respublica

A bit of this and that

We have been really impressed with Collinsville's City Scoop monthly news mailing. This month was especially good, great color photos, lots of information. Kudos to whoever is putting this together these days.

I grieve over the fact that our house is situated in such a direction that we are never able to see a rainbow. Too many big bushy trees blocking the sky in our neighborhood to see a rainbow.

It would be a huge benefit if we could find a way to kill Bermuda grass without endangering other plants. Pulling this is the gardening version of the Greek mythology story of Sisyphus being punished by having to push a giant boulder up a steep hill. When he neared the top, the rock would roll back down and he had to start again and again.

On that same Bermuda grass issue, there seems to be no product that will kill it without harming other things.

One of the harder things to do is put a new key on that darn circular key ring. Many fingernails have cracked while trying to pry the sides of the ring open enough to slide on the new key or take an old one off. Someone suggested using a small staple remover to open up the ring. Sounds like a great idea.

We still have a few Hummingbirds hanging around and it concerns me. Most have headed off to wherever they go for the winter, but these smaller ones don't seem to have gotten the message.

 

This is one old fashioned word

I was reading a news column this morning and halfway through the writer stopped me with the use of the word "athwart". Now I don't know about anyone else, but the definition of this rarely used word escaped me. The sentence said in part, "too often it has stood athwart history."

I looked up athwart. And the definition given kind of made me laugh because I just can't imagine most of us using the word. The most general definition is "side to side". "From one side to another, across." "a long counter thrown athwart the entrance."

"The stars which shoot athwart the night.""after it enters the Gulf of Mexico, the hurricane is predicted to advance athwart to the Texas coastline."

I mean, who says stuff like this? In any event I stopped reading and moved on to something else. So my best guess as to what the writer was indicating was, the group changed their opinions from one thing to another too often.

This lawsuit is for the birds

Over the years there have been many frivolous lawsuits, but this one takes the cake.

"Anyone who purchased chicken in Missouri or Illinois from Jan. 1, 2009 through Dec. 31, 2020 could be eligible to receive money."  Who didn't?

If you bought chicken from the grocery store over the last decade, you could be in line for a cut of a $181 million class-action settlement.

A number of poultry producers were sued and accused of conspiring to restrict the supply and fix the price of chicken.

 

Seriously? This would involve almost everyone in the country. However the absurdity comes when all us chicken buyers realize the effort involved in being a beneficiary of this money would be more trouble than the money would be worth. And the payout would be almost nothing, except for the lawyers.

 

Banking changes

When we first moved to Collinsville back in 1981, we chose Home Federal Savings and Loan as our bank and have continued with them all these years. But in recent times the name and ownership has changed. It went from Home Federal to Best Hometown Bank to its current, 1st National Bank of Waterloo.

We haven't noticed too much difference except most if not all of the employees are different from the earlier manifestations of that bank. However, I've been frustrated since late last week with the drive-up ATM machine being "Temporarily out of service."

It was down Friday and it was still down yesterday. There are times I want to carry cash instead of using my debit card for smaller purchases and this is driving me nuts. The other day I ended up using the ATM at what used to be named the Bank of Edwardsville but is now something which starts with a B. It worked thankfully. But what heck is going on with our ATM?

Emissions testing

A few weeks ago I received a postcard notice reminding me that I needed to get a new license plate sticker. This was to be done in conjunction with an emissions test. Ugh. The issue for me was the emissions test. It's a bit of a hassle since there are very few places which are certified by the state to perform this test. Granite City (Pontoon Beach) or Swansea (Fairview Heights). Nothing in Collinsville. You'd think as populated as St. Clair and Madison Counties are, there would be more options.

In any event I head off to Swansea this morning to get this over with. But. I called the Air Team business with a question, all I got was a very long recorded message telling me to go to their website and everything I needed to know or do was there. Except there was no option for talking to someone which I wanted to do because not everything was actually on the site.

While my mailed card said we needed an emissions test, the website told me it was not needed. So before I make the trip, I wanted to know which of the two was correct. In the end, I'm making the trip and am interested in just why the contradiction.

What's the deal with Vinegar?

When I was in Schnucks this morning I looked for vinegar which we need. I must have gone up and down most of the food aisles 3 times and couldn't find the vinegar. Finally I went back to the relish aisle and found the vinegar shelves were empty, How is this possible? Of all things a run on vinegar? Or is this a shipping issue? But still, how much vinegar goes out the door normally?

It's so weird, the things grocery stores are out of.

Someone had way too much time on his hands

The FTC, Federal Trade Commission, is investigating why so many ice cream machines in various McDonald's are constantly broken. The FTC!  "The FTC wants to learn how suppliers and equipment are reviewed, and whether or not restaurant owners are allowed to work on the machines in their own stores."

There is also a 24-year-old ice cream fan fed up with McDonald’s oft-broken machines managed to reverse-engineer the McDonald’s app to create a map of every broken soft serve machine in the United States.

This is hard to take in. The FTC and a computer guru care enough about McDonald's ice cream machines to go to this much trouble. I have never given a thought to having ice cream at McDonald's but it seems many have.

Here is the map that guy put together. Click to enlarge.

When it comes to advice they can't get their act together

Last week a medical report from the American Heart Association concluded that drinking 3 glasses of red wine a day can help maintain healthy blood pressure levels as well as other health benefits.

This morning this from Dr. Gregory Marcus, a professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University of California San Francisco: "Having one glass of wine or a can of beer immediately raises the risk of experiencing atrial fibrillation, or AFib, an irregular heartbeat that can sometimes be fatal, a new study shows."

So which is it guys? And the medical experts often wonder why we are skeptical.

We often forget about the lampshades

This is going to be a long and busy day so I needed this laugh. An article on how to clean lampshades, something I'd bet we all neglect. I normally notice the dust on the lamps very infrequently and when I dust them I use one of those dry, Swiffer Sweeping cloths I get a Walmart. These work well, have some static in them that sucks up dust.

But here are a few suggestions in the story which defy belief.

For a fabric shade: first dust off with a cloth and then fill the bathtub with enough warm water to cover at least half your lampshade, and add a few drops of gentle liquid laundry detergent. Place the lampshade in the water. If it is very soiled, let it soak for around 10 minutes. Make sure you turn the shade to saturate all sides equally.Dip your microfiber cloth in soapy water and wipe down the lampshade from top to bottom. Then drain the tub and refill it with warm water. Place the shade in clean water to remove the soap. Finally put the shade on a towel to air dry.

I would never do this.

Paper shades. Dust with a microfiber cloth, use some dampness if needed. Get rid of any grease stains by rotating a crustless piece of white bread around it. Seriously?

Glass lampshade: put in dishwasher. I don't think so.

Someone has way too much time on her hands.

So Illinois people have an accent?

It seems we do have an accent although it's quite tame. This link has a list of all the words we speak differently than people in other places.

• 89.20% of Illinoisans pronounce "Aunt" as "ant." Only 3.65% say it like "Awnt."
• 58.12% of Illinoisans pronounce "Been" as "Bin." 35.12% say it like "Ben."
• 59.55% pronounce "Caramel" as "Car-ml." 18.95% pronounce it as "Carra-ml." 16.1% use both.
• 64.66% of us pronounce "Coupon" as "Coo-pon." 33.43% say "Cyoo-pon."
• 53.68% of Illinoisans pronounce "Crayon" as "Cray-ahn." 25.33% say "Cran."
• 88.88% pronounce "Creek" with the long e, while 3.31% say "Crick." Another 5.23% use it both ways.
• 82.31% of us pronounce "Lawyer" as "Loyer," while 14.33% say "Law-yer."
• 49.29% of Illinoisans pronounce "Mayonnaise" as "May-uh-Naze," but 40.43% of us say "Man-aze." 7.59% use both.
• 65.76% of us use two syllables to pronounce "Poem," while 34.24% use only one syllable.
• 53.93% pronounce "Really" as "Reely," but 25.68% of Illinoisans say "Rilly."
• 38.23% of us pronounce the word "Realtor" as "Reel-tur," but 39.15% say it with three syllables, as in "Reel-Uh-Tur."
• 77.83% of Illinois pronounce the second vowel in "pajamas" with an "A" similar to "jam" instead of an "A" similar to "father"
• 79.27% of Illinoisans put the emphasis on umBRELLa vs. UMbrella

Let me just say, I'm glad we say Reely instead of Rilly.