November 2

Beautifully sunny bit a bit on the cold side. We just broke 40F and it is almost noon. We aren't likely to pass 50 at all today. But I did get out and cut down the three sunpatiens, the impatiens and the last dahlia. All looked pretty bad. Everything else will stay and provide some cover over winter. The roses are looking somewhat better though I will be cutting some of their growth before I bring out the straw bale and pack them. The red one survived last winter without any protection but we had quite a bit of snow piled up over them last year during the worst of the cold. I don't trust the weather. One of the pots had some spindly peppermint trying to grow. I will leave it alone and see if it comes back next year.

We are listening to Pandora today. I have really had enough of the coverage of the various off-off year elections. All I heard over the weekend was speculation over what the consequences of a Republican (or a Democratic) win would be in New Jersey or Virginia. One or the other will win and long term consequences won't be known for some time. I am at the "pox on both your houses" stage right now.

I have said for some time that the official statistics on inflation (or anything else) tell any kind of accurate tale about what people at my level of the economy experience. This piece on NPR explains part of why we have that disconnect. The statistics have been weighted with various adjustments to make inflation seem less than it really. However, all the adjustments fail when we are faced with tactics like "skimpflation" or shrinkflation as another author has termed it. For the last 50 years economists have been concerned with changes that they thought enhanced buying power like computers that are faster and can do more functions or cars that have more bells and whistles. I noticed that much of the shrinkage we experienced (4 lbs of sugar for what 5 used to cost or 14 oz cans of a product for what 16 oz cost before) never got into the equations. Now, however, too many goods and services are being skimped or shrunk.