Pain, Pain, Go Away!

How do you recognize a bad situation when it's like the air you breathe? Literally is the air you breathe? A couple of really bad days, years apart, finally clued me in that cooking fumes were giving me sinus headaches, which led to neck pain. So I ordered a range hood and stopped cooking onions in the meantime. Sinus problems and neck pain--absent. To the best of my recollection, no house I ever lived in (until last week) had a properly working range hood, or any range hood. My previous house had a small, east-facing window next to the stove that might have helped. But when I lived in a dorm, I don't think I ever had a cold, and the only sinus pain I remember from that time was during a bad allergy season. I put in a range hood last weekend. It's ductless--it doesn't vent to the outside, but filters the air through charcoal filters and recirculates it back into the kitchen. For its maiden meal, I sautéed peppers, onions and zucchini. I could smell the peppers cooking,...

The PRIME Act Remember the panic buying and food shortages of 2020? When grocery store shelves were cleaned out and restaurants closed, I recommended a family farm that raised beef (previously bought by closed restaurants) to my coworkers. The PRIME Act has been re-introduced to help family farms like this. It was introduced in 2020 to remove the requirement for most livestock to be processed at a relatively small number of industrial-size slaughterhouses.  Smaller, local "custom" slaughterhouses could be used instead for meat staying within the state and would eliminate the need for those animals to travel for hours in trailers. Custom slaughterhouses "must follow federal, state, and local health and safety guidelines and are periodically inspected for cleanliness and safety— similar to how restaurants are inspected," says the Institute for Justice . Critics say the PRIME Act would make the meat supply less safe, but similar laws already apply to poultry.  The Fre...

Sometimes it takes a lousy day to make you figure out what's wrong. And today was a lousy day. First, it took an half an hour to get through the line at the understaffed Kroger. When I came home, the house still smelled like onions from canning chili the day before, and my headache and sore neck started getting worse. I ate some leftover chili and roused myself to go shop for a new washer, since mine is leaking from the bottom, as the plumber I called for a clogged drain discovered. An appliance repairman on YouTube said washers are badly built nowadays; I bought a brand unlikely to break down for a good seven years or so. It set me back three times what I paid in the 90s for a Kenmore that lasted at least 20 years. There was no use shopping for a used one here in Indianapolis: people here use appliances until they're worn out. By mid-afternoon, I was back home and took some Mucinex for my sinus pain...and realized I'd felt OK while I was out shopping. It was like Christmas...