Already the middle of the week

Good morning! The weather people are calling for some interesting weather for us over the next 24 hours. It is supposed to start raining around noon, switch to rain and snow this evening, and then switch over to all snow overnight. Yeah. Of course, now Mo says "Let's put up the outside Christmas decorations."

I received an email from my friend Angie about her class project. She says, "I just wanted to let you know about my project. I made a delivery yesterday and my Saturn was full. I had to put the seats down to get it all in. That was just the first delivery too. There will be one more delivery to the center tomorrow. " Very cool.

My lodge (Polar Star Rose Hill Lodge #79) has adopted a nursing home. We want to help out those people that aren't able to get a lot of the things we tend to take for granted and they may not have easy access to. We're currently collecting items such as shampoo, toothpaste, tissues, crossword puzzle books, etc. If you are interested in assisting, please contact me and I can arrange to pick up or let you know where you can drop it off. We are also in the middle of a canned food drive. We will be collecting canned food and taking it to a local food bank for distribution. We are also involved in a project to help out local school children that have a need for basic necessities like pencils, pens, notebooks, paper, coats, shoes, hats, etc. If your school is in the St. Louis metro area and you would like to be included, please send me an email with the contact info for your school and I can forward your school's info over to the coordinator for this project.

Locally, St. Charles County is honoring 12 local eateries with the "24 Carrot Gold Food Safety Excellence Award." That's a mouthful of a title. This is the second year for the award and to be considered, the restaurant has to have had no critical violations for the last twelve months and no more than six non-critical violations at the same time. It is a diverse collection of places to eat and who would have suspected school cafeterias would have been on the list? Here is the list of honorees:

* Assumption Church School Cafeteria, 405 N. Main Street, O’Fallon
* Louis P. Balducci Vineyards, 6601 Highway 94 South, Augusta
* Burger King, 2882 Highway K, O’Fallon
* Denny’s 1423 South Fifth Street, St. Charles
* O’Charley’s, 2204 Highway K, O’Fallon
* Orchard Farm High School, 2165 Highway V, St. Charles
* Wentzville Prairie View Elementary School, 1550 Feise Road, O’Fallon
* SSM St. Joseph Health Center, 300 First Capitol Drive, St. Charles
* Schnucks, 8660 Veterans Memorial Parkway, O’Fallon
* Fort Zumwalt South Middle School, 300 Knaust Road, St. Peters
* Steak ‘N Shake, 1134 Pearce Boulevard, Wentzville
* White Castle, 2000 S. HIghway 94, St. Charles

Job's Daughters, Bethel 4, will be having a egg, sausage and pancake breakfast at the Applebee's at Olive and 270 (11950 Olive Blvd, Creve Coeur, MO 63141) this Saturday (Dec 6) 8am-10am. I'm pretty sure that Santa may be showing up. Cost is $7 for adults, I'm not sure what the child price is.

Christmas party with Santa and MoCHIP event at the South Side Community Center in St. Louis, sponsored by The Patch Center on Saturday (Dec 6) 10am - 3pm.

Even though St. Louis unemployment rose 6%, according to a survey reported on in the St. Louis Business Journal, 13% of St. Louis CIO's plan to add IT staff during the 1Q2009 and 2% are anticipating reductions. This ends up being a 1% decrease from the 4Q2008 forecast. The good news is that IT employment in the St. Louis metro area is up over nationwide trends. The survey and report was conducted by Robert Half Technology and they surveyed 200 local CFOs from companies with 20 or more employees.

Just across the Missouri River from where I live, Dickies has opened a retail store over at the St. Louis Mills Outlet Mall in Hazelwood, MO. This is apparently their first store in Missouri. Guess we'll have to get over there at some point. Or the next time Mo is planning a trip to scrapbook store at The Mills, I'll at least have someplace I can wander through.

If you are planning on being out and about near Highway 270 and 40 this weekend, expect traffic delays. According to the Missouri Department of Transportation, they are planning on re striping the interchange in preparation of the December 15th re-opening of Highway 40's western portion. Personally, I'm not going anywhere near it this weekend.