respublica

Weather and sports predictions

Looking back over last year's January 31-February 1 blizzard I came across this post on how blizzards have affected the St. Louis Cardinals success.

Blizzard of 82 Cardinals win the World Series

Ice storm of 06  Cardinals win the World Series

Blizzard of 11  Cardinals win the World Series???

Well what do you think of that?  The blizzard theory stood the test.  Cards win World Series.  

 

One year ago today

January 31, 2011 the weather forecasters terrorized us all day long, no, make that most of the week, predicting a massive ice storm followed by snow.  It was so dire that businesses and schools let out early, restaurants closed for the night.  The weather was supposed to hit just before rush hour and continue sleeting, icing all night turning finally to snow.  

Well, it didn't happen exactly that way.  The ice came slowly and didn't really hit til well into the night, but it did come as did the snow.  Dale, Ferdie and I took a walk around 6:30 in the evening on the 31st and had Demun all to ourselves, it was beautifully eerie.

 

 

It snowed most of February 1 and most everyone just stayed inside.

 

 

Then February 2 we all came out to a bitter cold and quite a bit of snow on top of inches of crusty sleet.

 

 

Seminary staff and students worked to make things walkable and driveable, but as I recall, it was windy and very very cold.  

 

Today will be in the high 60's.  What a difference a year makes.  The links show a more complete picture of last year.  

 

 

Ok paint experts

This week we begin painting the living room, dining room and library.  All three rooms are rather north facing, get little sun and are connected and fairly open to each other. All three have wide, dark brown/reddish hued woodwork.  When someone walks in the front door they'd see all the rooms as well as part of the kitchen.  The kitchen was recently painted in rainwashed, a blue-green-gray color.  

My issue is, must the room paint complement the kitchen?  Do some colors do better or worse with the woodwork?  We do know we do not want white. Or pink.  Dale does not want any room painted brown or brown-ish.  

Here we go again.  I'm going to see what the nice Sherwin Williams staffer, Dale, has to say.  

 

Do we argue over food as much as we debate politics?

1.  From an expert who had personal weight issues: 5 Foods Never to Feed Your Child.  Head slap.  Fruit juice is one of the five.  The others are:  Foods with extremely unnatural coloring, Soda, hot dogs and deli meat, prepackaged/frozen meals.  

2.  Annoying Restaurant Trends.  The first is allowing dogs to accompany diners.  The annoying trend which made me laugh out loud is "Wood Infused Food".  We are seeing an awful lot of wood fired this, wood smoked that in restaurant advertising.  The author of this piece said, " The food comes out half-cooked and smelling like a humidor." On the other hand so many food experts are recommending a diet which pretty much tastes like wood chips.  Another annoying restaurant trend cited is "over-zealous drink pours".  Someone lives somewhere where waiters come along and top off wine and beer glasses.  That trend has not hit St. Louis that I know of.  

Purple is in again

Collinsville is living exciting times again.  After a long drought the basketball Kahoks are on top again, bringing fans back to Fletcher gym, being the topic of conversation in the coffee shops and bars. Collinsville has a long history of high school basketball success and with that success came avid fans who could not only discuss current times, but knew the entire BB history.  

It's fun to see.  If you can't get to the games an enterprising couple of guys have managed to create a website which broadcasts the games live. Kahok Sports. Fantastic.  

Happy Anniversary to Ferdie

It was 3 years ago today that we adopted Ferdie and brought him home to the seminary campus.  He was a great dog on January 29, 2009, but he turned into a fantastic dog.  We are so thankful we got him after a bit of haggling and begging.  Here's a post I put up on his first day with us, we learned his history through a couple of comments on that blog from Tracy.  Every year I have to thank Tracy from Collinsville city hall for finding Ferdie after he was seen just standing on the edge of her street on a cold January night.  Thanks Tracy!  We will never forget what a blessing you were.  

Here is what's he's like these days:

 

 

Pretty darn happy.  He loves to help work with the seminary's grounds people.  It makes his day when there is some sort of outdoor work going on.  

 

 

Hot or cold, wet or dry, he loves being in the thick of things.  

 

 

We relearn each growing season that he really really likes vegetables: radishes, turnips, mustard greens, tomatoes and especially broccoli.  If it's growing where he walks, he yanks one out, lays down and just enjoys eating.

 

 

When he's in the house he mainly loves to spend time with his stuffed animal family, they're his emotional support.

 

 

His Baylor Bear is never more than a glance away.  

 

 

We love you Ferdie.

 

Thanks again Tracy and thanks to Bob at Dirks Fund for letting us adopt him.

 

What microwaves can do to food and other things

Some brave soul put various objects into a microwave and turned on the power.  Amazing what can happen.  Don't do this yourself.  

 

Irritating BND ad

Now the Belleville News Democrat has an ad which pops up the first time the site opens which is a video.  You can't close it until the entire ad video plays.  If it happens everyday I may stop visiting the BND.

Why women's clothing sizes are meaningless

Now this is an article any woman should identify with.  Why when you go clothes shopping are the sizes so wrong?  Or are they right?  A size 10 in one store might be an 8 or a 12 in another store.  Why are pant lengths so long?  If petit means clothes for shorter, thinner women, how about the stouter, short woman.  Sizes and lengths make no sense.  

Lots of good information in the story, especially the history of how women's sizing came to be and what standards were used.  But for today's shopper it basically boils down to this:

Vanity Sizing. Women don't want to know their real size, so manufacturers re-label bigger sizes with smaller numbers.

Dog whistle

Out of the blue this political season has had one phrase pop up constantly by commentators, political reporters, candidates, supporters of candidates.  

Dog Whistle.  

I woke up this morning realizing that I've seen and heard Dog Whistle constantly lately and haven't spent any time giving it any thought.  What does it mean in our political world?  First off you have to realize that the term is most used by liberals and liberal media people to describe GOP or conservative political people. 

Dog Whistle is a type of political campaigning or speechmaking which employs coded language that appears to mean one thing to the general population but has a different or more specific meaning for a targeted subgroup of the audience. Dog-whistle politics” is a derogatory term, often employed to describe what liberals consider to be coded, subliminal racist messages “pitched” too high for the general public to recognize.

Watch for it.