Kudos to MoDot

(photo from http://stlmissouri.com/river.htm)

Kudos to MoDot! They got all the water (and mud and debris washed up by the waters, plus the stoplights working again) from the flood over the weekend removed and the intersection of hwy 141 and interstate 44 open by Monday morning's rush hour! I had to back up and hear it again on the news (with our handy DVR) to make sure I heard right!

Something to pass the time...

31

(Plus 5 more that I couldn't spell!)

29

Signs of Spring - if only for a moment

Yesterday's high hit 65 degrees - what a welcome change from the cold, nasty weather we've had recently! Tom brewed a batch of beer, and we both walked around outside without coats and while wearing sandals.

Sadly, it looks like the nice weather isn't going to last - at least right now. Apparently we're supposed to get more snow this week:

Snow could shatter early spring

ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

03/02/2008

Enjoy the warm temperatures today, because winter could come roaring back into the St. Louis area Monday night.

A high of 70 or more is predicted for today -- but then watch out. The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm watch for the region for Monday evening through Tuesday afternoon, with a return of nasty weather possible in two separate waves.

The first could develop Monday night, bringing more sleet and snow, with possibly heavy accumulations of sleet. Then on Tuesday, as cold air settles over the St. Louis area, a second round of winter is expected with heavy snow.

Forecasters say the weather system that will be approaching the area could change quickly, so the outlook is uncertain.

Click to feed animals

Received in an email today:

All you animal lovers-this is pretty simple... Please tell ten friends to tell ten today! The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily to meet their quota of getting free food donated every day to abused and neglected animals.

It takes less than a minute (How about 20 seconds) to go to their site and click on the purple box 'fund food for animals' for free. This doesn't cost you a thing.

Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising.

Here's the web site!
www.theanimalrescuesite.com

(verified by snopes.com)

Happy Valentines Day

(from the chinchillas!)
They each made their own valentine for "Daddy."

"The Storm of the Season"

Here are a few pictures from the "Storm of the Season" as Fox News called it:

Our backyard the morning after the snow - I didn't actually measure the snow, but the news said we got 7ish inches.

Our street (views of both directions from our house) - since we live in unincorporated county, they don't bother to plow our street or subdivision.


The cleared street is the main street after you leave our subdivision. It also happens to be an incorporated municipality.

Chili Dusting

Super Mario Galaxy

I just beat Super Mario Galaxy!!!!! I got all 120 stars!!!!!

New year's resolutions

I have several New Year's resolutions that I've been tossing around in my head the last couple weeks and decided I should write down...

1. Lose weight - I'm participating in the "Biggest Loser" contest at work to help motivate myself - I created a separate blog to monitor my progress - http://jk-weight2008.blogspot.com/
2. Finish the master bathroom - and all the other house projects that are "in progress"
3. Make it to church on a regular basis
4. Do more community service things - currently I'm working on teddy bears for the Victory Junction Gang Camp
   

I hate...

<font> tags. If you don't know what I'm talking about, consider yourself lucky.

You can count on Fox 2...

At this very moment....

2007 in review

Some key events in 2007:

February: We welcomed a new furry friend into our home. Chili came to us from the humane society, and is the friendliest chinchilla we’ve ever met.

March: Started a new job as a web designer at American Express Incentive Services

April: Sadly, we lost our friend Sully in April.

June: Our first wedding anniversary (wow the year went fast!) which we celebrated quietly by tasting year-old wedding cake and having our picture taken at the same stone bridge in Forest Park where our wedding photos were taken.

September: We took a 12 day road trip to Yellowstone National Park at the beginning of September. It was the perfect time of year to experience the park, as the weather had not yet turned, but the park was not as crowded as it is in the summertime.

October: Tom started a new job at the beginning of October as a contractor.

So, as we wrap up the last couple hours of 2007, I wish all of my family and friends a wonderful, safe, prosperous and happy New Year.

Midnight: 1990-2007

My parents kitty, Midnight, passed away sometime last week while they were out of town visiting relatives. They knew it was probably good-bye when they left as she couldn't eat solid food, only could drink water.

We got her when I was in 1st grade, and we celebrated many of her birthdays (August 13). We got her from the Central Missouri Humaine Society when she was a little 8 month old kitten. We picked out her name in the car on the way home - I suggested Midnight and everyone loved it immediately. She was an outside cat and would roam around the woods surrounding our home at her leisure but always came back home when it was time to eat. She'd usually meet me about half way down the driveway when I was in high school since I was the first one home in the afternoons and she was ready to be fed. In recent years she discovered her love of Whisker Lickin's cat treats after I started bringing them home for her when we'd come to visit every few months.

She lived a long life and I'm sure she's enjoying galloping around kitty heaven with all the other kitties who have passed before her.

Merry Christmas!!!

Old School Fipsy

From this little picture comes......ASCII Fipsy......

courtesy of www.typorganism.com/asciiomatic/

First snow of the season

Obviously these people don't live in unincorporated St. Louis county....only 7% rated "it was pretty poor" and 5% rated "it was terrible."

My street/subdivision is a mess. I slid turning onto the highway 44 outer road. Yesterday when I was shoveling snow in the driveway a salt truck/snow plow went by and didn't even have his plow down on the pavement and wasn't leaving a salt trail behind him.

Snow is only "fun" when it means you get a bonus day off of work.

Vincent Linnebur, 1933-2007

Published Sunday, December 2, 2007 in the Columbia Daily Tribune
A follow up to my blog post from March 20, 2007

The Rev. Vincent Anthony Linnebur, 73, died on Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007, at Boone Hospital Center.

At his request, a private family prayer service will be held at a later date.

He was born Dec. 4, 1933, in Tipton, the son of Edward and Leona Kramer Linnebur. He had four brothers and six sisters.

He attended St. Andrew’s Elementary School. In 1948, he entered St. John’s Seminary in Kansas City, where he graduated in 1954. He then entered the Pontifical College Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, where he was ordained into the priesthood on May 21, 1960. His first appointment in the Diocese of Jefferson City was as an instructor and director of students at St. Thomas Seminary in Hannibal.

In 1963, he went to Peru to work in the missions of the Jefferson City Diocese. He worked in Nazca and San Juan until 1975, when he returned to the United States and became pastor in Perry and Paris until 1978. He then became pastor of Sacred Heart Church in Columbia until 1984. He then studied at the University of Missouri, earning a master’s degree in social work in 1987. He worked as a counselor at Positive Motivation and Charter Hospital until being employed by the state of Missouri as director of the Moniteau County Counseling Center in California, Mo. He retired from state employment in 1994. He then lived in Columbia and Tipton.

Online condolences may be left for the Rev. Linnebur’s family at www.heartlandcremation.com.

Arrangements have been entrusted to Heartland Cremation & Burial Society of Columbia, 442-7850.

For gosh sake people...one holiday at a time!

News Flash....

Just because all of the stores have their holiday merchandise out and are playing Christmas carols doesn't mean that you have to too. At least wait until after Thanksgiving to start decorating.

There is a house I drive by on my way home from work that has had their Christmas lights on outside their house for the last week or so, and today when I left work, the building I work in had all the Christmas lights on outside.

It drives me nuts that everyone is so focused on the holidays before they even get here.

"Don't Get Stuck"

That's metrolink/metro bus's new slogan. They are trying to get people to ride metrolink or buses instead of driving when hwy 40 is closed for construction.

Just for the heck of it, I typed in our home address and my work address in their tripfinder feature to see what it would come up with. Keep in mind that my usual morning commute is 5.52 miles and takes 15-20 minutes.

Here are the options that metro's tripfinder provided:

My Birthday (week)

My birthday is my favorite holiday - and everyone made my 25th a good one!

Tuesday:
Tom let me open one of my presents early - We Love Katamari game for PlayStation 2.

Wednesday:
Technically it was Thursday (12:15 am), but it was before I went to bed on Wednesday...Tom gave me another present - Desperate Housewives Season 3 on DVD.

Thursday:
Tom had a beautiful bouquet of flowers delivered to me at work. After work we we to Build A Bear where I made the Playful Polar Bear - which just so happened to arrive in stores on my birthday, November 1. I also got a red sweater for the polar bear to wear.

Friday:
Some friends joined me at Chevy's for a birthday dinner, and one friend told them it was my birthday so they sang and brought one of the huge sombrero out. I got lots of cool gifts from friends - a littlest pet shop monkey and a 10 pack of lots of pets (including a chinchilla), a frog photo album, and Cherry Pie scented lotion from B&BW.

Saturday:
We had dinner with Tom's parents and Grandmother. I got Big Brain Academy - Wii Degree and Crash of the Titans game for the DS. Plus some cash from his Grandma.

I also got birthday cards from my aunt and uncle Joanie and Terry, and my Grandma Heinz, and a friend from college - Joe. My parents also sent a card but are apparently "too poor" to give me any present....either that or my mother figures that I'm "rich" enough to buy my self a birthday present. It's the principle of it really, I wasn't expecting anything extravagant from them...

THANKS EVERYONE!!! I appreciate your thoughtfulness!

Halloween

Tom and my pumpkins


Haunted Forest that I built at my work for the Halloween decorating contest.
(Mine won by a landslide!)

Teddy Bears

I've started making Teddy Bears for Victory Junction Gang Camp, a camp for children with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses. These are children who cannot attend a traditional summer camp because of their medical needs.

Each camper gets a hand-made teddy bear that they get to take home. Victory Junction relies on donations of these bears, and have plans to serve almost 2,000 campers this coming year - that's 2,000 hand-made teddy bears that they will need.

If you're interested in making some bears, let me know and I'll get you all the details.

Site of the Day: Create your own kaleidescope

Check out the link below. You create your own kaleidescope by drawing in the big box and then it shows it in kaleidescope form on the right side in the small circle.

http://www.zefrank.com/dtoy_vs_byokal/index.html

Day 11: Salina, KS to St. Louis, MO

Ike boyhood home

Today was the last day of our vacation. We stopped in Abilene, KS to see the Eisenhower Presidential Library. It was really interesting, much more so than I thought.

Eisenhower Wedding Cake

After the library, we headed toward Missouri, stopped to visit my family in Columbia for dinner and finally made it home around midnight. The doodles were really excited to have us home and all had to come out and play so it was about 2 am when we finally went to bed.

Day 10: Denver, CO to Salina, KS

Today we made a stop in Denver at the Hammond's Candy Factory where we got to watch sugar sticks and lolly pops being made (almost entirely by hand in the same manner they were made when the company opened in 1920. We got to sample several candies and then stocked up on handmade candy in their gift shop as well.

People making lolly pops (notice the mirrors toward the top of the photo,
you can see what they are working on in them)

I wanted to visit the United States Mint in Denver, but as luck would have it, the mint is closed to public tours for construction during the month of September. I've since learned that this is a family curse on my husband's side, as any time anyone in their family was in Denver the mint has been closed to tours for one reason or another.

We headed east down highway 70 from Denver and into Kansas. We stopped at a place called "Prairie Dog Town" which I thought would be similar to the prairie dog place in South Dakota...boy was I wrong. The place had all kinds of animals - rattlesnakes, prairie dogs, buffalo, coyotes, fox, chickens, goats, sheep, cows, pigs - but the animals were living in despicable conditions. The goats had some sort of respiratory infection as they were all coughing - and children were being encouraged to pet these poor sick animals. The coyotes were in a cage enclosure that was probably 10 x 10 feet in diameter and were walking around it in circles. Worst of all was a "pond" at the back of the property full of ducks and geese which was mostly just a mud hole with garbage in it. It smelled awful and I could see an old tire and plastic bag in the water. It was also probably a breeding ground for misquotes as the water was just sitting there and green with algae. I plan to write the Kansas congressmen to alert them of the conditions of this place even though there will probably be nothing done to help these poor animals.

The last stop of the day was the Cathedral of the Plains which was the largest catholic church built west of the Mississippi river at the time of its construction (1909). It's located right off hwy 70 in Victoria, KS.

Cathedral of the Plains

Day 9: Rock Springs, WY to Denver, CO

Our vacation is wearing down - I can tell by the fact that I only took 4 photos today (and 2 were the same shot)!

We mostly just drove today, east across Wyoming. There's nothing along hwy 80 in Wyoming. Once we got to Colorado we had a bit more fun. First stop was the visitor center in Fort Collins where we picked up our free Colorado t-shirts. Yes, they were free. Colorado is running an internet promotion this year where you request your shirt on their website and then when you actually arrive in Colorado you can pick up your shirt from a visitor center. I chose the "I'd rather be in a gallery" and Tom got the "tight loops and tight lines" shirt. They are really good quality shirts too!

After the visitor center we took a tour of the New Belgium brewery, also located in Fort Collins. The tour was really quite impressive - even from a non-beer drinker like myself. They even gave free beer samples (you got to choose 4 of their 10 beers to sample). Tom and I chose different beers and while I tasted all 8 we had samples of, Tom finished them. Needless to say, I did the driving from Fort Collins to Denver.

Tom posing by the New Belgium Brewery Sign

Once in Denver we met my cousin Allison and her boyfriend RJ for dinner. We had a good time catching up and hanging out.

We checked into a Super 8 in Westminster, CO (just outside of Denver) around 11 pm. We asked for a no smoking room, went upstairs to our room and upon opening the door were hit with a stench of cigarette smoke. Upon further inspection, the carpet even had cigarette burns in it even though they had tacked a "no smoking" sign to the door, they had not made any changes to the formerly smoking room (it had probably smoking for many years). Tom went back to the front desk and asked for a different room. They gave him one, which smelled much better......until Tom folded back the bed blankets. There was hair in the bed. Not just one hair, but several hairs. We went back to the front desk and told them we could not stay in their hotel and proceeded to go across the street to the Fairfield Inn where we had a restful night sleep.

Day 8: Yellowstone to Rock Springs, WY

Today we headed out of the South Yellowstone entrance and into Grand Tetons National Park. We had some rain and wintery mix while entering the park. The park had a very different landscape from Yellowstone, and would have been really pretty had the sky not been filled with gray clouds.

Jackson Lake at Grand Tetons National Park

We got to see Jenny Lake which I was pretty excited about (obviously). It was pretty as the clouds started to clear up. They do a boat ride across it that we'll have to do next time we're in the area, too cold and cloudy this time!

Jenny Lake at Grand Tetons National Park

See more pictures by clicking here.

Day 7: Yellowstone

Mammoth Hot Springs

On our third day in Yellowstone we began at Mammoth Hot Springs, which weren't very exciting because they were dry. They looked a lot like ice or cave formations.

Mommy Buffalo and Baby Buffalo

We saw a lot of animals today, including deer, lots and lots of buffalo (crossing the road), a coyote and a brown bear. The bear we saw in Lamar Valley through the scope of a bear watcher. He was laying down on a gravel bar in a stream (too far away for pictures though).

We saw Tower Falls and then the upper and lower falls of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon. The canyon was gorgeous. It would have been neat to hike down to the brink of the lower falls, but the guide book said not to attempt if you have "heart, lung or other health problems" and since Tom and I both have Asthma we decided to pass on that one.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and Lower Falls

See more pictures from today by clicking here.

Day 6: Yellowstone

Today we went back to the Old Faithful area first and took a tour of the original Old Faithful Inn. The tour was really quite fascinating – for example, the building was constructed to be the same height as the surrounding trees, and the front is asymmetrical because nature isn’t symmetrical. There are 2 extra windows on the left side of the front (when you are looking towards it) that are nothing but windows – no rooms behind them. They built the entire inn in only 1 year because they wanted to get tourists in it as fast as they could – and they built it all from materials found in the park – stone and wood.


Next we explored the Black Sand Basin, the Biscuit Basin, and the Midway Geyser Basin. Then we drove Firehole Canyon Drive and saw the Firehole Falls. We also saw Gibbon Falls and walked a trail at the Artists Paintpots and decided to call it a day with the walking as our feet were both telling us it was time to sit down.


I got to see a bear today though! We were driving along in the forest and suddenly came upon a bunch of vehicles stopped in the middle of the road, not knowing why we eventually worked our way around them and I saw they were watching a bear chew on a stick not far from the side of the road. We weren’t able to take a picture, but hopefully we’ll see another bear before we leave the park.

See more pictures by clicking here.

Day 5: Yellowstone

Wow, Yellowstone is amazing – like nothing I’ve ever seen before! I cannot really describe it in words but I managed to capture some amazing photos.

We entered Yellowstone through the East entrance. We had a bit of rain on the drive into the park, and some grey skies, but by the end of the day the sky was a brilliant blue. One of the first curves we went around there was a car stopped on the side of the road and there was a buffalo looking in the windows! We stopped behind them and watched the buffalo cross the road in front of us.

Buffalo crossing the road in front of us

We walked around the Grand Thumb Geyser Basin, where we got our first glimpse of geysers, and also some Elk. After checking into our room for the night (lodge at Grant Village) we headed up to the Old Faithful area, (stopping at Kepler Falls along the way) where we walked around some of the Upper Geyser Basin and watched Old Faithful erupt.

a geyser in the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Old Faithful

Our room at the lodge was shared with a furry friend whom I named “Wally.” We had a squirrel spend the night inside one of the walls! He scratched and chewed on the drywall for much of the night and finally made his way back out the roof vent. We were probably the only people in the park used to hearing the noise of an animal pulling off strips of drywall (thanks to Fipsy and friends). We called the office and they sent a maintenance man out to our room who basically told us the squirrel would find his way out eventually.

For more pictures click here.