A/C Day

Today we reached the yearly milestone where I have to tote up the window air conditioners from the basement, and put them in the bedroom windows. Up until now it's only reached the mid 80's about 3 days total, but it's supposed to be up there every day this week. It was over 90 today.

So, it was fun working out in the yard later cleaning up from our minor disaster on Thursday. A moderately large (12 in diameter) branch came down out of our oak tree in the back yard. Fortunately we were both at work, and the dogs were inside. Everything it hit was smashed.

Most annoyingly, it came down on top of our clothes line. The lines were fine, but the aluminum post bent! I got out there and pushed it back up, and it seems OK for now.

It was also fun getting out the little chain saw, and carving it all up into pieces. The saw hadn't been used since Isabel, back in 2004.

The saving grace of the day was probably the Williamsburg Farmer's Market, where Coriander got much adoration, and Winnie bought us two quarts of yummy organic strawberries.

Darwin Award - XI

You know the phrase "never bring a knife to a gunfight"? Well, never bring a BB gun to a shotgun fight.

FORT WORTH -- A robbery suspect entered an west-side donut shop early Friday armed with a BB rifle, but a good Samaritan who came to help a shop employee had a shotgun.

Conclusion: the robbery suspect died from a blast of 12-gauge buckshot to the chest, police said.

The incident was reported about 2 a.m. at the Happy Donuts shop, 109 Roberts Cut Off Road, said Lt. Paul Henderson, police spokesman.

The suspect was Richard Lane, 45, of Fort Worth, according to the Tarrant County medical examiner's office.

"What I understand," Henderson said, "is this particular suspect was known in the area for possibly other criminal activity -- other robberies, other burglaries."

The neighbor who shot the man was not arrested.

Headline of the Day

Great tits cope well with warming

Well, I should think so.

Canadian Anchor Babies

Dr. Winnie asked me recently if I'd feel as bad about Canadians sneaking across the border as I do with Mexicans. I said sure, they were all dope heads and had funny accents. Now, it also turns out they're coming to raid our health care system.

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year - in what a doctors' group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.

The problem has peaked, with British Columbia and Ontario each sending a record number of women to U.S. neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). Specifically, 80 B.C. women have been sent to U.S. hospitals since April 1, 2007; in Ontario, 28 have been sent since January of 2007, according to figures from the respective health ministries.

André Lalonde, executive vice-president of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said the problem is due to bed closings that took place almost a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative and too few staff.

"Neonatologists are very stretched right now," Dr. Lalonde said in a telephone interview from Ottawa. "We're so stretched, it's kind of dangerous."

Great! So they come here to give birth, making their kids American citizens. I scanned the whole article, and apparently the provinces are footing the bill. But there is a question of why they can't open their own neonatal units. Maybe Canada isn't such a great place after all.

Stephen Bennett

The reason I was really interested in going to the concert where we saw Tommy Emmanuel (see previous post), was to see Stephen Bennett. He's married to a VIMS professor, and I see him from time to time around town.

For the concert shown here, the Fifth Harp Guitar Gathering, we were in the audience, for the third time at one of these festivals. Every one that has been held near us. (The other two gatherings were in OR & FL.) We were sitting just a bit to the left of the camera. Just awesome.

Tommy Emmanuel

Charles at LGF posted this, and I couldn't help piling on. I've gotten to see Tommy once, because, Winnie wanted to go, and he was amazing.