respublica

An inexplicable crash

Our daughter lives in Montgomery County, Maryland and over the weekend they lost power to their home as did 85,000 other county residents. The power was out for most of the night, but I believe it's finally been restored this morning. This happened when a small plane crashed into a local power line tower on Saturday. Two people were in the plane and suffered serious, but not life threatening injuries.

Not having power is rather miserable and cold at this time of year. I still haven't heard how the plane managed to hit a major power area but i did read power finally came back this morning.

All those old forgotten photos

A couple of years ago Vince Herr noticed that I was interested in photography and Collinsville and Holy Cross. He was something of a hobby photographer in his years and dealt mainly with slides. He photographed many Holy Cross and other Collinsville scenes in color. One year when we were at the funeral home, he came down from upstairs and handed me several slide boxes of his and wanted me to have them.

Over the years I looked at them by holding them up to a window or a light. I really wanted to see them bigger and in print or digital, but time passed and life entered in and I kind of forgot them. Recently I've been on a Holy Cross committee working on how to celebrate the anniversary of the church and these slides popped into my head. Maybe they will be of some interest.

A couple of years ago I bought a little machine which turns slides into digital. I did a few of the churches ladies from years ago making apple butter outside the school. Yesterday when I was ready to look at some of the slides, I could not find the bracket that goes into the machine with the slides in it. I have the bracket for negatives, but the slide one has disappeared. So what does a person do? That person goes to Amazon and has them send me a new slide bracket. Comes today.

Here is one of Vince's slides from an older year of making apple butter. The Catsup bottle shows in the background.

In news other than our tech issues

Yesterday Dale and I went to Walgreens and received a Covid booster and a flu shot. To be honest, I was not thrilled about getting both at once, but Dale felt it just fine, medical experts had no problem with it, Dale said.

So far so good as far as any after affects besides two rather sore upper arms. No fever or chills as have occurred in other flu shots. Hopefully we're done with all this for a while. What a ridiculous week this has been so far and it's only Tuesday.

It's the small things that make us wonder

A couple of days ago I woke up to Dale telling me there was a soft drink cup along the curb across the street from our house. This was an odd piece of information to wake up to so I went to the front door and looked out. Sure enough a cup. Now this may not seem like much, but we rarely have litter on the street much less a soft drink cup just standing perfectly. We talked about who may have put it in such an odd spot. We doubted it was anyone who was at the American Legion. If someone had tossed it out their car window it probably would not have been sitting straight up. Maybe someone walking down the street? Probably not, unless you live beyond us, there is rarely foot traffic.

But it hasn't moved in this the third day and I am about to go get it and pitch it. Picking up someone else's litter isn't my favorite thing because of possible germs. I know, I'm weird this way.

It just goes to show how little is going on right now that a lone soda cup becomes fascinating. click the photos to enlarge and see better.

 

 

A look back in time

This photo showed up on Dale's Facebook memories link today and it really took me back. He was at his desk in the St. Salvator Lutheran Church parsonage in Venedy, Illinois. This must have been taken in 1976 or thereabouts because I was beginning my fascination with photography and had set up a darkroom where I developed black and white film. So much has changed and nothing has changed. He still has a deck filled with papers, shelves lined with books and keepsakes. This image shows just the start of his collection of things. We no longer have that electric typewriter thankfully.

At last the fence has been renewed

For some time now our parts of our back fence has either been in the process of being replaced or refreshed. It's been in place for many years and needed work. Dale took off some boards early in the spring and replaced them with new, but, boy does the wood fade fast. So last week I went out and bought stain, brushes and rollers and got to work on both sides of one area. It looks so much better. Not the hardest job I've ever done, but it was messy at times as well as fighting off our back neighbor's three dogs who came along and wanted to play. Their idea of playing was to keep jumping on me until both of my legs and arms were scratched and bleeding.

That's life.

The before and after both on the back side facing our nest door neighbor's yard.

And the side facing into part of our backyard where we have the raised vegetable beds. I've taken out most of the plants, but left two tomato plants with the hope I can still save some

The Apple obsession has gone too far

We've had Apple iPhones and iPads for many years, so long that we take it all for granted. However, this season the St. Louis Cardinals must have received a boatload of money from this company because they have been using it several times in ways that leave out many fans. A couple of weeks ago an important game was only televised on Apple TV. Many local fans were irate over this because they did not have Apple TV. We sure don't.

Today Dale has the opportunity to go the the first Cardinals playoff game with three other friends. Unfortunately to get into the game with the tickets the team won't accept the actual ticket or a QR code, but must have an Apple ID. Dale cannot find his Apple ID which has pretty much upset the whole morning. This Apple business seems unfair and almost obnoxious. The Cardinal owners must really have gotten a big payday.

What about anyone who does not have an Apple iPhone? How do they get into this game?

If Dale does get in he is with 3 others who have gotten the season seats of a company they have worked with over the years and will be sitting in the second row behind home plate, a bit to the left as you see it on the screen. If you don't see Dale, you'll know why.

Cleaners and other things

Most days it seems as though we are past the days when Covid caused all kinds of shut downs and out of stock items in stores. But, there are still things everyone seems to be buying leads to empty areas in stores. The one item I can rarely find these days is Kellogg Vanilla Protein Drinks. Over the past few years Dale has made it a habit to drink one of these with his lunch and until Covid, I could always find them in area grocery stores. Then suddenly they were out of stock in local stores and haven't come back. Schnucks and Dierbergs still have not gotten the Vanilla but always have chocolate or strawberry, flavors Dale is not interested in.

Then some weeks ago I discovered Walmart carries these and always had Vanilla in stock. Until this past weekend. I guess lots of people really like Kellogg Vanilla protein drinks. But, today they are restocked which is one of those HURRAY days around here. And the best part? The very best part? A four pack at Walmart is 5.98 and before the other two grocery stores ran out of them the cost was 9 something at Dierbergs and 8 something at Schnucks. So many times Walmart is a wonderful place.

Also, since Covid, it has been hard to find a cleaners. The Collinsville cleaners we always went to shut down for good it seems. There really aren't many of these businesses anymore, maybe a drive to St. Louis. But  then we learned about Premium Cleaners in Fairview Heights, a newer business, and they have been fantastic. I'm picking up a load of cleaning today including a comforter. Comforters are impossible to wash in our machine and going to a laundromat is still not for me since Covid. The Premium people are great. It is on the east side of 159 south of the Mall area.

This is how I've always felt

Math beyond 6th grade was always Greek to me. And don't get me started on chemistry formulas.

These are the times

The past week has been just crazy. There has been so much to do in the garden, our daughter came in from DC for a few days, and we woke up this morning to find that what we believe are raccoons, just destroyed our back deck. So what with having to keep up with basic things, now we deal with raccoons.

Those raccoons (more than one we have to believe) even knocked over a strong, stone bird bath we have on the deck. Both the bowl and stand fell. Also a large glass vase we had out there with pussy willow stems was knock over. Not to mention a drying rack I had hung onions to dry. They were down as well although we deduced coons don't care much for onions.

It's just been one thing after another lately.