Chewbacca Defense

Their fries used to be straight up crack. I still have to scratch that itch every once in a while, but more often than not, its I end up with a bag of french fry flavored salt.

Does anyone have a link to localized soil temps that would cover Whatcom County? I think I am going to plow ahead with my yard project despite the rain, but it occurred to me that with the upcoming cool temps, I need to make sure the soil is going to be warm enough for the grass seed to germinate. Looks like I need to be at least 50 degrees.... The challenge on this is I need to have a full yard again by May 31st so that my wife can kick the dog out to the back yard while I am gone.

Yeah ummmm....no....I grew up in Georgia and am familiar with her district, and I am not at all shocked her district put her in office. You ever seen the movie Deliverance? Happened in a different part of the state, but same caliber of people. I think the only way they would turn on her is if she started pushing moderate Republican talking points.

First time at my computer this weekend. Got out on the bay and did a quick 4 mile paddle Saturday morning, the air temp was warm, but the water was quite chilly. I could not believe how bad the pollen was on my car(pic below). After kayaking I headed to a friend's house out in the county for a little DnD, and was there as the winds hit. I talked a week or so ago about seeing clouds of pollen getting knocked out of trees in the south, well I witnessed it for the first time out here when a huge gust hit a stand of trees behind my buddy's property. We all got to talking about how the pollen seems to be so much worse the past few years. We ended up with .27" of rain yesterday evening but cleared off after sunset. By the time the DnD session wrapped up at 1am we were down to a very chilly 42 degrees. Getting a little nervous about this Thursday/Friday, hoping the weather cooperates. I have a thatcher and aerator lined up for Thursday, and I have 15 yards of top soil lined up for Friday so I can hopefully rehabilitate my back yard. This is what my looked like Saturday morning. Never had the pollen this bad out here.

Yeah I'm going to Charleston as well. Pretty much the only options are Alaska and Delta, and Delta used to be my airline before we started flying to Montana a lot. Delta did have a couple of options on the A321 when I looked a month or so ago, but that's never a guarantee. Planes have mechanical issues all the time and get shuffled around, so even if I booked on a Delta Airbus flight, a Boeing could be sitting there waiting for me at the gate. I think my favorite MX issue was a Horizon E175 that had computer issues when it sat overnight in freezing weather (the flight was in December). The solution was to do a full reboot of the aircraft: shut everything down, disconnect the batteries (which is just a button push on an airplane), and unplug from ground power. Kinda weird to be sitting on a dark plan at 5am on the KBLI tarmac. It was so quiet you could hear a mouse fart. It worked but we were very late and I just made my connecting flight to SNA.

I hear you. Irrational? Yes, but I'm in the same boat and feel the same irrational fear. I need to fly to South Carolina to see my mom. I need to fly Alaska so I can use miles for the ticket but they are "proudly all Boeing" once again, and I'll inevitably be on a -900 or -900ER. Chances of something happening are somewhere between slim and none, leaning heavily towards none, but I would really love to do that flight on an Airbus. Another irrational fear situation that ended up setting off serious alarm bells in my head. I was on a flight about 2-3 or so years after 9/11 and am almost certain I was on a "test" flight for a certain terrorist organization. My wife picked up on it too, and we discussed what we would do. Flight Attendants were switched on too, and I could tell they were giving those guys extra attention. A lot of non-verbal communication between the crew when it came to these guys. They tried to congregate in the fwd and aft galley areas a couple of times and were quickly sent back to their seats. Pretty much zero chance they were going to do anything, but I was not going to take any chances. It was kind of chilling to be having in a meeting a month or so later with our Sales VP, and hear him share similar stories of what I saw through his conversations with Airline executives. Then a few months later I got pulled into a meeting at work to learn about a few other things they were doing to get a 9/11 v2.0. We were being approached to develop "countermeasures" for the things they were trying.

Not to mention I think there might be one or 2 up who have relocated to places like Vancouver BC, Seattle, San Fran, LA and other major cities. Lets also not forget Lethal Weapon 4!

When I was little I was inside watching Saturday morning cartoons and my mom was outside working in the flower beds. We had the windows open to air out the house, and my mom started yelling for me. I ran to the window and she yelled at me to hurry up and close the windows. I looked up the street and I could see this huge green cloud blowing down the street headed our way, and as the gust wall hit each tree, the tree shook off a bunch of pollen that added to the cloud. It was pretty wild.

I have not read all the pages, so apologies if this has already been covered, but I would venture to guess that Russia and China are behind the scenes playing puppet master feeding resources to the Houthis, Hamas and now Iran. Russia can't really afford to be sending resources to these causes, but at the same time, they can't afford to NOT send resources given our current state of political unrest (never thought I would be making that statement). China is in a little bit better position, and I would venture to guess this is at least in part to respond to the Western Pacific Alliance currently in the works.

Right after my corneal abrasion healed up and I was getting over my sinus infection, I got a face full of pollen while trimming a tree last week. Almost sent me back to square one thanks to my allergies, but I think I am recovered from that now, just have to limit my time outside while my immune systems settles down. Growing up in Georgia, I am very much accustomed to things being covered in a very thick green film, and when it would rain, puddles would have a thick layer of green on the surface. When I moved out to the Willamette Valley, then up to Bellingham, I never saw that. Once in a while you could just barely see a fine dusting of pollen but that's it. The past couple of years the pollen has been really thick up here, rivaling a "typical" Georgia spring.

meaning.........??????????

Actually I think they are already having problems with rust.

Both my kids have strong political voices, and my wife and I have both told them we think protests are stupid (we used softer wording), but we also did mot mince words that if they engaged in protests that in any way interfered with average citizens being able to go about their lives that there would be absolute hell to pay. And we used the very point I highlighted in your comment to back our point. We had some whack-a-do professor from WWU got a bunch a people to chain themselves across the freeway here In Bellingham over a proposed pipeline in the Dakotas. It ended up causing a 5 car injury accident. A doctor my wife worked with got caught up in the traffic jam, along with a vanload of elderly folks who were in pretty poor health. The doctor was near them went over to keep an eye on them. A few of them ended up soiling themselves. Dignity is already pretty hard to come by at that stage of life, nothing like a bunch of selfish twatwaffles to add insult to injury. I think the doctor was on his way to a funeral for close relative (aunt or uncle), and missed most of the service. We used this situation as a clear "this is what we are talking about" follow up discussion with our kids

Another pic 5 minutes or so later

Interesting contrail situation….

Awesome! Looks like fun! I like doing that type of stuff and I hope I will be able to do more in the coming years. Right now it's all about catching up on deferred projects on my own house.

*light* drizzle this morning and 46

Yes. The winds usually have a pretty healthy sustained element here in Bellingham with us being on the water and I guess as for how gusty it is, it depends on the type of storm and location. Frasier outflows are definitely mostly sustained winds where I am, where as the fall windstorms are more likely to be gusty at my location. I would say that 3-4 times a year we go from calm to trees bent over in an instant. The places I play soccer at are both very open and exposed, and they tend to see more sustained winds in a storm, but again, they are closer to the water. Another time that is inevitably windy here is when we have the ski to sea race out here Memorial Day weekend. I've done the canoe leg a couple of times, and by early afternoon there is usually a decent south wind coming off the bay. The tail end of the canoe leg is out in the open, flat part of the county and is getting blasted those winds. There were times we literally were not moving...our paddling force+push of the river current=the force of the wind. Abso-f*cking-lutely sucked. We would have to hunt to find the sweet spot in the current or a break in the wind. It was a 20 mile canoe leg, and this happened in 3 or 4 spots over the course of the last 3-5 miles. I've since moved on to the kayak, and I can usually make pretty good headway even in a strong headwind. Worst I've been in was about 10-15 knots sustained. They cancelled the leg soon after I got out on the water because they were having to do too many rescues. I made it, but passed a lot of people who were getting fished out by the Coasties and the local Sheriff & Fire boats. Its always a south wind, one of these days the gods will smile on us and give us a north wind. Being able to surf the swell would be a hell of a boost to race times!

Anyone want to put odds on Trump firings his lawyers between now and Monday? Classic last minute delay tactic, and based on how his other appeals in the NY election interference case has gone, I'm guessing the judge will tell him to pound sand.

I enjoy a good heavy drizzle, except if I am caught out in it unprepared (for the reason you mention). You don't hear the classic rainfall sound, just the sound of water dripping from the trees. Heavy drizzle while playing soccer is kinda lame, I have to wear glasses to play and I have a harder time with fogging and not being able to see through all the water on my lenses.

My experience is that *most* of the time, the strongest winds of a classic "PNW" windstorm hit with no rain, and typically a mid to high broken cloud deck. It's when we have a strong front pass through that we get the sideways rain and dark clouds, but that is usually pretty brief, maybe an hour tops.

Ah crap and I just put my snow shovel back in summer storage....

Made me LOL!

That was me last Sunday, only worse. I got a hair clipping in my eye, and it got all kinds of swollen and pissed off. I got an abrasion on my cornea thanks to said hair clipping, and it is finally returning to normal, finished antibiotic eye drops this morning. The plus side, I had an eye patch and my wife "let" me talk like a pirate. The only problem was I was feeling pretty crappy (also had a cold) so I wasn't really in the mood to talk like a pirate.

I could not help but LOL when he did that. Par for the course... We had an eclipse in Atlanta when I was in 5th or 6th grade and it was the exact opposite. We all went out side with strict instructions to not look at the sun, and all the teachers had pinhole cameras and pointed out how you could see the eclipse in shadows cast by leaves on the trees. I didn't really think too much of this one until I realized that this is the last eclipse I can reasonably expect to see in my lifetime. I'll be in my 70's then and while I sure as heck hope I'll still be walking the earth then, that's getting on up there. So with that, I had a little FOMO, but it sounds like it is going to be an absolute sh*tshow with traffic, no doubt all the rude "me first" jackwagens will be out in full force, so I'll just go about my day here at home.