Kicking the can..

I called it. The last minute passing of a resolution to keep the gubbment from so called defaulting.

http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/34676/Shutdown-Ending-but-Larger-Difficulties-Remain/

What some of the rest of the world thinks.

I found this to be of some interest.

"Because Republicans and Democrats, House and Senate, Congress and president could not agree on a stop-gap budget, hundreds of thousands of federal employees were sent on involuntary leave and many agencies were forced to shut down," continues the editorial. "The main actors in this dispute, which brings together many factors, both ideological and political, took a huge risk and, unhindered, proceeded to validate everyone who ever accused the political establishment in Washington of being rotten to the core -- by driving the world power into a budgetary state of emergency. The public is left wondering how things could have been allowed to get to this point and why there is so much poison in the system."

Read the rest of the article here.

17 Years

17 years is what the talking head said this morning about the "partial" governmental shutdown, 17 years since the last time it happened. Roughly 2 weeks are all that remain until the debt ceiling is either raised or We the People, default.

Today the national park system is closed, the E.P.A is shut down and various other federal agencies are locked up tight.  There is politicians blaming politicians for a problem that the politicians themselves created.

It will all come down to the last minute deal.

Isn't 17 years also the life cycle of a cicada?

On a different note, I need to find my small detail brush, the one with nylon bristles that sort of resembles a toothbrush on steroids. The reason I need to find this particular piece of hardware is that the other day it started raining.... inside the rv. After a summer of running pretty much non-stop 24/7, the coils have become coated with a film of caliche dust, pet and human dander and a curious amount of Styrofoam insulation which caused an ice-up situation. Luckily I can see the evaporator from inside, so cleaning it shouldn't be too difficult.

I also have a "lint lizard" attachment for the sweeper to remove debris from some of the harder to reach places.

As a wise man said; "Thats all I have to say about that."

What Putin has to say

An article appeared in the New York Times yesterday.

MOSCOW — RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies.

Please read the rest of the article here.

Feeding Fred.

I was sitting around near the end of August looking for something to do while mindlessly surfing the web and ran across an article on bread. This got me thinking about how homemade bread would have been made 100 years ago (I was cruising vintage photos at the same time). I started looking into sourdoughs, many of the recipes I was finding called for store bought yeast, which to my thinking is cheating and the end result isn't a true sourdough. After searching around a bit I came across a very simple recipe that only used equal parts of flour and water, I figured that was simple enough for me to at least make an attempt and if I failed I was only out a little of my time and a few cups of flour. Besides, if I felt really desperate, I could always send away for a starter from Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail Sourdough Starter webpage.  Carl passed away a few years ago and his friends are keeping his tradition alive of sharing his sourdough with anyone that asks  for FREE! If you are interested, please check out the website.

Luckily, I didn't have to send for Carl's sourdough because mine took off after the second day. Many of the sites I had looked at recommended that once things got moving along to name your creation so that you would be less likely to forget to feed it. Thus Fred was born. Fred mostly resides on the back of  the counter behind the stove in a Ball widemouth mason jar that once housed Janak's Country Market Dill Pickles while I'm letting him mature. I've already tried using him a few times to make a simple bread but he seems to peter out  and I don't get much of a rise out of him, but the flavor is almost spot on.  I'm not sure if I over worked the dough but I recently changed out the type of flour I was feeding in hopes of getting better results and instead of a traditional loaf of bread, I want to try  a biscuit recipe .

I fed Fred this morning and while I was writing this he decided to take off and over flow his pickle jar so I removed about a cup and stuck him in the fridge to slow him down a bit.   Now it looks like I'm trying that bread recipe again a little sooner than I planned!