All right, time to think.

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I had to check my last order, the year supply of grains and legumes, from Emergency Essentials.  It has been placed.  I haven't heard that it has been shipped yet though.  Which is fine, as long as it eventually gets here.  Just... like I said... I'm a bit itchy about things.  Something(s) is/are terribly wrong.  It isn't my health, although that isn't doing really well.  I have been rather laid up.  No, this is just a sense that things are very potentially about to go very wrong in and everywhere sort of way.  Too many people are out of work.  Too much is going on in the Middle East.  Our government seems to only get in the way when it is wrong and steps out of the way for the wrong people and ideas.  Too many things are hanging by threads.  When one big thing drops, lots of little things and possibly even other big and bigger things will drop.  That is just the way it is.  We haven't seen this kind of intensity since the worst parts of the Cold War.  The stakes are the same but there are too many players, actors, and problems to make a good accounting.

I have been looking at the canners, All-American type.  These really are the best, for many reasons.  The problem is, currently, I have a glass-top stove.  While it is a wonderful device it isn't made to handle that kind of weight and size.  It isn't just the weight, either.  These canners are extra wide at their bases.  This would leech heat into non-heating element glass.  Not good.  D.C. suggested getting a propane burner, or some such, but that would require canning outside.  If I had a place I could build up, at least in the warmer parts of fall, that would be one thing.  As is, it would be a bit of a mess.  The other option would be to build a gas/propane burner system into a minor island.  And that might be of interest, but the hammer is reaching high-noon.  I am not sure there is time.  Squeezed, I tell you. 

For now, I think, the canner is off the books.  As such, though, I may be able to save what I would have spent on that and buy a good grain mill shortly after my mother leaves.  I would get the bike attachment as well.  I had, at first, thought against that, thinking I would then also need to buy a smaller bike.  It seems the previous owners left one of suitable size out back.  While I do have a bike, it is sized for me, so will not fit the grain mill's attachment.  Funny how it all works out sometimes anyway.

I have been enjoying BioShock 2.  Hard mode has become somewhat easier.  But it entails a LOT of saving, careful planning, and very judicious use of goods and services offered within the game.  I still think it is a bit too lean, but that is just me.  I don't mind running a bit lean.  I hate knowing that one of the many required big fights could leave me completely dry, or even some random encounters.  There isn't a "smarter" way to play.  It is just a fact of this game in it's most difficult mode.  Of course, if a fall comes, it will be like that.  Easy access to food is a luxury no American I know has ever missed.  The same goes for clothing, tools, even electronics now.  Poor people have televisions, smart phones, dvd players, hand and console game systems, and cars.  Really?  Did I say "poor people"?  The very people who are demanding more from the rich?  More?  For... what?  Bah!  An interesting part of the game is it sets atheist types, one of the communal sort and one of the complete self sort, against each other.  To be honest, if I must lean, I would lean to individual.  But they are both flawed, terribly.  One is just less flawed.  While the story itself isn't the greatest, other things within the story are superb.  This is a fine thinking man's game in what it offers other than the play.

Well, it's about bedtime.  I hope you slept well.  Good night, Jean.