respublica

Please don't mess with the toasted ravioli

The September Feast which is a free St. Louis food magazine and distributed at local grocery stores and restaurants, has an opening column by the editor who writes about Fall bringing on comfort foods. The issue is devoted to south side St. Louis and some of the best sandwiches, slingers and other dishes. It's a great issue and has me ready to make the south city tour of many of these places.

But, a she mentions the chef at Quincy Street Bistro who "is applying his background in fine dining to the bar-and-grill fare at at his family's corner pub. Think smoked hog's head toasted ravioli...."

No, I do not want to think of toasted ravs filled with hog's head. Normally a hog's head is brined for some time (as I've seen on the Food Network), but his is a smoked head..maybe brined as well. Please don't serve me anything made with hog's head and especially, leave the most perfect appetizer alone-toasted ravioli.

Oh my cable company

This is an update to the Charter issues we had the other day at the seminary house. That episode ended well, the outage was fixed by our campus workers, but the facilities manager at Concordia had Charter come out to make sure things were copasetic. And a call was made to Charter cancelling what was to be a service call today (Saturday) between 3-5.

We're in Collinsville this weekend and ten minutes ago a Charter service man came to the door to take a look at our outage problem. At first I was just shocked and then (sorry) started laughing while I told him the issue was at our other address and not here. He, thankfully, laughed with me and told me I wouldn't believe how often this happens. This, being sent to someone's home and that someone never called Charter with a problem. 

We talked for a while and then he told me that he would record this stop as "turned away at the door" and that I should not see any charges on our bill. 

The Charter guy on the phone Thusday night obviously got the two billing addresses mixed up even when the first thing I had to tell him was what phone number was connected to the St. Louis account. The Collinsville account has a different number and should never have come up on his screen. 

Oh Charter.  This was a very congenial and knowledgeable guy today, if we'd had a problem I'm sure he could have fixed it. But part of this story really bugs me. If our seminary workers had not been able to fix our outage yesterday, I'd have been waiting over there all day for nothing because Charter sent the tech to Collinsville.

Rooftop baseball

We went to the Cardinals game last night and had tickets to the AT&T rooftop section in Ballpark Village. We had no idea what to expect as far as game viewing, but it turned out to be pretty darn cool. We could see all the action with the benefit of having the KMOX radio feed play by play piped in. You'd be surprised how much better you can follow the game with Mike Shannon et al providing information.

View of what was down below us and you can see I-64/40 near the Poplar in the middle background.

The field. The camera makes it look farther away than it actually is.

The south side of Busch looking west before the game.

And the same view after dark. We weren't sure if that dark mass of sky was a storm rolling in or nightime falling.

Would we do this again? I think so. Not only is it a calmer atmosphere but it's an easier in and out from the parking areas. But having to weave through the huge crowds on the main area of Ballpark Village is a trick.

 

Oh no 2015

They were pretty darn right last winter.

We have the best people working at Concordia Seminary

This is an update to the post below. Dale went down to the shop and described our cable issue and the fact that we were pretty sure it was an under ground line problem. Two guys from environmental services were at  the house within 20 minutes to see if they could find the line and what it looked like.  Jim, who works full time and can fix anything, brought along a student, Kyle, who works with him part time. They immediately found one end of the cable line which had separated from a second piece of line. Then with a shovel they moved some dirt and found the second.

The people working along the fence line must have pulled it apart and luckily the two portions of the line were intact, adapter and insert. The line hadn't been severed.

The cable line has been buried not more than an inch under ground which is probably much too shallow. But they were able to take off that black torn adapter piece, replace and refit. Everything working perfectly now.

This is so great, love these guys. They can do anything. Now I just have to hold the line for an hour trying to let Charter know they are not needed.

Not to get too "I told you so" about this but the buried line is exactly what I tried to tell Charter was causing the outage.

And to make things even more fantastic, two other of our students, Craig and Casey, came along and sang Happy Birthday to me while Jim and Kyle were working.

Silence around here

Yesterday morning around 8:30 our internet and TV signal suddenly went down. For most of the day I wanted to believe this was another Charter outage similar to last Saturday. By dinner time I knew better because I'd learned we were the only ones out and the timing corresponded to some work being done along our back fence line. Actually, I had gone outside when the internet went out and talked to the utility guy who'd been marking various service lines but he said not a word to me, merely unclipped something from the wall of the house and then spray painted the ground where the cable line was buried. But it was too late.

In the early evening I called Charter and got a person who insisted the tv would return soon because his information showed Charter doing something in the area. He then put me through hoops of remotely unplugging and plugging the internet modem, wireless modem and reading numbers off the back of both. I tried to tell him it was most likely a damaged in ground cable line but he wasn't having any of that. In the end he said he could get a technician out Saturday evening!

I was really exasperated by then and took it out on Dale who mainly repeated "this is how our parents lived, it wasn't so bad for them." What I do know is we're looking at 3 days of no tv or internet service and the Charter guy who's coming Saturday night is the wrong guy-an indoor guy, not the buried line guy which will mean waiting even more days.

I have been very hard to live with the past 12 hours but it's frustrating when people who deal with this sort of thing ignore me when I tell the what seems to be the issue which is that everything went out shortly after landscape growth was being cut back. And the utility company guy who brushed me off still bugs me.

Is this a funny ad or what?

A print ad for Nikol Baking Dishes with the heading: Treat Your Food to Something Good

Never heard of the Nikol company but I'll be paying more attention now.

Dan the man

Every year students work part time on grounds and landscape here at the seminary and each year there is a turnover as some graduate or head off to vicarage and new students take their place. There's a learning curve when it comes to using power equipment, but after months of on the job training even the most novice of guys becomes a pro in handling the toughest machinery. They're taught well.

Last year Jacob came on the job and by spring he was able to cut down a big oak tree all by himself while under the watchful eye of an experienced student.

This morning Jacob is watching as new Dan, a vicarage returnee and new grounds guy, gets the chainsaw.

Actually I don't believe Jacob let Dan do the actual stump removal, but we did need to get Dan on record as being part of the grounds crew.

Raccoons as we never knew them

This is a rather horrific and nightmarish article by a vet.

"I used to think raccoons were cute. That was before I started working nights. Now I honestly believe that raccoons are genuinely sadistic creatures that take pleasure in trying to kill dogs and cats."

Since we had several years of raccoons making our Collinsville property and had dozens trapped and taken away by Critter Control, this story stopped me in my tracks. Now I really worry.

This is one of our trapped raccoons. They are huge animals, not the cute, chubby creatures you see in movies or in commercials.

"Although raccoons sometimes kill cats for sport, cats generally have the good sense to steer clear of the masked animal bandits. Dogs, on the other hand, often relish a fight with a raccoon. It's a fight they almost always lose. Here is a raccoon's modus operandi when it attacks a dog: The raccoon attempts to scratch out the dog's eyes. The raccoon rolls the dog onto its back and attempts to eviscerate it. Raccoons bite and scratch with amazing speed and ferocity. Their bites often penetrate the chest wall, leading to collapsed lungs. They may penetrate the abdomen, leading to septic peritonitis. They also have a knack for lacerating the urethra, causing urine to accumulate underneath the skin, resulting in terrible scalding and possible secondary kidney failure. They are fond of knocking dogs into the canals in order to try to drown them."

We haven't seen or have been told of raccoon sightings by our neighbors this summer, but all the same, letting Ferdie out in the dark yard at night to have his last bathroom break will be kind of unnerving. I wish I hadn't read this.

Visual math

If you know me at all you know I have no head for math. Whatever side of the brain it is that understands mathematics was underdeveloped in me. But here is a cool gif that visually demonstrates the Pythagorean Theorem. (a² + b² = c²)

What you do with that information in real life however, is another matter.