Tuesday, April 5, 2016

Sunday--

We had bouts of blizzard-like snow followed by intense sunshine yesterday. Supposed to be much warmer today. Typical spring. 

I did some crocheting but had to take out almost all of two rows because I made a mistake that couldn't be finessed away. Oh, well. I redid all of that row and started the next. It is a pretty pattern but, if my attention wavers just a bit, I can mess it up. I also did up a oatmeal bread that I modified from a traditional yeast bread to a sourdough. It came out quite well and actually better that the original recipe.

Monday--

We had high winds all night. Yesterday I brought in a half-filled pot in which I will put the largest of my tomatoes--one of those that supposedly tolerate lower light levels. I wanted to give the soil time to warm up a bit first. I moved two of the other tomatoes downstairs onto the table in front of my south-facing window. I found roots beginning to form on four of my rosemary slips (yeah!!!) but all of my lemon verbena slips failed (boo!!!).

I found this item that resonates. I can agree on just about every point. Evidently the politicians in Australia are similar to ours over here. I don't give a bucket of warm spit (and I am bing polite because there is another s--t word I could use) for any of ours.

Tuesday--

Yesterday was a weird day for our shopping. The weather not quite bad enough to not go out at all (the temperature dropped and we had snow flurries) and what should have been an easy hour turned into a three hour trek. We went out with our list, as usual, and everything on the list was normal stuff, nothing exotic or odd. We expected to go to both supermarkets because the produce one carries hasn't been of good quality for sometime. But all we thought we would need at the second store was the produce we weren't getting at the first. But going for the produce we still had items on our list we couldn't find at the first stop. Yogurt, steel cut oats--that kind of thing. But we couldn't get them at the second store either. Both had steel cut oats but of the quick cooking variety and we stopped getting that kind of convenience food a good while ago. Neither had the yogurt we like and we are getting to the point of not buying substitutes that don't measure up as stop gaps. We wound up making a trip to a town about 20 miles north of us to our favorite little store where we get most of our tea, spices and which has a large selection of grains, flours, nuts and such--in bulk. We knew they had steel cut oats because that is where we found them in the first place. And we stocked up. We found the yogurt in the (more expensive) supermarket across the street. This has become an all too frequent occurrence for us--finding that what we want, and have come to expect, is no longer available in the stores nearby and having to go further afield. As happened with the bread (which I am now making at home) I am threatening to start making our own yogurt. We'll see what happens.

As I read this Lambert Strether post at Naked Capitalism I remarked "Debt has become a major asset--for some people at least." I love his assessment that we are creating a second "sharecropper" society.

I have often said that much of what is sold to us as "convenience" isn't really convenient and may actually be both inconvenient but harmful. I don't want my refrigerator or freezer telling me when I need to replenish whatever or ordering on its own. We just changed phones and phone companies and the first requirement: no smart phones. I have tried PDAs and they simply don't work for me. I don't want any of the A.I. assistants. This is a good illustration of why in this aspect of technology I am a luddite.

Damn!! Two of my favorite blogs have stopped posting recently: Thoughts from Frank and Fern, and Some Assembly Required.

I am no Clinton supporter and I think the whole notion of "Super-delegates" is a crock but publishing a list of her "Super-delegates" and urging those supporting other candidates to harass them is just plain wrong. The link is to Americablog which has the story but isn't responsible for the list.

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