Monday Notes

We made the intense hot chocolate last night. We'd already dropped the amount of chocolate by fifty percent, down to twelve ounces (mixed with two quarts milk and a cup of heavy cream); tasting it, we cut the recipe again down to ten ounces. This is very good stuff, but my golly, it's like gargling with Ghiradelli chocolate. As a side note, its very hard to keep warm, which is bit of a problem, as using it to get warm is the reason for making it in the first place. I wonder if there are, essentially, classy 'thermal commuter cups' that we could use? Not that I intend to get special cups for it; thats just curiousity.

A blog that I read on occasion is written by a woman in a specific medical speciality. I noticed that she had turned off commenting, and I asked her, via email, why. Her answer surprised me -- people tended to use her blog as a forum to vent about their experiences with her speciality, and to ask medical questions of greater detail than were really appropriate. As she more-or-less put it, "I'm a doctor; I'm just not their doctor". That wouldn't have occurred to me as a reason for doing that. Something, obviously, about the comments was irritating, but I would have guessed volume. (Me, too, only when I shut it off, its because there aren't any!) She also said something that squared with things I've read - people who write emails to her tend to be thoughtful and courteous, whereas the same people's blog comments can be snarky and curt.

I see where the Democrats are intending to resurrect an agency charged with illuminating waste in the Iraq war effort. I think thats good, though I had just the tiniest bit of angst; what would happen to the sense of comity if the Republicans (who had tried to terminate the agency) said No, we don't want to do that -- would it become a Well, we're doing it anyway? That doesn't appear to be the case. But the part I liked in the article was when a White House spokesman said they had no problem with extending the life of the agency -- they had a history of working well with inspectors-general. Ah... okay.

And now, Monday!