respublica

Long long trucks

I've noticed recently that beer delivery trucks are getting longer and longer. With the local American Legion across our street having beer brought in every couple of days that the Coors truck is almost as long as the building is wide. And, this morning a Budweiser truck came through and is almost as big. It's no fun to be on the interstate around all those type of trucks and other trucks are as tall as they are long. And, there are millions of them on our interstates.

Dinner woes

With all the awfulness on the news this week, I feel guilty about obsessing about what to have for dinner, but here we are. Since Dale retired we've eaten at home almost 100 percent of the time. Covid shutdowns got us out of the habit of going out to eat and when we talk about going out, we never seem to be up to it.

I have used a rotating menu which I'm tired of. I made a nice roast beef last night which took a bit of effort and was worth it...not an every day plan though. I ask Dale what he'd like for supper and 95 percent of the time he mentions hot dogs. I really believe he could happily live on hot dogs.

So here we are once again.

This is most certainly not true

What is the best bakery in Illinois? According to Mashed, it is Lost Larson located in Chicago. Of course it would be located in Chicago, most food experts rarely venture much beyond that area. But I beg to differ.

Kruta Bakery in Collinsville is right up at the top when it comes to bakeries. Mashed foodies have probably never gotten further south in Illinois than Homewood. This sort of thing happens a lot when it comes to "best of" anything in Illinois.

We know better down here.

And in the same vein, a ranking of the best places to live in Illinois by niche.com, were all in the Chicago area. I mean seriously folks, do these Illinois surveyors ever get out of Chicagoland? And, the top Illinois cities in which to live are all suburbs. Shocker. Part of my growing up years were spent on the southside of Chicago, the Roseland neighborhood, the the second half in the west suburb of Villa Park. I loved those places but that is not all there is to Illinois. And...

The city ranked the top best is a place I have never heard of: Bannockburn! Sounds more like it should be in Scotland and must be a fairly new suburb comparatively.

Here is the list

1. Bannockburn
2. Long Grove
3. Clarendon Hills
4. Naperville
5. Inverness
6. Hinsdale
7. Buffalo Grove
8. Western Springs
9. Kildeer
10. Evanston

 

Cotton ball gardening hack

Lately I've been spending more and more time out in the garden areas of our yard. Got the potato pots planted, put in some radish seed using the seed tape and have begun eyeing the rest of the planting beds to see what needs doing next. It's time for some things to get planted, too early for others. But the soil still needs working to be ready.

Which means I tend to read articles on this sort of thing and this particular gardening article struck me as the dumbest thing ever.

The Cotton Ball Hack to Germinate Seeds for Your Garden. The idea is you cram a bunch of cotton balls tightly into a jar, wet them down and then pop one or two seeds into it. Place the jar in a sunny window and moisten the cotton as needed. The one or two seeds should eventually grow enough to me removed and planted.

Who is going to do this? How many jars of cotton balls will have to sit around sunny windows in order to make the garden worth while? Not gonna be me.

Is half a roll better?

We use a lot of paper towels around here. I use them for everything practically-cleaning the counters, windows, clearing drip spots from the floor, drying fruit and vegetables I wash and on and on.We go through a lot of paper towels. Somehow using a dish cloth several times over seems unsanitary and using it just once and tossing it in the washer seems a waste. Paper towels do the job. But it gets expensive, the cost of these has gone up just like everything else. So this article caught my eye.

"Woman Cuts Paper Towel Roll in Half and Swears it Saves Her Money."

Along with the article is a Tik Tok video of her doing just that. However it struck me as pretty hard to do and without a really good knife this could be ragged. This does not mean I won't test this with one of our rolls. The knife should be sharp and I wonder if using a good knife may dull it. So we shall see.

Ten Grocery Stores with the Freshest Produce

This list was put out By a foodie site and can be taken as you will. Here are their choices in order of the freshest produce.  Around here we can find a Whole Foods and a Fresh Thyme

1. Whole Foods
2. Sprouts Farmers Market
3. Central Market-Texas
4. Natural Grocers-Colorado
5. Heinen's
6. Wegman's-Out east
7. H-E-B--Texas
8. Hy-Vee-Midwest
9. Jungle Jims-Ohio
10. The Best Market-where I don't know but they are
11. Fresh Thyme, many places

Obsessive People should not be allowed to write articles

Here is one example of an obsessive person who want all of us to be like her. "How to get rid of dust in your home easily and effectively."

Right of the bat anyone who lives anywhere know this will be impossible. I read through the long list of things we should be doing to fight dust and I just finally laughed. It's unbelievable, we'd be doing nothing but dusting every day. You can read it the link if you have the energy.

The least helpful advice for lower back pain

I admit I now have lower back stiffness and discomfort. It began around the time we moved back to Collinsville and I point to two reasons, age not being one of them. I have been sitting way to much since moving back, reading, sitting at the computer or tv. This story headline attracted me but the first thing on back issues I read was a word I've never heard of. Psoas!

Now I had to take anatomy in College and read various articles on physical things fairly regularly but have never come across the word, psoas. It appears to be the name for a deep hip flexor that connects to the spine and extends down to our femur. The Femur is the longest and strongest bone in our bodies and attaches to the hip and knee. Sitting a lot causes this flexor to tighten and shorten causes problems.

The advice for helping back stiffness and pain is to get going and stretch the Psoas. I honestly do not know quite how to do this, but do know that stretching the lower back muscles and knees does help a lot. I often lay on the couch and lift by legs and hold position and can feel the back loosen. Maybe what I'm doing has something to do with the unheard of Psoas, but I'll keep doing what I'm doing.

The exercises shown in this article are kind of too much for me, but I may try a couple.

This and that

A couple of news items I found interesting or just silly. First "the worst cities to live in in Illinois".

The worst places to live in the Illinois Metro East. Probably anyone who lives in this area can name one. Here Is what the Edwardsville Intelligencer newspaper chose. Centreville is at the top, followed by Alton, East St. Louis and Cahokia.

Update!

Honestly, this business of websites and computers insisting on downloading an update is beginning to drive me over the wall. It's not just one thing, it's pretty near everything. I'm at the point where I say, no, not now over and over. While I realize there are a few safety reasons for some updates, most are not. And, too many updates mess up things to the point where a commonly used website is unrecognizable.

And worse, more often than not the new updates demand a user name and password to continue using it. I don't know about everyone else but I have user names and passwords out the wazoo, some outdated. I have just about had it. This morning and yesterday morning my actual laptop wanted to be updated. I can't even imagine what that will be like when the update is complete. This morning the laptop will not take no for an answer and no matter what I do, in less than an hour it will do this on its own.

Sorry Apples

These days we are now buying and consuming more bananas than apples, oranges, strawberries and etc. An apple a day is no longer in vogue, while bananas have become one of the best fruits for health and ease of eating.

I have been eating an banana every morning for years, it's part of my daily routine. They are loaded with important vitamins and minerals, especially Potassium which is  crucial for muscle  function and overall bodily functions. 

The only issue with bananas is I can only buy a few at a time, they over ripen quite quickly and I am not wanting to make banana bread every week to use them up. This means heading to the store several times a week.  If you go to the grocery store regularly you'll probably notice that there is always someone in front of the bananas, taking a fair amount of time looking for those with the perfect amount of ripeness. But not too ripe. Too many banana shoppers feel it necessary to pick up bunches, put them back, repeat. They also regularly pull apart a large bunch because they don't want 8, only 4. I am just as bad as anyone. It takes me a few minutes of staring at the bananas to decide on just the right bunch.

Yes, we have no bananas does not apply to most of us.

Glad we don't live in Evanston

The City of Evanston, Illinois, has enacted a new ordinance which outlaws leaf blowers. Gas powered blowers will be illegal beginning April 1. However electric blowers will be allowed. This is going to be a problem for those residents who pay for law service which probably is mot in that city. We have a battery powered blower and it works well for us, but we don't have a huge tree filled yard.

Evanston-based landscaping companies registered with the city may be eligible for grants of up to $3,000 to assist with the purchase of electric-powered leaf blowers.

I will say, though, when you live near a place which has multiply lawn service people showing up, all with trimmers and blowers it can be deafening. Best to run over most of the leave with a mower, but they are load as well. Evanston hasn't gotten around to outlawing mowers yet.

Another Day, Another story on Food Safety

Today's food safety warning are about how we should be refrigerating our items. There are days when all these warnings are just a bit too much for me to deal with, but there are a couple of good tips.

The one thing I learned the hard way was fruit and vegetables should not be underneath or above the freezer. That is the coldest place and pulling out frozen lettuce is no fun, same for berries. Our freezer is a pull-out drawer on the bottom and it works really well, too well some days. The top shelf is the warmest on ours and things you use quickly should go there. Fruit, vegetables, cheeses, leftovers etc.

Lots of information here, some just too much to take in. However, I'm obsessed with keeping food safe, I never leave leftovers out on the counter overnight and won't keep cooked things too long in the fridge in any event. If they aren't eaten after two days, out they go. If you've ever had a bout with food poisoning you'll understand.

This is not the friendliest March

I am getting frustrated with this weather. We had a mild winter for the most part, but now that it's getting time to get out into the garden, it gets bone chilling. My habit has been to plant potatoes on St. Patrick's Day which is sort of an old tradition. Ireland loves their potatoes so I've tried to go along with this technique. I bought two varieties of seed potatoes on Saturday at the Collinsville Farmers Market. I have the two large flower pots almost ready to put them in and had planned to work up part of the back yard garden today. But I think not.

Planting potatoes in big pots is an amazing way to do it. In the end we just tip over the posts and there come the potatoes. No digging and the best tasting spuds you'll ever eat. I am so ready. I do put extra potatoes in the back garden but that ground is just not ready to be worked.

I am going to clean the pots today and go get potting soil.

 

Good-Bye scary Pin Oak

When we bought our house back in 1981, there were two small Pin Oak trees in the front yard. We like the way they sort of softened up the look of the front of the house, but over the years these two grew and grew. Not only did they grow so much they hung out over the street and our roof as well as the neighbors roofs. Two years ago we had the tree on the right side removed and today will say good-bye to the second one.

They turned out to be just terribly messy trees dropping small acorns every where, clogging up the gutters and getting perilously close to falling on the power lines across the street. I am really happy to see the last tree be taken away.

 

Tech Blues

All of a sudden two of our tv's have lost connections. These two are Roku set ups which work wirelessly to receive channels. We've never had an issue until last night and it has been a frustrating morning trying to get them communicating again. The main floor tv is hooked up Spectrum Cable and has had no issues. I've tried removing the Roku sticks and let them do whatever they are supposed to do to re-set. But it did not work this time and has in the past.

This morning I've been trying to get our printers working, they both refused to print the past few days. I'm hoping it's a printer ink thing and a new cartridge will make things work. Modern technology is fantastic when it works, but impossible when it does not.

Garden Hacks

I'm getting itchy to get out in the yard and begin planting. I know it's too soon, but the time has come to consider what we will do this year. So I found  this article interesting. I won't do most of the ideas they give, but I will do some.

I already picked up some seed tape. This is a great way to plant things like radishes and other salad type vegetables. I used the radish and green onion tapes a couple of years ago while at the seminary and it worked really well. Those seeds are so mall this makes it easier to get a balanced crop. Home Depot had them yesterday, not as many choices as I would have liked but did get radishes and a small salad green mix. Just unroll the tape and lay it flat in the ground. Cover it up with soil and walk away. Nice even spacing when they grow.

Horrifying news if you live in Florida

This is almost too much to even consider. "Invasive Pythons are Apparently Taking over South Florida."

"The invaders, which can grow to over 18 feet in length, were first brought to the U.S. as exotic pets in the 1970s, but have since spread into the wild and may now number in the tens of thousands. " I just cannot imagine how horrifying this is and will be.  There is no consensus on just how far the so-called “invasion front” could spread, but some studies have predicted that the Southeast Asian snakes could proliferate across Florida and even much of the southern United States. 

Here we go again

Nest weekend we have to turn our clocks ahead one hour, my least favorite law. At 2 a.m. Sunday morning we move our clocks ahead one hour which means we lose an hour of sleep and the daylight will continue long into the next evening. It will still be light at almost 9 p.m. for some weeks. I much prefer the fall time change. And, I do wish our states would get ride of this twice a year time change, we don't need it, it serves no purpose.

Short and to the point

Came across this and it spoke to me.

"Look around at your clutter. All that clutter used to be money. All that money used to be time."