respublica

Illinois' big new year

A couple of things of interest to those who live in Illinois, and that will be us come next summer.

New taxes and fees on driving will add up to 1.98 Billion dollars. That's new taxes on top of taxes already in effect. This is outrageous. Supposedly all this new money will be used to prop up infrastructure. Where have we heard this before.  You can see the new taxes for drivers here.

These taxes may have something to do with this figure: Illinois has lost more population over the pasts decade than any other state. A large percentage of that drop came just over the last year as the state's population lost more than 51,000 people between 2018 and 2019 alone.

Rebuild Illinois is Governor Pritzger's new motto. But rebuild for whom?

To make this work, there must be a need for people to pay them and those people need jobs. Illinois' job growth is going down fast. Last month alone Illinois saw 17,200 jobs lost. In Missouri last month showed a gain of 11,310 jobs. Here is a list of all the states showing jobs lost or gained.

Moving the dust around

We've spent the weekend in Collinsville with the plan to attempt to remove all the dust which accumulated after our basement water treatment mess. The basement floor was jackhammered all the way around and drywall was taken down which meant we now have no water problems, but the dust has never wanted to go away. There was a point where everytime I was at the house, I came down with what seemed like a bad cold, but was really just from the lingering dust. 

So, I decided this was it. That dust was going away. I shopped vac-ed all the basement floors until I was about out of my mind, and then washed them all down. It seemed better, it has to be. Then I went to the main floor and vacuumed twice. Once with an older vacuum I didn't care if it got messed up and then with our newer one. Followed that up with a complete dusting of any surface as well as cleaning the hardwoods with a cleaner made for them. I changed all the bedding and then carried out food from Bandanas.

I have to say we both slept a lot better. We've put this job off because Thanksgiving and Christmas took precedence. Dale just will not get out of that basement. He's made himself a new office and has plans for new walls. Frankly, if we are going to move back her next June, we need to focus more on the other two floors. But it is what it is. Some progress has been made.

Number memories

Can you remember your childhood phone number? I bet you can no matter how old you are. Mine was Pullman 5-3675, dialed as PU 5-3675. That was during the years we lived on the south side of Chicago. When we moved to the suburbs, the number was Terrace 2-9296, dialed as TE-2-9296.

What weird things we remember when we can't even remember what we had for dinner last night.

Mattresses in the news

It seems buying mattresses online is a big thing these days and many people are taking advantage of the accompanying free trials offered by the sellers. It seems you can buy a mattress online and have a 100 days free trial and when that time ends, the buyer has it sent back and does it all over again with another brand. Somehow they get out of really paying for their mattresses and can pull this stunt for years. For every offer there will be those who know how to game the system.

Frankly I wouldn't buy a mattress online much less have the nerve to keep sending one or more back. But, mattresses are interesting things. They are hard to give up because you become so used to them and the areas where you can best nestle in to sleep. Who really wants to break in a new one? Plus going to the mattress store and testing their firmness of softness is just weird. But when your mattress has begun to give up you know it's that terrible time to begin the search for a new one.

And the worst part is not getting a new one into the house around corners or up stairs, it's what to do with the old one. That disposal part is probably why we hang onto our too long. Maybe so many mattresses fall off cars or trucks onto highways is the way some people have found to dispose of theirs.

Christmas!

We had one of those Christmases when everyone was in a good humor. The boys had fun, the parents didn't have to watch them every minute, the dinner was easy and the weather was sunny and warm. Nice day. I'll admit Christmas dinner prep and clean-up was so much physically easier than Thanksgiving. No turkey on Christmas, we had a big beef tenderloin roast which I got at Schnucks and used all the store rewards points I'd been saving since this summer. Schnucks customer rewards is one of the best store rewards of all of them. The points given each time you shop add up to real dollars taken off your bill at check-out.

Here is a quick look at family this year.

Katie and Charlie's two boys, Drew and Jake. Perfect poses.

Lizzie and Darren's boys, Christian, Nick and Connor. Also perfect poses.

My sister sent me this painting of Ferdie she had made and it made my day.

Katie got into the Ferdie memories as well with this wine glass.

Connor wanted another giant bear for Christmas. 3 of our grandsons love the big bears and have bedrooms full of them. So I couldn't help myself, it's such a sweet thing. I rather like cuddling up with them myself.

 

After the day ended Dale and I took a walk through the campus to see all the Christmas lights. It was quiet and calm.

A line for the ages

This is the line at Kruta's Bakery in Collinsville this morning.

Unreal  Glad we went yesterday

We Women sure have changed

Maybe a better word than changed would be, evolved. This old bit of advice to women from the Singer Sewing Machine manual in 1949 is quite something. I can believe this is advice given sincerely and taken as such, but wow that is a blast from the past. click it to enlarge if your can't read it well.

Woman worries, 1949

Sour wraps

Did you realize that dill pickles are showing up in everything lately? I've casually noticed recipe stories on this fad, but didn't spend much time thinking about it. But now I know this is quite the food fad. Dill pickle wrapped various cheeses, meats, etc. There are dill pickle dips and dill pickle cheese balls. One food writer said, " unless you are one of those people that doesn’t like dill pickles — who can resist those little pickle wraps?"

I guess I'm in the 'don't care for dill pickles" category. They seem much too sharp and sour to me, pickle is all I can taste. But if you love having them in everything these days, here are some ways to fix them.

What a great piece of news

Yesterday the weekly ranking of large school high school basketball teams in Illinois came out and Collinsville was number one! It's been a long time since something this awesome has happened in Kahoks country.

A visit to the milk truck

We went to a lunch meeting with two of our seminary staff people yesterday and afterward made them come with us to see the restoration progress of Dale's milk truck. We were in the area so Dale thought, "why not".

It's just about finished, they even turned on the engine for him.