chowmama
chowmama's JournalSomething dyed today
In a good way.
At a now (I hope, temporarily) closed shop at the Midtown Global Market in Minneapolis, DH and I both got t-shirts that said 'Keep The Immigrants, Deport The Racists'. Great shirts, made and sold by immigrants. Heavyweight cotton, message was embroidered, not screen-printed, so it'll last a long time.
Problem was, the only one in his size was a really nuclear yellow, with black printing. We're not really that involved in 'best personal colors', or any of that stuff, but we both agree that this isn't a good look for him. He looks like one of the original Killer Bees from early Saturday Night Live. It doesn't help that he's always been built a little like John Belushi, and now he looks like Belushi 40+ years older and heavier. Oh well, they're both from Chicago.
Anyway, given that the shirt is cotton, we got it on the basis that I would dye it. I've put it off, so he's worn it a couple of times and I had to make sure it had no stains that would be preserved for all eternity. That done, I tested the tub in an inconspicuous spot to see if it would survive the process. It would, so I did the deed, with a dark green and a chambray blue mix of Rit, in a laundry bin, in the tub. It looks really good, darker than olive green, and the black printing still shows up. It'll go through the washing machine once and get hung up when damp to dry.
I wore only black clothes and used nitrile gloves, so I don't look like a refugee from Blue Man Group or a woad warrior. The room survived. The tub is a disaster. The surface of the tub is fine, but every drop of soap scum is blue as blue can be. I had no idea there was so much of it.
I now have an extended appointment with a sponge and canister of Bon Ami.
And I want my Midtown Global Market Back!!!
There are going to be a lot of Melt The Ice hats in Minneapolis
These are the Norwegian protest hats, for which a pattern is being sold to raise funds for immigrants.
I say this because I bought the pattern and the yarn. Then went to my ample supply of needles and other equipment and came up empty. The worsted weight version, which will have a medium weight fabric and knit up the quickest, uses size 8 needles. I really only use double point needles for circular because I'm a 'propped needle' knitter - the needle from which the yarn is being knit is propped vertically on my leg. You can't do this with a circular, unless you're the Hunchback of Notre Dame. And if you try, you soon will be.
I have no size 8 DP needles. I've shopped around this weekend at several places and looked on the websites of every store located within a reasonable distance. Every store is sold out. (I didn't look at Hobby Lobby because I'd sooner stop knitting.) There are no size 8 DP needles in the Twin Cities.
I have my mom's old needle collection and it turns out that she had a size 8 15" length circular needle, tip to tip. It's going to be hard to squeeze 96 stitches onto it and I'm going to have to rubber band the tips any time I need to set it aside, so the piece doesn't explode off them and unravel. I'm going to need markers - I hate markers. And my hands are going to be cramped as hell from trying to knit in midair. Gauge and consistent stitches may be another problem.
We'll see how it goes. But how often does this kind of shortage, on only one size of needle, happen?
Spending this horrible day canning
Atakilt Wat, an Ethiopian vegetable dish involving cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions and spices. I'm making a large enough batch that I hope I can get 10 pint jars, half of which will contain half a large serrano chili. I've never canned it before, but I'll use the timing I've used before for beets, potatoes and carrots. Worst case, it may be a little overcooked, but it'll be safe.
I'm trying to come up with good ways to preserve the produce I hope to get this year from the big-ass Victory Garden I'm putting in this spring. The setup will be hella expensive, so there'll be no savings this year, but I'll try to get as much as possible. I'm definitely planning on a few cabbages and I hate sauerkraut. It'll be interesting, as I'm not a skilled gardener. Yet.
The musical accompaniment so far has been primarily Kris Kristofferson, for no particular reason. However, Sunday Morning Comin' Down fits the mood, if not the details.
On the plus side, last night I made wartime Crunchies, an oatmeal cookie from the 1940's Experiment website, for the first time. I won't post the recipe, because it's not mine, but I'm keeping it in my recipe collection (five 3-ring binders, each with its' own category). Go check out the website and get the recipe there. DH wants to eat them all and have me make more right away.
Edited for spelling of the dish.
Also, I've already bought the seeds for starting next month. Is there any way to store the leftover seeds, of which there will be many, for next year?
More putting up
I canned 4 pints of mirepoix last night and froze 2.5 pounds of homemade Mexican chorizo in 8-ounce portions this morning. I also have 2.5 pounds of plain ground pork in 5-ounce portions frozen from last weekend, and bought a huge bag of frozen peas.
Given it took me almost a month to get all the way through the horrible adenovirus I had, I made some inroads on my existing stock and need to replace. It was damned handy to not have to go to the store often or do a lot of scratch cooking, though.
I still have no appetite; I can taste and smell just fine, but I don't get hungry; I eat because I know it's time and I have to. It's a really weird feeling, but I do know how to supply good-tasting healthy food in reasonable portions. Brainworm Bobby would be scandalized that I'm not following his advice. As if I'd pay any attention to an upside-down food pyramid that was based on lobbyists' recommendations.
I'm so worried about DH
The murder happened 2.5 blocks from my house. I got home from work last night and went over for a while, so I know what the walk is like.
All hell is breaking loose today and DH, home by himself, called me to let me know that he was going there now. (I'm at work.) He doesn't walk well and would have trouble going that distance in summer on good surfaces. I insisted he at least put on his ice covers (Yak Tracks). However, I can't be there to steady him.
He also has a pretty good temper, but promises that he'll be peaceful because he knows the Feds are just waiting for any opportunity.
I can't find any streaming footage about what's happening right now. I wanna go home. And then to the protest to find him.
What the fuck has happened to my country?
Damn, I wish I was psychic
I dreamed this morning that some unlikely source announced "President Trump has passed". I no longer remember the name of the source, only that it began with 'C'. Something like Census.
Imagine my disappointment.
This links into the 'offbeat Christmas carols' thread
but doesn't quite go there.
The Twin Cities in Minnesota has a very active Irish language club. I and a singing group I was in had a lasting effect on the beginners' class with a Christmas carol.
Irish has a process called 'eclipsis' which, under the right grammatical circumstances, substitutes consonants at the beginnings of words. It's important to know when this happens and what letter replaces which (and which letters are left alone). One of the teachers does rapid-fire drills in this, using Irish words, English words, nonsense words, anything, to help remember the correct replacement on the fly.
We wanted to tweak him a little at the annual Christmas party and decided to eclipse a carol - Twelve Days of Christmas. Every single word that begins with a consonant, grammatical placement be damned. And we worked on it till we could do it really fast.
There were three groups at the party - the teachers, the students, and the students' plus ones. The teachers were all laughing uproariously. (The one from the U of MN was standing at the bar and had to hang on to keep from hitting the floor.) The different levels of student had increasing looks of anxiety. The plus ones all thought we were drunk.
The Eclipsed Twelve Days is now a permanent method of teaching eclipsis in the Twin Cities. If you can do this at speed, eclipsis no longer holds any fear for you. But you'll still have to explain it to the plus ones.
well, I watched it
Just hoping that as the night went on (and on and on) he'd get more and more incoherent.
Instead, they apparently got him on a higher dose of uppers, got him out there on time, and played the teleprompter so fast that he couldn't ramble too much or the speech would run out on him.
Of course, it was still CrazyTown. Incomplete sentences and mangled words as he tried desperately to keep up. DH referred to it as an old late-night used car commercial from the one person in town everybody knew not to buy from. His core followers will still swallow every word. But in the midst of all the bizarre lies, I think they'll still run up against some hard truths.
You can't reduce a price below 100%, of course; that would be free. Not just a lie, but a stupid lie. But he slid in there that to even get the discount, you have to sign up with TrumpRx. Assuming that lasts even as long as any other Trump business, how much do you think that'll cost and how often will the price for the policy be raised? Is this going to be another 'First deny all claims, then contest the appeals, and see who gives up? That would be the people who can't afford lawyers. You know - his base. For as long as it lasts, he's going to rob them blind.
And with the new Big Bollixed Bill, we're getting a giant cut in taxes. We'll see yuge refunds this spring. Except that we won't. This spring, we're paying 2025 taxes under the old rates. How many of his base are going to spend big, expecting the yuge refund? The yuge refund isn't coming until after the midterms. This reminds me of the last time, when he decided that everybody's paycheck would withhold less taxes. At the end of the year, a lot of people found out that they still owed the money; it just hadn't been withheld for them. So instead of a refund, they had an unexpected bill. His administration had the gall to say "Well, you shouldn't have been withholding that much anyway. You're welcome."
And the whole "Who are you going to believe, me or your lying wallet?" won't fly all the way to next November. People who live paycheck to paycheck notice what things cost. And whether they still have a paycheck.
People remember this shit.
The Malignant Moron and his handlers should be careful what they wish for.
The official position is now “People are going to have to adjust to a lower standard of living”. Not buy so much, not buy unnecessary items, etc. in order to deal with increasing inflation and decreasing jobs. The idiot still claims those aren’t happening, and affordability is ‘a hoax’, but the little people are going to have to adjust to these nonexistent things anyway, just because.
Okay, we can do that. We’ve done it before. But there are consequences.
You can look at the Depression and WWII, of course. In more recent times, there’s the 1980’s economy and the tanking of Detroit. And there’s the petroleum dance that goes on every few years and has for decades.
The petroleum dance is fun to watch. The companies raise prices. Some executives have been caught on hot mikes laughing “So what are people going to do – stop driving?” And then the price gets up to a certain level and – people stop driving. They carpool. They take public transit. They run their errands in the most efficient ways they can find. And they stop driving whenever they can manage it; certainly, they don’t drive for recreation. Demand tanks, executives panic, and they drop prices again. Until the next time. Rinse, repeat.
From the 80’s – Detroit wanted to only make large vehicles using truck chassis’, which still get a tax break as ‘agricultural’ no matter what vehicle they’re actually installed in. (Naturally, this tax break never finds its way down to the consumer.) The economy was crap anyway, so, given gas prices, a number of Americans wanted smaller fuel-efficient vehicles that Japan was exporting in increasing numbers and in ever-increasing quality. Demand for the big truck or mini-van that could transport 12 kids was way down. Also, the economy was encouraging people to keep their old cars going for as long as possible. If you didn’t have a lot of money, you bought a new car when the repairs on your old car were more expensive than a new car payment. Even then, you might buy a good used car.
Detroit wasn’t (and still mostly isn’t) interested in giving up that tax break. (Look at the commercials - we’re still being told that we need to buy a tank). So they pressured the government to join them in a campaign to encourage people to buy American. Not only buy American, meaning the only vehicles they were interested in producing, but buy a new one every 2 years. It was the Patriotic American way. Demand, hell. They’d by God tell us what we wanted and we had to want it. Spoiler alert – nobody listened. We couldn’t afford to.
Back in the present, the Malignant Moron spent some time before Thanksgiving ranting about the reason the tariffs hadn’t brought much money in so far is that people saw it coming and stocked up. Oh, noes – You mean spending or not spending makes a difference? Who could have seen that coming? And simultaneously with telling us that we need to adjust our needs downwards, he’s celebrating that the ‘stocking up’ has begun to run out and we’re going to be forced to spend enough to make the tariffs work.
Umm…we can’t do both. We can and do get frugal when we have to. And it looks like we’re going to have to. When do you think the government is going to insist that patriotic Americans continue to buy food and goods the way they did before they crapped all over us? The tariffs won’t work unless we do. And we won’t. So they won’t.
None of these drunken sons of millionaires (or wannabes) understand any of this. It’s not their life; they can afford whatever they want. But they understand the stock market. Even if they’re only on a few boards or even if they just live off the market profits, they’re going to find out that all these stocks are backed up by something. Whether it’s goods or a service, when people stop buying it, the stock dives. It’s going to hit their bank accounts. They may lose their jobs.
They may get what they wished for.
I'm deep in the weeds with Part D and Supplement research
Our current plans with UCare in Minnesota are not offered next year - they're offering no Medicare plans at all. I'm going to miss them; they were great. But I can't find a combo Part D and supplement, so I have to look at 2 separate plans now. I categorically refuse to get an Advantage plan.
I've finally pretty well limited the Part D options, as DH has a lot of meds and I had to go through everyone's formulary. I did have to go on several websites that wouldn't let me have the info without supplying an email and phone #. I only gave one company anything and started getting the hard sell immediately, so I'm now just lying about that.
Now my only steps are to make sure our doctors and nearby hospital are in network and also get any suggestions about whether they recommend any companies I haven't run across yet. So, I'm near the finish line. DH wants to know if ever other senior in America has to do this and is it even fair. I told him 1) Yes and 2) No.
And if anybody has the phone # 612-222-3333, I apologize. I tried for 111-222-3333, but the internet knew that was phony. I'm pretty sure there's no such email as xxx@email.com.
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Member since: Sat Apr 9, 2022, 08:43 PMNumber of posts: 1,035