Spring Retreated

Well, spring was nice.  It went down to 32F (0C) last night. It looks like the geraniums will continue to move out to the driveway in the morning, and then back into the garage at night for a little while.  The meteorologist who is almost always wrong is predicting 50 mph winds on Monday.  Here's hoping he continues his streak of wrongness in this case.

Here is a sunset from a few days ago.  That was pretty good.  We've had a lot of days with sun and clouds.  According to our neighbor, April is a roller coaster of weather.  Wind, hail, hot, cold - all on the same day.  It's not like Tucson where it would be hot and stay that way until early November.

This was taken last night.

Today I tried something new.  I have eaten one too many frozen peas and green beans.  Safeway produce has hit new lows in Spokane.  It is beyond me why they bother to put out beans that are clearly molding.  We look for bok choy, but it always looks like it's been through a shredder.  There is a Yoke's, which is the home grown store which allegedly is good, but ours does not change their chicken oil often enough.  After five minutes in there, all clothing must be washed.  This is cabbage, onions and celery.  Interestingly enough, sauteed cabbage does not put a bunch of food smell into the house, like the onions do.  So, using pre-cooked onions, we can add cabbage to the list in the future.  I pre-cook onions and keep them in the freezer.  We really need a new green vegetable.

We checked out another, newer Yokes, which is not all that far from us, so we're going to be shopping there.  It's a huge store, really bright, wide aisles and no over powering smell of deep fat fried chicken.

This is from my neighbor's yard.  I don't know what it is.  The kids have trampled the one next to it.  They are tough on vegetation and sprinkler lines.

Here is another sign of spring, power raking.  Over time the lawn gets full of dead grass from being mowed and the cuttings not completely removed, or thatch as it's called.  Another neighbor hired a guy with an aerator and a power rake.  Most people got the aeration, which is when they cut plugs of dirt and grass out and leave them on the yard.  Here is the guy aerating a yard across the street.  It's self propelled so he does not have to push it up that hill.

We got the power raking, which just pulls out the dead grass.  He did yeoman work on this; power raked, manually raked up the dead grass and then mowed the lawn.  See the light brown stripe around the edge of the yard, that's thatch.  Soon, it will be time to fertilize the grass.  Lawns are kind of a pain in the butt.

Today the House of Representatives passed a bill to limit the cost of insulin to $35 a month.  193 House Republicans voted against lowering the cost of insulin. Every Democrat voted for the measure.  From The Hill we learn the following:

Insulin was first discovered by researchers at the University of Toronto in 1921, and has not been significantly improved in the past 100 years.

The patent was sold to the University of Toronto for a dollar in the hopes that it would be made widely available for patients in need.

As the Lancet detailed in a report last year, shortly after the University’s patent on insulin expired in 1940, the Department of Justice investigated three companies — Eli Lilly, Merck and Bristol-Myers Squibb — for anti-competitive pricing tactics.

Today, three companies control nearly 100 percent of the world’s insulin: Eli Lilly, Sanofi and Novo Nordisk.

Countries that control drug prices don't pay exorbitant amounts for insulin.  A vial costs under $5 to produce.  Without insurance, people pay around $1,400 a year  for insulin.  It's not a drug you can cut back on to save money.  Anyway, the republicans were in fine form arguing against capping the price.  A woman representative from Georgia said she was voting no in order to protect our freedom.  Kathy McMorris Rogers, who is my idiot rep, got up and said if government controls insulin prices, what's next?  Will the government set the price of gasoline?  What these stupid people don't seem to know, or care about, is that the pharmaceutical firms are controlling the price of insulin, there is zero pressure free markets can bring to bear on the costs. 

In news from other countries, we have this.

The video of the drone killing Russian hardware can be found here.   The music in the background is Ukrainian rap, which is sort of an acquired taste.  Drones were "... demonstrated in a military exercise and said to be able to hit a target a meter across from an altitude of 300 meters high, enough for the drone to be virtually invisible and inaudible. The RKG-1600 grenades are apparently produced using 3D printed parts."  For more on this, go here.  Unlike the Switchblade drones the US is providing, this delivery system does not kill the drone. 

Shanghai is currently under lock down due to Covid.  The government is sending out robots to tell people to stay inside.  To play the video go here.  It's pretty cool.  The robot walks like the Boston Dynamics dog, but it might be a Chinese knock off.  I love the speaker on its back.

Finally, we have this.  A boy and his dog.

So that's it - that's all I've got.