Back to the deep freeze.  Our current temperature is either -5F or -2 depending on which site you believe.  Doesn't much matter because cold is cold.  We may be in deep, cold winter but my thoughts are definitely turning to spring.  I got my seed/plant orders in yesterday.  My new plants include a new Top Hat blueberry which I will try as a potted plant that I can bring inside over winter, three wintergreen and three lemon verbena.  I haven't had much luck with either the blueberries or the lemon verbenas over the last few years but keep hoping I will find the right way to grow them.  My rosemary is doing very nicely in its third year so perhaps a new attempt at the others will do well also.

What I am reading:  Found this by way of Naked Capitalism.  So we aren't rats running around the maze of life; we are hamsters on the wheel.

This story makes me very glad I am retired.  We have the food police telling us what to eat and a growing group of "health Nazis" telling us what to do to "improve" our health.  I resent both groups and give them both a "middle finger salute" before telling them exactly where they can go.  I have managed to survive my nearly 66 years without a great deal of medical attention for most of it and I intend to continue the same way as long as possible.  And allowing companies to penalize employees for not meeting weight, blood pressure, or cholesterol or other benchmarks is ridiculous when the medical establishment constantly reformulate their notions of what is healthy.

I agree about "Bush, Clinton and the Fatigue Factor."  Ever since the song and dance began to coalesce around the candidacy of Jeb Bush for the Republicans and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, I have been asking "Isn't there anyone else??"  I am heartily tired of all the Bushes and the Clintons.  Almost as sick of them as of the Palin clan.

I love the cartoon here this morning.  It is so true and has been for the last six years.