Since I nearly started a brawl on the two mailing list I forwarded this article to, I might as well post it here.  Actually there are two stories from the Wall Street Journal, the first is about suburban farming and the second is the near brawl starting article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120881517227532621.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Load Up the Pantry

April 21, 2008 6:47 p.m.

I don't want to alarm anybody, but maybe it's time for Americans to start stockpiling food.

No, this is not a drill.

You've seen the TV footage of food riots in parts of the developing world. Yes, they're a long way away from the U.S. But most foodstuffs operate in a global market. When the cost of wheat soars in Asia, it will do the same here.

Reality: Food prices are already rising here much faster than the returns you are likely to get from keeping your money in a bank or money-market fund. And there are very good reasons to believe prices on the shelves are about to start rising a lot faster.

"Load up the pantry," says Manu Daftary, one of Wall Street's top investors and the manager of the Quaker Strategic Growth mutual fund. "I think prices are going higher. People are too complacent. They think it isn't going to happen here. But I don't know how the food companies can absorb higher costs." (Full disclosure: I am an investor in Quaker Strategic)

Stocking up on food may not replace your long-term investments, but it may make a sensible home for some of your shorter-term cash. Do the math. If you keep your standby cash in a money-market fund you'll be lucky to get a 2.5% interest rate. Even the best one-year certificate of deposit you can find is only going to pay you about 4.1%, according to Bankrate.com. And those yields are before tax.

Meanwhile the most recent government data shows food inflation for the average American household is now running at 4.5% a year.

Click here for the rest of the article.

As my blood type is O-, I'm rather popular with the Red Cross and they talked me into doing a double blood donation on Friday. I have gone through apherisis previously, but had a massive case of the tingles because of a reaction to the the anti-coagulate. The new process doesn't use any were near as much anti-coagulate because there is only two cycles were they are pumping fluids back into. I still had to hit the Tums pretty hard (nine tablets) but it was manageable.

One particularly interesting aspect of the new method of a double blood donation is all the saline they pump into you. While I did look a little pale the rest of the day, I felt particularly good and several people commented that I had bright eyes.

Not having to water the garden is a good thing and I was also starting to feel sorry for the grass. I don't want to imply I would actually water the grass, but just feeling a little sorry for it.

and thankfully the wind was blowing from the north so Sammie the destroyer, couldn't smell the cat.  The cat was clearly a young indoor cat that got out and had no idea what to do with itself.  Thankfully my dad and I were 1) working on the backporch 2) had nothing in our hands and 3) was two steps away from Sammie.  Dad was able to turn around and calmly bend down and pet/grab Sammie and I followed the cat into the house and scooted him out the front door.    The cat just hung around the side of the house for about an hour which was driving Sammie crazy as she views cats as a cross between doggy catnip, a chew toy and a fresh steak on Christmas morning wrapped in fur.

My first thoughts of the Gaylord Opryland's convention center is why didn't I bring my GPS unit. Ye gods is this place huge and to make things a little more interesting there was a senior prom going on as well which cut off half of the major hallways. I did manage to work up an appetite wandering aimlessly around this multi-level seven acre complex trying to get to the cafes and/or the pubs that were still open.