Teed Off, Top Kill, The Law!!

I hate cars and I hate computers. Yesterday Matt went to Canadian Tire to check on a clinking noise we have been experiencing lately. They charged us almost $30 to tell us we would need to spend $800 on a major repair. Heeeelp. Then they referred us to another garage where they said this same repair might only cost us $500. Matt promptly went there and they said they thought it was only an adjustment that needed doing and that would probably cost about $100. Phew, I hope they are right. Then this morning it suddenly occurred to me that my regular date reminder programme hadn't popped up lately, so I checked, it appears to have lost all of its information. I have relied on this programme for years, but suddenly it is totally empty of data. How the hell has that happened? I have a backup programme which runs constantly, Carbonite, so now I am trying to get it to restore what was lost. Otherwise, I am lost and have no details on family and friend's birthdays, anniversaries, or anything else. What is doubly aggravating, a lot of my most important programmes, I have copies running on my laptop, but not this one.

It seems the Top Kill programme instituted by BP has been partially successful and they are in a wait and see mode right now. Matt heard a report this morning about oil company violations and it appears that BP is notorious for all their infringements of codes with hundreds of violations in their records. Exxon has the best record with only one violation to its name. President Obama is visiting the Louisiana coast today to see what's going on. He is being blamed for a lot of what's happened. Er, why? Its not his fault. I was also pretty staggered that the locals have to obtain permits to do anything, like building berms to hold back the oil. How ridiculous, I realise some oversight is required, but just get on with it for goodness sake.

Another story that shook me somewhat this morning, a known criminal has confessed to the murder of a little girl and the DNA test confirms this. Six years ago the father was grilled for 14 hours until he confessed to the crime and was put in jail, luckily, the lawyer managed to get him released because of DNA testing. The man's son was also interrogated and asked the same question continuously until he was upset and crying. They have video of it. As though the child was not traumatised enough by the death of his sister without being grilled. I can't find the information on this story at GMA yet, it will presumably be published later, but it is incredible in this day and age that a person can be so battered by interrogation that he ends up confessing to the murder of his child which he didn't commit. Cops going gung ho just to clear their books and damn the consequences. For 6 years the father has been suspected even though the courts cleared him. The actual murderer lived close to the family, was a known burglar and a burglary was commited across the road the same night, yet he was never questioned. He is currently in jail for something else.

Before we came to Canada, I was under the impression cops did what they wanted in North America and I remember being stopped because I had a smoking oil leak in my car; I was so frightened. I have since discovered my ideas were wrong, but it is a fact, there are some cops out there who think they are above the law and do what they like. I feel so sorry for the father in the above case. A similar thing happened to an uncle of mine, he woke up one morning to discover his 23 yr. old wife lying dead beside hime, the kids were jumping on the bed to wake up Mummy and Daddy. For three weeks, they went through his home with a tooth comb looking for poisons or anything else incriminating. He was in major distress having lost his beloved wife and having to go through all this which of course, included interrogation. Finally they discovered she had died of a very rare heart disease, at the time there were only a few know cases, and only young women of her age group died from it. I think this episode destroyed him.

Last night, I had defrosted a couple of skinless, boneless chicken breasts and I covered them with onion flakes and a mixture of half a bottle of Catalina dressing and two large spoonsful of Barrie Bros. Salsa. Then I covered the dish and baked them for about 50 minutes in a 350°F oven. Delicious. I was quite pleased. I had the Catalina dressing left over from another recipe which I posted and wanted to use it up and I figured the Salsa would give a good taste, it did. Slightly spicy without burning one's tongue off. Its amazing what you can do with a little thought and ingenuity.

Have a great day