Good morning, everyone. We should be getting some heavy rains today. The weather reports last night noted that large areas of Indiana (south of us) and Illinois may experience flooding because this system will be followed by another due in next Wednesday. I was really glad to see that none of the projected daytime temps are supposed to fall below freezing. I have a couple of containers that have two to three inches of ice in them and that will take a bit of time to melt away.

I rather like our system for the water also, Lois. A decade ago we might have gone the faucet or pitcher filtration route without thinking about the filters we would have to replace continuously. At that time I was desperately trying to find some way into a full time job that would pay for my rather modest lifestyle and time was as much at a constraint as money. Now we have the time to use more labor intensive methods (like cooking from scratch and gardening), are not so easily seduced by promises of 'labor saving' products (which we have often found to be overblown), and are cautious about solving a problem with a process that requires an increase in our trash and an expenditure that may be bearable now but may not be sometime down the line.

So, Hillary Clinton says we are loosing the 'information war.' I wonder what has taken her so long to figure that out. I noticed the (very slight) mention on a newscast a couple of weeks ago that Al Jazeera is negotiating with Comcast hoping to be included in the Comcast line up. I hope that comes to fruition. Much of what she said before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was right on target. Several times a week I tune into the PBS News Hour and a couple of foreign news programs on another PBS channel. I can't begin to tell you how absolutely wonderful it was to get news without commercial interruption and without a single mention of Charlie Sheen. If Al Jazeera does come to Comcast I hope it is included in the package I already have and not on one of the premium packages. I will definitely tune in.

Robert Ellsberg has a wonderfully sarcastic comment on how right the GOP is to blame Teachers, et. al., for the economic crisis. Wonderful to see someone call out the right wingers for their blame-the-victim game.

And then there is this post from Robert Reich that pretty well sums up the 'good' news on the employment front that was supposed to push the stock market higher. Again I feel somewhat like the canary in the coal mine. I said above that I once desperately searched for one job that would pay a living wage. I never found it. The closest I came during the last decade was a job as a legal secretary paying $10/hour for a 32 hour week and a period of about 8 months when I had two (and at one point 3) jobs paying between $6.50 and $9.50 per hour. Between them I actually got about 48 hours/week. In each case, though, the net pay was only about two-thirds what I needed to pay my full share of the expenses. I am sure it has gotten worse over time. A year after I left the inventory counting job I saw an ad for the same job starting $1/hour less than I started at. Those 8 months I split my time between three part time jobs was the most exhausting and depressing of my life.