Snippets

[Crusty]

Winter Blues


One of my favorite coffee cups says WINTER SUCKS in bold letters. Today is the kind of day it was made for. The sky is dark grey the temp is hovering close to the freezing mark and we’ve been getting very light snow showers off and on all day long. I have no plans to go anywhere today, but I still feel trapped.

I’ve been doing things like looking at 1/4” vinyl tubing and soft jaws for my vise on fleaBay and Amazon. I’m not buying; I’m just looking. There’s nothing worth watching on the idiot box and I don’t feel like watching a movie; though I probably will, later on. I’m going to fix a BLT and Knorr Teriyaki Noodles for dinner, but that won’t be for a while.

I made the Pulled Chicken last night. Actually; the Crock Pot did. I just mixed up the ingredients and turned the crock pot on at 10:30 PM. When I got up at 6:30, it was done. Just as I predicted; I had a Pulled Chicken sandwich for breakfast. It was quite tasty. The rest of the chicken got measured out and put in little containers and stacked in the freezer. I have enough frozen items to have dinner for well beyond the next month.

I’m drinking a cup of Kenya Grand Cru coffee. It’s a light roast that tastes pretty good. I can get 12 Oz. bags of whole beans of it from Whole Foods. It used to come in 1 pound bags, but now, even the whole bean marketers have succumbed to the “Give Less and Charge More” school of business that the whole coffee industry had fallen into.

I remember when coffee used to come in 1 Pound cans. Then, the size shrank to 13 ounces. I just bought a can of Haxwell Mouse Columbian and it has shrunk to 10 ounces. Like the Toilet paper Super Mega Ultra Rolls that say they’re 4x as much as a regular sized roll, I expect coffee will come in Super Sized 16 Oz cans soon. Maybe they’ll even come with a key so that you can open the can without an opener and use the lid to seal the grounds back up to keep the grounds fresh.

Maybe I’m just an oddball; but I’d much prefer the quantity stay the same and let the price go up proportionally. I really get tired of getting scammed. “Well; you’re only paying 25% more for 33% less!” If it’s going to cost me 20 bucks for a pound of good coffee; that’s fine. I can make the adjustment. 15 bucks for 12 ounces just annoys me and shows me that I’m being conned. I feel like that Abbot and Costello routine, “Hey; give me two tens for a five.” It’s like tossing a coin; Heads I win; Tails, you lose.

Then again; that attitude seems to have pervaded everything, from coffee and toilet paper to news reporting (especially) and politics. We’ve had two snow falls this past week The local weather forecasts have hyped the living dickens out of the “Major Winter Storms”. Yesterday’s storm left maybe an inch of snow on the ground before it turned to rain and washed it all away.

I wish I could get things wrong as often and make as much money as the local “Meteorologists”. Like that would ever happen. Who would want to watch an old, fat, crusty geezer who calls it the way he sees it, instead of a buxom blonde who says exciting things from a script?

Well; tomorrow, supposedly; the sun will come out and the temps will get as high as, maybe, 40º F and Saturday, it’s supposed to climb all the way to the high 40s; maybe even 50! I guess I’ll be able to put a few more miles on the Express. That should improve my mood.

[sportsterpaul]

John, 6 inches of wet heavy snow up here. Took me forever to move it and am exhausted. Did feel good to get outside in fresh air.

[Steve9]

Bike looks great!

Has to be satisfying.

I appreciate the going back to carb-fuel injection is great but the electricalness of it leaves me