respublica

Cardinals game day give-a-ways for 2020

Want to know what the St. Louis Cardinals will be giving away to fans heading to games this coming season. I'm sure there are non-season ticket holders out there who buy individual tickets according to the free stuff given away upon entering. Two years ago we went to the last game of the season and received red plaid, fur lined, earmuffed, hats for cold weather. This turned out to be one of the more popular giveaways and so many people who weren't at that game were so wanting one.

I've kept mine, I just love it. It looks kind of silly when on my head, but it's warm and a conversation starter. And, the women's clothing store, Talbots, actually had a catalog cover with this hat minus the Cardinals logo. I wore mine the other night when we did the campus lighting ceremonies because it was really cold. Here is KSDK's story on 2020 and the game by game giveaways. You need to scroll down the story a bit before they get to all this.

The Best Toys of All Time

This is a great article which lists the 5 best toys. While scrolling through the list I thought of all the times kids are given expensive toys with all kinds of moving parts or screen images but never have the fun the things on this list gives.

1. A big stick which fell off a tree
2. A cardboard box
3. string
4. A cardboard tube from a roll of paper towels or toilet paper
5. Dirt

We've all been there with these things.

Coffee! What won't it do?

The Ford Motor Company has teamed up with the McDonald's Corporation to turn coffee parts into car parts. Starting this year, Ford is incorporating coffee chaff - coffee bean skin that comes off during the roasting process - into the plastic headlamp housing used in some cars.

In the past Ford, like most car makers, has used plastic and talc to make the headlamp housing, but some mad scientist came up with trying out coffee chaff. The headlamps are now lighter and more sustainable. On the sustainable level, this keeps plastic and coffee grounds from going into landfills. Also the talc (a mineral) which was used with the plastic is not renewable.

 

I find the creativity and imagination that went into this process just mindboggling. Imagine being the scientist who first thought of this.

Campus lights

Every year the seminary campus gets lit up for Christmas and my favorite is the angels which cast their shadows against the building walls. The best is the angel in front of Luther Tower.

Our house has blue snowflakes and blue and white lights on the bushes as well as two dogs. I miss my dog, but these two make me happy.

The last month of the year

Playing catch up after the Thanksgiving long weekend. Here is the tally to begin the last month of the year.

Mattresses 126

Ladders 130

Last year in mid December the tally stood at Mattresses 126 and Ladders 112 so we are a bit ahead of mattresses this year and well ahead of ladders.

Want a reason for the exodus from Illinois?

This is a very informative opinion column on Illinois taxes from the Chicago Tribune's Kristen McQueary.

"The typical retort when taxpayers gripe about taxation is to point out the services rendered in exchange. Public schools, public safety, park districts and libraries largely are funded through local property taxes. So quit your whining.

But that isn’t the whole story in Illinois, Chicago or Cook County, where property tax hikes levied and collected increasingly are being swallowed up by pension costs for retired workers, health care costs for active workers and debts accumulated to patch up unbalanced budgets. Property owners and income tax payers are getting the same or fewer services while their tax bills climb and their property values remain stagnant."

"Acquiring debt is too cavalier a process in most government spending bills. The state’s $45 billion capital spending plan, approved last spring, includes money toward a highway interchange for a Peotone airport, pickleball courts, dog parks and bike paths. Meanwhile the state is sitting on a pile of $5.8 billion in bills it cannot pay, and its combined unfunded pension liability climbed recently to $137 billion."

Welcome to Indiana, Missouri and Iowa Illinois folks.

Cleaning tips

I admit I'm as sucker for websites like this one with a headline which reads: 48 Must Follow Tips for the Deepest Clean. 48 seems like a lot to browse through but right off the bat, the first one was something I might do. Ever since we had the basement water treated with all kinds of dry wall dust and jackhammered concrete dust, the house always seems vaguely dusty. I've vacuumed and dusted and wet mopped, but it still doesn't seem right. So this is what I need today.

Those in the floor heating grates are a pain to try and clean, but this article says to pull them out, wipe down a bit and then put them in the dishwasher on a water only cycle. How cool is that?

And, you can wash pillows! I've always been a bit leery about tossing pillows in the washer, but here is the advice: "put two pillows into your washing machine on the hot cycle with one cup of bleach and regular detergent. Run them through the washing machine with an extra rinse cycle. Place them in the dryer with some tennis balls so they don’t lose their shape."

I'm just not sure today's foam pillows will hold up to that but it's worth trying with some you don't care if you ruin.

There are 46 more of these at the link if you're interested. I know I'll be reading them all today.

I miss the sun

It's been almost a week since we've had any sun and with its loss came really cold temperatures and too much wind. The wind has wreaked a bit of havoc on our outdoor Christmas things, but worse it did something to our front storm door. We now can't open it at all. The strong wind around Thanksgiving must have slammed the door in such a way that the lock jammed. Yes, our storm door has a lock. But we have no key. We've spent the last couple of days forgetting we can't get out that door and then backing up to go out the kitchen door.

It's a small thing, but when you're dragging out Christmas figures and lights it gets to be a pain. I'm going down to seminary maintenance now to see if they have a key to this storm door. It will be a nightmare if there is no key because this is a big, heavy glass door.

Wind is not fun.

About those Thanksgiving leftovers

I you know me at all you'd know I'm obsessive about food safety. I am always on the look-out for food that may be under cooked, spoiled or contaminated. As soon as we put our forks down after any meal, I am up and wrapping and refrigerating any leftovers. I never understand people who can eat food which has been sitting out for several hours after a meal. Or leave a pizza out on the counter overnight and have some for breakfast. If you have ever experienced food poisoning, you'll understand.

No, just no.

So this article from ABC7 in Chicago was right up my food philosophy, although they may have been a bit more forgiving than I am. The article is titled:" How Long Do Leftovers Last? Your Guide to Post-Holiday Food Safety."  Here is the advice.

1. Eat or freeze Thanksgiving turkey and other leftovers within 3-4 days. That seems too long for me, that would be the Monday after. Sunday is my limit and anything left is out for pickup. Actually, Saturday is my last day to eat any of it, while Dale can still be found eating it as long as it is within sight. I protect him by not letting it go past Sunday.

2. After the meal is over, get that food in the fridge within two hours. And don't think food should cool down before refrigerating.  Any food left out longer than that should be tossed. I do think you'd be ok with cake left out or cookies, pie.

3. Reheat those leftovers thoroughly, at least to 165 degrees in an oven set to at least 325. Do not reheat in a slow cooker/crock pot. I almost made that mistake last night but after checking online about doing it found it was a real no no. The reason is slow cookers keep food at an unsafe temperature too long and bacteria forms.

4. Leftover food containing meat, fish, eggs, poultry can last two to three months in the freezer. Leftovers without any meat only make it one to two months.

I realize I'm paranoid, but better safe than sick.

 

Food miracle

Yesterday, Thanksgiving, something amazing happened. The food all got finished at the same time. Or, rather, the right time in order to get it all on the table at the right temperature. I did the stuffing and mashed potatoes a bit differently because those two take time and oven/stove top space. I made both in crock pots and it worked perfectly. Both were out of the way cooking slowly while other things could use the time and oven.

 

Watching Black Friday from my couch

Every year local and national news spend an inordinate amount of time on stories about the huge number of people charging into stores at the stroke of midnight or 5 a.m. for stuff at lower prices. I can remember doing this exactly twice and one of those was early on in the Black Friday years. But that was enough to keep me away and just watch the news.

What I've noticed over the years is what shoppers are shown putting into their carts and so much of the time it's huge tv's or other tech stuff. But so often big tv's. You rarely get news video of people buying shoes or coats. My guess is while they call it Christmas shopping, it's mostly shopping for themselves. Which defeats the purpose of spending money this time of year and makes it harder to spend on real gifts in the coming weeks.

Taking on MoDOT

This is one of those news stories that made me stop and cheer. It's about time. "A state lawmaker from eastern Missouri is criticizing what he calls the state Department of Transportation’s (MoDOT’s) incompetence, for its handling of the Veterans Day winter storm."  State Rep, NIck Schoer of O'Fallon wants MoDOT to examine how other states handle snow, including the chemicals they’re using. Schroer says the agency wasn’t ready for the storm.

If you remember that cold, wet, icy, snowy burst of winter weather during afternoon rush hour, you'll remember how many accidents and hours it took for drivers to get home. Meanwhile, those drivers heading east related that when they finally got into Illinois they found the roads very drive-able. And yet, MoDOT responds to Schoer's comments with all kinds of excuses and talk of how much they did.

I've said the same thing as Rep Schoer for some years. It only takes living in Missouri for a bit to realize MoDOT does not get its roads free of ice and snow like Illinois does and, probably many other states. On this blog I've practically begged MoDOT to go over to the Collinsville IDOT headquarters and learn what they do to the winter roads that Missouri does not.

Here is a post I wrote on just this issue from the past February.

Here a bank, there a bank

Everywhere a bank...

A story in the St. Louis Business Journal relates that the Chase Bank will be opening 25  bank branches in the St. Louis area this fiscal year and hire more than 200. Chase has been expanding all over the country this year.

I find it difficult to follow all the ins and outs of banking, investments and other fiscal things, but what I have noticed is the enormous number of banks located everywhere in this area. We drove from Collinsville to Edwardsville over the past weekend and there were banks on every intersection all along 159. Most areas had more than one, the banks faced each other from across the road. It got to the point where we gave up trying to count them.

So what is with all these banks? Banks we've used for years have one by one sold out, changed names. That is the real news to me. The new version of an old bank is never as customer friendly as the previous one. Or as reliable.

And now comes the Thanksgiving food stories

News outlets just cannot resist putting out stories on what foods can make us sick on Thanksgiving. You can be sure turkey is front and center in most of these reports. Just about the time we're ready to begin cooking, here come the food safety stories.

This story came up this morning on the Fox2 news station in St. Louis. It concerns the way turkeys were stored at the Collinsville Walmart.

"A week before Thanksgiving and there are questions tonight about how some turkeys are being stored at a Collinsville Walmart Supercenter. Pictures obtained by Fox 2 News have some concerned about health safety. As a result, Walmart is taking action."

It seems some turkeys were put into recyle bins. "Pictures show turkeys being stored in large blue bins in a freezer at the Collinsville Walmart Supercenter on Collinsville Crossing Boulevard. One of the bins is marked “we recycle."

Walmart is taking action, they said, after being made aware of this.

And of course there are the warnings about how to buy and defrost and cook a turkey. Don't defrost on the counter at room temperature. Do this in the fridge over some days. If you buy a frozen turkey that is already stuffed, then don't defrost it at all, the stuffing will develop bacteria.

Also some panicky food safety people have recommended not stuffing any turkey before cooking. I'm sorry, but we still do this. But whatever you do, don't thaw at room temperature.

After many years of food safety people telling us to rinse off/wash turkey before cooking, now there is some thinking that this makes things worse because of bacteria splatter onto counters. It's much better not to wash or rinse. But I'm telling you I rinse down the outside and inside of turkey and chicken. There is blood on a thawed bird inside and out and I do not want any part of that. You can eat bloody beef, but I draw the line at poultry.

Make sure that turkey is totally done before eating. The temperature of in inner thigh, the thickest part of the bird, should register 180-185. Stuffing should be at least 160-165 and get that stuffing out immediately.

You have only about two hours from the time it comes out of the oven to when the leftovers should be wrapped and put in the refrigerator. Frankly, I don't let the turkey sit even that long before put it away in the fridge. As soon as everyone seems to be done that bird is going in the cooler.

Don't all theses stories and warnings have you looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner?

I have to confess

About a week ago I was bored on a Sunday afternoon and Dale was out of town. I was so bored I began watching QVC and their big weekend offer happened to be ipads. My ipad is old, I use it all the time, and it has lost most of its ability to do much any more. But I had no intention of replacing it, they cost way too much. I could buy 2 laptops for the cost of one ipad.

But! This QVC weekend pre-holiday sale was pretty amazing and I watched carefully to see if there would be a catch. The price was less than half of what you'd pay in any store or on the Apple site. Plus it would come with a keyboard (not necessary) ear buds, cover, stylus, voucher and a lot of memory.

I did it. I ordered it. For this price and all that comes with it, it was hard to pass up. I'd guess Apple will be coming out with some new type of ipad in the near future and this is why the price was so much lower than anything I've ever seen. But, hey, this will work great for me.

The one area QVC can't match places like Amazon is in the length of shipping time. It will end up taking between a week and ten days to get this ipad. Amazon would have had to me in a day. But for twice the price.

Turkey thawing time

It's that time of year when Thanksgiving is a week away and many of us will be cooking a turkey. Unless you are the person who buys a fresh turkey, you will be considering the time it takes to thaw the frozen type. Which is me. I am kind of paranoid about food poisoning or food spoilage so I'm always skeptical about the fresh ones.

I usually try to buy our turkey the perfect number of days ahead of the time it takes to thaw. Most experts recommend 24 hours of thawing the the refrigerator, not on the counter, for each 5 pounds of weight. So a 15 pound turkey should thaw in 3 days. We normally have a bigger turkey than that so probably 4 days. I've found over the years that it usually takes a bit longer than the recommendations. 4 days would mean buying it on Sunday. I'd get one earlier, but it takes up so much room to store in the freezer for a couple of days.

And, the biggest issue I always have is how to keep the side dishes warm and time things so everything is ready and hot at the same time. After talking about this with Robyn who cuts my hair, she mentioned that she uses a crock pot or slow cooker to keep made ahead mashed potatoes hot. I did a google search and sure enough, slow cookers/crockpots are what most cooks recommend. That is a big help.

 

Red light cameras coming back?

St. Louis Mayor Krewson is considering bringing back the red light cameras which were eliminated in 2015.  She has statistics which show that since the cameras were removed 171 people were killed in roadway accidents. The number of pedestrians killed by cars rose by 54 percent.

We've noticed an uptick in cars running red lights recently. In our area we see this on Clayton road and Big Bend every day. You have to wait after your light turns green to make sure there isn't a car in the other lane direction whose driver stepped on the gas well before the intersection to speed through a light which was turning red. It is totally red before the car completes the intersection. We've seen this enough that waiting a second or two when our light turns green is best for safety. 

It's hard to say why so many are zooming through lights that are turning red. It may be that our area and many other St. Louis streets have too many lights. Many streets have stoplights block after block after block and it does become frustrating when the sync is off and you find yourself never getting a string of green lights. I do believe the timing sync should be looked at in many places. For instance, at Clayton Road and Bellevue and Clayton and Demun (our exits from campus) have terrible timing. Clayton Road green lights go on a long time but the exit streets are lucky to get 5 seconds. Seriously. In many parts of the day getting onto Clayton Road across from St. Mary's means sitting through at least 2 series of long red lights as lots of traffic from the hospital stream through.

In any event, there is much more red light running right now and if bringing back those cameras will help, I'm all for it.

First moving day

For the past year or more most of the seminary's faculty homes have been renovated, at least the empty ones. Not just paint, but total gutting of bathrooms, kitchens, new wiring, plumbing, windows, heating/cooling systems and on and on. It's been a long process with every tradesman you can think of working on the street. Today one of our faculty families will be moving in to a completed house and I kind of have to laugh. The faculty guy is in Houston for a conference and it's all up to his wife to see this through. This is not uncommon around here.

When we moved into the seminary home, Dale conveniently was out of town at a conference. I will never forget how much work I had to do back then. And, now that we will be moving back to Collinsville in June, I know full well he better be around this time.

Which brings me to a bit of history. The seminary faculty homes were built at the same time as the present campus, mid 1920's. This is around the time frame we always though was when our Collinsville house was built. A former city councilman, Harry Hall, built and owned the corner house and I believe the second as well. But as we've had work done on our house, someone told Dale ours was built in the 30's. We know it was built by Mr. Krite of the hardware store fame and built for his mother. It was built well.

Recycling old commercials

Last year during the lead-up to Christmas, GMC created an ad which ran pretty much every half hour. It featured a husband and wife giving each other presents. The man brought his wife outside where there were two big pickup trucks, one black, one red, and told her, "one for you, one for me". She shouted, "I love it"! and went right to the black one. He started to tell her, no, that was for me, but when he saw she was in love with the black one, he resigned himself to the red.

Anyhow, this was on tv constantly last year. So guess what. GMC must have loved that so much they've brought it back for this year. So far it has run every half hour (it seems like it anyhow).

"I LOVE IT" is an expression I'm hearing all over the place now because of this commercial.

Manure vaults

I came across this post on Facebook's Original Chicago page and found it surprising and interesting. It told of the many manure vaults in the city of Chicago back in the days before cars when horses pulled wagons and buggies. Who knew, but when you think about it, something had to be done with all the manure.

Here is his post.

"Manure vaults that were an underground covered hole in alleys all over Chicago that "Manure Mongers" (street sweeper) would swept-up horse manure from the local area and empty it into the vault closing the lid. Later, the vault would be shoveled out and the manure carted off.

Pic is of a typical “Manure Vault” in a Chicago alley in 1918.

These vaults were one way of keeping the streets clean of horse manure. In 1900, Chicago had 83,000 horses living and working in the city.

On average, one horse creates between 40 to 50 pounds of manure a day. At 40 pounds per day, that equals 3,320,000 pounds or 1,660 tons of horse manure to dispose of per day. The sheer volume made what was a nuisance in small towns and a crisis in large metropolitan areas."