RIP Peter Aurness

Better known as Peter Graves (he used Graves to avoid confusion with his brother, James Arness) who died from a heart attack 4 days before his 84th birthday.  Unusually for Hollywood, he was married to Jane Endress for almost 60 years, from 1950 to the day of his death.  Though most remember him from his stints as Jim Phelps on Mission: Impossible and Captain Clarence Oveur on the Airplane! movies, I best remember him from his frequent appearances on Alfred Hitchcock Presents and starring as Jim Newton in the series Fury; both I saw in reruns.

 

He played the heavy for so long, it was good to see him find the fun of doing comedy later in his career.

Banning salt in restaurants?

An Assemblyman from New York City, Felix Ortiz, has introduced a bill to ban all salt use in restaurant cooking.  The penalty would be a $1000 fine for each individual addition of salt by restaurant staff, whether before, during or after cooking.  There's an article from the Times Union here.  Yes, his father aparently had heart disease and high blood pressure that he links to excessive salt use.  But as anyone who watches Alton Brown can tell you, NaCl is essential to the chemistry of cooking. 

 

The Assemblyman freely admits to eating ham, cheese and bread in restaurants and says he will continue to do so; Of course, since he is a politician, he contradicts himself by stating, "I think salt should be banned in restaurants. I ask if a dish has salt in it, and if I does, I get something else that doesn't have salt,"   I think the Assemblyman should be forced to subsist on a diet with no added salt for a month.

 

Or, maybe with a name like Ortiz, he just hates the Irish and doesn't want them to have their corned beef and soda bread on St. Patrick's Day...

And, the winner of th Bahrain GP is:

Haven't a clue, I haven't watched it yet.  Time to make coffee, then watch the race on DVR.

Sunshine on my back yard makes the grass grow

Paraphrasing Henry John Deutchendorf,  Jr.  there.   You probably know him as John Denver.  While he wasn't popular in the circles I ran in,  I liked his music.   His output had dropped a lot when he crashed his new Long-EZ into the Pacific in 1997.  Just like Glen Campbell, booze got the better of him,  though there was no ETOH in his body when it was recovered.

It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day here in Pugetopolis, I plan to enjoy it.   But the coffeemaker just beeped and it's time to feed that caffeine-crazed,  jittery monkey on my back.

Wallpaper stripper

Good thing this bathroom doesn't have wallpaper, this would have stripped it off the walls.  Something wanted out,  and it wanted out NOW!  A definite #6 on the chart.

And why do Mounties

have so much trouble marching in step?  It's not like it's all that difficult a skill; I learned it in Boy Scouts and continued through high school band and a decade or so in the military. 

Bit of an oil slick this morning; I guess I'll cut back on the EVOO (as Rachel Ray would say) on the pasta.

TGIF!

But I still have to go to work.

Normal morning

Not much else to say:

Aahhh!

So much better. The salad continues its assault; more of it for lunch today. Two flushes and an impressive skid mark on the porcelain.