Friday--

The warm temps (well, warm for the season) have melted most of the snow we had. The new round of cold and precipitation hasn't come in yet. We moved our shopping errands to yesterday instead of next week so we won't have to contend with the (possibly nasty) weather.

I see more and more odd things when we go out on our errands and shopping. Last weekend it was the sign at our local supermarket's meat section meat coolers announcing the animals were U.S. raised and slaughtered. They can't put country of origin on the labels anymore thanks to the WTO and our U.S. Congress but they can tell us that the product is from somewhere in the U.S. Well, we came across another oddity yesterday. We stopped into our local Menards for some new burner pans for the stove and found they had pressure canners in their kitchen section. First time I can remember. Do they suddenly have a demand for pressure canners?

I read this item yesterday and was, at first, astonished by the prices. Then I took a second look after finding out what the current exchange rate between Canadian dollars and U.S. dollars is and finding our where the examples actually came from geographically. Canadian dollars are worth about 70% of U.S. values and many of the examples come from Nunavut, one of the Northern territories. Considering those two factors--the lesser value of the Canadian currency and the transportation distance--the prices don't seem any more outrageous than our own. We stopped buying Tide some time ago because of the price and because our clothes don't get so grimy we need the cleaning power.


 I intend to plant a lot of mints and other flowers the bees like.

Did you play Powerball? I didn't and was surprised when I found I wasn't even tempted to run out and get a ticket. John Beckett has an interesting post on Powerball dreams and I realized that he is absolutely right. Those dreams aren't mine. And for the same reasons. They never made me happy or satisfied when I dreamed them and pursued them. There was always something more just out of reach that the snake oil salesmen hawking those dreams promised would make me happy and fulfilled. Liars all.