The Really Big Sentinel News 200507

The Sentinel All the news that's fit to print and some that's not.
Sequestration and Food These 2 months of confinement have brought us a lot of interesting things to do. We have had time to reshuffle furniture, finally hang some drapes, get our storage locker squared away, begin our daily yoga practice and just sit, talk and enjoy each others company. We have experimented with different ways of concocting limited food. Joyce has focused on different mixes for our daily salads and later snacks. Her creativity has been well accepted. This reporter came up with a way to make his breakfast oatmeal palatable. One instant oatmeal packet, milk and a teaspoon of dry French vanilla powdered creamer. Microwave 1.5 minutes and then add 2 heaping tablespoons of chilled, crushed pineapple or a fresh banana. That makes for a culinary delight and healthy breakfast that carries a man well into lunchtime, which is 5-6 hours later for us.	Drink Drinking the same old coffee started to become boring, so I decided to do some experimenting. I went through a few iterations and came up with a solution for boring coffee. My concoction is as follows: 4 parts ground Colombian roasted coffee, 2 parts French roast coffee and 1 part baking cocoa. You end up with a flavored coffee that Joyce says is better than a $4 cup of Starbucks any day of the week. Joyce never lies to me, at least as far as I know. She sure drinks more of my recipe than she normally would, so I believe her. Well now, A person can't drink coffee all day, so there is some alcohol later in the day. Speaking of alcohol there is a funny song by Brad Paisley titled "Alcohol" which we both enjoy. I have widened our scope of drinking with Margaritas to celebrate Cinco de Mayo and some Crown Royal Apple whiskey. Now many folks don't like whiskey straight because of the harsh bite after drinking a shot, but there's a solution for that. A shot of Crown Royal Apple and a single ice cube. That my friends is beyond imagination. There is no harsh bite to the whiskey and if you like apple pie, the taste is the same as a good apple pie, but without the soggy crust on the bottom.	Stimulus Check With the generous check the IRS sent us, the purpose was to stimulate the economy with people spending the money and we are doing our best to follow that request. We are buying better coffee, better whiskey, paying the rent (the rental company appreciates that) and I have made some internet purchases and electronics from Walmart. Now granted if you read my previous posting you know the printer purchase did not work out well, but beating the hell out of that printer after countless hours of trying to get it to work properly, or even work at all was futile. Those of you who know me know I am not prone to anger nor violent behavior, but hammering on that cheap printer was enormously pleasureful and relieved all my stress. I do not look forward to experiencing that again, but then who knows what this long and longer yet stay at home order could at some point trigger some suppressed anger inside my soul at the very next electronic device that quits on me. My Windows laptop which is near as I can tell 13-14 years old had a reprieve about 3 years ago when our west coast bureau chief talked me through steps to replace the old hard drive that was failing with a new solid state drive which made it run faster than brand new. Now the mother board is becoming a real mother to deal with. Ports are failing and weird things are happening, despite having a complete exorcism 3 years ago. That laptop could be a future release of the ire that sprung from me with the printer. I hope the laptop will continue to be somewhat functional, but I am keeping an eye on it now.