Aug 11 1984
Not realizing that his weekly radio address is already on the air, President Ronald Reagan quips into his live microphone: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

And the world shit its collective pants…

We outspent the USSR with Reagan’s Star Wars program. They went broke first. We had to spend 30 years into the future making it happen. Creditworthiness matters, bitches.

The dollar is backed only by the “Full faith and credit” of the U.S. Government, no thanks to President Richard Nixon’s dumping the gold standard in 1971. The recent grandstanding in Congress reduced the world’s faith in the dollar. That is what Standard and Poors meant when they downgraded the US from AAA to AA+.  The US isn’t as good an investment any more and it is likely to get worse.

Standard and Poor’s Global Credit Portal Research Update: United States of America Long-Term Rating Lowered To ‘AA+’ On Political Risks And Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative

“You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. We won the midterms (congressional elections). This is our due.”
– Dick Cheney, then Vice President
Source: Adam Entous, Reuters, on AOL News Jan 11, 2004

[Source]

Caveat: I am NOT an animal expert. I don’t have a dog, I have cats.

Dogs have around 15,000 years of selective breeding behind them. Of course they can eat our foods… or most of them! Despite what the premium brands tell you, a dog is not a wolf and it doesn’t require the same nutrients as a wolf. Dogs can eat many vegetables and they seem to enjoy them.

There’s an article on the Humane society site which lists human foods that are harmful to dogs. I would not feed a dog chocolate or anything from the onion family.
Foods potentially poisonous to pets : The Humane Society of the United States

There are a number of good books on feeding dogs (and cats) homemade or even raw foods. Dr. Pitcairn's New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats has valuable information on the nutritional needs of both dogs and cats, and recipes for healthful meals you can make in batches. The book even has recipes for supplements you can spoon onto commercial dog or cat foods.

Managing Stress

• Avoid Vagueness
• Not wasting energy on nervous habits.

Success

• The smells of pines, teaberry and blueberries
• Birds chirping in the morning and not a car for miles
• No longer a Peon
• Hungry for those good things, baby
• I can be anything I want, I’m that good.
• “You can be anyone this time around.” — Dr. Timothy Leary

Alliance

• Internal Motivation
• Conformity
• Safety/Strength in numbers
• We’re all born to die alone
• Confluence of interest
• Tied to expectations
• Ants

Harmony

• Communicate easily
• Keep my head in a crisis
• Let Space die
• Assimilate new
• No sense fighting self
• Resolve conflicts
• Self-acceptance
• Beta-endorphins
• Synergy

Tied to expectations

• Music

Resistance

• Open-Hearted
• Plays well with others
• Let me lose with grace
• Distancing others
• Hubris
• Confusion game
• Color Orange for clashes and conflict

Celebrating myself

• Reading for enjoyment
• Hot baths
• Pine Barrens
• Avoid the front office
• Avoid cold weather and the dark
• Sneakers
• 650cc Motorcycle
• Playing sports
• How the hell did I associate being cold, poor and alone with “having it all”??
• Springtime after rafting
• Self-indulgence

Cherishing myself

• Fight intertia
• Kayak
• Egocentric
• In the Pine Barrens
• External verification
• No need to make sacrifices
• Pilot’s license Note: probably won’t happen.
• Vanity

Communication

• Clarity and vision
• Flow
• “Friends from Space, have you eaten yet?” — Not on the Voyager menu plaque!
• Travel
• hearing loss as obstacle
• MI as obstacle
• Clinical Ecologist
• Copy Cat
• Acceptable ideas

Photo credit:
Anita363

First off, the night before I dreamed I was driving down a road with fast-food joints as far as I could see. I woke up with the intention of having a rare tenderloin. I think I am craving B12, taurine or fat. In the past when I’ve quit eating red meat I’m become anemic. What foods have the B12 and taurine? I quit my fish oil supplements and am considering starting them again.

I found a new vegetable market with astonishing prices, but while I was there I started feeling anxious and dizzy. I went around the corner and had a small cheesesteak and a half slice of pizza. Mistake. I felt great after eating but it didn’t last long. I was exhausted, I dozed in a chair most of the day, any exertion made me sweat.

Anyway, before the crash I went to the new store and bought a box full of stuff. 6# tomatoes, 4# each apples, oranges, and spinach. 3# carrots, 2# celery and lemons, and 2 big bunches of parsley. So I made a gallon of tomato cocktail last night and had a glass for dinner. This morning I made a half gallon each of orange-ginger-carrot and Blueberry Soda. When I’m done typing this I’ll make Apple-Spinach. That covers me for today and tomorrow.

I have decided to use this as an opportunity to determine which foods cause symptoms. But not this week.

BTW, I have a Breville 800JEXL Juice Fountain Elite 1000-Watt Juice Extractor “I guess that’s yer partner in the wood chipper” model that I bought a couple of years ago after careful consideration. Bonus: the pulp is great for the compost pile.


Anyway…

Day 4, almost day 5. I don’t sleep well in the heat, even with the AC on. Anybody else have that problem? When I was a kid I was scrawny and hyper and I loved the heat.

I ran a lot of errands today, including stocking up on 4 lbs tomatoes, 3 lb apples and 1 lb carrots, with beets, celery and kale to round out the nutrition. I considered getting a bell pepper but decided against the bitterness this time. Instead I got some jalepeno peppers to add some flavor and bring out the sweetness of the carrots and beets. And a pineapple for the heartburn that has developed, and strawberries because the apple/strawberry/mint combination was so tasty, and a grapefruit because they are less acidic than oranges. Oh, dang, forgot lemon for the tomato mixture. I’ll have to run out tomorrow. I need to balance it more toward veggies and less toward fruits, but I have to work up to that. Glycemic index refers to how long it takes to release sugars, not to how much sugar is released. Is that true?

Is it ok to juice enough for the whole day, and for part of the next day? How fast does juice lose its nutrition?

I also went to Home Despot :-) and bought two more tomato plants and two eggplant. I am looking forward to juicing tomatoes right out of the garden.

I always keep Vitamin C in the kitchen to help juices keep their color. Don’t know why commercial dried fruit has to have sulfites in it. It’s just aesthetics.

Has anyone tried making tomato/oregano or salsa flavor? I’ve learned that I personally can’t keep down any juice mixture with onion in it.

I will start documenting recipes now so I can perfect and share them.

I ate a yogurt at lunchtime, which I’m pretty sure isn’t supposed to be on the menu, but I needed it to settle my stomach and curb diarrhea. Detox has definitely set in. I feel like hell. Still gnashing my teeth.

I am confident that I will feel better tomorrow.

All right, off to bed.

If I make it to 5 days, it will be EASY to get to 10. I’m trying to convince myself of that.

My mind has been feeding me images of food. The thoughts pop into my head as if I’d already made the decision. My car tried to take me to McDonalds tonight. It’s odd, because McDonald’s hardly quailifies as food. It’s salty, greasy slabs of something that gives the impression of being meat.

I seem to be sleeping ok. Better, actually. I also seemed to tolerate the heat better than usual today. We’ll have to see how I tolerate the hot weather coming in tomorrow.

My husband cooked salmon last night and it smelled unbelievably good. He bought me a bottle of V-8 and I didn’t have the heart to tell him it’s too salty. Later I found myself browsing recipes online. Unfortunately they were barbeque recipes.

I made a treat while I was doing my juicing for the day – an apple, a handful of wild strawberries, and a sprig of mint. I also made a tomato mixture and yes, I juiced the tomato instead of pureeing it this time. A glass of kale juice – yeah, gonna have to keep mixing that with apple for now. And my favorite, orange-carrot-ginger.

I know from experience fasting that it gets easier after a day or two. I can do this.

My favorite juice is orange-carrot-ginger but it has too much sugar for me to be drinking huge quantities of it. Ditto apple-kale, but fortunately kale is relatively mild in flavor so I can drink it in small quantities. Hint: a pinch of vitamin C powder will prevent juices from turning brown.

Today I made a half gallon of tomato juice blend, but I cheated, I pureed the tomato in the blender. Like Ray Stewart, I think it’s a crime to put a beautiful Roma down the chute. I PROMISE, I will juice it next time.

Anyway, the juice blend was tomato, carrot, beet, kale, celery, cucumber and a half lemon. I will be perfecting this recipe, and of course juicing the tomatoes rather than pureeing them.

Normally I’d read the group THEN post. I didn’t. I will read now.

I will be blogging my recipes as I develop them.

Believe it or not, I’m still  redoing the categories on my WordPress blog in the Dewey Decimal System.  I’ve had 6 years of creating a taxonomy that doesn’t quite do what I want so why not?

Obviously I cover a lot of different topics on my blog.

While each post can be categorized by Dewey, tags exist outside the taxonomy and help identify lateral connections that may not have been obvious as I wrote the articles.

An additional problem is that most of the things I blog about didn’t exist in the 1870′s when Melvile Dewey created the system.  I’ve used a number of web sites to help me convert the troublesome computer and technology categories.  Fortunately OCLC maintains the DDC on an ongoing basis.

I’ve used a number of sites to help me create the taxonomy.  I’d like to share them in case anyone else is considering standardizing their categories.

• http://www.oclc.org/ OCLC is a library service and research organization whose purpose is to improve access to the world’s information.  OCLC owns the Dewey Decimal System which is used by libraries in over 135 countries to categorize their holdings.
• Dewey Decimal Classification / Linked Data This site provides Dewey Decimal classifications in either machine- or human-readable format.
• List of Dewey Decimal classes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wikipedia has everything, but I suggest you verify everything elsewhere.
• Dewey Decimal Classification System Bob Peck is a professional indexer whose list of DDC categories was invaluable.
UIUC Library – Dewey Decimal System – A Guide to Call Numbers The Undergraduate Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign also has a list of DDC call numbers.
• Dewey Decimal Classification Centennial 1876-1976 The 1976 edition of the DDC is available from Project Gutenberg, where you can download over 33,000 free ebooks to read on your PC, iPad, Kindle, Sony Reader, iPhone, Android or other portable device.
• Site Index:
  Dewey Decimal Classification Robert Teeter has listed a number of useful four-plus digit codes for technical topics.

Any thoughts on how to categorize self-referential blog posts, the category I’m presently calling “META”?

It has also dawned on me that I have not been adding metadata to the pictures I’ve uploaded.  That’s another problem for another day.

Photo credit:
OZinOH
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