Monday, September 29, 2008

Take it as an investment hint . . .
















There is a web page called "Map of the Market" where you can see at a glance what is happening on Wall Street. The brighter the red, the more the stock has lost. Today the map is a glowing ember.

Click on the controls, and you can ask to see the five top losers and gainers. I found it interesting that earlier today two of the top five gainers were Campbell Soup and Molson Coors Brewing.

I guess that means investors realize that in tough times, we'll all still need our comfort food and beer.

Friday, September 26, 2008

Weekly Wrapup

On the Bank Meltdown: I can't remember who said this, and as a good journalist I should cite my sources, but then again, this isn't the N&O it's only my blog. So I'll just say the speaker was one of the government figures in this financial mess. He said, and I don't quote, because I can't . . . it is a bad idea to cap bank executive's pay and bonuses because the people who did the damage are already gone, and a cap would hinder the ability to hire new executives. I do remember he used the word "mediocre" as in, we would only be able to attract mediocre talent. I guess mediocre talent isn't as good as high-priced talent; like the high-price talent who bought the country to this brink of financial collapse in the first place? Hmmm.

New in Morrisville: Yesterday we looked at the new "urban" flats at Grace Park. The project was originally intended as condominiums, but was switched over to rentals because of the housing slowdown and a problem with obtaining permits to complete a large project in one swoop. As a result, the model suites were very nice, but, you could see where they cut back. For one thing, an elevator shaft is roughed out, but there will be no elevator. Another thing; the agent said they have the new "acid wash concrete" floors, and said it like that was a good thing. To me it was clearly a way to save money on floor covers over the concrete. It was cold, unattractive and caused her high heels to echo. But apparently it's "the latest". So when did they start acid washing concrete instead of jeans?

In Conclusion:
This is why I love my pets. They are my link to nature that I lose in civilization. Even if they understood what the talking heads on CNN and MSNBC say, the news would be meaningless. They don't need to own property and don't care about the latest upscale amenities. They don't get chewed out because they made a political judgement error at work and if they did they wouldn't need an aspirin later at home to fix the headache. Every day when I get home, I'm greeted by the same, happy, natural creatures despite what happened to me during the time I was away. So tonight, let's all drink a toast to our pets, and give them an extra treat for being nature's perfect barometers of what's really important.
(Photo courtesy of Betty France Photography http://www.mwt.net/~bbfrance/)

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Something Else About the Economy No-one's Told You

As to the spinning vortex which is this current economy -- I think we're all trying to work out whether we're being slowly pulled into the abyss at the center (as my coworker put it) or just riding in a storm cell as per usual. I'll give you something new to think about. A singular event that happened yesterday which I haven't heard about from the major news sources.

I wanted to buy some silver coins. I started out at Kitco.com, an excellent source. Here's what they had on their website:
The following products have been temporarily removed from our Precious Metal Store until further notice due to production and delivery delays that retailers are currently facing; 1 oz Gold bars, 1 oz Kitco Gold bars, 10 oz Gold bars, 1 oz Silver Eagles, 1 oz Silver Maples, 1 oz Silver Philharmonic coins, 1 oz Olympic Silver Maples, 100 oz Silver bars and 1 oz Palladium Maples.
The only silver left were 1000 ounce bars. (That's more than 60 pounds.) I went over to Tulving.com and looked at their inventory. They were sold out of all silver (coins, bars and rounds of various sizes) except for 500 coin boxes, $1000-less-than-pure bags of coins, and, yes, 1000 ounce bars.

Bullion Direct? A pittance on inventory; a flea market would have more.

A-Mark? Some stock, but a high markup.

All sites warned of shipping delays.

I called one of the dealers who'd been in business for 30 years. "This is a dumb question," I said, "but how often does the supply of silver get this low? Is it unusual?"

"It's unprecedented." He answered.

My husband asked if this was because people were hoarding silver, but the broker declined to give an opinion.

So should you buy precious metals? Well, if you believe the economy will go back to normal, then probably not. Everyone who wants precious metal will have their supply, eventually things will get better, they'll sell and the price will have nowhere to go but down.

What if you believe the sky is falling? Then I guess you might want to have some, but 1000 ounce bars are really hard to carry to the Quick-E Mart. The clerk may not be able to make change either.

Before you panic in this economic crisis, remember this: if the economy does collapse and the US goes into depression, all those tech and manufacturing jobs that went overseas will come back.

Monday, September 22, 2008

The State of Morrisville breakfast and other opportunities to miss work

The Morrisville Chamber of Commerce held a State of Morrisville breakfast last week. The tables assignments were pre-marked, and since Ward and I could find no sign that said Dissenters and Trouble-Makers, we sat at Open Seating. I had mini quiches and pineapple-orange juice. Ward had mini danish since real men only eat real quiche.

Here's some of the more interesting points:

Grace Park
They are holding an open house on Thursday, Sept. 25 from 12-3. They promise food, but it looks like you'll have to play hooky from work to attend. And when you see us there . . . we won't tell if you won't.

Wake County
Nothing to do with Morrisville, but interesting if you're watching the economy -- Wake County has a $45 million, AAA bond to sell, but can't sell it. No bank is buying municipal bonds right now.

Duke Health Care Clinic
The urgent care clinic is slated to open Nov 10 with 6 urgent care doctors, 6 primary physicians, 2 specialists and high-end imaging equipment. Their hours will be 8am - 8pm, but they didn't say whether they were open on weekends.

Roads
The DOT speaker spouted off a list of Morrisville projects. Ho hum, I can get that info from the web, and he went too fast for me anyway. But he said some notable things about roads in N.C. in general:

The cost of construction has doubled from 2002 to 2007. I don't know how they arrived at this number, but North Carolinians have driven 52.4 billion miles less this year. This means a $24 million bite out of gas taxes for the DOT coffers. Also, only Texas has more total road miles in their state, our infrastructure is aging, and NC DOT falls further behind each year on bridges that need replacing.

Retail
The retail speaker was a salesman who spoke twice as long as his allotted time. But I did glean these points from him:

First, a hot tip: The clothing market is soft right now. Go to T.J. Maxx in 60-90 days to pick up bargains as the unsold stock rolls over.

And on Park West: They have 60% of their space committed but can't name names yet. They promise to start road improvements in the fall. That's today; should I drive over and check?

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Revenge of Poochy Boy

Last night I was back to cajoling Poochy Boy to eat his new food. I decided to try putting some on his paw again, and had to lean over to him to get this done. When I got close, he suddenly sprang up and hit me square in the face. I actually tripped and fell over backward with PB on top of me. Then I saw he had a glob of Country Pet wet cat food in his paw. He shoved it towards my mouth and meowed loudly. I was quite disorganized at the moment, but I could swear he said, "You eat it!"

Gotcha. Actually the score is now CoffeeCrispLite: 1, Poochy Boy: 3 which makes us both winners.

The tuna juice-fusion won him over. I mashed it in his wet food. Also, by now PB was tired of getting only 3/4 rations (we had to pick up the dog food because we actually caught PB eating it. And the dogs watched him do it and just sat there.)

Later that night I gave him more without the tuna juice and he finished if off. Hopefully there will be no regressions.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

The Darkening of The Dog

I was going through some old pictures. Can you believe this is the same dog? Has she been dying her hair while we're at work?


Princess Dog at two












Princess Dog at three













Princes dog at five











I can promise you the color change is not a trick of the camera. We noticed her getting darker over the years. When we came to pick her up after her first surgery (when she was four) her face was so different I thought they gave me the wrong dog.

Still Teaching the Cat What Food is

Today's tally:
CCLite: 0
PBoy: 3 (maybe).

At 6am, The Pooch (that's him on the left) gets 1/2 his daily food allotment in familiar dry form. By dinner he's hungry for more and that's when he gets the Country Pet wet, real food slid under his nose.

Last night I heated it up again. Oooh, smell that?

No reaction.

I sprinkled on the Parmesan which Dr. Lisa says cats love. No reaction.

I heated it up again. Cat food lasagna. I think I see Garfield drooling at the window. PB takes one sniff and turns away.

I mashed it some more; into a puree. I put some on his paw again. I dipped a kernel of hard food into it and offered him the chip dip.

Then I went outside and got the grass -- several blades of Grade A, Premium tall fescue -- PB's weakness. I put them on top of the wet food and gently pressed them into the mix. I left the kitchen and peeked in from the living room.

PB went for it. He dug out every blade and in the process, I figured he decided the food was good too. I thought I would cry for joy. But when he was done and I rushed in to check the result, the wet food was still there. That's where the "maybe" from this blog entry's opening paragraph comes in. Maybe he actually ate some of the wet food, or maybe I'm just being optimistic. Afterward he would eat no more.

Later that evening I tried pushing a piece of cooked chicken into the food, and finally dripped tuna juice over the whole concoction. It was still a no-go with PB, but by this time who could blame him since it really was just a microwaved, pureed, grass-stained, fish-smelling, cheese-smothered mess.

Which made a nice bite-size bedtime treat for the dogs.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Teaching the Cat what Food is

Poochy Boy and I faced off this weekend. The tally so far is CoffeeCrispLite: 0, PB: 2.

As I explained in an earlier blog entry, at 11 years old (which is 60 to another cat) I want to change The Pooch over to a healthier, wet cat food. On Saturday I bought home my carefully researched choice: Country Pet, which comes in frozen sausage form.



PB needs to be slowly weaned onto this delightful REAL food product, whose first ingredients are chicken, fish, beef and lamb; not chicken, brewers rice, poultry by-product and corn gluten meal like in Purina One. So for dinner, instead of crunchy crap, PB got ever such a slight serving of moist meat.

He had no idea what it was. For all he knew I had just put mud in his bowel. Which by-the-way, he would eat. He wouldn't eat this.

Veterinarian Lisa A. Pierson, on her web site, says any cat can be weaned onto wet food. You just have to be patient enough. Back at home, I tried heating it up, making a chip dip out of it with his regular food as the chip, mixing his regular food into the new one and mixing the new one into his regular food, none of which worked.

I then put a dab on The Pooch's paw. True to his cat-like powers of keen perception, he didn't even notice what I had done. Then he shook his paw and realized there was something there. He licked it off. He liked it. But when he was done, he lay down next to the bowl of new food and promptly ignored it again.

Tonight I will try Dr. Pierson's "tuna on top" and "Parmesan cheese" tricks. I also have one of my own ruses, sprinkling fresh-picked fescue grass on top -- sort of a California Style Feline Ragout.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Caption Competition!


















I told you Fred, unless it says "Fox News" on the camera, ignore them.


Can you do better? Leave a comment.

Coyotes of Morrisville

Hard to believe, but some neighbors said they've seen a coyote in the subdivision, and not the kind that dances on bars, the furry kind. Range maps show that coyotes don't habitat east of the Appalachians but, lo, if there wasn't an article on WRAL.com back in August that says coyote sitings are on the rise all over the state. They've even been spotted in downtown Raleigh.

Wikipedia says that coyotes will mate with domestic dogs, but I don't think that's what Princess and 100Percent dogs have to watch out for.

To scare off a coyote just make a lot of noise. Don't worry. I will.

Coyotes are a much worse problem in California where people feed them, making them unafraid of humans.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

The ABC Happy Hour

Sometimes it gets depressing to research sustainable food and Morrisville events. The government too often takes the side of big agriculture and our town council too often supports high density development. This is probably why the blog has been so quiet lately.

So today I declare a happy hour. Enjoy the ABCs of San Francisco:

Art












Beer












(That's a sampler plate)

and California dining


















(A less alcoholic sampler plate)

Friday, September 5, 2008

Weekly Wrapup for a Quiet Week

Hanna Update - Forecast now to be a rain event for Raleigh, with 2-1/2 inches of rain and gusty winds.

Morrisville - Stay tuned for important news. For a preview, check out Jackie's September 3 entry on 'Tis About Morrisville, and scroll down on the Morrisville Action Committee's website for an article titled: Critical Planning Decisions to be Turned Over to Town Staff?

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Hanna's coming -- hide the cinnamon buns

We are preparing for Hurricane Hanna, due to hit us on Saturday. Here's the projected track:



















It's fast moving so hopefully it won't cause problems but I will not forget the lessons I learned from Hurricane Fran in 1996, a storm whose eye came right over me.

1. Lengthy power outages are the main concern. Have some Sterno or an outdoor grill or there'll be no morning coffee. Picture trying to boil a pan of water that's on a bent coat hanger perched over a herd of candles. That's how desperate I was, and it didn't work.

2. Don't figure that cans of fruit, vegetables, beans, and tuna will tide you over until the store opens, no matter how many cans you have. The day after a hurricane you only want cinnamon buns, chips, and cold spaghetti-o's. Dang the sustainable healthy. Your body will demand junk.

3. If you don't have your D-cell battery supply by the time the storm is announced, forget it. They're gone from every store shelf in town. And have enough so you aren't afraid to use them because you now realize that this isn't Toronto and power doesn't go out for one night, it goes out for days or weeks.

4. Gas up the car or you'll end up like my friend who asked me to drive to see if we could find ice. She had to be the terrified passenger while I maneuvered around fallen power lines and trees. She probably would have preferred to be the terrified driver. It's a control thing.

5. Figure out a way to have cold beer because then you can bring some down to the radio station and a grateful DJ will say your name on the air.

6. Go to the supermarket early to stock up. Then go back to the supermarket the day before the storm to rubberneck. Stay away from the bananas, bread and water sections or you'll get trampled.

7. When the storm hits, turn the A/C down to polar frigid. If there's no power the next day you'll still be cool and will have the most popular house in town. That way you can get your visitors to bring Sterno, D-cell batteries, and beer.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

A brief intermission for Labor Day


Apparently they're making dogs in pill form now.



Just add water.






Deep thoughts about Morrisville, sustainable eating, therapy dogs, and more is on the way.