3772 Dieting Disappointment

Saturday, October 5, 2013

"A man can be happy with any woman as long as he does not love her." 

--Oscar Wilde--

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I haven't had Bisquick Impossible Cheeseburger Pie, one of my favorite things, in ages, and suddenly had a hunger for it.  So a few days ago I made it.

I was SO disappointed.  It didn't have the right texture or taste.  Not at all what my mouth remembered and expected.

I used 90% fat free hamburger, Lite Bisquick, 1% milk, and 75% fat free Cabot Cheddar.

No wonder it was blah.  The only things that were "real" were the onions, eggs, and tomato.  They tasted fine.  It was everything wrapped around them that was yuck.

Sigh.  It's sad when you get old and fat and have to make choices like that.
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3771 Freakin' out here. Part Three.

Friday, October 4, 2013

All mushrooms are edible.  Some only once per person.

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I followed the online news stories coming out of Washington yesterday.  I tore out more of my hair.

The first reports quoted police saying that the woman attempted to "break through a gate" at the White House, and then rammed a barricade.  I guess there were too many witnesses, and people who pointed out that there was no damage to the front of her car, because that changed to "attempted to go through" a gate (which was open).  "Ramming a barricade" became "tried to go around" one of those fence section dohickies like are used for crowd control that a secret service agent was pulling in front of her car in an attempt to divert her.  She did hit the agent (who ran in front of her car), who was injured when he slid to the ground.

She then took off at high speed, acquiring a screaming police tail.

They managed to stop her (or she just stopped, not sure) and blocked her in with a police cruiser behind her.  Now, initial reports said she shot at the police at that point.  However, I guess there were too many witnesses who pointed out that her windows were closed and unbroken, so much later that version changed.  She looked out her window and saw a cop in that classic firing range position, with a gun 18 inches from her and pointed at her head.  (Having read my immediately previous blog post, and being herself of the "wrong" race, she knew what was coming, so...) She backed into the blocking police car, wiggled out, and took off again.

Reporters were careful to point out that she then headed to the capitol building and senate offices.  (The video actually shows her literally going around in circles.)  If you look at any map of DC, the capitol building is straight up the widest road from the White House, so it doesn't take any planning to get there.

The police fired on the car, and then stopped her again.  Interestingly, there  is no video of that stop.  Initial reports said she got out of the car and opened fire on the officers, so they shot her dead.  Barrump-bump.

Later reports noted that she was unarmed.

This morning's reports say she never even got out of the car.  They shot her while she was sitting in the car.  Judge, jury, executioner?

Police claim they didn't know there was an infant in the car during all that shooting.  I call B.S.  On that first stop, you KNOW someone checked the back seat to make sure there weren't three more people hiding back there.  That's SOP.  Modern infant car seats are huge and stand out from the back seat.  Plus, "news" reports noted a baby in the back even before that final stop.

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Now, all that speculation reported as fact was disturbing enough.  Everybody was so anxious to get the info out first that they didn't care if it was accurate or not.

What REALLY got to me was the comments on the articles from (here we go again, can you tell I'm furious?) assholes. 

Almost all of the commenters, better than 98%, made it into a political act, blaming anger at the government shutdown.  Half blamed Congress (about evenly divided between blaming Republicans for their assholery, and Democrats for their refusal to compromise capitulate).  The other half pointed out that she headed for the White House first, so obviously Obama was to blame.

What got me was that EVERYONE was absolutely sure that THEY KNEW what her motive and intent was.  With NO facts, NO knowlege of her, they were SURE they knew exactly what was going on in her head.

You have no idea how much that infuriates me!

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So, early evening, Daughter and Nugget visited, and I told Daughter what was going on, and how angry all this speculation knowing and laying blame made me.

She thinks like me.  She and I immediately came up with a story (one of a hundred possibilities) that could explain what was really going on with the woman.  It is every bit as valid as all those other theories, so why did no one consider something like this? 

By the way, this morning's reports, after interviews with family and friends, reveal that she's apolitical, and after her daughter's birth in August of 2012, she suffered such severe postpartum depression that she had been hospitalized.  "She's still not right."  It may be that the baby fell asleep in the car, and she just kept driving, to get a few hours of that blessed peace.

Our possible story:

She was driving from Connecticut to Virginia for whatever reason.  She got off the beltway at the wrong exit, and instead of going into Virginia, she found herself at the Mall.   Traffic is the usual mess, and she's not a confident city driver, and to make matters worse, she needs a restroom so bad her eyeballs literally hurt (no restrooms on the beltway).  Oh, well, the monuments all have restrooms in their basements, so maybe that's ok.

But none of the monuments are open.  The parking lots are blocked.  This isn't a civilized European country with public, self-cleaning bathrooms on the sidewalks.  To make matters worse, the baby woke up and is screaming bloody murder.  It all gets to her and she goes slightly nuts. If you are a mother, you know that craziness.

Then she spots the White House, and an open gate.  Maybe they're open.  Maybe they have tourist restrooms.

She turns in, and is thwarted by some guy who wants to close the gate.  NO WAY!  No way you are closing NOW, when I need it so desperately!  Wait until I'm done!  She tries to go around the barricade and bumps the guy pushing it, knocking him to the ground.  Oh, f**k.  I don't need this.  Besides, I just pissed all over the car seat, so f**k you all, it's all your fault, I'm outta here.

She notices she now has a screaming police escort. Is that for me?!  All she wants to do is get away.  Out of here.  Out of the nightmare.  Make it all go away.  Angry and slightly crazed by her ruined upholstery, wet crotch, and screaming baby, down to both physical and mental tunnel vision, she hits the gas.

The police manage to pull her over.  She looks to the driver side window, expecting to find an angry cop that she has grovel to, explain things to, maybe she'll get a ticket, oh crap, I really don't need this.

Instead, she's staring straight into the barrel of a gun.  She's heard the stories.  Scared witless, she takes off.  Get away from here!  Find someplace safe!  Now they're shooting at me!  Oh my god, I knew that would happen!  Get away, away, away!

Finally she stops.  Maybe I can explain this.  Maybe they'll give me some dry underpants.  Maybe the baby will stop that infernal screaming.  I can't think when she's screaming...

Bang.  Dead. 
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3770 Freakin' out here. Part Two.

Friday, October 4, 2013

"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."

--R. Buckminster Fuller--

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There was the very old, bedridden guy, maybe a year ago, whose daughter thought he was dying and wanted him to go to the hospital, so she called an ambulance.  But the old guy didn't want to go, and got angry at the EMTs.  EMTs are not allowed to get physical, so they called the police for assistance.  The police arrived.  The old guy still refused to be taken from his bed, and swore at the police and waved his feeble arms around, so they shot him dead.

There was the man who answered pounding at his door to find the police demanding to be let in.  They were looking for some guy, who actually lived two houses up or something.  Wrong address.  The police demanded to come in to search anyway.  The man exercised his right to refuse them entry.  He stood in the doorway with one hand on the door frame, the other on the door, his foot braced against the door preventing it from opening, so they shot him dead.

There was the guy a few weeks ago who was staggering around in the middle of the street, obviously deranged, obstructing traffic, and ignoring police who told him to get out of the street, so they shot him dead.

There was a guy last week who had gone off the road and wrecked his car, and was running down the road looking for help when he saw a police car, so he ran up to the car shouting and waving his arms, so they shot him dead.

And in between all those are countless examples of absolutely innocent and unarmed people reaching into pockets for cell phones or id, or holding wallets or phones in their hands, getting shot dead by police who, well, not so much "jumped the gun" as jumped for the gun.

What the Hell is going on?  I used to have enormous respect for the police.  When my daughter was small I told her many times that if she ever was in trouble, or lost, or needed help, to find a police officer, and he or she would help her and keep her safe.

I'm not so sure of that any more.

Maybe Daughter does have some measure of protection from the police.  Unlike in every one of the incidents  above, Daughter is white.
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3769 Freakin' out, man! Part one.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Forget all the reasons it won’t work and focus on the one reason that it will.

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I am freaking out here.  Three days ago I was playing with my hair, pleased that even at my advanced age my hair is still pretty thick (well, thick as it ever was given that it's always been super fine).  Yesterday and today I've been pulling it out in frustration and anger.

SWARM - the first aggravator.

You've probably seen the YouTube video of the motorcycle thing this past Sunday?  If not, it's at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13DzHnlaiNs.  Watch at the beginning.  The biker runs in the SUV's lane, right next to him, and is turned toward the driver's window.  Then he pulls in front of the SUV and hits the brakes, looking back the whole time, to make sure he gets hit.  Yep, as planned, the SUV bumps the bike, and stops.  The SUV is then swarmed by bikers.  If you listen carefully, you can hear helmets hitting the SUV.  (It was later reported that the SUV's tires were slashed at that time.)

The SUV driver tries to get away.  You can see him swerving to get around bikers. That big bump was when he drove over a motorbike - and the rider.  That rider has two broken legs and a broken back, is now in the hospital in an induced coma, may never walk again.

Note where the SUV gets stopped in traffic further on, and a biker tries to open the door, but the car gets away.  Later the SUV gets stopped again.  A biker starts hitting the window with a helmet - note it's the same sound we heard back in the beginning.  The video ends before the mob breaks the window, opens the door, pulls the (Asian) driver out, and kicks the shit out of him.

The driver's wife and 2-year-old son were in the car with him.

There were more than 200 911 calls reporting these guys, including one from the panicked SUV driver himself, and from other drivers and people along the route.

These assholes had no concern for anyone else on the road.  Most of those bikes did not have plates, were not street-legal, and of those riders who were detained or arrested, most of them were not licensed.  They paid no attention to niceties like lanes or speed limits or safe distances.  Some other assholes expect us to have sympathy for the guy who got run over, and want the SUV driver charged with hit and run.  Well, the injured guy's driver's license was taken away from him in the late '90s, he's not allowed to get it back for several more years (gotta wonder about how bad that is) and (I believe) he's never had a motorcycle license, but STILL he's had something like 15-17 traffic citations since losing his license.  (How is that guy not in jail?!)   So he wasn't even allowed to be there.

So, no, no sympathy.  You got exactly what you were asking for, fella.  Maybe now you'll stay off the streets.

If you haven't already seen it, please DO watch the video.  Imagine what that SUV driver was feeling.  Would you have done anything different?  Tell me in the comments.

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A guy called into the local radio station today, and he was saying that he knows what was going on.  He said the mob was taking over the highway for tricks - that's why there was a camera.  He said to notice that as they passed on-ramps, there were more bikers sitting on the ramps, who then joined the ride.  What they were doing sitting on the ramps was preventing vehicular traffic from entering the road.  They very much resent vehicles who don't exit or at least pull over and let them have the road.  The SUV driver had the audacity to not get off their road.

And riders wonder why drivers hate them.

And you have to wonder about the arrogance and intelligence of people who would post that video on YouTube, like they're proud of it or something.  Complete assholes.  Any of you who know me have never heard me say that word, ever.  But sometimes, it just fits.

[I am aware that at least three readers of this blog ride.  I do hope none of this applies to you.]
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3768 Back

Saturday, September 28, 2013

If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

--Anatole France--

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A little over three weeks ago my back went out.  It's sort of ok now, finally, a bit touchy in the mornings, warning signals not to get fancy, ok by afternoon, but three weeks ago, for more than a week, I was hobbling around all bent over, with a walking stick to pull me upright, wearing the brace, afraid to carry a cup of tea from counter to table.

I've had that almost all my life.  It's a birth defect exacerbated by repeated trauma.  It's been worse.

Things are more complicated now, though.  The urologist I fired last January seemed to think I was careening headlong into full kidney failure.  He was so full of crap on so many other things I decided not to believe that, either.  But, uh, what if he was right for once?

It scares me a little that I can't tell the difference between pain in the kidneys and nerve pain from my lower back.  Actually, there IS no difference, since it's the same set of nerves screaming.  And there is such a thing as being in too much pain to go to the doctor, especially when there's a high probability it is just the pinched nerve and there's nothing they can do for it, except put me through more useless pain figuring that out.

I guess the only way I can be sure I'm not dying is that ... I'm getting better.
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3767 There's nobody home.

Saturday, September 28, 2013

"A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

--Sir Winston Churchill--

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Long time no write.  My mind is stagnant.  I am isolated here.  I guess I could try harder to do something about it, but it doesn't seem worth the effort.

At the country house I went out for lunch or dinner with casual friends a few times a month.  I went to bar trivia with friends once a month.  There were occasional movies, museum visits, and so on.

Here, I talk to Daughter, Nugget, and Hercules, and occasionally over the fence to the neighbors to the south, and that's about it, except for the occasional store clerk.  Other than those few, I talk with no one.  Seriously.  I haven't had a real conversation with anyone in ... a year?  I'm going to forget what it's like.  (Well, to be honest, I listen more than I talk.  I love listening to others discuss things.  I'll throw a question in now and then, but mostly I just love to see other people's minds work.)

There is a local Mensa group, but everything seems to be centered around Princeton, and that's a long and annoying drive.  There's a dinner once a month just 15 minutes up the road, but it's an all-you-can-eat buffet, and that particular bunch (mostly obese males) seems to hunker over their plates shoveling it in, and they don't seem interested in conversation. 

The Princeton Mensans seem more interesting, but, oh, that drive!  At the country house I was more than willing to drive an hour north to Albany or an hour south to Walton for dinner, because the drive was beautiful and relaxing.  Here, the scenery is ugly and the other drivers on the road are out to kill me, and it's just no fun.  It's hectic and nasty.  I hate driving here.

I signed up for a bucket-load of local Meetup groups, but having gone to a few events, I am discouraged.  I have not enjoyed any of the meetup dinners I've gone to so far here in NJ.  Those people are just not my kind of people.  It's not me!  I'd been to many many Meetup dinners in Albany that I really enjoyed.  It really IS the people here.  I don't know what it is.  Like a shallowness or something.  A "look at me!" loudness.  Flitting from shiny thing to shiny thing.  There's no depth, no "there" there.

Plus there's an incredible amount of racism and classism here.  

Daughter belongs to a few women's groups, and she has a lot of friends her age.  They are always visiting back and forth.  She seems to think I need a friend or two.  She keeps trying to match me up with older women from her groups or from the Geocache club.  But I don't want a "friend".  I'm not keen on a forced one-on-one kind of thing.  Friends are a lot of work.  I'm not good at social upkeep.  And I guess I'm still smarting from FW and NJKC.  FW chewed me up to the point where she was affecting my health - real poison - and NJKC was fine until she got sick and then she withdrew from everyone.  In my life history, friends either overwhelm me with demands or they get to the point where they know where my soft spots are, and then they attack me.

All I want are some interesting groups that get together occasionally.  I haven't found that here.

Maybe if I did find some groups, there will be some one or two people that will "click", but that would, I would hope, take time, and anyway, it's not something I'm looking for.

In the meantime, my mind is stagnating.  The internet is my only input.
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3766 Failure of Justice

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

The past is not dead.  In fact, it's not even past.

--William Faulkner--

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The Paula Deen thing is still pissing me off.  People are acting like the lawsuit was completely bogus, everything was just fine, all is forgiven, welcome back.

It wasn't, and it isn't, and you aren't!

The suit had nothing whatsoever to do with Ms. Deen's use of the n-word twenty years ago.   That's just what the news media happened to pick up on.  They completely ignored the actual meat of the complaint.  I suspect it was because that's all Ms. Deen admitted to, and the reporters were perhaps afraid of being sued for defamation if they used material from the complaint before it was "proven".

The suit was about sexual and racial discrimination in the workplace.  (I read the complete filing.)  The court ruled that the complainant did not have standing in the racial discrimination part of the suit, so that part was dropped.  That doesn't mean it didn't happen!  What it means is that because the woman was white, and the suit involved discrimination against black employees of the restaurant, she could not sue for that because she suffered no loss because of it, and that's all it means.  You have to have "standing" to sue.  Her sexual discrimination portion was allowed to progress. The black employees would have to sue for the racial discrimination, but they would have to prove injury beyond insult, and that might be difficult (read "expensive") so that's not likely to happen.

Now the entire suit has been "dropped".  That doesn't mean it had no merit! What it means is that the parties reached an agreement and settled outside of court. 

From an article on the case,

Chapman University law professor Lawrence Rosenthal said that the attorneys in the case employed a common, and nonetheless shrewd, legal tactic when they agreed Friday to drop the case "without any award of costs or fees to any party," according to a court document.

Note the use of the word "award".  That doesn't mean no monies were paid.  It simply means that the court did not award money to anyone.  Naturally, because it was settled outside of court and the suit was dropped.  This also means that it is not a matter of public record, and we will never know how much it cost Ms. Deen to make it all go away.

No, Ms. Deen.  In my mind at least, the lawsuit was NOT completely bogus, everything was NOT just fine, and all is NOT forgiven!  In my mind at least, the very wording chosen by your attorneys shows that.
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3765 Out of mind

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

"Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels;

it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled."

--Michael Crichton--

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I am annoyed by people who wrote "lol" at the end of statements when you know darn well they didn't really laugh out loud.  The Man knows people who say it ("l-o-l") in response to something funny, when the normal response would be to actually laugh.  How sad is that?

1950s, Beatnik coffee houses, poetry readings, nodding heads and snapping fingers instead of applause.   2020s, people sitting in their rooms watching a comedian on screen, good jokes, nodding heads and choruses of "lol, lol" instead of laughter.

Sigh.

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What's with the hanging toes?  I see a lot of women who seem to buy sandals that are far too short for them, so that their toes hang over the ends of the shoes by an inch or so.  Do they think that's the way sandals are supposed to fit?  Don't their toes get stubbed?  Don't their toes drag in the dirt on every step?  I don't understand.

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When I was very young I used to play a game with myself on long car trips.  I'd pretend someone from 300, 500, or 1,000 years ago was sitting next to me, and I'd explain everything we passed to them.  I'd imagine their questions and responses.  I still do it every once in a great while when I'm alone on the road and the radio choices are crap.

I wonder if these imaginary conversations say anything about my personality.

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In August, a sports writer in Kansas City committed suicide.  Before doing so, he set up a website, "Martin Manley: My Life and Death", into which he apparently poured everything he wanted to say, and which "went live" the day of his death.  The site has more than 40 subpages with titles such as, "Why Suicide?," "Why Age 60?," "Growing Up," "The Heavens," "First Two Loves," "Pictures," "KC Star," "Legal," "911 & Conspiracies" and "COOL STUFF."  It would appear that he put a lot of time and effort into it, and intended to leave it as a kind of memorial.  He wrote:

"Today is August 15, 2013. Today is my 60th birthday. Today is the last day of my life. Today, I committed suicide. Today, is the first day this site is active, but it will be here for years to come."

He paid the site host, Yahoo, for five years, the longest for which Yahoo would allow prepayment.

I haven't read it, but from what I've read about it, nothing there was the kind of thing that would encourage anyone else to commit suicide.  It's his view of his life, the interesting things that happened to him, the workings of his own mind, and his logical reasons for wrapping it up.  Sort of "it's been great, see the other sections for how great, but now I'm done".

Well, Yahoo took it down.  Gone.  Erased. Done. (Some people were afraid that would happen, so there's a copy from cache available to those who know where to look.)

I am furious!  Yahoo had no right to simply destroy it all.  I hope he comes back and haunts Yahoo corporate offices!

The man wrote a memorial to his life, made it available to others, paid Yahoo to keep it for him, and Yahoo tore it up by the roots and threw it away?  They could have just broken the link, and turned the text over to family.  But they didn't.  All that work, and, shrug, it's all gone.

(There's a small bit about coordinates to a buried treasure in an arboretum, which has some people tromping around trying to find it, but it's fairly obvious that was a joke, and a lure to pull readers, sort of like the blurb on the back of a book jacket.  That's not why Yahoo pulled the site.  I suspect it was simply the act of "suicide" associated with the site that shocked their feeble-minded lawyers.)

Here's a story: http://mashable.com/2013/08/16/blogger-suicide-60th-birthday/
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3764 Rachel Carson lives

Monday, September 9, 2013

"There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher."

--Victor Hugo--

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One of the biggest differences between the city house and the country house is the presence of paper wasps, yellow jackets, ground wasps, hornets, and the like.

At the country house, if you leave a car parked outside for a few days, every door seam, trunk lid, hood seam, wheel well, gas cap cover, will be full of yellow jacket nests.  You quickly learn to be very careful opening things.

Every high house eave corner will at some time or another acquire a huge round hornet's nest. 

At some point every summer you are guaranteed to step on a ground digger yellow jacket nest.  They love lawns.  Teleportation is a quickly learned skill.

Anything left outside that has a sheltered spot, a small hole, a covered area, like deck chairs or empty flower pots, will gather irritable inhabitants. 

It's a serious problem.

Today I was sitting on a chair on the patio at the city house, and through painfully-acquired habit I checked the chair for wasps flying around it before sitting, and I was careful not to let my fingers curl around to the underside of the armrests.  When I realized what I was doing, I realized that I haven't seen a single wasp here.

Not one.

Rather than being pleased, I'm worried.

Why no wasps? 
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3763 Chobani

Thursday, September 5, 2013

"If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war."

--senior Pentagon official on reasons why United States military censored footage

showing Iraqi soldiers sliced in two by U.S. helicopter fire.--

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 Back in early August of 2011, I posted about finding mold in containers of Chobani yogurt, and how some were swelling and fermenting.  I got a comment on one of those posts from a Chobani rep offering an explanation ("no control after it leaves our facilities") and offering me coupons for more of the stuff.  A quick internet search back then showed that the problem wasn't confined to that batch, or that store, or that truck - it was pretty common, and all over. 

My take is that I've never seen mold or smelled and tasted alcohol in any other plain yogurt - and I often don't refrigerate my yogurt.  Properly made and handled, it doesn't need it.  That's why it has been popular in hot countries for thousands of years.

(Note - technically, yogurt is the result of a fermenting process, but the agent is a bacteria, and the process is slowed when the yogurt is chilled, or stops when the bacteria has eaten all the sugar in the milk - sort of like bread yeast works.  There shouldn't be any mold, and there shouldn't be any alcohol produced.)

Well, Chobani is in the news now.  The stuff is still (or again?) sprouting mold and producing gasses and alcohol.  Chobani has been pulling containers off store shelves.  They haven't issued an official recall, haven notified the public, haven't notified the FDA, they're just contacting stores and asking them to pull it.  Not all of it, just a certain batch.

They say it's a "mold common in dairy facilities" and not dangerous.

I call BS.  If it's so common, how come I've never seen or heard of the problem with any other yogurt?  Never had a Dannon or store-brand container swell or grow mold even when taken on weekend and longer trips with no refrigeration?  Yogurt isn't supposed to have mold in it!

They've known they've had a problem for at least two years. 

"A mold common in dairy facilities" doesn't worry me as much as what its presence might indicate about their facility and process.

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In other news, my back is out.  I've felt it coming on for the past two weeks, and now I'm wearing the brace and hobbling around with a walking stick, bent over like a crone.  I can't accomplish anything.
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3762 Chicken Farmers

Tuesday, September 3, 2013

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; 

if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

--Don Marquis--

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Am I the only person who thinks it's hypocritical that folks get all huffy when someone uses "retarded" to mean stupid, but no one blinks twice at the same use of the word "dumb"?

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This is cool:  a series of concrete arrows ten miles apart crossing the continent from New York to San Fransisco!   They were used to guide mail planes across the country in the days before guidance systems.  If I were younger and had an ATV, or a horse, and liked to camp out, I'd want to follow this trail before it completely disappears.  It's more interesting to me and less depressing than the fabled route 66.

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When I was very small we lived a few places in the south, like Fort Bragg, and Biloxi.  One time when I was maybe five years old, there was a holiday parade, and mixed in with the thrilling bands and floats there was a bunch of boring people in ghost costumes.  For some reason my mother got all tense and upset and muttered that they shouldn't be allowed.  I agreed, because they were boring, but so were the boys with the shoulder bands covered with badges, and the women in aprons, so I asked why they were worse and shouldn't be allowed.

Mom said they were the coo clucks clan, that they were fowl people, they kill people they don't like, and I should stay away from them.

I was shocked that chicken farmers would kill you. Why were they different from cow farmers and corn farmers?

For several years after I felt very brave eating chicken, because what if the farmer didn't like me and the chicken was poisoned?  To this day, 60+ years later, when anyone mentions the KKK, my first thought is of pigeons and chickens.
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3761 Spiders

Thursday, August 28, 2013

Drugs have taught an entire generation of American kids the metric system.

--P.J. O'Rourke--

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There are spider webs at the top of the wall where it joins the ceiling over the sliding glass doors.   They ride the door frame to get in, I guess.  It looks awful. 

I have two upright vacuum cleaners, one upstairs and one downstairs, and the hoses of neither will reach that high, which freaks me out because all my life I had used canister vacuums, which you can lift, and which seem to have longer hoses anyway, but when I last went vacuum shopping, ALL I COULD FIND WAS UPRIGHTS, WHICH I HATE BECAUSE THEY ARE CONSTANTLY HEAVY ON MY ARMS WHEN I RUN THEM.   It's like pushing a chair around.  HATE HATE HATE!  Do those things have ANY redeeming qualities?

I hate to use a wrapped stick or broom to go after webs, because that leaves web smears that are almost impossible to get.  I have the little battery-operated electric broom vacuum, and I was able to stand on a stepladder and run that around, but it didn't get into the angle very well, and worse, the wheels marked the wall.

So I stand there and swear at the spiders and try to convince myself that they're good, because they'll eat the clothes moths and the ants.  Except that there are no moths, and ants don't go that high.  Sigh.

Last evening I opened the slider, and a small, round, chubby, black spider dropped off the frame onto the floor.  She ran back and forth on the floor along the edge of the doorframe.  I tried to use my toe to herd her over the lip and back outside, but that didn't work.  So I got a piece of paper, intending to slide it under her, maybe, and flip her out.

The instant the paper touched her, she exploded!

Seriously.  Literally.

Hundreds, thousands, millions, billions, I didn't count, but jillions of tiny black dots burst off her and scattered in every direction.  They were fast, and tiny, not much larger than the period at the end of this sentence.

I teleported myself across the room.

She was carrying her babies on her body.  Some spiders do that.

By the time I had the courage to go back over there, she and the babies had disappeared.

So, what now?  How do you handle cobwebs?  (Actually, it's not cobwebs.  Cobwebs are ethereal, made by cellar spiders or house spiders, those almost transparent white spiders.  These spiders are outside beasts who build real webs, tough ones.  Big ones.  Webs with houses to hide in.)
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3760 Meteors

Sunday, August 11, 2013

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats.  I don't intend to waste

any of mine running around doing exercises.

--Neil Armstrong--

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Supposed to be a great meteor shower overnight, peaking between 3 and 5 am.  There's no point in my trying.  There's so much ambient light here, the night sky is pink.

Jay loved meteors.  Before we were married, we used to go out to the fields, and lie on the hood of the car to watch.  After we were married, we'd watch from the deck at the house (what is now known as the country house). I watched with him, but I wasn't as excited as he was.

Jay had some oddities, well a lot of oddities.  He was bothered by florescent lights, said he could see the flicker.  I am also bothered by them.  I don't see a flicker, but I always hear a hum.

We discovered that we both hear meteors!    One night he shyly asked, "Did you hear it?"  I was amazed that he'd asked.  It's a eeeeeeeesh or hissing kind of sound that ends with the meteor burning out.  He, like I, never ever mentions it to anyone because when we did in the past, we'd been told over and over that we're imagining it, that it's impossible, that the meteors are so far away that the sound, even if there was one, would be long delayed --- therefore we're crazy, and people laughed at us.  But people have been reporting audible meteors for more than a thousand years.  And have been told they're crazy for more than a thousand years.

Today I read an article that explains it (of course I can't find it now...[Later - I found it!]).  Meteors produce VLF (very low frequency) radio waves.  Those radio waves travel at the speed of light, so one will receive them at the same time one sees the meteor.  Humans can't usually hear the sounds, but under certain conditions, the sound is magnified and reflected by objects --- like for example, for Jay and me, the hood of a car, the expanse of glass behind us on the deck, or, surprise surprise, wire-framed glasses.

We're not nuts.  We heard them.
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3759 Snork 2

Saturday, August 10, 2013

Some grow with responsibility, others just swell.

----------------------------------------

It has occurred to me that folks who don't live up there may not get why I found the news account in the "Snork" post so funny.

That particular street (actually more like a road, a minor artery between Poughkeepsie and points north) appears distressingly often on the police blotter for domestic violence and gang violence.  It's not one of the nicer streets.
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3758 Flower Pots

Saturday, August 10, 2013

The victor will always judge the defeated, and always find him guilty.

--Goering, during the Nuremberg Trials--

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Flower pots drive me crazy.  They all have holes in the bottom.  Yeah, ok, I understand you need holes so excess water drains out and the pot doesn't get all swampy and rot the roots and drown the plants.  But why do the holes have to be in the bottom?  That makes no sense to me.

When a soil is dry(ish), like in pots on the porch or in strong sun, or especially in hanging pots, when you water the plants the soil doesn't absorb the water quickly, and it tends to run straight through and out the bottom.  It takes a lot of water over a long time for the soil to gradually start absorbing water.  It's very frustrating. 

The only solution is to use trays under the pots.  Trays catch the runoff, act as a reservoir, and then the soil gradually soaks it up.  Happy plant.  That works for standard plants, but not for hanging pots or the decorative pedestal planters.  Hanging pots come with a tiny, completely useless, attached saucer (I don't know why they bother) and it's next to impossible to arrange a tray reservoir.  You can go crazy trying to keep those things moist.  At the country house I had some huge pedestal planters outside, and when I planted them, I buried some big plastic bowls deep in the bottom for reservoirs. 

The improvement is so simple:  Don't put the holes in the bottom!  Put the drain holes in the side, height depending on the size of the pot.  That creates a reservoir in the bottom, allowing water to be absorbed as needed.  In nature, that reservoir is called ground water, or the water table.  You don't even have to put stones down there because roots won't grow into that reservoir unless the plant likes it, and stones restrict the ability of the water to move into upper regions by capillary action. The soil above the reservoir will not be too wet, since excess water will still go out the hole.

I don't understand why someone hasn't already thought of that.

Any entrepreneurs out there are welcome to use this idea and make a bazillion dollars.  I'll even help.  Just let me know you're doing it and mention my name somewhere....
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3757 Bugged

Thursday, August 8, 2013

The immediacy and appropriateness of your action in the moment

is far more important than your cleverness with words and numbers.

--------------------------------------------------

Having finally come out of my recent obsessive funk, I looked at the July calendar for the first time.

I screwed up.  In July I managed to blow off three birthdays, two anniversaries, and one baby each of which merited at the very least a card.  Sheesh. 

I know this won't make up for it, but

Happy Birthday, Baby Big Sister!

I did manage a sympathy card, because I got the call and responded right away, it didn't require awareness on my part.  A friend and his youngest daughter, also a friend, lost their mother/grandmother.  The lady had been on her way out for the past five years, multiple crises where she wasn't expected to make it through the night, but she'd recover, a little less strong, and keep on going.  So her passing (in her 90s) was almost a relief.  My friend had called me to tell me he'd be heading south for the funeral and wouldn't be back for a few days. 

Then, like two days later, I get another call.  His eldest daughter's husband died in a fishing accident (he fell in, went over some falls, and drowned (there was also a heart attack, but there's some confusion as to whether the heart attack happened before he fell in or after the falls)).  The 12-year-old son was with him, and the kid of course blames himself for being unable to save his father, although he did pull him out of the water at the base of the falls.  So my friends had also lost a son-in-law/brother-in-law, and have a grandson/nephew who's a freaking mess. (Yes, they got him into counseling immediately.)

So I sent a card to the two of them at their business partnership, and included a letter --- after fussing over whether it should properly be two cards, or four cards, and then thinking it probably didn't matter how many cards, it's the expression that matters.  Four would be overkill.  No pun intended.

-------------------------------

There was a huge bug on my window screen last night.  I suspected it was a cicada just by the size and shape, but it didn't look like any cicada I'd ever seen before, and I haven't heard a single cicada around here (city house), so I looked it up on the internet.  Yup, it's a cicada.  Strange.


They are all over everywhere at the country house.  There are many broods up there, two year, three year, five year, seventeen year, heck, I never asked any of them how long they'd been waiting, but anyway, it's a rare year when you don't hear them somewhere along the roads.  It was the same at the old estate across the road from our house when we lived near St. Louis.  There were cicadas every year.

As I said, I haven't heard a single one here.  Possibly because there are very few large stands of old trees?

Every one I'd ever seen was different from this one guy last night.  This quiet fellow was the same shape and size as the Mid-Hudson or St. Louis cicadas, but whereas they were splashed with color (black with red , yellow, and green spots or streaks on their bodies), with huge HUGE red RED eyes, this guy is solid black with small black eyes.  Very dull.  Boring.

And much too quiet.
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3756 Snork

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

A cult is a shared belief with no political power.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Remember when I said I subscribed to the Rhinebeck Village (NY) news blog, and how it often inadvertently cracks me up?   Today's offering:

HYDE PARK – Police are looking for two men who held up a clerk at the Mobil gas station at 1110 Violent Avenue in Hyde Park around 4 a.m. on Monday. 

That should be "Violet Avenue".

I blew iced tea out my nose.
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3755 Periodic thing.

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."

--Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.--

-----------------------------------------------------------

I do something weird every so often.  Every so often I get what can only be described as an obsession, which can last anywhere from three weeks or so to three years.  It's sort of like bipolar, in that it lasts for a while and then goes away, but it doesn't seem to involve depression or mania. 

After the year that Jay (and both of my dogs) died, I got heavily into estate auctions and eBay.  I bought stuff.  Lots of stuff.  The country house is chock full of stuff, some of it lesser junk, some of it very good (from live estate auctions).  That's what's so overwhelming about sorting out that house. I understand that part of it then was real situational depression, and an attempt to fill a suddenly empty and echoing house and life with something I could love.  That went on for three years.

But every so often, something similar but of shorter duration happens.  It might be needlework, when I spend every waking moment knitting, embroidering, sewing, and doing nothing else that has to be done.  Or reading, when I feel like I absolutely have to read the entire backlog of books on the shelves.  Or the past month and a half, when I started watching videos on YouTube, in particular some expats living in Japan who do videos on the culture, houses, customs, of life in Japan (**see below), and video tours of old Victorian houses - to the exclusion of everything else (including, as has been obvious, the updating of this blog).

But I'm not depressed.  I still enjoy stuff.  Even after Jay died, I still managed to get out, like I joined the fire department and got EMT training, went to the county fairs and the antiques fairs and the Renaissance fairs, took bellydance lessons, etc., I just don't pay bills when due, or clean the house, or do the dishes or the laundry - in other words, when I'm in the house, it's all obsession.  As if I want to escape responsibilities?

I didn't really realize that pattern until now.  I've been thinking back, trying to figure out when it started.  I think it started when I married Ex#2.  The guy who didn't talk to me for weeks at a time, who would go away on business trips without mentioning it to me and couldn't understand why I worried when he didn't come home after work (pre-cell phone days),  the guy who wet the bed almost every night and crapped his pants whenever we were in the car going somewhere he didn't want to go, and refused to admit there was a problem, let alone see a doctor.  That's when it started.  I was so alone, and I read and did needlework to fill my empty days.  Projects, projects, projects.

It was just Saturday that I came out of this latest (the YouTube obsession) cycle.  I got a bunch of stuff done around the house this weekend; suddenly I wanted to clean up and check things off to-do lists.  I wonder if, now that I'm aware of it, I might be able to see it happening and control it.

--------------------------------

**On the Japanese videos -

Lots of good things about Japan, like very low crime, beautiful countryside, it's very clean, people respect others, and so on.  But there's no way I could possibly live there for any length of time (even beyond the fact that immigration is strongly discouraged).

The houses, even new ones, have no central heating and no insulation!  People use space heaters to heat one room, and the space heaters are kerosene so you have to keep a window cracked, and the heaters turn themselves off periodically, so if you don't get up pre-dawn to turn them back on, you wake to a freezing house.

Westerners are amazed by the toilets.  They are very fancy, electronic, and have heated seats.  Well, yeah!  THERE'S NO HEAT!

All social and professional interactions are governed by rank and seniority.  You must defer in all matters to those who rank above you, which means that if someone of higher rank than you says you must do something that makes no sense at all, is stupid or dangerous, you must guard your facial expressions and react with enthusiasm.  You NEVER correct or criticize the ideas of anyone of higher rank.  This is not just professionally - it's socially, too.  (Your bosses will expect to sit in the front and at the choice tables at your wedding, for example, ahead of your family.)  You never say anything negative.  If you want to say "No", you say "Perhaps".

Husbands outrank wives, so a wife is to expect that her husband will have affairs, and she is to ignore it in all ways.  Some husbands may never stray, but he's considered a fool if he has the opportunity and doesn't.

You have to fill out pages and pages of forms to do anything if you are more than just a short-time tourist, and there are no English translations of anything, not even the directional signs in official buildings, and next to no one speaks English.   Learn  Japanese, or starve.

Some YouTube channels:
- softypapa
- thejapanchanneldcom
- thesillyolddude
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3754 Extraneous thoughts

Friday, July 26, 2013

"If absolute power corrupts absolutely, does absolute powerlessness make you pure?"

--Harry Shearer--

--------------------------------------------------------

There's a bird out back I don't remember ever hearing before.  It's in a tree, and I can't see it, but it says, "TutaTWEE tutaTWEE tutaTWEE breaker breaker.  TutaTWEE tutaTWEE tutaTWEE breaker breaker breaker breaker."  It's quite pleasant.  Any idea what it might be?

-------------------------------

Ethics become a luxury as the demands of our daily lives increase.

-------------------------------

I still subscribe to the Rhinebeck Village announcements and news blog.  I don't know why, because I can't attend any of the events any more, but I can't stop, either, because it's so often unintentionally amusing.  Sometimes I wonder if the editor reads the submissions before posting them.

Like the day the headline/title of the post was "The Hudson Valley LGBTQ Center is proud to welcome Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals"  Within a few hours that was changed to a program about.

Another one was "2013 marks the anniversary of the American Civil War".  Gee.  I thought that happened every year.

The other day the title was "Rhinebeck village upgrade to the waste water treatment plant".  That's not so bad, except my immediate thought was, "And that's better than the water from the village well?"  (Yes, the villages and small towns up there have wells.)

 -------------------------------

Something to think about:
“The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn’t
make any sense to me,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the Associated Press.

Yep, some folks want to repeal it because it safeguards everyone's right to vote.  Can't have that, now, can we?  Not if we want to win elections....

--------------------------------

Yahoo "news" is worthless nonsense.  A while ago they had a long story theorizing about why dogs turn around before lying down to sleep.  The "reporter" threw out several theories, including stuff like "to make the ground softer", but completely missed the real one.  I though everyone knew this:  Dogs turn around before lying down because who wants to lie down on spiders, bugs, or grass snakes?

Pretty much the same reason why I open up the bed at the country house and sweep it out before crawling in if I haven't been there  for a while.

Sheesh.
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3753 Making stuff

Thursday, July 25, 2013

God says, "Take what you want ... and pay for it." 

-- via a Stephen King character --

--------------------------------------------------------------

Last week  the Nugget and I made cookies.  Oatmeal chocolate chip.  Small lesson learned - leave the warm chocolate chips for when she's a little older.  Messy!  But yummy.

Today we made ice cream.  Well, technically ice milk, but it was good anyway. 

• Fill a large ziplock bag with ice cubes, and add a lot of salt.
• Fill a small ziplock bag with milk and zip it tight.  We used vanilla-flavored milk, which is already sweetened.  You can use chocolate, or you can chop up some fruit in it.  Whatever sounds good.
• Put the small bag inside the big bag and zip it up tight.
• Wrap the bags in a dishtowel, and put gloves on your little helper.
• Shake the bag, a lot.  Squish it sometimes. The kid will probably get tired, but as long as she can do the first few and the final few shakes, she'll be satisfied that she! made the ice cream.
• Check occasionally to see if it's thickened yet.
• When you take the small bag out, be sure to dry it before opening it, so you don't get salt in the ice cream.
• Dump into a bowl and enjoy.

Nugget's comment, "Too cold.  Put in mike-o-wabe, Amma."
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