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New(er) Computer, Making Blackberry Jam, & Corn
I just wanted to start this post with an observation about our Decline: with climate change creating widespread crop failures– the question of whether to eat or burn our corn is becoming a bit of an issue.
To wit: news.yahoo.com/livestock-farmers-seek-pause-ethanol-production-065218525–finance.html
To those peak oil denialists, I wonder how many of them saw THIS coming-? I mean, here we have 2 of the most powerful, life-altering issues of our time, climate change and peak oil, coming to a head and making one another worse. Did you read that statistic? That 40% of the corn in the U.S. goes to renewable energy!! That's crazy. Especially since you can make biofuel out of waste crop material- but they're making it out of edible corn. Regardless, there will be less corn for fuel with climatic disruptions to crop production and less fossil fuel for fertilizer, farm machinery, and transportation costs as peak oil rears its ugly head and makes normal agriculture increasingly expensive… See how they just exacerbate one another? Yeah, me too. Make a note.
Moving along to my own personal sphere, my husband- evidently as an act of generosity around the time of our 16th wedding anniversary- bought a 1 year used Toshiba Satellite laptop from a friend of his at work- for ME. It has more than double the hard drive space and double the memory speed. Whee! It's technically a year old, but he bought it from a co-worker whose mother bought it as a compulsive shopping thing and then hardly used it. To pay her mother's bills, now her daughter is selling some of the pricier items, but at a nice discount. So– less than half price for us! Also, unlike my own laptop, the speakers are NOT tinny and terrible. They fixed that major complaint and it has dolby speakers! WIN. I was going to save my second half of the year's cash to buy a new laptop, and now I don't have to. Hubby paid for it all, even though it meant he had to turn down an invite to a camping trip with friends in eastern Oregon.
Wow. So color me mollified here! I would never ask him to buy me anything that expensive, yet that's twice in a year he's gone out of his way to be generous. First the new chair and birthday party, and now this on our anniversary– a date we rarely celebrate to much of an extent. Huh. The improvement in income, and our continuing frugality (most of the time) is surely helping.
Anyway! I am now transferring all my files and re-installing games into the new laptop and once I have virus protection up and running, I'm set. Then my old laptop will go to Tess, with most of the games intact. She's starting college this fall and will need a more powerful machine than the tiny piece-of-crap laptop she has now, which is not even as good as what people buy their elementary school kids– and it has a tiny screen. My 3 year old laptop will be much appreciated, because she's on a severe budget to start, as she's avoiding getting loans for as long as she can. I told her since I don't have kids of my own, SOMEONE needs to inherit my cast offs! LOL!
Finally, Gerick and I spent the evening making blackberry jam out of the berries growing abundantly in our back yard along the property lines. Our house smells heavenly! In the pic below, that's my gardening hat, and the cucumbers and flowers are all off this land. Not only our flower/herb garden, but also the wild flowers in the field.
2012-08-23 15:13:35
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