Good Morning again, everyone.  You know it is spring because we are on the temperature roller coaster.  We had a couple of really nice days with a transition today which will be followed by much lower temperatures and possible snow for tomorrow and Monday.  We will probably postpone our shopping and errands until Tuesday.

I just had to go into MSNBC's Week in Political Cartoons.  Check this one out here.  Or this one.

This one about sums up the feelings in this household with the recent increase in the Federal tobacco tax.  In the last two years Mom has seen the price of a carton of her cigarettes (pretty much the cheapest brand out there) almost double.

On the economic front--I noted yesterday that my former boss and I had selected the fabrics and materials I needed to do the two baby quilts she wants.  Something about the purchase stuck in my mind.  It involved the spools of thread she purchased.  They seem to be much smaller than I remember but, since I usually buy thread several spools at a time and I hadn't bought any in a long time, I wondered if my memory was faulty.  Not even.  The new spools appear to be about half the size of the old ones.  This wasn't mere appearances as an e-mail newsletter from a favorite little local sewing shop made clear. (I wish I had the resources to patronize it more often.)  The proprietor wondered how JoAnn's could sell thread for so much cheaper than she could. True she carries a top quality brand but to be so much less??  Well, it turns out that the spools JoAnn's carries contain about one third the yardage at about three quarters the price.  More of the charge a bit more for a lot less scam that has been repeatedly perpetrated on the consumers of late.

Rain at Rainy Day Thoughts has a post today that should make everyone angry enough to demand a universal, national health care system that isn't run by insurance companies.  Follow the link for all of the messy details.  Medicare Part D should have been subtitled 'the insurance companies profit assurance program.' 

Well, it is time to get back to cutting the pieces for the new quilts.  See you soon.