respublica

Awesome People Hanging Out together

You can get lost in this site which features famous people meeting up with each other, be surprised how much time goes by before you finally look up. The photos on this site covers many generations, fascinating stuff.

The new big thing in New York City-the Cronut

One Manhattan bakery has come up with a new pastry which has New Yorkers lined up down the block each morning to try and snag one or up to 6, of the 200 cronuts made each day. Cronuts are a twist on donuts, deep fried croissant dough shaped like the traditional donut. There is such a demand for these things a black market has sprung up. People are willing to pay 40 dollars and up for a cronut.

"Mr Ansel, an award-winning pastry chef from Paris, said he tried 10 different recipes before finding the perfect blend of laminated croissant pastry to be shaped into rings and fried in grapeseed oil."

Not sure what laminated croissant pastry is but it sure doesn't sound good. However, the cronuts really appeal to New Yorkers. One woman said, "It melts in your mouth and is sugary, but the croissant bit is slightly savoury and has a little cream in it," she said. "I just want to eat 20 cronuts afterwards".

How long before Mayor Bloomberg outlaws them?

Another device to control snoring

Don't most of us have some experience with snoring? Either someone we know snores or we do. Hard snoring can be dangerous to the person doing it because it can lead to sleep apnea, a point where breathing stops for a time. Snoring can also lead to poor sleep, high blood pressure or headaches. Plus it's a danger to a marriage. :)

There have been frequent inventions through the years to help stop snoring-bandaid type things for over the nose and special pillows. Here's another being touted now and one I doubt many snorers will be comfortable with.

It's called the My Snoring Chinstrap and available for 119 dollars.

Rain delays

What a nightmare game between the Cardinals and Royals last night. It began an hour late because of rain and ended at 3:15 in the morning. What ever happened to common sense among game officials? Does baseball not have a rule or rules for guidance on games like this? Well yes they have.

Rule 4.12 (5) A game shall be called as suspended for... "Weather, if a regulation game is called while an inning is in progress and before the inning is completed, and the visiting team has scored one or more runs to take the lead, and the home team has not retaken the lead."

Baseball has more rules than any other sport on earth so why did the umpires make the teams sit in the clubhouse for 4 and 1/2 hours last night during heavy downpours? The stands were empty, the only sound you could hear at 3 in the morning was the echo of the radio announcers. What was the point? A long night serves no one well. MLB needs one more rule-the common sense rule.

In politics or business or life

Good advice for people who get put on the defensive, written by, I almost dread saying it....Chris Matthews.

Don't get mad, don't get even...get ahead.

One pointless phone attachment

Smart phones have reached the point of being able to do about everything so that we're now seeing things offered for sale which absolutely no one needs. When a phone can do anything, how can we keep owners spending money on them?

Here's a new attachment no one needs-the Smelliphone. It's a piece of plastic you attach to your phone which enables you to get unique smells for each person on your contact list. You get a text or email from Sue and instead of a ringtone, a chosen smell drifts out of the mechanism.

 

Bacon joke

On KMOX this morning Charlie Brennan and Debbie Monterrey were talking about a bacon festival and Debbie said, "If it weren't for bacon no one would know what a chestnut was."

Heh.

Travel nightmare

Katie and Jake drove back to St Louis with us on Sunday so that she could attend the funeral of her lifelong best friend's father yesterday. She had a plane reservation to head home yesterday at 5:30. Let's just say that trip to the airport was the worse experience ever. To begin with we were way early, but there was not one empy space in the East parking garage on any level. Finally she just told me to let her out as close to the entrance as possible and let her go. She with Jake in a car seat, a carry on bag and purse. 

Anyway since I had no where to go, I had to head home. I got halfway there when she called and said she was not flying Southwest as she'd thought, but American and had no idea how to get over to terminal 1 in time. I gave her the best advice I knew and then went crazy wondering how to help. Turns out the shuttle area for going from one terminal to another was so filled with people waiting it looked like, as she put it, a rock concert getting out. People were angry and crying and yelling because not only weren't there enough shuttles, there weren't any shuttles. When she finally got over to the American counter she was behind two huge groups, one of which had problems with overweight bags and the other large group missed their flight. All of this meant each person in each group had to either be reticketed or pay individually for the heavy bags. It took forever and there were only two clerks working the checkin. To make it even more surreal, another man had to go through a long process because he was carrying a firearm.

When she got to a clerk finally, the woman was very rude and mean, telling her she should have been there earlier and then refused to check her in because it was too late to get to the gate. After 45 minutes of standing in that line behind all those people with only two duty clerks. She was beside herself and tried to plead with the woman to no avail. The clerk rebooked her for 6:20 this morning, told her she was flying into Baltimore. Baltimore was going to be a real hassle for her, Jake and husband Charlie but what could she do?  Back I went to the airport to bring her back here for the night.

As we were standing in the longest Lambert security line I've ever seen at 5 am today, she looked at her ticket and saw that the plane was going to Reagan. The ticket clerk really took it out on Katie. So luckily she noticed in time to let Charlie know before he took off for Baltimore. 

The worst. Everything was tear inducing but the parking garage being totally full was a sign of things to come. What made me angry was all the electronic signs leading to the airport said all garages were open. Well, that was just not true and so many of us in the snaking caravan through the aisles found out. In the end, she could have made it if only one more clerk had been working the checkin desk or if the clerk had had any sympathy. Katie can move fast when she had to. 

But this morning's endless security checkin line was the last straw. The line went almost to the United terminal entrance. Ridiculous. But Katie and Jake are in the air now, and hopefully things will ease. Lambert can brag about the new renovations all they want but until they make actual travel easier it's useless bragging. It's a bureaucracy at work, both with American, Lambert and the TSA.

In better times, an hour before all this started, we had our picture taken on the steps of Holy Cross. Lizzie and her 3 boys and Katie and Jake and I. All we missed was Drew who luckily for him, stayed behind in DC.

The fittest cities

The fittest cities in the 50 largest Metro centers.

1. Minneapolis-St Paul

2. Washington DC

3. Portland Oregon

4. San Francisco

5. Denver

Oklahoma City is in last place and St. Louis is 31 while Chicago is 27 and Kansas City 28

I believe Washington DC earns its place at the top, when you visit there you just do not see overweight people except tourists.

What is going on in St. Clair County?

Judges and probation officers being charged and investigated for cocaine use and distribution.