Some stuff I'll want to remember

1. Do not go to the Asian supermarket the day before Lunar New Year unless you're more interested in teh spectacle than the shopping.

2. Do a real swatch before starting a major project, or risk winding up with Too Much Yarn. Srsly. The Ben.Ben.Blankie is almost half done and I've only used one quarter of the yarn I bought.

3. Something potentially life-changing has happened. The Union League has stopped charging members an additional fee for the use of its fitness center. This means that effectively Roy and I just got two free gym memberships. How cool is that?

The tough go [food] shopping

I may want to remember this shopping trip later.

We were out of or low on a lot of bulky stuff: cat food, kitty litter, paper products, laundry products, etc. So a rental car was in order for the weekend. I thought I'd prep for shopping by looking through the circulars.

There were specials on meats all over town. How can this be? -- I wondered aloud. Roy told me that because corn was at three-something a bushel a lot of suppliers were hanging onto their corn, hoping for an increase. As a result, feedlot operators were slaughtering their stock. The price of porkbellies is already on the way up as result, he reported.

Ulp. Time to load up while the loading is good. So the weekend's meat haul included:

• Two huge oven stuffer roasters
  
• Thirteen chicken breast halves
  
• Ten pounds of Italian sausage
  
• Nine pounds of ground turkey
  
• Twelve pounds of ground beef
  
• Seventeen pounds of bottom round roast, some cut up for stew beef
  

I spent much time breaking big packages of meat into smaller portions, placing the portions in sandwich bags and then in one-gallon freezer bags, labeling, etc. Downstairs and upstairs freezers are both full.

Oh, and I also bought thirty pounds of kitty kibble, eight bags of kitty litter, twenty rolls of toilet paper, etc., etc. etc. A case of tomato paste at 44 cents a can. Four different grocery stores plus the Wal*Mart. And I ran into 79-cent pinto beans so I struck.

I don't expect to buy another scrap of meat until after the Flower Show. Maybe not even then. Maybe a fish or two, but no meat. (I didn't mention that we had a whole pork loin, cut up into chops and roasts, in the freezer already. And chicken livers. And chicken hearts.)