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So... what have I been doing lately (besides not updating this journal)?
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Wednesday was Pi Day -- March 14th -- pi = 3.14 -- which in past years Nancy has celebrated
with her students by having them bring in pies -- nice round pies (or round
cookies or round cakes, etc.) This was very popular with students -- 8th
graders love to eat pies and cakes and cookies -- and it helped make math
more interesting (and tasty) -- and even helped some of the students remember
what pi represents. Alas, no more pies for Pi Day. New "healthy food"
regulations prohibit bringing home-baked products into school. They can
only eat factory-made food from supermarkets. The theory -- I guess --
is that some health inspector might have visited the factory once upon
a time and so the factory has accumulated some paperwork proving that they
were sort of clean at a given moment in time.... but regulatory bureaucrats
don't visit our homes to offically approve our kitchens, so no pies for
Pi Day. |
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Thursday night we went out to dinner to celebrate Nancy's mother's birthday.
We = Nancy & me, Jill & Eli, and Jeremy & Katie... plus Nancy's sister Janet, her husband Tom, and their kids -- Mike, Lauren, and Alison... and, of coruse, Nancy's Mom. All of whom are pictured here except for me ('cause I'm taking the picture). We ate at the Mews Tavern, one of our favorite local spots.
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I didn't get around to posting an entry that day -- so you also missed
out on me pontificating on the Ides of March and how the Roman calendar
worked.
And Friday morning we had snow... Not the heavy snow that other areas in
the northeast received -- we had more like three or so inches, plus a mix
of sleet and rain and freezing rain. (I had already shoveled the driveway
once but by the time I took this picture about an hour later the it was
pretty much covered-over again.) |
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 I cooked up some corned beef yesterday and we had Nancy's mother and sister
Janet over for dinner -- corned beef and baked potatoes, spinach salad
(baby spinach, walnuts, red onion, and strawberries with a raspberry vinegrette
dressing), steamed asparagus, a cole slaw made with finely chopped red
cabbage, carrot, and Granny Smith apple. Nancy made an applesauce cake
for dessert. Jill had been in a baking mood in the afternoon and made oatmeal-craisin
squares (use an oatmeal raisin cookie recipe but subsitute craisins and
instead of spooning dough onto cookie sheets, fill glass baking dishes
about half an inch or so deep, bake, and then cut into squares.) Yeah,
so we ate some of those also. Happy St. Patrick's Day!
I spent most of my online time last night researching the brands of cat food included in that recall. The recalled cat food is the meat chunks and gravy style, which Tiger
likes. There were more than forty brands listed and I went through to check
on the brands Tiger eats. I frequently buy him Fancy Feast and Whiskers
and they were not involved in the recall. (Whew!) I also sometimes buy
IAMS brand -- but not frequently because the supermarkets where I shop
do not carry much of a selection in it. When I went to the iams.com page
last night to get more information, I found that before reaching any information
you find a notice that says "By using the information contained in
this site, you are bound by the terms in our Legal statement." Sure, sell poisoned pet food and then insist that your customers
are agreeing with everything you say before supplying information to help
them find out if the food you sold them was in the tainted batch. Yeah,
that's a great public relations move. You've guaranteed that I'll never
buy IAMS again.
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And I'll close with a picture of a sleeping cat. |
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