respublica

What's for dinner?

I'm not much of a lunch eater so supper is important. And Dale always likes a normal meal at the end of the day, not something cold like salad. But it's getting harder to decide what to have. If you're anything like me you have a certain meal rotation that you use. I use mine because I'm familiar with the recipes and they're normally satisfying. However, they're getting boring.

When Dale is not home at dinner time I often fall back on things that are easy or something he normally would not care for. Easy is a scrambled egg sandwich, at least it's a warm meal. Or homemade macaroni which is more time consuming or soft pita with some sort of chicken or sliced steak and avocado and cheese. 

I need new ideas.

Leaf us alone

I can't believe the amount of leaves we are dealing with this fall. I thought last year was bad, but this year is just overwhelming. It's almost hard to see our Tiny Town for all the leaves, it's like a rising river threatening to drown the little buildings. There is no easy way to remove this amount of leaves, they're too deep for mowing over and just too many to rake or blow. Thankfully the campus' lawn service company will descend on us today and attempt to get rid of as many as possible.

I give all kinds of thanks for the lawn service people who do such hard work. Additionally it will be good to get the leaves out of the main campus because too many neighborhood dog walkers have used the leave cover as an excuse not to pick up after their dogs. We notice.

Highway 40 as we say around here

Back in 2007 MoDOT began a two year rebuilding I-64 (highway 40) from Spoede Road to Kingshighway. During that time much of one direction or another was closed so alternate routes had to be found going east and west. It was quite the experience back then. There was a grand opening in December of 2009 which allowed St. Louisans to walk around on parts of the new roadway. I took Ferdie over to take a look around and blogged about this afterward. We'd had Ferdie less than a year back then and looking at the pictures I am amazed at how young he looked.

All of this is in aid of thinking about how all this has worked out. It's tough to say the whole re-do has been a success, but it does look nice.  The problems have come with the short entrance and exit ramps onto and off the road. Think Hampton and Kingshighway. There is little room for error and lots of on/off ramp traffic all day long. Also westbound from Downtown has many exit ramps on the right which are exit only.

Eastbound traffic around the Brentwood/Hanley area is tricky most days what with lanes ending at certain places and lots of on ramp traffic trying to fit into the flow. So this morning a bit of a eastbound mess snarled traffic again. If you look at this picture from the traffic reporter Rodger Brand, you can easily see the issue for vehicles trying to get through this area.

Cars are coming from the west in center and right lanes while others are entering the highway from McKnight. They flow right east into what will be the exits for 170 and Brentwood which will be two exit only lanes next to each other. Traffic not getting off must get over to the left through lots of traffic. Just past that will be the dreaded Hanley exit with lots of cars entering there and finding themselves in an exit only right lane for Big Bend.

Too many exits too close together, too much traffic, too many exit only right lanes which make for collisions almost every day. I don't know how this can be fixed, but it makes for nail biting drives many days.

What social media has become

I like social media, Facebook, Twitter, etc, but too often the posts and reactions to posts in comments (especially with politics) have become almost unbearably mean and angry. So this Tweet I came across says it perfectly.

"Social media has become a replacement for yelling at the TV."

None of this negates the areas of social media which are good and helpful. And there are many.

Thanksgiving weekend

We've been busy. First came getting the house and food ready for Thanksgiving. We had Lizzie's family here as well as our former neighbor, Mary.

Before we had dinner, Lizzie took the boys around the campus for some photo ops. Here's one of the 3 of them sitting under the tree in the quad. Christmas lights dangle above.

And, throughout the whole weekend we worked endlessly getting our Tiny Town Christmas village out and lights hooked up.

Appliances drive me crazy

We've had a boatload of appliance breakdowns in recent months. Some say things like this come in 3's and it seems to be true. Our refrigerator stopped cooling, the air conditioning system stopped cooling and needed replacing, the glass window in the oven has a vertical crack and now the garbage disposal has quit. There have been more, but my mind refuses to go any further in case the dishwasher wants to join the club.

At least with the disposal I have a few things I can try to get it working again. The first thing to do will be take an allen wrench and work it around the hole on the underside of the unit. Hopefully it just got clogged over Thanksgiving and a bit of back and forth will help. But there is no wrench under there with the disposal. Most times an Allen wrench comes with the unit and is either attached or sitting under the sink somewhere. Hopefully I can find one around the house that will fit.

Yes we have no Avocados

I was surprised when I went to the grocery store this morning to get some avocados for Thanksgiving guacamole and found there weren't any to be found. At least at the Schnucks closest to us. I chalked that up to the the busyness of the season and popularity of avocados. I then went to the Maplewood Schnucks to see if they had any, since this is not as busy a store. They didn't either.

I finally walked over to one of the produce stockers at Maplewood and asked if there was an avocado shortage and he said, "yes, yes, there is. There has been an avocado shipper strike and they've been hard to get." But he thought he may have some of the more expensive Hass ones in back. I really didn't want to pay 2.99 for each hard as a rock type, but I felt desperate so said sure. When he came back he was carrying a couple of boxes of the smaller, black skinned ones which I had been looking for. He said, he found some under the other boxes and I was welcome to rummage through to see if any were worth taking. And boy was I happy. Many were too ripe, but I found 6 perfect ones. This man was so nice, it made my heart sing.

The Clayton Schnucks stockers try not to look you in the eye and distract them from their stocking. I guess this is understandable since they are so busy they have to keep re-stocking.

 

Raising the Christmas star

Yesterday a bunch of us climbed way up to the roof of Luther Tower to crank up the big lighted star which shines for miles. To say it was chilly is an understatement, but it was fun. To climb to the roof there are 3 levels of winding stairs. The wind because the tower is rounded and you go up a couple of steps, turn and do a couple more and so on. The third level is a winding iron staircase which gives many the willies. But boy, the view when you step out onto the roof.

This is my favorite look down. The colors around Luther statue were amazing in the cloudy light.

Here is what the star looked like at the beginning. After Christmas it is cranked down onto that metal rectangle which itself is a trap door right above the bells. If a bell needs to be replace a huge crane shows up, that metal door opens and the bell is hooked on. Or, someone climbs in to see what is going on with the bells.

The cranking begins. Each year we have a student who knows how to do this with a second student who learns the process to take over next year.

And it's up and of course my blog process won't turn it correctly.

Then it was time for a toast to another year of star raising.

Here we all are

And one more look down before heading back to earth.

A poll on side dishes

A group named, Survey Monday Audience conducted a national poll on the most popular Thanksgiving side dishes in various regions of the U.S.

You have to click to enlarge if your eyesight gets strained trying to make out the chart. Seeing this, my first thought was, "You've got to be kidding." One third of the country makes a big deal out of salad, another area squash? Green Bean casserole is not surprising while mac and cheese sort of is surprising even though our grandsons requested mac and cheese.

No region emphasizes stuffing? What would Thanksgiving be without stuffing?

Early sunset

Living in Barrow Alaska would take some strong mental and physical endurance. Yesterday the sun set at 1:44 p.m. and it will not rise again until 1:26 p.m. on January 22.

I don't know how they do it up there.