Good Thursday morning to you all.  We had a beautiful day yesterday.  Temperatures reached near 60F on the patio.  We opened the front door and raised the storm window of the screen/storm door by a couple of inches to let in the breeze.  Later the breeze turned into a brisk wind forcing me to place some of my 5 gal buckets with their frozen soil in front of the mini-greenhouse to make sure it didn't blow over.  I wasn't too worried about that because it is on the most protected fence.  I also found my little thermometer and got it hung in the greenhouse.  The temperature inside got up to almost 70F.  And I don't have it entirely zipped up.  I have been slowly closing the zippers as the plastic relaxes a bit.  I don't want to put too much stress on it because if the zipper broke or the plastic ripped I would either have to find a way to repair it myself or buy a new cover.  I really don't want to do either.

Hey, Nicola, we all have our 'guilty pleasures.'  I don't mind that.  What I have found very irritating is how DWTS (and Great Race, and Survivor, and Bachelor, and Bachelorette and their kin) have taken over the airwaves and news.  I have my own guilty pleasures but over the last few years I have seen more and more of my pleasures cancelled so the networks could put on cheap knock-offs of DWTS.  With the new season of DWTS I expect to see morning and evening news devoting a considerable portion of their time to the day-before speculation and re-cap of standings, the day-of speculation and re-cap of the standings, the day-after results and new standings, and any juicy bits of gossip concerning the behavior or mis-behavior of the contestants.  You may not get all of that.  I wish we didn't.

Well, Bank of America is acting badly again.  Perhaps it is time for more customers to pull out.  However, I doubt it will make much difference.  I read yesterday that BoA has the contract with South Carolina to issue the pre-paid debit cards on which tax refunds will be issued if the taxpayer doesn't have a direct deposit or doesn't indicate a preference for a paper check.  The article indicated that BoA will charge some of the taxpayers as much as $10/transaction to use the cards and, of course, merchants will also be charged for the 'convenience' of accepting them.  Don't you just love all the ways by which they separate people from their money?  But I guess I am not the only one who thinks bigger is not necessarily better.  One might think that a defection rate of almost 10% of my customers would make me reassess.  But then maybe not if I had enough sweetheart deals with enough states to provide me with a large number of accidental customers I can bleed.

So, how bad were the tornadoes that marched through states from Arkansas to southern Illinois and Indiana?  Bad enough that NHKWorld (Japan English Language) had a segment on them last night (Wednesday for us, Thursday morning for them).  Yet again we are grateful: the heavy snow went north of us and the thunderstorms with their tornadoes went south of us.  In the 'Oh, we are having a strange winter' file was the report on this morning's news: Boston is bracing for its first big snow storm of the season.  Last year they had over 80 inches of snow.  This year?  Only about 9--so far.  So far Chicago has had a bit more than 15 inches.  Contrast that with the 45, 53, and 55+ for the last three winters.

In the 'FOX may miss this piece of crap but I certainly won't' file Andrew Breitbart has died of apparently natural causes.  That boy took 'swift-boating' to an all new high low.  There is a definite place for muckraking journalists but preferably those who have a sense of ethics and a passion for truth.