respublica

Off to LA

We're leaving for Los Angeles today, the whole family will be at the Rose Parade because Dale is riding on the Lutheran Hour float on Monday. We have a number of things planned for out there the next couple of days and of course, the map shows southern California in the midst of a rain band. Well. What can you do? It will be January. But parade day looks chilly but sunny.

Anyhow, we're off and hope to have a fun and probably a bit of chaotic family time.

The Lutheran Hour float is slotted near the end this year, regular entries are flipped flop in the parade order from year to year. So if you want to try and see Dale, the estimated time is somewhere around 11:40 central time. We have seats in the grandstand at the beginning of the parade, under the tv cameras.

A study with a zero in it

This is interesting, a study on Homeopathic medicine from British health people found:

Homeopathy is effective for 0 out of 68 illnesses. And, it is a therapeutic dead-end.

clothes pin pain relief

Now this is a new one. Someone discovered the pain relief benefits of clipping a clothes pin on the ear. Actually, the pin is clipped to various parts of the outer ear depending on where your pain is. My first reaction to seeing this story was, "come on man." But a google search turned up lots of stories on this and if you click this Google images link you can see pictures of all the different places on the ear with a pin and what area of the body it's supposed to help.

What could it hurt to try if you have aching knees or back? All you need is a clothes pin which may be the most problematic part of all this in this day and age.

Fat Washing your drinks

My first reaction to this story in the January FeastSTL on the latest cocktail trend was no, just no.

Bartenders infuse their choice of fat (oil, milk, animal fat) into a liquor of some sort with the goal of packing cocktails with richer texture and flavor.

One local St. Louis bartender describes one of his fat infused drinks this way: "For his Lowland Jack, he first macerates pears with whiskey. To clarify the spirit of any tannic flavors from the fruit, he milk washes the batch with whole milk and strains it through a coffee filter. “What I really enjoy about the technique is the texture I get,"he says. “I still have casein [the protein found in milk] in there, but when I shake it in the drink, it acts like an egg white. I get this nice, frothy, full-bodied drink that’s very chug-able.” He has also used browned butter fat washes with bourbon and rum."

I'm still in the no column on all this, but I'm a pretty rigid eater and drinker.

 

 

Drowning in coffee cups

We are at the point where we have no place to go with all the coffee cups we have. Most are cups we've received as give a-ways and in some cases, bought on vacation. One cabinet is filled with so many cups, we've had to stack one on top of the other. The same is true in our other house. I'd love to thin the numbers out but Dale stops me because most have some nice memory attached to them.

However. We just can't accept any more coffee cups. Time to find another type of give way, every organization on earth. The same is quickly becoming true of those give away plastic or stainless water bottles. One of our cabinets has enough of those that when I open the cabinet, one or two fall out.

Portable battery chargers for phones are better, USB flash drives are good. They're small and useful and fit in a pocket, purse or drawer.

These updates

Every device and app and internet host seems to want to do updates constantly. But Apple, come on. Seems like every 6 weeks Apple comes out with a new update for iPhone and iPad and the pop-up demand for this to be done is annoying. Normally I do not update my phone or ipad right away because there always seems to be a glitch for which they will send a patch for later. So I deal with the little box that comes up by clicking, "remind me later." But this goes on a couple of times a day.

Last week I gave in and let the darn thing update and now it's pretty obvious the latest edition is a battery drainer. Big time. And probably a space hog as well, but I haven't had the energy to check how much space the latest IOS update took up.

A few things

Katie and Charlie and the two little boys had an early flight to Los Angles this morning. They chose this time so that they'd have more of the day to do things when they arrived and because early morning hours are when the boys are still groggy and not restless. But when they got to the airport they learned the flight has a two hour delay. So there they are with a just 4 year old and a 5 year old with nothing to do. The bad part of this is the practice of airlines not to explain the why of delays until the patience of passengers has run out. Then they announce, "thank you for your patience."

The Riverfront Times has a story titled, "10 bad things that will happen in 2017". I hate to admit that I checked that story out. It begins with unnecessary vulgarity which made me not want to read further. This must have been written by someone who'd been drinking all night. And the ten things are just stupid.

Amazon reports their best year in sales. I can believe this. Where else can you shop at home and get what your ordered so quickly? I did a lot of Amazon shopping for Christmas this year and was not disappointed. It works well if you know what you want. Stores are better if you don't know because you can look around for ideas.

My vote for pictures of the year comes from my brother in law who is a biker. One day last summer he was riding and came across what he thought was a new cement roadway and just kept on going despite the orange construction barrels. Turned out it was newly laid cement and his bike took an immediate stop which tossed him head first into the wet mess.

I think I've pontificated on cyclists in the past.

And the arrival of the EMT's

Garden Glow

Dale and I went to the Missouri Botanical Garden last night to walk through the lights. Us and just about everyone else in the St. Louis Metro area. Boy it was a jam packed evening. But the crowd was only difficult when trying to find a place to park, the lots were full as were all the side streets near the garden. We ended up parking practically underneath I-44, but it's worth it. Once in the door and through the massive group of people having their tickets scanned, everyone spreads out.

The tickets are very time specific. We had 6:30 as our entrance time and the outside lines have you line up according to your scheduled time. This works well actually.

I love these glow balls which change color as they rest on the water.

There's Dale

I took this next picture of our reflection in windows.

Near the end we stopped at one of the small places which sold food and drinks, got ourselves a glass of wine (me) and a Bourbon and Eggnog (Dale), and took them outside to sit next to a fire in Adirondack chairs. We people watched for a while and wouldn't you just know it, we saw quite a few people we know passing by.

The garden makes good use of lights reflecting on water.

They're doing it with mirrors

Sundrop Farm located in south central Australia has perfected a way to grow tons of tomatoes in an arid area using seawater, sunshine and mirrors. The farm is about 5 miles from Spenser Gulf and has seawater piped to them where it is then de-salted and used as irrigation for thousands of tomato plants inside a very different type of greenhouse.

The farm’s solar power is generated by 23,000 mirrors that reflect sunlight towards a 127-metre high receiver tower. On a sunny day, up to 39 megawatts of energy can be produced –  enough to power the desalination plant and supply the greenhouse’s electricity needs.

The interesting thing about this process to me is the use of seawater and the technology involved with removing the salt and ending up with fresh water. I've long believed that this could work well in parts of California which sees so many droughts. Has anyone in California begun experimenting with this? I don't know, but if they had, we surely would have heard about it.

Cousin Eddie was at Home Depot

I had to run over to Home Depot this morning because we had several light bulbs and tubes all quit at the same time, none of which were the typical lamp bulb. As I got out of my car I looked twice because I could hardly believe what I was seeing and believe me, most everyone else who pulled up gave a long stare as well.

The RV was running but no one seemed to be inside. The top was covered with old bikes, filled trash bags and bins and even filled grocery store bags hanging off the back. Plus lots of stickers slapped on the outside.

Quite amazing.