Word of the day: Turbinado!

Well, I found the thing I've been trying to find but every time I go look for it they're out of stock, that is: a pressure canner. Not merely a pressure cooker, but a pressure canner. My wife has been wanting one of these for a long time and I hope this helps a little in making up for me forgetting her birthday last year. [Ouch] Which reminds me, I think I know someone else who has a birthday coming up soon. Who am I forgetting?

Anyway my wife began learning to can several months ago and she's getting pretty good at it. She hasn't had much time to do it lately because of other more pressing matters, but we still have quite a few Mason jars of pinto & green beans on the shelves. I'm hoping the real pressure canner will help reduce the number of popped lids that she still gets now and then.

Still can't find any corn candy pumpkins. Only in the "mixed bag" variety, and that's not satisfactory. I want to find them in bags of NOTHING BUT PUMPKINS. My sister said they have them at Wal-Mart but none of the ones I've been to have anything but the mixed bag. By the way, those candy corns with the black ends they put in the "autumn mix" taste bad.

Also, nobody better give me any candy corn this year that's made without honey. That corn syrup-only stuff is horrid. If anyone gives me some, I'm going to meld it all into a big sticky wad and shove it down their throat.

I have quit sweetening tea with artificial sweetener. I don't sweeten it much anyway, and in fact in restaurants I typically drink it unsweetened. I just sweeten it a little when I make it at home to give it a little smoothness without actually making it taste sweet. I've begun sweetening it with that "Sugar in the Raw" that I discovered at the coffee counter of a Tiger Mart a few months ago. I'm not doing this under any belief that it's healthier or anything--I just use it because I discovered that I like the flavor.*

Finally got hold of some of that Dr. Pepper made with sugar instead of corn syrup. H.E.B. was stocking some special 125th anniversary DP that was made that way. I bought a 12-pack, when it was gone I went back for more and haven't been able to find any. I'm still running into the odd bottle of Mountain Dew Throwback in convenience stores, but at $1.39 a pop I can't bring myself to really stock up on it.

I didn't get to do any music editing last week due to being just too worn out to do much of anything even when it required only sitting at the computer and listening attentively. I'm hoping this week will be easier. I need to put in a couple of Saturdays of overtime but we're so far ahead of schedule that we had to stop working any OT. Looks like we're going to have cooler temps and no rain this week, so that's a plus. Our regular contingent of meter readers are now backed up with 5 or 6 temps who are really helping to take the pressure off. We'll have them until the end of the year. I'm hoping that at least one of them (a former co-worker of mine from another job) will get to be made permanent by year's end. A new employee has to jump through so much red tape to get hired where I work that it actually streamlines the process of they're a temporary employee first.

*I knew someone once who acted like if you used regular salt instead of sea salt, you were basically trying to kill yourself.