Groceries have gone nuts. I've seen a 25-50% rise in several of my normal purchases. Don't see why. Seems like price gouging in the disguise of "COVID has caused this".
Noticed a few things not around but not much.
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Groceries have gone nuts. I've seen a 25-50% rise in several of my normal purchases. Don't see why. Seems like price gouging in the disguise of "COVID has caused this".
Noticed a few things not around but not much.
There have been some unusual patterns post-pandemic. There was an odd rash of chicken processing plant fires for example. Perhaps mere coincidence, but similar patterns have popped up for other foods, paper products, etc.
Letting that slide, future supply problems seem likely due to unusual weather patterns and fertilizer sourcing hampered by geopolitical events and trends. Not to mention interruptions and changes in our degrading freight carrying infrastructure.
We had some interesting weather yesterday.
It has been pretty dry for several weeks now, but we got some light rain while I was driving to the cardiologist yesterday. Not a lot of it, but what we got was very clean compared to earlier in the year. It almost had the character of car wash softened water. The dust slid right away, and after drying there was no spotting. Earlier we were getting everything from dirt spots to mineral/salts spots.
This came in from eastward this time, so it probably didn't have the tilled-up dust we get from the west. Or even the smoke from Canada, since that system had come in from below that activity.
New pattern coming in from the west, as more typical rains do. We expect more sludge.
My trip might be derailed. I'm getting an MRI on Monday (hopefully) to see whether I've done something serious to my right Achilles tendon. Kind of a bummer.
Sorry to hear that. Did you wreck or just over stress it?Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
I think it was the 11 hour day that ended with a roughly 4000 foot vertical climb in hot weather. I was so tired by the time I got to sleep the exhaustion seeped into my dreams. A dream would start, then there would be some message about "this dream is still under construction" and I'd go on to some other dream. It was really weird.
Soon AI will have our dreams for us.
They might already. I was playing around with an AI concept a couple decades ago that was based on using dreams to train the AI. That was an evolutionary engine approach, so the dreams would allow for a diversity of AI brains to all work on the same artificial problem. The nice thing about the dreams was that it was possible to create automated 'problems' for the brains to solve, and each would be able to do as it would. The key was being able to automate the evaluation of success/failure in the dream.
Our dreams seem to serve the purpose of reinforcing learning, as well, so perhaps there's something there.
Rains came though, we got a good soak. Looks like we won't be dry for a while now with scattered rain here and there over the next 10 days. Not that really clean rain this time though.
For now we're back in the haze from Quebec fires again, probably the worst we've seen so far. Not just a hazy sky, but smoke in the air you can clearly see looking across the road. Much of the time you can smell it too.
We don't have a lot of big fires over broad areas. I'm not sure we ever had smoke like this since maybe the days when people all burned leaves in the fall.
I remember a couple of years ago when the fires were everywhere here in CA. The sky was just brown for days. Could see long distances.
This June has been great, mild 75-85 just about all month. Usually we have some 95 days, maybe even a 100. But that's changing, suppose to be 107 Saturday.
Well, my ride is done, but I didn't tear my Achilles. I was told I probably would if I kept going, but considering how swollen my ankle currently is, I was already on to plan B...or C, or whatever I'm down to. Bummer, but at least I won't need surgery and as long as I rest it for a month, or so, I should be good to go.
Glad it's not torn. These adventures of yours seem to be pretty hard on your body. If I remember right, last year you ended up with bad sores on your feet. Later in life these things seem to come back to haunt you. I've damaged my shoulder so many times that now I can't get it to heal. Been getting cortisone shots the last few years, now they don't even help. Things definitely take longer to heal the older you get.Quote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Maybe you could finish your vacation working on your tan on a nice beach. lol
Skin damage is also cumulative. Sometimes everything seems to go well until some seemingly unrelated condition arises. That can trigger fragile skin that appears just fine... into anything from "crepe skin" to itchy rashes that are hard to control to skin cancer.
A guy I used to work with was fine until around age 48 to 50 an itchy rash arose. His doctor put him on a course of steroids that masked it somewhat, but then it came back with a vengeance. He ended up getting lots of tests with a dermatologist and they finally figured out that it was many years of wind and sun exposure from sailing, the rash triggered when he changed the multivitamin he was taking to one with less intense doses of vitamin A. From the time it cropped up to finally correcting it took around 6 months altogether. I remember he always seemed to be slathering a prescription Retinol cream on in the men's room to keep it in abeyance. He had a sort of "sponge on a stick" he used to get his back.
I think a bunch of us got hired in around the same time in our 20s. By the time we'd all reached 55 or so it seemed like everyone had something to deal with, even if it was just a second pair of glasses for using screens and reading. Rumor was that for the women it tended to be things like bladder control or emotion and mood management meds. Before I retired it seemed like the new Employee Service Program counselors were always buzzing around or holding seminars.
The damage is already accumulating. Both knees have some issues, though they are far from needing any work done. My right shoulder is a bit of a mess. Both feet are a mix of hypersensitive and numb. It's like I can feel some things too acutely, and other things not at all.
And yet you can't wait to go on another trek. lolQuote:
Originally Posted by Shaggy Hiker
Don't get me wrong, I completely understand. My life is full of such choices. Humans are funny creatures.
But honestly, I can't decide if I regret doing the things that caused the damage I'm dealing with now. Strange.
Shaggy,
For the feet, if your are riding the bike but not using cycling shoes, you definitely need some. They have a stiffener in the forefoot that distributes the force on the foot. I assume that you already have decent hiking footgear.
Canadian forest fires are still raging, and we've been getting quite a dose of smoke. So bad it gets swept as far as the Carolinas, and now I hear it has reached Spain.
This must be why I'm seeing people walking the neighborhood in masks again. I hear they are cheap now though, even the one-time-use N95 masks can be a cheap option. They got overproduced and are now warehoused in massive numbers.
I made the mistake of hanging a knit shirt in the sun yesterday, not taking my advice about the smoke that I gave my neighbors.
When I brought it in at dusk ahead of the rain (that we got little of here) it smelled a little funky. Today it smells rank, like the weird smells in a department store shoes aisle or something.
Doesn't appear we'll be clearing until 7PM to 7AM tomorrow. Might be leaving that shirt out overnight!
https://firesmoke.ca/forecasts/current/
lolQuote:
I made the mistake of hanging a knit shirt in the sun yesterday, not taking my advice about the smoke that I gave my neighbors.
Sounds like something I'd do. I'm great at giving advice, not so good at following my advice.
You should hang some gouda out in the shirt.