Another jumper

I was hearing all of the sirens as the vehicles wnet past our house yesterday, thinking "this is not good". We had another person jump off the bridge.

The 59-year-old Newport News man who died on Sunday after leaping from the
Coleman Bridge was a prominent financial advisor on the Peninsula. Carroll
Marcus "Marc" Cooper Jr. died after leaping from the bridge into the York River.

Public Humiliation is Sweeeet

Nope. I didn't do it, but here is a sign that popped up on the edge of the parking lot down the street by some local businesses. Winnie says "better them than us", as we used to find the MD20/20 bottles out in front of our house.

Can anyone tell me how to look up, for free this VA license plate? It might be nice to send her a copy.

True Genius

I went out to work in my yard this morning, and the neighbors, two houses down, were out too.

See, where we live is semi-rural, and it's legal to do open burning. So, a lot of people burn yard waste. But it's not legal to do it before 4pm. (This was about 8am.)

And they've got a freakin' bonfire going.

OK, a technical violation only. I've burned leaves in my driveway at times that barely skirted the 4pm rule. But, they've got two more strikes against them.
1) They use propane and their 250 gallon storage tank is only about 10 yards from the fire.
2) As you can see in the picture, their house backs onto a gas station, so this fire is only about 30 or 40 yards from the gas pumps and storage tanks.

Hey, doofus, I don't mind if you blow yourself up, but leave me out of this.

I called the sheriff. They had the fire department come give them a little talk.

I can't imagine what they were thinking.

Storm footage

We had quite a good storm back on 9/25, though it wasn't "tropical". A few seconds of footage follow. Compare to Tropical Storm Hanna a few weeks before. I took the earlier footage from the area I show being underwater here.

Tropical Storm Hanna

It's not much as these things go. I'll post an update if it changes.

Recall Update

They're doing pretty well with the petitions I wrote about earlier.

An estimated 2,000 to 3,000 signatures have been gathered by a grass-roots group of volunteers seeking to remove from office four members of the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors.

In the third full day of collecting signatures across Gloucester, residents were lining up at tables from Gloucester Point to Gloucester Court House to sign petitions seeking to oust supervisors Teresa Altemus, Bobby Crewe, Michelle Ressler and Gregory Woodard.

To put that in perspective, Gloucester County has a population of under 39,000 of whom about 30,000 are of voting age. In the election that brought these critters to power, there were only about 1,700 votes cast in my precinct (Crewe won by 218 votes). In the one Supervisor race that was at-large there were under 9200 votes cast (Ressler won by 1,642 votes).

My understanding is that in order for a recall to be authorized, they have to get signatures equaling 10% of the votes cast in the last election. So, 170 or so for Crewe, and 920 for Ressler. Sounds like they'll have that to spare. Which is good, as the judges will throw out the signatures on any technicality.

But, looks like we'll be voting again soon.

Recall

After the great time we've had with our supervisors here, the recall process has begun.

Just after noon Friday, Garr Johnson walked into Burke's of Gloucester on Main Street with copies of 250 petitions that seek to remove four members of the county Board of Supervisors from office.

Within an hour, the petitions hit shops and sidewalks in Gloucester, and residents were already lining up to sign them.

Winnie and I signed this morning. They were set up at a card table in the parking lot of the post office, and they were keeping a line about 5 deep in the few minutes I was there. Shouldn't take too long.

Ah, small town life!

It's so fun to live in a small community, where everyone gets in everyone else's business.

Four members of the Gloucester County Board of Supervisors and the Gloucester sheriff were indicted on a total of 15 misdemeanor charges by a special grand jury Tuesday.

In addition, a Gloucester developer faces 10 felony charges in connection with the forgery of county documents.

Supervisors Teresa Altemus, Michelle Ressler, Robert "Bobby" Crewe and Gregory Woodard each were indicted on charges of transacting public business in private, unlawful warrantless search and computer trespass. Crewe and Ressler also faces charges of coercing and intimidating a county employee as a result of a closed-door meeting on Jan. 8 with former Planning Director Jay Scudder.

Sheriff Steve Gentry faces a single misdemeanor count of malfeasance or misuse of office for conducting unlawful searches and seizures related to the entry of the offices of former county employees Bill Whitley and Danny Stuck.

Developer George Woodhouse, who was Crewe's largest campaign contributor and who also contributed $500 to Gentry's campaign, is accused of forging county certificates of occupancy, which are documents that certify that a structure complies with county ordinances regulating building.

We've all been waiting for this ever since these four decided they were going to personally remake all of Gloucester's government.

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.

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.

Tornados and such

While we were missing the Sierra Madre fire on the one hand, we were also missing the tornadoes at home on the other. Well, nearby tornadoes anyway.

Or so I thought. Apparently they were a lot closer than that.

And yes, purely in the interest of studying the social effects of natural disasters on communities, when we got the chance we moved toward the fire, not away. Kind of like when there's a storm.

UPDATE: Here's a great bit of tornado video, from the camera inside a parked ambulance.

A Quiet Sunday Evening

I thought I'd write this sooner, from home, but here I am at work.

Sunday we had an amazing windstorm as a cold front came through. It blew for hours. First the TV and Internet went out. Then there was a big crack and out went the lights. It turned out that the next door neighbor's maple tree, in the front yard broke, and a section up to about 3 ft across came down across the power lines. The tree caught on fire, and it took three and a half hours to get the tree off the lines and the power back on.

Unfortunately, we must have missed an automated response step in reporting our other outage. I called the cable company last night, and my problem was news to them. They say it will probably be Friday before they can get anyone out to look at it.

So, no TV, no Internet, until then.

This hasn't been a good two weeks

First, two weeks ago tomorrow, I had to drive up to New York to help out as my Grandmother entered a nursing home. She lived alone for over 50 years, so I think this is coming as a major shock to her. Then, I also organized a lot of the packing up and cleaning out of her apartment.

Most of her furniture went to Salvation Army, and quite a bit of smaller stuff went to the SPCA thrift shop. Some of her smaller, nicer possessions went into storage. I brought all of her personal, non-financial papers home with me, and I'm slowly figuring out what is what. Boxes and boxes of photos and photo albums, diaries, correspondence, etc.

Then, en route home, a week ago Thursday, I began feeling 'weird'. By the next morning I felt distinctly bad. By the time I got to the doctor's office, at 2:30, I had a 103.4 fever. They did the test, pronounced it the flu, and gave me Tamiflu. That helped really fast, but I still worked from home on Monday, and dragged through the rest of the week. Today I napped for two hours. Now, I'm ready to eat and sleep again.

Hit and Run

Winnie was the victim of a hit and run last night. An older blue pickup truck hit her Rodeo from behind at a stoplight at the same intersection where a young woman was killed a couple of days ago.

Winnie pulled over to exchange information, and the truck took off. She called it in, and the State Police took as much info as she had, but it was dark when it happened and she didn't have a good description. Just a cracked bumper to replace from what we can see, but WTH?

Winnie says if she ever catches him, she'll kick his asshole out his mouth.

I believe her.

This is what passes for a sheriff here

Somehow, I don't think Mr. Bowser is going to sweep the upcoming election, and be our next sheriff.

A candidate for Gloucester County sheriff says he will "go to my grave" before complying with a judge's order that landed him in jail Friday on a contempt charge.

Substitute Gloucester Circuit Court Judge Walter J. Ford ordered Clarence Bowser, 58, to serve 10 days in jail. Ford found Bowser in contempt during an Oct. 12 hearing, but gave him until Friday to comply with an earlier ruling by Gloucester Circuit Court Judge William Shaw III to clear an obstructed easement.
Bowser remains adamant that he will not comply with Shaw's order, so it remains unclear what his status will be Nov. 6.

The deed-granted easement on Bowser's 18-acre property in north Gloucester is at the center of a land dispute that involves Sheila B Guenard, a former Gloucester resident who now lives in Louisiana but still owns nearly six acres next to Bowser that can only be accessed by the disputed easement.

Mr. Bowser slipped a note to a reporter before they hauled him off to jail.

"This trial is an example of a low-level crime, that crouds our jail (It is a matter of interpretation for the Sheriff) When our justice system uses terrorist tactics to high-jack property and hold the individual hostage until he complies where is the justice in that? What happen to due process. I will go to my grave before I comply or give satisfaction to public corruption. This case may not benefit me but it will benefit those who come after me." (sic)

Hot, not, hot, not

The weather here can't decide. One day I'll open the windows and turn off the A/C because it feels so good and then, like today, it goes back up to 85.

Add this to our ongoing drought, and the autumn won't look to good. Still there is starting to be some color.

Real Estate Taxes

I wrote last October about the giant snafu we had with our real estate reassessment. Apparently, the company that did the work, and the county, are still going at it. Here is an excerpt from todays nice long article, that pertains to our house.

George Woodhouse, who served as BOE chairman, says the board was confronted with such a mess left behind by Blue Ridge that its members believed they had to start over in many instances to correct Blue Ridge's mistakes.

"We had to dig," Woodhouse said. "Basically we had to do their job."

Woodhouse explained that Blue Ridge failed in many cases to take into account depreciation of properties, especially along the Route 17 commercial corridor, and that many one-time residential properties that are now zoned commercial aren't marketable for commercial use.

"The lots are too small. They'd have to be stitched together with other lots to be of any use as commercial property. Those weren't realistic values," he said of the Blue Ridge assessments. He denied that the BOE overstepped its bounds in the process. They were not empowered to estimate values, he explained, only to apply factual information, such as square-footage, use, sales references and location, to the template Blue Ridge created to reach a value estimate.

So, now there trying to do it all over again.

Coleman Bridge Opening

Back in May I filmed an opening of the bridge. It is one of the largest swing span bridges in the world, so it is kind of interesting.

Another nice weekend

It's been another nice weekend. Fourth of July here, is by tradition, hot, muggy, and nearly unbearable. I hate to jinx it, but I wonder if it could actually be nice this year? The forecast calls for 88 degrees on Wednesday. It was 83 today, while I mowed.

I'm Dreaming of a White Easter...

...just like the ones I used to know.

This is bizarre. We haven't had enough snow for it to stick to the ground in over two years, and now we get it in April. The younger two pups had never even seen snow on the ground.

Our apricot trees had bloomed a week and a half ago, so no fruit this year. It broke a chunk out of our lilac bush. Hopefully the pear and cherry trees will be OK.

With weather like this, you'd think we were still in Colorado.