respublica

What's happened Olives?

This just shocks and maddens me. Been buying black olives recently? Well, for whatever reason the producers are calling tiny olives large olives. The large olives are no where near the size we used to get. They are smaller than the normal small olives.

Can we blame this on Covid too? Has there been a problem with growers? Bad year for some reason. But it hasn't been just this year, I've noticed this size reduction for some time. I'd like to know the reason and may buy a can of small olives and compare the size.

It's just darn annoying.

Who's Running?

Watching the news several times a day, I've become frustrated with political discussions around the coming presidential election. This is just my opinion, but just why is it that it is taken for granted and accepted that there are only two candidates. Biden for the democrats and Trump for the Republicans. Does neither party have anyone else? Both of these men are too old and their age manifests itself in different ways, none good or promising.

By going along with this current view, our country will not have a president we can count on to do the job. Someone please step up and counter each of them.

Are you a good person?

There is now something named  The Shopping Cart Theory which tells your or others if you are a nice person.

"To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right.”“There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it.”

I rather like this because I see people in grocery/Walmart/ Home Depot etc, just leave their carts next to their parking spot and leave. Most of us have learned to get the cart to the corral, but I'm always shocked at where not so nice people will leave their cart when leaving the stores. Too often they leave it in the empty spot next to their car, or in front of the other car.  Most grocery parking lots have quite a few cart corrals and if you can walk all over the store pushing that cart you can walk it 15 feet more to where it should go.

Also, those who do go to the corral, but put their small cart in the large cart slot and vice versa, drive me crazy too. Anyhow, there is probably no changing many people, but I do push wayward carts into the corrals if I see them. I  wonder if any of the people who don''t do what they should with their cart ever wonder if the store parking lot has cameras? I bet they do.

Obsessing about trash

I admit I am all about getting trash put into bags and out into the cart. I don't like it sitting around. Two weeks ago Republic Services completely forgot to pick up our streets. We are Tuesday pick-up and that week it did not come. We figured there must be a reason since the guys who do our street are very reliable, never miss, always early and friendly. So that week we just figured a truck was broken down and it would be picked up on Wednesday. But it was not. Thursday came and no pick up. It became obvious to the neighbors that we may well have been forgotten. On Friday we called twice, first me and then Dale later. We learned that others were calling as well. Finally a truck came at 4 Friday afternoon just as the Legion fish fry traffic was coming down the street.

I was glad to finally have what turned out to be almost two weeks of trash finally gone, but still wondered what happened.

Now today our trash is again sitting at the curb with no pick up. We realize the 4th of July holiday moved us all back one day. But today is that day and it is getting late. The fact that our drivers have always been very reliable makes this more worrying.

I'm stressed over this because of the heat and a worry they may make us wait til next week. For quite awhile I received texts from Republic if there was something new or a delay issue. I guess that is in the past.

Update. Finally got the trash picked up late in the afternoon. Thankful

It's a very very smokey, noisy time of year

Leave it to some neighbors to not let fireworks stay in official display areas. Last night the people behind us decided it would be great to stand by their front door and shoot of fireworks. Problem was, their front door is very close to our wood fence and garage as well as our next door neighbor's new wood fence. The shooting and smoke and probably hot embers went on for a couple of hours. I was pretty much beside myself hoping against hope none of the flaming parts fell and started a big fire. I could really conceive of all this hot stuff setting one thing after another on fire.

Here are two pictures I took of how much smoke filled the area behind our yard. Just now the guy who was doing this standing with his family right against his own back door, came out and set one more blast off. I'd guess we'll see more of the same tonight. But our next door neighbor did finally call the police who came out very quickly and told those people to desist. We shall see tonight.

Updates and more updates

Speaking as someone who has owned an iPhone and iPad for years, I am thoroughly miffed at the constant demands for updating apps and even the entire device. What this too often does is make a mess of things. Update and then fill in the user name and password. again and again for each thing. I'm not one who uses the same password for each program or app which means having to find my list of these things and hope I haven't changed anything and forgot to write it down.

Yesterday a game I've played for two years which helps me settle my brain down or relax when I've been doing too much physical work on the house or in the yard, now demands I update to the newest version-16 something. My iPad can't do this until I update it to 16. My iPad is too old and can't do it. So what this means is, forget this Word Search game or buy a new iPad. We recently got new iPhones so I am not in the mood or position to buy a new iPad. I just hate all this.

But Apple isn't the only tech device which wants updating. My laptop is the same way and all of this is getting on my nerves. This seems so wrong in many ways by these tech companies.

What the grocery store shopping cart says about you

I rather liked this no hold bars description of what grocery shoppers do or don't do with their carts. As someone who goes to Schnucks almost every day for one reason or other, I've seen a lot of lazy people leaving their carts in any old spot or putting a large cart in the small cart corral or vice versa. This kind of drives me nuts. How hard is it to do it the right way? This description is titled, "The Shopping Cart Theory" or, "The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing."

Click to enlarge

Yes We Have No Raccoons Today

Our raccoon guy came yesterday and took away two of these animals who got themselves into the cage traps and he replaced the cages with two more. This morning we had none! No raccoons or even a ground hog. Oh happy day.

However, Dale did mention that the past several years the raccoons were more likely to have shown up in July. I just hope not.

Raccoon update

Yesterday our longtime animal remover, John, came and put a few cages around the house and our neighbor's house. And just like that this morning we found raccoons in two of them. The worst one was the raccoon who had been taking up residence in the ceiling of the garage. Not a ceiling, really just an area in the beams which had sheets of ply wood up there.

That garage raccoon went into the cage which was placed right inside the door and he is really really mad. He growls loudly whenever one of us goes near and raises those long arms with the long sharp finger nails. The second raccoon was in a cage up against our front porch. This one seems smaller and has not interacted like the other one.

I'm tired of this happening every single year around this time.

Well, guess who's back

Every single year around this time we get raccoons in our yard. We really believed we would be free of them this year, but no. This morning we were standing our our deck looking down at the garden when all of a sudden a big raccoon ambled down our driveway and into the garage. Once in the garage we heard him making his way into the rafters. The past few years we had a critter control guy come out and trap them. The last two years he took away 6 or 7 until we had to stop. It got too expensive. But this is really ridiculous that we get these cute, but very mean, animals every year.

The picture is not the one from today, but last year. Today's is much bigger.