5 Thoughts for May 5, 2015

1. I bought ground meat, 93% lean, from Safeway, on sale at $3.99 / lb. The first thing I noticed was that the meat was saturated in water. While cooking, rather than fat (because it's very lean) coming out, I saw lots of water. It should be illegal to increase the weight of ground meat using water.
2. Happy Cinco de Mayo. This being America, of course we would celebrate another country's victory in war, by drinking and over-eating. Sort of like non-Catholics partying on Fat Tuesday, like they were preparing for Lent, without participating in Lent, of course.
3. The popular narrative of the Freddie Gray story is wrong. It isn't about racism, but about an illegal arrest with excessive use of force, followed up by a lack of human decency. Half of the six officers involved are black. With social media the way it is, people react to the news as though they know the whole story, minutes after the story has broken. Once that narrative was written, it couldn't be changed.
4. I've been getting so many error messages with Yahoo Mail, it reminds me of why I do not use Yahoo Mail as my primary email. Just for fun, go to isitdownrightnow.com and look up the different websites for their response / ping times. You'll notice a big difference between Gmail and the other email services (Yahoo and Outlook / Hotmail). Speaking of email, I've tried it, multiple times and I just can't wrap my head around Google's Inbox. I really dig the tabs of Gmail, and Inbox removes the tab in favor of a single, inline grouping.
5. TriMet's Orange Line is going to open, officially, on September 12 of this year, but you'll be able to go across it on August 9 as a part of Bridge Pedal. On August 22, there's going to be a fireworks show just for Tilicum Crossing. I'm going to have to talk to the folks at All Classical about getting a front-row seat.