Miscellany
Too damn cold to do all my laps yesterday morning, so I only did one lap. Then I stopped at the Superette in Mammoth to get my nicotine fix.

We went to the Country Cottage for lunch, where I had a grilled chicken breast sammich. Then I took Mother to the grocery store. Some of the things I picked up are Arizona No-Carb White Cranberry/Apple Green Tea, pork rinds, some Martha Gooch reduced carb spaghetti, and a new low-carb tortilla by Mission. I looked at Carb Control Pasta Sauce, which tastes pretty good but is almost three bucks a jar. Then I found Hunts Spaghetti Sauce on sale for 69 cents a can, and their No Sugar Added sauce only has two more net carbs than Carb Control's. *I* win. I also got some low-carb bread by Nature's Own. Other than that, the only things I put in the cart were some Diet Mountain Dew and some Oscar Meyer Ham and Ham and Cheese Loaf.

I used to wonder why poor people are often overweight. Now I know. It's cheaper to buy foods that make you fat. It should be the other way around. It's getting better, though, now that other companies are starting to compete with the Atkins line, which is still gawdawful expensive. I still haven't figured out how they make syrup with no sugar in it. Nor have I figured out why it would cost $6.00 for an amount that would cost 89 cents if it were normal syrup.

I have had this computer for almost 10 years, and I just discovered something about it. It has no "cents" symbol. Yet from the recesses of my memory, my fingers go to SHIFT-3 when I want to type it. Odd.

I checked the Royal Empress trees this morning, the ones I planted last year as a memorial to the World Trade Center. One is beginning to leaf out, but the other one, the one that little monster next door wrecked last year (as documented here) looks like it may not have survived the winter. The same desire to destroy instead of to create that brought down the WTC is what this little monster indulged in in wrecking my memorial. Bitch.

I was hoping to plant my vegables (If I can write "sammich," I can write "vegables.") in the next few days, but it's too damn cold. There's still a danger of frost. I need to do it soon, though, since my little plants are in danger of getting rootbound. I need to start watching the 7-day forecast. The average last frost here in Thayer Missouri is April 3, so if I can get through a weeklong stretch of above freexing temps, I should be fine from here on in.

I don't really care if the corn produces or not. I'm not planting it for corn. I'm planting a 9-foot variety outside my window to give me a privacy screen. And the Russian Mammoth sunflowers I plan to plant along the front sidewalk are more for decoration than for the seeds. But I do want the vegetables from the okra, 'maters, squash, peppers, and cucumbers. The eggplants I don't really care about, but I had three extra spaces in my seedling trays and the eggplant seeds were ten cents a package.

The watermelons didn't come up. Doubtful that they will, since I planted them about three weeks ago. Damn. I like watermelons.