respublica

One hilarious, over the top, prediction

This headline and story seems like a reach to me:

"Consumers may not see lower prices until the latter half of 2022."

How on earth could they know this?

Morning ear splitting noise

We have the habit of getting up early and watching Morning Joe on MSNBC for an hour and then at 6 flipping to channel 5 in St. Louis. What is so grating with channel 5 is how very loud the commercials are in the morning. I mean, really really loud often preceded by some sort of loud whooshing noise.

What is the point of this sound change from normal news reports and commercials that early?

Hot Air

Early last evening we realized the second floor was very hot even though the fan was running. Dale thought maybe that air conditioner's setting box needed new batteries. That did not work to cool things down so I started exploring options as to why. The filter was clean. So I went out to look at the outside unit and it was not running. The fan for the inside unit was running but not for the big one.

What to do? I finally googled what this might mean. The most common explanation was a problem with the capacitor.  More googling let me know that a homeowner can actually buy a capacitor and replace it. That won't happen here even though it does sound pretty easy. One piece of advice to learn if this is the issue was to slide a thin wooden stick through the fan grate outside and gently nudge the blades. If the blades take off and start running it's probably the capacitor. If the blades don't take off, it's probably the fan motor.

I tried this nudging the blades trick and the fan did not take off on it's own. Maybe I was too gentle, but most likely we may be looking at a motor. Either way, it's not a job for us so we called Viviano's who've worked with us several times and someone will be out between 9 and noon.

I am thankful this company does not have a worker shortage.

It was really hot upstairs last night after a day in the 90's, but fortunately, the night got nice and cool. We'd opened the windows and put a normal fan on which cooled things after a few hours. It was actually rather nice to have open windows.

Update: It turned out to be a bad, old, thermostat. It was Don Viviano who came here, a most cheerful and nice guy who knew his stuff.

The Old Farmers Almanac is at it again

They predict a terrible winter for America. But if you read this article, the terrible-ness is located mainly up north and the northeast. Big swaths of the country will be 'not so cold, not so wet.'

I'd be interested in knowing if weather people look back after winters to see if the Almanac was correct. I know we don't. How often are they right?

Good-Bye to These Restaurant chains

It appears that lots of familiar restaurants are beginning to close their doors. We've all probably been to many of these over the years and even though we may not go much anymore, they are part of our city landscapes.

The reasons for all this are probably many, not least of which is the pandemic. We stopped going out to eat for almost a year and now that we're ready to try again, there aren't enough workers. Some places just got sloppy and unpleasant-think Steak and Shake.

Here is the list

Ours is to question why

Every day brings more questions. The biggest question here is just why is it still so hard for businesses to get workers? This is a serious question. Where have all the former workers gone and what are they doing for income.

Every place seems to be hiring or wanting to hire with no result. Just try to get tree trimmers or home improvement people and on and on. This is just one area. Restaurants are begging for workers as are so many other commercial outlets.

What are people doing for income? I can't believe the government payouts which came with the pandemic are enough to get by on for this long. Is this money still being sent? If so, maybe it should stop. On the other hand, the argument from many is that wages are too low and not worth the effort.

Nothing makes sense.

We've tried for a year to get tree trimmers which we really need. Truthfully we haven't called them every week of the year, but when we do the call goes to answering machines and we never get a call back. Oddly, during major community events, these companies are present handing out their business cards. It's very frustrating. We'd be happy just to get on a schedule, they don't have to come tomorrow.

This is just one thing, many businesses have had to close due to no employees. It's bizarre.

It's Covid advice weekend

Partnering with the post below, this article warns us of 6 places we still should not go if we want to steer clear of potential Covid germs. I'm a sucker for this sort of thing and these 6 things basically mean not going anywhere. They run the gamut of everything from crowded indoor events to in-door dining to bars, theaters, churches and public transportation.

About the only thing we've done is go to church and I doubt we will stop going. The others, well, we miss going out to dinner but haven't yet.

How to tell the difference

This article tells us how to tell the difference between a cold or allergies and Covid. This comes at the right time since Fall is a big time for allergies what with leaves drying and falling and other summer plants dying and giving off mold etc. The other day I was pulling out euonymous vines and it wasn't until I'd finished that I remembered in past years I was really allergic to this plant. So I worried I may get set upon again and not know if it was the allergy or Covid. Or, maybe what would people around me think. Thankfully nothing happened this time.

But, the main difference in symptoms is with Covid you quickly lose you sense of smell and/or taste while with a cold or allergies most often not.  The article advises that if you aren't sure, do the smell test. Go around the house/fridge and smell stuff.

Odd, but advice is often that way.

It's Fall and the vegetables know it

As much a I hate to do this, it seems to be time to start pulling out most of our spent vegetable plants. We've had a banner year and I hate to see all this go. It has been so great to go out to the backyard and pluck off some beautiful tomatoes and herbs for dinner. Not to mention the fantastic yield we had earlier of onions and potatoes and radishes and lettuce and garlic. Everything did so well, but my favorite was probably the potatoes. They produced well and the taste was just out of this world. Thankfully I still have some stored in a dark, cool place in the basement. I peeled and frozen quite a few Roma Tomatoes for winter as well as some Keller's sweet corn.

A couple of weeks ago I planted some more radish seeds and they are now growing really well. We also have 3 more cantaloupes and they are close to ripe. Oh, and, for some reason we found more potato plants popping up, probably from some pieces of the original group. I read up on this and learned that fall potatoes should actually bear, even though their leaves won't go brown when ready as they do in spring. Probably be smaller as well, but I'm pretty excited to find out.

But, as the annual flowers and vegetable stems get pulled out, the city yard waste pick-up guy is going to hate us.

Seasons change

Yesterday was the first day of Fall. Good-bye summer and with it the longer days. Oddly, we won't be changing our clocks back an hour until November 7th at 2 a.m. But, no matter how we try to keep longer daylight, we can't fool Mother Nature. It will be dark earlier whatever we do.