Saturday, June 27, 2009

Didn't have the midas touch today...

Only 28% savings off list...$66.55 list, $47.65 I paid. Cupboards are getting kind of full though...

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Yeah, Ok...so sometimes I enjoy making a game of it...

Went to Big Y to use the coupon from last week.

$81.71 - $1.00 coupon - $27.35 in "use your card" specials - $7 off $50 coupon = $46.36 ... 43% savings which is pretty darn good :) I know I could do better...that included a $12 steak that wasn't on discount but should be good for three meals.

Figure a "portion" of meat is supposed to be about 4 ozs before cooking, 1-3/4# Sirloin will yield about 7 servings. I know I'll eat it in about three sittings...once hot and two left overs. The chicken was 1-1/2 pounds, or six portions, and I know the same size chicken package I bought last week made four meals for me.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Today was a good day.

Got up at 5:30. Set "Take a Chance on Me" by ABBA on my Blackberry as the alarm...upbeat and annoying as all hell, so pretty much perfect for an alarm.

At work at 8:05, so I'm getting closer to my 8am goal. Had lunch with Frank, the recruiter who got me this job. Out of the office at 4:30.

Gorgeous, dry, sunny day finally. Far too many cloudy days this month, you'd think it was Seattle, not June in New England. Home at 6, fed the dogs, worked out in the garden for an hour, mowed the lawn for a half hour, through some chicken tenderloins on the grill.

Had a nice grilled chicken salad for dinner. I'll use the rest of the chicken for lunch this week, figuring a salad tomorrow, maybe a sandwich later. Had a $7 off of $50 coupon for Big Y...bought $50.26 before the coupon on Sunday -- I swear I wasn't using a calculator!

Did some work for PCF tonite. It was a good, full, satisfying day.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Garden Update

-- Planted some pole beans last weekend to replace the deer eaten peas.
-- Planted some yellow squash & zuccinis last weekend.

This weekend:

-- Hilled potatoes
-- Planted green (bush) beans
-- Planted cucumbers
-- Planted a six pack of Celebrity tomatoes + Cauliflower I bought at the co-op.
-- My transplants are looking pretty peaked after I tried to harden them last week, I'm gonna try and get them in this week which looks like a lot of overcast/showery days.
-- Beans & Squash from last week are up. Spritzed the beans and cauliflower with deer & rabbit repellent.

Still behind were I should be, but hopefully by this coming weekend corn and the rest will be in. Should've rototilled...shoveling to open up planting rows is sucking up too much time. I forgot to take pics for the blog :(

Started seeing Red Lily Beetle larvae on the tiger lillies, so they got spritzed with Sevin liquid.

I wrote that off the top of my head?

Reply in my local paper...not the greatest piece of writing by a long shot, but I thought pretty decent for a single draft, single stream of conciousness:

>Mason is noted in the history books for slaughtering hundreds of Pequots when he raided their
>villages.

And your point would be?

Native civilizations, across the Americas, were engaged in slavery, violence, and genocide before European settlement. Mason exploited an existing war between tribes that had been going on before settlement to English advantage.

European exploration and settlement brought three major things.

One, and by far the most deadly and culture changing, was old world communicable diseases. These decimated native civilizations and opened up the temperate parts of the Americas for settlement by Europeans. Without these diseases wiping out the native population, we would look a lot more like Africa or India -- influenced by colonial powers, but without the wholesale replacement of native populations seen in North America to an almost total extent, and Central and South America to a lesser extent.

They brought with them better, more sophisticated systems of governance and the tools to support them -- i.e. the concept of 'state' instead of tribe, combined with technology like writing. Taken as a whole, this heritage of western civilization dating back to the Greek city states through Roman bureaucracy through to international commerce being conducted by contemporary Europe allowed them to out-organize the native populations.

And they brought superior technologies -- such as ocean-crossing ships, metal armor, and firearms.

There's nothing morally superior between the big picture of native civilizations or western civilizations. Both were prone to both individual and organized violence, to cruelty for entertainment, to slavery, to stealing from neighbors and seeking advantage over others. Both had the ability to demonstrate tremendous compassion and humanity. The Europeans simply were better organized, equipped, and unlike other parts of the globe disease cleared the way ahead of the Europeans so they could become the dominant inhabitants instead of just colonial rulers.