountain.