I filled the car up for $1.88 a gallon

Cheap, Cheap.  I was paying $2.80 not so long ago. 

"We are NOT running out of food." Say many Web posts.

Why do I have trouble believing that?  With most of the country out of work, we have to be loosing food production, food processing, and food distributing.  Most of us can see the empty shelves in the food stores.   I don't believe this is caused by panic buying.  This Corona virus thing has been going on for a month, plenty of time for the buying panic to die down and for the food supply chain to fill up the empty shelves.  The shelves are still empty which makes me think the food supply chain is breaking down. 
   The medics and the media are all in favor of keeping the country shut down forever, or at least until a vaccine becomes available, which the TV says will take a year, which is forever if you are an empty grocery shelf.  Hence the trickle of "We are NOT running out of food" Web posts. 

TurboTax recommends Adobe Acrobat

Me, I don't e-file my taxes.  E-file means the Infernal Revenue Service can feed your return straight into their computers for audit.  I know I won't be getting a refund, so I'm in no hurry to have the IRS computers scanning my returns.  I print out a paper copy and mail it in.  Turbo Tax kindly informs me that the IRS has been complaining about the scannability of forms printed by anything other than Adobe Reader.  Groovy.  Should IRS contact me and bitch that they cannot scan my paper 1040, my reply to them will be "Get a better scan program" and "I plan to hand scribe my return next year. Get used to it."

My lawn is melted out but the Cannon ski trails are still white

Spring is making an attempt up here.  It is in the forties temp wise.  My lawn is free of snow and the winter shocked grass is attempting to green up.  But the ski trails up on Cannon Mountain are still white.  This comes from all the snow making over the winter, combined with both skiers and snow grooming machines packing the trails down into ice.  They run the groomers ever night during ski season, I can see their lights running up and down the trails in the dark. 

We need some new pronouns

We need a unisex pronoun for cases where the person could be either male or female.  Right now I write "he/she".  This comes up in discussions of literature.  Say I am discussing the protagonist.  That's a $5 word that means hero or heroine.   Writing "he/she" seems sort of odd.  For that matter I find myself writing "him/her" more often than is good.  The new pronouns I want do not declare the person to be transgender, They just would be for use in cases where the person might be of either sex.

The Food Supply Chain is breaking down

Today I ran some errands.  First off, a dump run.  Stuff has been piling up for two weeks and I can smell the kitchen trash can.  It's time.  Two weeks ago the Franconia dump was on emergency Corona virus mode and they were only taking the big Pay-as-you-throw bags.  Which left me with a trunk still full of bottles and cans.  Today we have a new plan, we gave up on recycling.  I just pitched my pay-as-you-throw bag and all the bottles, cans, old magazines, and mixed paper into the industrial strength trash masher we have down at the dump.  And so my trunk is empty for the first time in two weeks. 
   Then a quick stop at Walmarts for a 40 can carton of canned catfood.  Place was not too busy.  The Dunkin donuts concession is not operating.  No glazed donuts for breakfast.  Maybe a quarter of the customer were wearing  face masks.  A guy asked me how I got my "1" license plate.  Turns out he is a constituent.  I gave him my card, told him I was standing for re-election.
  Then I did Shaws.  Again not too busy and a quarter of the customers wearing face masks.  They are running out of a lotta stuff.  I was seeing a lot of strange brands of stuff that I never saw before.  I'm thinking they sold out of the good old brands we all recognize and buy, and to fill the shelves they put out the strange branded stuff.  I'm thinking we all need to go back to work before we run out of food. 

Discuss a book with the kids.

After they read a book (or see a movie or a stage play) you can discuss the book with them. Good leading questions about a work of fiction might be

1.  Who is the hero/heroine (protagonist is a unisex word that covers both sexes).  What motivates the protagonist?  What does the protagonist do?  Is it successful?

2. Who is the view point character?  (Dr. Watson is the classic fictional view point character).  Often the protagonist is the view point character.

3.  Who is the villain?  What makes him/her evil? 

4.  Does this story follow the classic story outline?  

   Protagonist is faced with a challenge of some sort.  He/she attempts to deal with the challenge.  The first (and perhaps some later challenges) overwhelm the protagonist.  At the climax of the story the protagonist makes one last do of die effort to deal with his challenge.  He/She either wins or looses, winning is customary but not necessary.  All after the climax is anti-climax.  Is the anti-climax (if present) necessary?  When do we readers learn what the challenge is?  And what might the challenge be?  How much does the outcome depend upon the protagonist's skill and cunning?  And how much upon pure good luck?  What is the anti-climax (if there is one) and is it necessary to the story.  

5.  Is it one of those modern stories where the protagonist merely serves as a punching bag thru out the story?  Like Catcher in the Rye.

6.  Is the protagonist believable and realistic?

7.  What shelf in the bookstore does this book belong on?  Romances?  Mysteries? Science fiction and fantasy?  Historical novels?  The everything else shelf?