Meat

I love meat, burgers, steaks, roast, etc, but, practicality matters, and beef is going to become a 'sometimes thing,' as Cookie Monster says of his beloved cookies. Sorry, the World is changing, growing crowded, overly hot, and dry un some places, tropically wet in others.

It takes a lot of room. food and water to raise cattle and a lot of room and water to raise the food for cattle. We will not have that luxury much longer so say so long to sirloin. While your at it, get used to goat cheese and milk.

Pork is pretty easy to raise but, be sure you trust your hog raiser. Pugs will  quite happily and successfully live on garbage, so make sure your source takes proper care of the porkers.

Chicken and Turkey will become mainstays of our diet. Please try to get free range. They are healthier and coop raising birds is obscenely cruel.

Fish? Well, rivers and oceans are not too productive these days and are terribly polluted. A tiny cod filet now costs what a huge chunk used to cost. Also, eating small filets means that fishermen are taking the young, before they have had time to reproduce a few times. Soon, they will become rare. Farm raised fish is great but, and I cannot stress this enough, buy only fish farmed in the US and Europe. The fish farms in the rest of the World are the equivalent of septic talks.

There is another fine source of animal protein that should become widely available and cheap, but there is a problem. I am talking about rabbits. They cost little to raise, are reasonably clean and they are delicious, lean and tasty. The problem, no one seems to relish the thought of eating cute little bunnies. Well, get over that. My Dad, during the Depression, kept rabbits, both for the family table, and to sell. He said that he grew to loathe the little critters but loved the meat and money. So put aside thoughts of Bugs Bunny and Peter Cottontail and get ready to eat some very tasty and healthy rabbit.

Get Ready to Move

Just a short note today. My eyes are bothering me.

Any practical American living near the ocean needs to be ready to move, sell out and head inland quickly. This not panic, just reality.

Look around on line and you will find that flooding is becoming quite an issue along the Atlantic Coast. S. Florida, especially Miami Beach; North Florida, around Jacksonville; Louisaian; the Texas Gulf Coast, especially Houston and Corpus Christi; all along the New Jersey coast.  High tide often brings water inland, any significant rainfall adds to the problem.

I;m not talking puddles. {umps are needed and run almost constantly in Miami Beach. The thing is, all the natural barriers have been ruined and the areas are now all concrete. Water comes in and has no where to go.

Add to this the rising sea levels and increasingly weird weather and you wee the problem.

Face it, the climate is changing. It may be human activity is causing it, maybe its Solar activity, maybe just a natural cycle, or even Ancient Aliens come back to muck up our lives (they are very upset the the History Channel cut their show), but none of that matters at this time. The fact is, the climate is changing. Want more proof. O live near Savannah, Ga. There has been no tropical activity there in a couple of centuries, yet last year, we had 3 tropical storms and a hurricane. There is a storm now hitting the gulf Coast and June storms are as rare as teeth in a chicken.

The Practical American would be figuring out how to move inland before the rush begins

Tobacco

I seem to see a lot of younger folks smoking. I am not going to preach an anti-smoking sermon. I smoked, a lot, for about 45 years. Recently, I have had a severe sinus infection and there is nothing like having difficulty breathing to get your attention. Well, as I coughed my brains out while trying to smoke during this infection, my brain, as dysfunctional as it sometimes is, got the message. I quit.

It really has not been bad  I use nicotine lozenges and walk a lot. On the past, I tried everything and time and again, lasted about a week. I seem to have finally gotten over this awful habit.

I grew up around heavy smokers, but they started before we knew the health risks. Also, in those days, a pack of cigarettes cost about a quarter. There really is no excuse for those my agel we were just dumb, but at least they were still cheap.

I don't quite understand the younger smokers I see.. They certainly knew the hazards and the darn things cost $5 a pack(yes, there are cheaper brands, but they taste4 awful and I', not too sure what they really are). This is decidedly not practical. Add to that, the cost they add to your medical issues, the fact that insurance is much higher for smokers and the fact thatthey impair your breathing and, ultimately slow you down, and there is no excuse.

In addition, more and more, smokers are treated almost as social outcasts, and believe me, when you stop, you realize how vile they smell and begin to understand other's negative reaction. All in all, there is little positive about the whole foul habit.

If you smoke, do whatever it takes, therapy, drugs, hypnosis, anything it takes, but quit. If you are young, don't start and if you do, realize than it is much easier to quit after a few months than it is after 45 years Plus, a half a pack a day, at $5 a pack runs you  somewhere around $875 a year, and I'm sure you can find better uses for that money.

Air Conditioning

Summer is here and, if you're like most folks, your AC is humming away. Thank God, we invented those things. However, they can run up your electrical bill very quickly.

There are a few things you can do to help keep that bill down. First and foremost, keep the filter clean. It is easy to forget to check them, but clogged filters make the AC run much harder with less results. I check ours about once a week and clean it, even if it does not look dirty, to remove any oily film that might be building up. Of course, ours is a washable filter and just rinsing it does the job. If yours is a replaceable filter, you can still brush off surface dirt or even vacuum it, but, din't go too long without replacing it. After all, they are cheap and electric bills are not.

If you have a window unit, keep items away from the front and back of the unit. You need a free flow of air to keep it running well. Also, keep the front of thr unit, where the filter is covered, very clean; if it is dirty and gummy, you get poor air flow.

If you have a central unit that sits on the ground, keep the area around it clean of leaves and debris. If the unit seems to be running poorly, remove the covers and check the copper coils. If they are dirty, they are easy to clean and any hardware store will sell the cleaner. Check the air handler, the inside part of the unit, and if it is holding water, clean that out and clean out the line that carries water away. Pour some bleach, not much, through the line since you likely have an algae build up. If all of this seems too much bother, get a service contract with a reliable company and have them service the entire unit on a regular basis.

I have lived in hot climates with no AC and it is not pleasant; neither are sky high electric bills. Take care of your air conditioner.