Cold Tuesday

It is a whopping 14 degrees outside, bitterly cold once again. Luckily it wasn't too windy today, or else it would have felt like it did right after New Year's. It sure was windy overnight though.

We got a dusting of snow overnight and schools were called off today. When I woke up, I thought that sounded ridiculous! Once again, it seemed that everyone was scared away by the tiny amount of snow. Then I learned from Jarrod that his drive to work was kinda rough, hitting a solid sheet of ice on the way. And the weather lady said that the snow fell on warm roads, melted, and then refroze as it got colder. Oh... now I get it.

Not wanting to risk it, I cancelled my doctor's appointments today and will do them in a couple weeks. The nurse understood completely and didn't want me to try and venture west (where they didn't get any snow). So I stayed in and worked from home all day and then went to Walmart tonight. I must say, that was possibly the best Walmart experience I've had in a while. Turns out no one shops at 6-7 pm, there was hardly anyone there. It was great, and I was out of there in less than an hour.

I also finished a book that I've been reading like crazy; I don't think I've ever attacked a non-fiction book so quickly. It was Bitter Brew: The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer. It was such a good book. The author did a fantastic job researching (he listed his sources, broken out by paragraph) and you could tell he strived to give an accurate portrayal of the Busch family, unlike the media coverage that they received in the newspapers (especially in recent years) which sounded as if it was practically dictated by those in charge to spin things in a good light.

But it is a sad tale, really. In a nutshell, I'll give you my thoughts: To go from the founding father Adolphus, with his glamorous over-the-top-ness, to his son who was just as flashy, to "Gussie" Busch, the stubborn man who was respected by most of St. Louis and who turned the company into a booming business, to August III who ousted his father, yes, but still had a good work ethic and believed in quality and being the best, to his son August IV, the hard-partying cocaine-addicted mess of a CEO (and mess of a guy in general) who never really cared enough about the business to take it seriously—that is a sad story. None of these men were perfect people by any means, or very moral, and they spent/wasted a lot of their millions, but they all believed in their business and their community, except for the last guy, IV. A-B was a source of pride for StL where a man could get a job, make a career there, buy a house, send his kids to college, but now that pride is mostly gone and everyone says it's just not the same since InBev bought them out. I feel like I learned so much St. Louis history in this book and like I said, it is a sad story to go from so much pride to so much disgrace and scandal. I highly recommend it especially if you are from St. Louis, like non-fiction, or enjoy a good well-rounded story.