A Few Quick Notes 318

-Though I don't think it actually rained today, it has been relatively overcast and somewhat cool. If things go as forecast, we should have similar weather until the end of the weekend.

-Several days ago I moved a number of my plants out to the balcony for the summer. One of the things that I have already noticed is that the move seems to have really slowed down growth, particularly as far as the beans are concerned. Under normal indoor conditions the beans seem to grow several inches a day at this stage, but in their present location growth seems to have almost ground to a halt. As I have a little less familiarity with the rate of growth of lettuce and tomatoes I haven't yet really been able to observe a change in growth patterns.

I am hoping within a few days we should have a little more sun and warmer temperatures and that these will allow more rapid growth than I have seen in the past few days.

Given the previously described conditions it is not particularly surprising that some of the recently planted seeds haven't been showing signs of germination or growth. I am hoping that in a few days at least the peas will start to come alive.

-We had barbecued burgers for dinner tonight. While I quite enjoyed them, I likely didn't need three.

-A few days ago I wrote about malt based beverages and linked to a Slate article about the demise of Zima and the market position of other malt based beverages. As a consequence of this article I have been examining some of the products mentioned in the article only to find that malt based non-beers don't seem to be quite as common in Canada as they appear to be in the US. Notably, the Slate article suggests that Smirnoff Ice does not contain vodka in the US. I checked a box a few days ago and learned that in Canada it does. Also, all of the Boone's products that I have examined contain some kind of fruit wine, rather than a malt base (though it is not always clear what the fruit wine is). The further consequence of this article is that I have now had to start thinking a little more about products sold in multiple countries and to what extent they might be re-formulated, and to what extent reviews of products from one country are applicable in another country. I guess none of this should come as all that much of a surprise given my cross-border experiences with both Corn Pops [or the Wiki article that explains the differences] and Mountain Dew (the Canadian and American versions of these products vary rather dramatically from each other).