WHAT MADE YOU GRIMACE & GRIT YOUR TEETH TODAY?

Our grocery store closed all of a sudden. Diane and I will both miss it as we both have preferred it to other grocers for a lot of reasons. For me, they were a part of my good acquaintance circle, losing a big portion of the people I talk to in real life, given I don't get around a lot now. The inconvenience is huge, but that is the least of it - it's the people I'll miss and worry about. 50 employees losing their jobs..

Via the internet, I found that it was a mix of the economy being down around here in combination with losing customers to both a giant Walmart and a very new small type Walmart nearby.

Anyway, I plan to write the company and express how I'll miss the people, hoping that it's possible some of them will read it. The company is apparently working with the union to try and get the employees jobs.

Today's gripe is that ants showed up in my kitchen. Ah.... the rites of Spring are showing up.

Here's what you do. If you have a cement block foundation, buy some chalk and draw a chalk line on the block all the way around your house. I did this for several years, and it works. You have to redo it once a week, but that's a small price to pay for stopping the problem. After four years, the ants don't even come anymore.

Make it thick. There were three places where the ants were traveling up the foundation of my house. This stopped them. I've read that this technique is a myth, but it certainly worked for me.

Thanks for the info.

my new mug

shaped like a mug but doesn't really hold more than a tea cup

I have to keep making more tea and refilling it

it's getting annoying

I recently bought a bag of dark roast coffee beans, gritting my teeth to start with since my good old grocery store is dead to the world. I forged my way around Walmart and found the coffee aisle. The coffee beans were from a new to me company, Eight O'Clock. I'd heard of it, from Boomerang I think, but not seen them in a store. The big dope failed to look to see if they were ground beans or not.

Opened the package today, and the beans were not ground. I long ago tossed my bean grinder that had stopped working, and not bought a new one. Grrr.
I did have some unopened but ground espresso beans in the cupboard, and used those for the first time in a regular coffee pot (I've an old fashioned espresso machine that I've almost forgotten how to use (stovetop). I'll brave that soon, but not today.

I took the coffee to my computer desk and started looking up coffee grinders. Gee, some of them are pricy. Then I noticed pictures of what looked like my seed grinder - an item I got years ago from a thrift shop. Hmmm, I wonder... and, yup, my fennel seed grinder will work fine. Good news, in that I don't have to take those beans back to the store and.... I'll have better coffee now, the beans being freshly ground. I stopped with the grimacing.

89% humidity

ff ff ff ff ff I hate it

My glasses fog up when I exit my (moderately air-conditioned) car. UGH

staff reduction -- my department lost four really good people last week...

Someone complaining about the fact it was raining when we've been in drought for several years.

Cuisinart makes a neat lectric spice grinder that works well for coffee beans. We keep one in our RV. Its great. It cpsts 35 bucks at Hammcher SChlemmer and 39 at W Sonoma (free shipping)

I did not know that they even put air conditioning in Lamborghinis.

tell em to go eat scorpions cause thats all thatll live in the desert

Listening to a reporter ask a gold medal winner "How does it feel?"

That question must be taught on day one of "Sports Journalist" school.

Soon my windowsill basil "farm" will be shut down, re night time winter temperatures. I'll live through it of course, and spring will be a cumin in after our few snow days here. I'm harvesting the big leaves and letting the baby ones grow a bit longer.

We've had to put fleeces on most of the container plants in our garden - their ghostly green shapes aren't very inspiring! Roll on spring.

An article that sent my teeth on edge:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/28/dutch-woman-with-two-british-children-told-to-leave-uk-after-24-years.
She studied Maths at Cambridge and is married to a British citizen. But, hey, she also knows how to write, and the article is, to me, well done.

I worry re the UK, and of course worry about the US deporting way more people, making the new man in the White House gleeful. Then there's the rest of the world... take Rodrigo Duterte of the Phillippines as a starter.

grimacing some more, The Guardian tells me they can't serve the page. Hmm, it's still there as one of the most read articles.
It's probably my slug computer moving about to squash it. I'll have to treat the notice with some ammonia.

I'll post the link again, in case I screwed it up while cut and pasting.. but no, it's a simple link.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/dec/28/dutch-woman-with-two-british-children-told-to-leave-uk-after-24-years

Bureaucracy gone mad, by the looks.