local conditions and foods

THIS AFTERNOON I LEARNED BY STICKING MY HEAD OUTSIDE FOR A FEW MINUTES THAT THE REASON I'VE BEEN ASKING EVERYBODY TO REPEAT THEMSELVES RECENTLY IS BECAUSE SOMETHING IN THE LOCAL POLLEN MAKES IMPORTANT PARTS OF MY EARS SWELL. OH, AM I SPEAKING TOO LOUDLY?

Sorry. In other weird news, we started comparing rotation diets with the new mold-injured guy, and it turns out that our safe foods are remarkably similar. Everybody else we know is able to eat what seems to us to be a random assortment of foods, and they are pretty impressed that my husband and I could synchronize our diets. To find somebody who we could actually have over for dinner sometime without it being a potluck is almost eerie.

In other news, rapeseed will kill you! But only because you can make ethanol-based biofuel from it, which we already reported makes even more toxic exhaust fumes than gasoline. It's not because it has the word 'rape' in it or that thing about covalent bonds the body can't break (see this blog's Quote of the Year for 1996). It's just because that's what happens when you burn ethanol.