respublica

Hunting the elusive Bengay

A couple of months ago Dale pulled or tore a large muscle in his lower abdomem, or probably rather, his Inguinal ligament. Let's be frank, it was groin pain. He'd been shoveling lots of compost and mulch into the back of a campus gator and then unshoveling it all into planting beds. He did this for one entire weekend and woke up the Monday after with lots of pain. We tried a few things to help such as ice, ibuprofen but not much helped. I then went out and got a tube of Bengay and for whatever reason this helped enormously and put an end to the suffering. 

Well. Thursday he spent a good part of the day in the heat trying to dig and pull out tree roots. Surprise. He tore or pulled the same thing. And, we had no Bengay. He went out to get some but Walgreens did not have Bengay so he settled of a tube of Linocaine. This only eased things for a short time before the soreness returned. After lunch he was really feeling bad (men! they just can't take a little pain) so I went on the search for Bengay. First I did a google search of nearby places like, yes Walgreens, maybe he just didn't see it. That website said, no Bengay so I tried the Schnucks website for Collinsville. Nope. 

And then I forced myself to check Walmart and sure enough they had it. But, it was now mid after noon on Saturday. I dreaded facing the full parking lot and store at this point. I felt bad for him, though, so I headed off. But! One place I rarely give much thought to in Collinsville is the Walmart Neighborhood Market. This store is much smaller than normal Walmarts and is mainly food and cleaning products and pharmacy things. Plus beer and wine.I decided to go in there first and I am sure glad I did. It's a very brightly lit, clean, and not crowded store. I breezed to the pharmacy area and found the Bengay right away. Self-checked out as the only person near any of the check out lines and home I went.

I don't know why I never think of this store, I will surely go back.

Funny, my spell check does not approve of the words Bengay, Schnucks, or Collinsville. 

If one mask is ok, two or three are better

It never ends, this changing of advice about how best to protect ourselves from the coronavirus. We've all just about become adjusted to wearing a mask in public and now the experts are claiming that we should be wearing two or even three masks.

And if that isn't enough, 75 hand sanitizers have been re-called due to Methanol.

I can't even.

And one more virus related behavior: Super Speeding

The Iowa State Patrol and Iowa Department of Transportation said citations for speeding over 100 mph have increase 84 percent compared to the four-year average. The Iowa State Patrol released data from speeding violations that showed 1,635 drivers exceeded the speed limit by 25 mph or more from January 1 through June 10. Most speeders are male between the ages of 14 (!) and 29.

Iowa state police are calling them super speeders and they have noted a pattern of speeders "on Iowa’s roads since the start of the Pandemic. At last check, it reported a 113% increase in speeding citations of more than 100 mph compared to the four year average.

Ever driven through Iowa? Or Kansas? etc? I wonder if the same data may be true for other states. It's easy to blame everything on the pandemic but this could well be true in this case. Too many days with nothing to do, no sports, parades, festivals and too many young guys with too much energy and no where to go with it.. But driving that fast an lead to disaster, surely these guys know this.

No volume, he said

We still haven't had our smart tv replaced which was broken by the movers, but having the Roku set up in the bedroom has been very handy. But I had to laugh at Dale's vague understanding of most tech things. He got rather addicted to watching a Netflix series on the history of ancient Rome while we were still at the seminary. Once we got the Roku going this week he was thrilled to go back to watching how horribly the Romans killed each other. That was my impression on the series anyway.

So last night he went up to the bedroom, pulled a chair in front of the tv and watched all this again. Each episode is 45 minutes long and I'd guess he watched two last night. I went up to see how he was doing and was surprised he was sitting so close to the screen and he said, "the sound is really low on this series for some reason, the only way I an hear it is to sit right next to it. He couldn't find the volume control on the actual tv. When he finally shut it down for the night I went up and looked at the Roku remote and sure enough, there was the volume up and down control on the side.

Too late for him, but there is always another day.

I conquered the Roku

I'm pretty pleased with how easily setting up a Roku player was. I didn't believe I'd have the smarts to do this. I was initially stymied by the fact that I couldn't find the remote to our bedroom tv and wasted at least half an hour going through some of the boxes in the basement we hadn't unpacked yet. And, the tv in question did not have an obvious turn-on button. But when I finally found it and got it on, it wasn't long before Roku set up screen came on. 

I did a lot of going up and down stairs to set up passwords and such on the laptop, but everything I did went immediately to the roku screen on the upstairs tv. I was daunted by the time it will take to get the stations we watch most. Roku screens are filled with all kinds of program icons and choices. It seems, and you may know, Frank, but each of the programs we want in there have to be activated by going to their websites. It takes time and I'm not at all sure where they end up.

But we have some of the news channels and HGTV. Also Netflix. Today I'll try to make sense of how these show up on the screen. And, whatever shows we have on our Spectrum account will go to the Roku tv. That's cool. But I have to spend time choosing and activating the on the computer or my iphone. 

Even better the Roku remote does everything from turning the tv on and off to letting me use my voice to control it.

Garage view

The back end of our garage is like a museum, or maybe just a hodge podge of stuff that Dale has accumulated over the years as well as wood and tools for things he's now working on. I tried to get at something I needed yesterday but gave up and just took a picture. It gives me pause each time I go in there but I also look at these things with good memories and affection.

Actually after seeing the second photo enlarged I was happy to see we still have that old pogo stick from our kids childhood.

This is old news

ABC7 News in Chicago linked to a Consumer Reports article titled: Potential Downsides of Overindulging in Alcohol

Before even reading this I wondered why CR would believe we would not have at least learned the basics in over drinking. These stories have been around forever so why now? Ah, it's another outgrowth of the Covid-19 pandemic. People have been bored, economically frightened, or trying to deal with kids home all the time.

I have to believe there has been more buying of wine, beer and spirits. Liquor sales have done pretty well from what I've seen in stores. But, in truth, so have grocery stores selling out all manner of food. Nurseries sold tons of all manner of garden supplies and plants. Hardware stores busy selling to so many doing home improvement projects. And, even pet adoption and humane societies ran out of dogs to adopt.

In the end, this story is more click bait than news. We've all learned alcohol lessons since high school and the advice here is the same. Maybe next month will come a story on the ill effects of over-eating and what foods have potential downsides.

The Gingers are back

Every now and then I've linked to a blog site written by two sisters who described their travels. After a hiatus, they're back online. Haley was moved by the whole family last week to Baltimore where she will be in graduate school. Now she's on her own in a new city and wandering around checking things out, especially the food. Her mom is the seminary's director of landscape and grounds.

Check it out.

Oops, late tally update

Mattresses 42

Ladders 44

I got busy and forgot to keep up with these things falling on St. Louis highways

More news we don't want to hear

This courtesy of the New York Times Science section:

"Flushing a toilet can generate a cloud of aerosol droplets that rises nearly three feet. Those droplets -- which could be laden with coronavirus particles -- may linger in the air long enough to be inhaled by a shared toilet’s next user."

This is why I don't want to travel anywhere by car and have to use rest stops or fast food bathrooms.