I’ve done the math before about how many cards I send out so I won ‘t bore you with the numbers again. The biggest category is birthday cards – that averages to about 14 cards per month.
For quite a few years, all birthday cards got the same postage stamp:
The post office also did a “Celebrate” stamp but I used those for anniversary cards and other momentous occasion cards. Then five years ago, the postal service broke my heart when they announced they were discontinuing both those stamps. Aarrgghhhh.
I had a nice supply on hand and I bought a bunch of the Happy Birthday before USPS ran out. A close friend of mine also gifted me with three sheets of them as well. I began to use them a little more sparingly. Six cards a month go to folks in one of my stamping groups – they got moved to the non-HB stamps right away. Then “outer-ring” folks stopped getting my special stash. Then the next ring in went to “regular” postage. I limped along like this for FIVE YEARS. I used the last one the first week in May.
So I was ripe for the on-line voting that USPS instituted last fall. They said they were going to bring back some older stamps and let the general public vote. The site did not have any limits about how many votes you got… .not even any limits on how many times a day you could vote; you gotta love a good loophole. I spent the entire month of September going online every morning and voting for the Happy Birthday option 20-30 times; it only took about 10 minutes a day.
My persistence paid off. They made the announcement the first of the year that my favorite stamp would be returning. They released it on April 18 although the pre-sale went up in March. The big surprise is that they did a completely new design – it’s in the header photo. I’m not sure why – it probably cost them more, first for the design itself and then for whatever it takes to produce a new stamp. Maybe after five years, the old design specs didn’t work anymore. Who knows. But no matter – the new design is fine by me. Technically I like the old look better but I’ll take what I can get.
We won’t talk about how many of them I’ve already purchased.
When was the last time you actually went to a post office?
There’s never any warning. Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer doesn’t have a set schedule – without any notice it shows up in my Inbox. In the olden days (back when the dinosaurs roamed the planet) it would appear in the snail mail box. It’s the same document these days but I have to admit that I enjoyed relaxing with a cup of coffee or tea and leafing through the hard copy.
But this is not a rant about the death of print. I swear. It’s more a rant about how YA and I are completely helpless in the face of this flyer. It’s unbelievable; we are both completely drawn to the new (and probably never-to-be-seen-again) products that are featured. A little bit like the seasonally colored items that I can’t stay away from.
The theme of the flyer and the seasonal items this time is “strawberry”. While I love fresh strawberries and I practically live on my strawberry jam, I’m not otherwise a massive strawberry fan. But YA is. And there are certainly lots more items featured in addition to the strawberry-laden stuff. We made a list and I headed out. Managed to find everything on the list with the assistance of a customer service gentleman who went to the back and found two items that were out on the shelves. Here is a partial list of what I came home with:
Pickle Potato Chips: these were primarily for YA – she’s also a fan of Pickle Pizza at the fair.
Parmesan Tapenade: I love all kinds of tapenade, so this looked promising. It made a great pizza topping on Tuesday.
Potato Cheese Stix: like it says. Cubed potatoes, mixed with cheese, frozen on a stick. YA says they’re pretty good.
Spicy Taco Sauce: This turned out to be a great sauce for the afore-mentioned potato-cheese stix.
Strawberry Gummy Bears. Completely for YA. I never even liked jujubes when I was a kid, so no gummies for me now.
Turkish flatbread with cheeses, spinach and onion. In the freezer section – can’t wait.
Spicy Spuds. Another freezer options – spicy roasted potatoes.
Oat Bites. There are two kids – PB&J and Raspberry. Bitty little muffins with filling.
Strawberry Snickerdoodles. I might try this although YA will probably eat most of them
Garlic Salted Mixed Nuts. They also have little garlic toasted chips in the can. Quite nice.
There were several other things, including a six-pack of San Pellegrino; we splurge on this a couple of times a year. None of these items were necessary and neither of us had a plan for any of it, although I did get a pizza dough while I was there, thinking about the tapenade. I’m of two minds about this silliness. One the one hand, it was a lot of money for nothing that we had a plan for. On the other hand, it’s food; we have to eat regardless of the absurdity of the food items.
Tried anything new (food or otherwise) the past couple of weeks?
Crafts shows are a favorite of mine. I love to see all the stuff that people make and it’s fascinating that other people buy all this stuff. The Arts & Crafts show at Canterbury is huge – not normally my favorite kind of craft event, but I’m fond one particular vendor so I wait in line, cough up my cash (I get two discounts – one for being old and one for getting a coupon ahead of time).
The lines are pretty intense so I get their pretty early. It’s good people-watching in line.
The vendor I like make quilted objects – I met the mother/daughter duo years ago at the State Fair. I ordered some oven mitts from them and the entry fee to the fair is cheaper than the shipping that’s why I went this year. I also wanted to check out their inventory of a couple of other items because they are closing their business at the end of the year. Marie is 84 and ready to retire! I got my mitts and some toilet tank toppers and a couple of table runners since it’s the last time I’ll be seeing them. They gave me the last two popcorn bags for free, since YA and I adore those.
Of course, as long as I’m there, I wander through and look at everything. This year I ended up getting a couple of dip mixes – they tasted good sampled w/ pretzels. I also stopped and got some fudge from a vendor I’ve purchased from before. The Turtle Sundae fudge is very good. Tried the baked cheese guys this year (won’t do that again). AND, I got a massive bag to popcorn… a combo of kettle corn and caramel corn. Normally I don’t get popcorn like that but from where I was standing in line (for almost an hour), the popcorn stand was directly in my line of sight and when they let us in, I was just pulled right to the stand. Took me six days to finish it.
Without Marie and Stanna, I won’t be going back to this Arts Fair. Not enough vendors that I’m that interested in. I’ll still do my Rubber Stamp event in July though and if they have a popcorn vendor, I’ll be all in!
Any arts/crafts events you’ve taken part in? Any vendors you gravitate to?
On the way home from St. Louis, YA were debating about what we should pick up for lunch and she told me that she had noticed a sign (when we were still in St. Louis) that Steak `n Shake was offering an Orange Dreamsicle Freeze. I don’t know if I’ve whined about S`nS dumping their original Orange Freeze – but they let go of it at the same time they dropped the grilled cheese. I haven’t been there since then – about 6 years.
But the new offering sounded good so we decided that fries and a freeze would be an ok lunch. YA found the closest S`nS and we let GPS get us there. As we were waiting in the drive-thru line, we noticed several posters in the windows of the eatery touting their all new beef-tallow. These are their exact words “return to tallow is part of a broader trend to revive traditional cooking methods and highlight authentic flavors.” Snort. I asked the person taking the order if it were true that the fries were now being fried in beef tallow. When he said yes, we cancelled the fries and just got the Freezes.
When I became a vegetarian in the early 70s, it was the end of French fries for me as all the fast-food places used animal fats for frying. Burger King was the first to switch over; for many years I got a whooper with no meat (yes, that’s just a glorified cheese sandwich) and fries. Then Wendys switched, then S`nS, and eventually even McDonalds gave it up and moved to vegetable oils. So this move back to beef tallow doesn’t make much sense to me. I don’t know the science about the health benefits (although RFK touting beef tallow makes me wonder…) but from a planetary point of view, I don’t think we need more cows eating way more grains than it takes to feed humans. My cynical side says S`nS is grasping at straws trying to deal with their currently financial struggles and think this might be a way to differentiate themselves from the pack.
Regardless, YA and I ended up at Subway for our lunch to go with our Orange Dreamsicle Freezes, which unfortunately weren’t all that great. I can’t imagine I’ll ever go back to a Steak `n Shake again.
Fries? Shoestring, curly, seasoned, sweet potato? Or just pass the tater tots?
Six months after our move into our home we continue to get mail addressed to the former owner. He still lives in town in a lovely refurbished apartment on Main Street just above his satellite communication business. I know it is lovely from the gossip of some electricians who were at our home and had been in the previous owners’ new place.
I always let him know when we get his mail. Sometimes he picks it up. Sometimes his elderly mom picks it up. She lives one block from us. About a month ago we received the property tax statement for his Main Street property along with some other mail from a finance company. I could tell what it was since the property tax envelope had been conveniently torn enough in transit for me to peek inside. I let him know via text that we had it. He texted that he was currently in Arizona and would pick it up when he got back to town in early April.
I saw him in his Jeep last week as I was going to the grocery store. He still hasn’t phoned to pick up his mail. I decided I am not going to remind him. The more we learn about him and his ways of dealing with things I think that he has been cossetted and coddled far too much by this community, and if his property taxes are delinquent, well, that may be a good lesson for him.
What natural consequences have you seen people deal with? What natural consequences have you experienced?
Oft times I feel as if my world is fairly small. 494 to the south, Highway 100 to the west, 35W to the east and Franklin to the north. Obviously I do travel outside of my “zone” but overwhelmingly, my life and errands are within. So it isn’t odd to me that my mother also had a fairly constricted range. It was brought home to me last week when YA and I were in St. Louis that Grasso Plaza is basically a catch-all for just about everything.
Grasso Plaza is about 5 minutes from my mom’s house, up on Gravois Road, which is a major thoroughfare in the southwestern suburbs. It’s basically just two strip malls across Gravois from each other with five lanes of traffic in between. (One of these lanes is what St. Louisans call the “suicide lane”, in which you can basically go either direction – insanity.) The parking lots on both sides were clearly designed by an idiot who had been drinking heavily. I can’t believe that the insurance companies haven’t banded together to force the Plaza to have them both re-done; I’ve witnessed two accidents myself in my visits to Nonny.
Anyway, here are all the places in Grasso Plaza that we went to in our three full days:
Schnucks. This is one of the grocery store chains in St. Louis; I am not making this up. We got a few snacks and some beverages to keep in the condo while we were there.
St. Louis Bread Company. SLBC was bought by AuBon Pain in 1993 and everywhere else except St. Louis, the name was changed to Panera. I assume some lawsuit or contractual thing was involved. On the outside the sign says St. Louis Bread Company, on the inside, everything says Panera, including how your receipt prints out. We had two meals there.
Walgreens. Of all the things that Nonny didn’t have in her condo was lotion!
Southern Bank. Nonny’s bank – we had to deposit a check of hers.
Post Office. We had to send the equipment back to MobileHelp (Nonny’s “help I’ve fallen and can’t get up” service). Very very friendly and chatty clerks – good thing no one was waiting behind me.
Cotton’s Ace Hardware. I’ve been here many times over the years but this trip it was to drop off the last of Nonny’s canned goods/cereals. Cotton’s has a collection barrel for the Affton Christian Food Pantry.
Dollar Tree. Just a quick stop for some plastic drinking cups for the condo since there were so many folks working on the cleaning out.
H&R Block. Stopped by to ask one tax question concerning Nonny’s taxes. They weren’t helpful. I should have just texted Linda. Ended up getting better info from AARP.
These weren’t the only errands we ran, but it was most of them and I was happy to put Grasso Plaza behind us. Even though it was handy, I don’t want to mess with those parking lots and that suicide lane ever again!
*A working title that was as good as anything else.
This week’s farming update from BEN
Spring is coming. The female cardinal is fighting with her reflection in our car mirrors. She did that last year too. (Remember when having that right side mirror was a big deal? They were not standard.)
The maple trees are getting buds on them. Crocuses are coming up. The chives are coming up. And the snow fence is falling over, so it must be time to be done with that. Fingers crossed. I saw a turkey vulture Friday morning and Kelly heard a killdeer.
Last weekend Kelly traveled to San Antonio for a work thing. Spent 12 hours in airports on Saturday. Had two layovers, three flights, and every flight was late for one reason or another. Left RST at noon, got to SAN at midnight. And then couldn’t get to the gate because there was some sort of medical emergency inside.
At least her luggage showed up! She had time to walk around Sunday afternoon. Saw the Alamo and did the river walk downtown.
Did her work thing, had supper with a co-worker, went back to the airport at 3AM, no trouble getting through TSA at that point, and was back in Rochester with no issues at 11AM Monday. She slept the rest of the day.
Man, air travel… I’m gonna ask you about that at the end so give it some thought.
Really haven’t done much on the farm this week. I’ve seen several posts from the Oat Mafia group on FB of guys out planting oats. One guy did it before the blizzard. Another guy remarked when he got to the field at 2:00AM it was 31degrees and a little wet. By 3:30AM and 27 degrees it was perfect. I read that and I think to myself, honestly, I am just playing at this farming thing… Yeah, they got 1400 acres total, and 300 acres oats, while I got 25 acres of oats, So, it doesn’t compare, but still… it’s hard not to compete. My equipment doesn’t do what their equipment does. I have to do tillage before I can plant. They’re doing no-till. I looked up some no-till drills. A brand new one, six feet wide, lists for $17,000. My current drill is 15’ wide. Ok, here’s a used no-till 15’ drill, 1996 model. $35,900. Whistle. That’s a lot of oats to make that pay. Plus having the field ready to plant last fall in order to plant this spring.
Last week I mentioned jumping through hoops at the local Farm Service Agency. Somehow, after 10 years, they decided the Hain Trust and me were not the same people. I had to get a lawyer to draw up some paperwork to show I am indeed part of the Hain Trust. And that made FSA happy and this week I got a nice deposit from them. Evidently, it’s tied into that Big … Bill the orange president created. Yeah, more bail out money since he screwed up all the markets. And this is how we’re saving money, right?
And the check from the corn I sold so I had a really nice bank balance.
Then I paid the first half of rent on two fields, $2000. And paid the diesel fuel and gasoline bill. $2300. And Farm insurance $1200 quarterly. And the monthly electric bill, and, and, and… easy come easy go! But hey, at least I could make those payments.
Working on a show at the college. We open in about 3 weeks and I am busy building stuff. I clean up as I’m working because I hate walking through sawdust and tracking it all over the rest of the shop. And that’s why I vacuumed up the remote for the dust collector on the table saw. And because I have a bag in the shop vac, I had to sift it to the top and fish it back out the hole. I knew it was in there because I turned it on while fishing it out, haha. I’m gonna add a board to it so I don’t do that again. This was the second or third time I’ve done that.
I took a walk along our creek last Sunday. Me and the dogs.
Bailey…
Silver Creek
I heard some sandhill cranes calling. A flock/siege/construction/swoop of 12 or 14 of them made a loop and head off south. I hope a few spend more time in our area. I thought of our Steve.
I had a lot of township business this week. Lots of phone calls and fact-finding. Relinquished my chair of the town board and don’t have to chair that board again for 4 years. And Thursday night was the annual meeting of the People’s Electric Cooperative. Supper was provided and it was… food. I wore sleeves and a jacket.
As chair of the nominating committee I presented the election results and read the oath to the winners. And that’s over for another year. Shedding projects left and right!
I couldn’t resist. Got up early on Sunday morning and headed to SunStreet Breads for their last day. Got there a little after 6; there was one fellow already standing outside the door but since I didn’t have a coat on, I stayed in the car listening to my book on CD. When the next two guys joined the little line at 6:10, I got out and joined them.
We had a great time, first talking about bakeries and donuts and rustic breads. Everybody had other bakeries that they sometimes frequent but it was clear that Sunstreet had a place in all our hearts. I can’t remember why somebody in the line behind me highly commended the movie The Hail Mary Project. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure I wanted to see that – another favorite book of mine that I don’t want “sullied” by some movie producer’s vision. This led to a lively bit of talk about science fiction movies. The first guy in line and I convinced to the two younger men between us that they needed to see Forbidden Planet with Leslie Nielsen and Walter Pidgeon. I mentioned John Scalzi, but apparently any science fiction written after 1985 was a non-starter for my new friend in the front of the line. The topic then returned to the bakery with all of us listing what we were planning on purchasing.
At 6:30, opening time, the line was all the way back to the Caribou Coffee – probably 40 folks. There were signs up about no espresso (I’m guessing that’s a time suck you can’t afford when you have lines out the door) and only six pastries per person. All three of my guys did the six pastries bit but since I was just there for the experience, I just got three – a raspberry cream scone, a laugen croissant (kind of a pretzel crust) and a blueberry turnover for YA. Oh and one last tray of outrageously expensive (but yummy) animal cookies.
The line was even longer when I left. I headed on home with my treasures, realizing that I’d had a great time – not so much because I’d gotten pastries on the last day of my favorite bakery but because it had been a blast to talk about donuts, bakeries and science friction in the wee hours of the morning.
In the last month we have had numerous workers in our home to replace the dishwasher, stove, and microwave, as well as to do some minor plumbing as we had one toilet replaced and a hot water shut off valve replaced under the kitchen sink. We also had new smoke detectors installed and a new electrical outlet installed for the new stove. The old outlet was a 110, and the new stove required a 220.
We have been very happy with all the workers who have come to the house. I was most delighted, though, with the plumber. He was a fully credentialed professional plumber, but he looked as though he was 16 years old.
I asked him if people often remarked that he looked too young to be a plumber. This was evidently a touchy subject with him since he told me that he is always told this, and it was really annoying. “People tell me I look like I am 18. I am 21 years old!” I suggested that it might help if he grew a beard. He said that he had inherited his father’s inability to grow much facial hair, so that wasn’t a solution.
People assumed that I was older than I was when I was a child and teen because I was tall for my age. I didn’t mind, but it meant that people often expected more from me than I was capable of. Now I just hope I look younger than I am.
Do you look your age? Do you act your age? Had any home repairs lately?
The bad news actually came down before Christmas. My favorite bakery, SunStreet Breads is closing. The owners are moving back to their home town and want to pursue “a new business model”. This coming Sunday is their last day; more importantly to me, yesterday was the last donut day (they only make their fabulous glazed donuts on Wednesdays).
I’ve been preparing mentally for this day for awhile. I made the card a couple of weeks ago – a big shaker card in the shape of a stand mixer. On Tuesday I headed to Michaels for a bit of black fabric and made an armband. Touch too dramatic? Well, I’ve been to SunStreet every Wednesday for 12 years for my donut fix. Missed a few during the beginning of Covid when they were closed for a couple of months and there were never donuts on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving due to the high volume of other orders. I figure I can mark this as a major passing if I want to.
Set my alarm early, headed down to Cub to get a small pot of pretty yellow flowers and was able to arrive at SunStreet by 6:15. Waited in the car until 6:28 when the line started to form for the door opening at 6:30. I was in line behind a father and son; the son was about 3 and cute as a button. He informed me (if I understood him correctly) that they were having donuts before school.
The head baker came out to say thanks for the flowers, although it was a short greeting and there was no shaking of flour-covered hands! I was back to my car with my donut and scone by 6:35 and the line of customers was already out the door. I might drive up there on Sunday morning to see what it’s like, but I expect that it will be a zoo and of course there won’t be donuts (I asked). Definitely the end of an era for the neighborhood. Wonder who will take that space next?
Have you ever gotten “verklempt” over a favorite store closing?
Trail Baboon 