Bits and Pieces

I had an electronic meltdown, possibly from an electrical surge but possibly from my tinkering. Do you remember that poem, "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing..."
That's me and computers. I know just enough to be able to screw things up in a big way. The whole thing started with my office laptop, that started getting the blue screen of death. By the time I was finished (or the power surge, whichever it was) I had no internet on any of my four computers. After many frustrating calls to my server, Bell, and my router company, both of whom blamed each other for the problem, I replaced all the ethernet cables, the telephone cable, the router and anything else that could be replaced. Except the modem, which Bell continued to insist was not the problem. So I upgraded and it was supposed to be delivered in two days. When I called a week later, someone had mysteriously cancelled the order, so I ordered again. This time it actually was two days and by the end of that day, I had internet again. Two or three weeks, it took and it was like losing a part of my brain. I just couldn't function normally without it.

The people where I live are absolutely wonderful for the most part. They're still neighborly and kind and you have to be careful what you say you need in front of some of them. The farm up the road has a CSI program, where for $25 you get a basket of fresh farm produce every two weeks or so, and theirs includes eggs, sometimes homemade bread and jam. One of those baskets showed up on my doorstep the other day because they had some left over and didn't want to waste them. Oh man, it's good. Fresh brown eggs, organic lettuce, beets, peas, baby Irish Cobbler potatoes...and broccoli. I'm munching my way through it very gratefully, but I keep eying the broccoli and passing it over. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely LOVE broccoli. I just love my broccoli full of chemicals. Organic broccoli has those sneaky, camouflaged, fat green worms hiding between the little broccoli stalks and they put me right off. I soak the broccoli in salty water and they fall off and die, but my brain is not convinced that I got them all. I like my veggies to be veggies and my meat to be meat; no way should meat be disguised as veggies. And no way should it be green.
So my theory about farming is that it all should be organic with the exception of broccoli. I've been eating local beef and pork and the difference in taste to the factory-raised animals is amazing. They actually have flavor! But they aren't green and they don't pretend they're vegetables. Poison the heck out of that broccoli!