And i'm back...

Read the title - watch the clip, you'll eventually get it...

(no, it's not really clever, but whatever)

So, you are probably wondering where I went and what was the crisis that caused a two month hiatus. To make a long story short, I unexpectedly became unemployed. Thus, my every waking moment was spent teetering between abject fear as to how I would support my family and aggressively pursuing my next job. In a word, it's been an interesting experience, one I will write about more in the future after I truly can say I have left the worst of it behind me and have let thoughts and emotions settle a bit. Suffice it to say that the end of my dark tunnel is in sight and it appears that one one way or another I will return to the land of wage earners in a week or two.

So for this introductory return post, I will merely introduce some links that caught my eye this morning that I found interesting (with commentary of course!)

First, was this odd little island where everyone is related to each other. The very first thing I thought about was with such a closed society, how do they avoid birth defects and the like? During my hiatus I became a vociferous reader, speed reading a book a day just to avoid boredom and put my mind on something other than the job hunt. One I just finished was David Rosenfelt's 'Dead Center'. Now while I generally read him for his smartass'd delivery and his love of dogs, this one obliquely addressed a small town where the cult-like bound residents never left. Again, I could not help but wonder about the small gene pool and the very real danger of birth defects. I am sure scientist love to study such things, am at some point I will look into this further, but that's where my head was at this morning...

The next worthy thing that caught my eye was this story about the apprehension of the dangerous taliban pajama boy. What caught my eye was not that he was using the rather ridiculous name of "Assad Biglosmurf" (which according to Google means literally 'lion of the big blue balls'), or that he apparently was plotting to train Syrians to bomb Americans. No, this is what caught my eye:

Half-Ass'd Beard

and this note from the article:

Teausant was also a member of the National Guard, assigned to the 118th Maintenance Company in Stockton. The Guard recently released Teausant reportedly because he lacked minimum qualifications.

The guy was in the National Guard and was allowed to wear a beard like that? I have no question as to how he was allowed to enlist, after all, the services have a hard time turning away anyone these days. My question was how he was allowed to stay in, then exactly how was he released? Did he get a 'General' or 'Honorable' discharge? I did a little digging, and true to form, the magazine whose job it is to get things right didn't actually bother to quote the National Guard spokesman to establish the truth about pajama taliban boy's relationship with the service. Here's what they actually said:

a spokesman for the Guard took issue with that characterization.  Teausant enlisted with the Guard in 2012 but "never trained or served as a solider in the California National Guard," Capt. Will Martin, chief of media relations with the California Military Department wrote in a statement.

 Next my attention wondered quite naturally to food. I found this little article about how to make homemade buttermilk and sour cream. I remember my first taste of buttermilk. I was probably about 8 or so, and my grandmother gave me some of the buttermilk that was from the fresh milk they got from the cow. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up! I do have to say that all the milk that I drank while on my grandparents farm tasted like buttermilk, with the acidic tang that you only get from fresh, raw milk. In any case, you need buttermilk to make sour cream. I will also say that I don't much use sour cream since as far as I can tell it's mainly good for putting on top of potatoes, a vegetable that I have abandoned since I went mostly-paleo due to it's uselessly high starch content.

Next I found this great idea article on things to wrap with bacon - a decidedly paleo friendly train of ideas. The ones that I saved in my recipe box? Bacon wrapped tomatoes and bacon wrapped strawberries. Pure genius! You know what's hard to spell? the word genius - I always try to start to spell it with 'gui',  then the spell checker gets all confused and tells me I am actually trying to write a word synonymous with beer (Guinness)... that's why there aren't more smart people in the world right there. The modern spell checkers make us drink (or something).

Finally, just for fun I wondered over to buzzfeed. There I found this fairly accurate article about things you think while shopping at Costco. I have to admit that it's been a while since I've been to Costco. With the paleo diet, I really don't have much need for large bulk items that aren't really cheaper at Shoppers or the like. Since I became unemployed, we have been being conservative about where we buy our food, so big dollar places like Costco are out anyway. That being said, I can honestly say that when I did go there, I can recall saying most of those things - except for all the stuff about waiting for samples. I never had the patience for waiting for those things or trusted the people working them not to wipe their nose on their hands before handing me a cup of fried cheese.

With thoughts of drippy nosed Costco chefs I will wrap up my return blog post. I will not make any promises here about regularity posting but I will say i'll try. Thanks for your support.