OMG, has it really been a month & a half??

Hi. Um. Yeah. Well.....

I thought it had been about 4 weeks since I'd been on here, but no. Of course not, it's been longer. You see, and I know I whined about this before, but I spend literally 8 HOURS staring at a computer screen at work. While I did do this before with the Old Job (OJ), I actually was doing a lot of....well....personal stuff and browsing at the OJ. The NJ is totally different. I'm on all the time. And when I get home from work at 6:30, I'm pooped and I still need to deal with the evening meal.

The good news is that while I'm getting home later, Matt has been able to work on the garage more while waiting for me to get home.

The bad news is that between the hours changing for my work schedule and the drought/heat wave we've had here, the garden became a weed-intensive mess.

So, to make a long story short:

1. I am so far behind in reading all the blogs that I usually read that I will never be able to catch up.
2. I will endeavor to do at least *2* blog posts a week
3. I will try on weekends to make time to read blogs again
4. I am truly hoping that cold weather will bring increased interest in the home computer

One of the interesting things about my job is that I am privy to agricultural news that can be facinating. One of the posts per week I intend to work on is a gleaning of the ag news from the point of view of national security issues. For example,

September 1, Agence France-Presse – (International) U.S. cracks down on Chinese honey smuggling ring. The U.S. government announced criminal charges September 1 against executives from six German and Chinese companies accused of smuggling antibiotic-tainted Chinese honey in order to avoid import duties. Officials said it is the biggest food smuggling case in U.S. history and is part of a years-long crackdown on illegal imports of substandard, tainted and counterfeit products. The accused allegedly conspired to illegally import more than $40 million of Chinese-origin honey in order to avoid antidumping duties totaling nearly $80 million. The case comes after a series of scares involving Chinese products, including melamine-tainted pet food that killed scores of dogs and cats, and children’s toys made with lead paint. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois cautioned that while the honey was tainted with antibiotics that are not approved by U.S. regulators for use in honey production, there was no reason for the public to "panic." German company Alfred L. Wolff is allegedly at the heart of the conspiracy to import the mislabeled honey. It allegedly bought low-cost honey from several Chinese suppliers and then shipped it to other countries where it was filtered to "remove pollen and other trace elements that could indicate that the honey originated from China," the 44-count indictment said. Source: http://www.turkishpress.com/news.asp?id=356430

And this, from the Canadian Medical Association Journal:

Report calls for overhaul of US food safety system

Tainted peanut butter. Poisoned cookie dough. Deadly spinach. In an era of daunting problems with foodborne disease and illness, a prestigious scientific panel is recommending that the United States government overhaul its food safety system to zero in on the riskiest foods and target limited resources where they can do the most good.

A 500-page report by a committee of the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council recommends, among other things, that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) shift "from a reactive approach to a risk-based approach" to food safety, set up a central data analysis operation to more efficiently pinpoint problems and better coordinate inspection efforts with state and local governments.

And this: California wholesaler fined for banned chemicals on vegetables

So, I hope to bring several of these a week. Stay tuned for that!

Also, I will hopefully be writing this week or next about The Three Sisters....of Failure! Yes, my corn, beans, and squash all took a dive this year. Dammit. Tomatoes did well, but not much else did. *sigh*