Blowing her nose

This girl nearly got her nose blown of.

A delicate moment

I've told a story similar to this to family members.

A report of a family fight Wednesday afternoon in New Castle didn't turn out to
be what police expected.

A nine-year-old girl called 911 after she awoke from a nap and heard her mother screaming. She went to her mother's bedroom and thought her mother was being attacked.

Turns out, her parents were just enjoying marital relations.

But the New Castle Police Department responded to the little girl's call, and even filed a report, noting "Mom and Daddy were involved in a romantic moment and daughter mistook them as fighting."

"Enjoying" being the operative word.

Too Good To Ignore

Some stories are too good to ignore.

Would-be car thieves could learn from a New Bedford man's mistake: If you're going to steal a car, avoid the idling state police cruiser — especially if two troopers are inside.

Jose Alvarez Nieves was arrested Monday night after he allegedly tried to break into three cars in a convenience store parking lot, including an unmarked state police cruiser, according to state Trooper Paul Gifford.

"It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime stories," Trooper Gifford said.

Not quite a "Darwin" story, but close. Give Jose some time.

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.

I sneer at $4 gas

Yeah, because it only hits me a few bucks at a time, spread out over the entire year.

But, this house gets hot water for taps and baseboard heat from a fuel oil fired boiler. Fuel oil prices are about 20 cents per gallon higher than last year, and to get a discount price I have to pay in a lump sum for the year up front. That'll be around $3500 - 4000. I'm not sneering at that.

Jim Webb - not VP

So, our senator says he doesn't want to run with Obama.

Freshman U.S. Sen. Jim Webb, in a statement just released by his office, said he's told presidential nominee in-waiting Barack Obama, "Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for vice president."

Given that he only won his Senate seat by 0.5%, I don't see that he would have been that much of an asset anyway. Or, since it's Virginia, was that supposed to prove he's a centerist?

Stay Strong Lou

One of my favorite bloggers, Lou Minatti, is going through some rough times. Having lost both my grandmother and mom this spring I've got some idea. Stay strong, pal.

Bling

Damn! Now we're going to have home invasions to steal our doorknobs. Well, I guess it could be worse.

Robert "Boochie" Burrest Jr. has always liked to tinker.

As a child, he'd go around his neighborhood with a wagon full of tools, doing odd jobs. In high school, he'd make his own wooden shoes. As he grew older, he began customizing cars.

About eight years ago, after fooling around in his workshop, Burrest came up with his first invention. It's a wooden or metal ring on which you can screw an assortment of decorative doorknobs.

Maybe ol' Boochie here can figure out how to get rappers to use these doorknobs, instead of gold teeth, as a new status symbol.

Foreclosure Rates

Not that I'm saying some houses have been overpriced, or anything, but here is a diagram of the foreclosure rate in the area where I grew up. Each little house symbol denotes a property in foreclosure.



Now, here is the area where I live now. If you looked really closely you'd see I had to fudge a bit. I had to zoom out by one more step in order to get any foreclosures to appear.

It is hot.

Very hot. And humid. Very humid. Mikey is staying indoors except to water flowers and take out the trash. A/Cs on full blast 24x7.

So, I'm playing on the computer, transcribing my grandmother's diaries from 1937-1941. I'm about 85% done. The best part is that I got a new 22" LCD monitor yesterday, to replace my old beater of a 17" CRT. Much easier on the eyes, and I can open multiple windows at once, and see them all.

Arctic Ice Disappearing due to Bush Administration and Volcanoes, but mostly Volcanoes?

Yeah, volcanoes. Under the ice cap.

Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday.

The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge

Meanwhile, in the Colorado mountains...

...they're still skiing.

With an average of 3 feet of snow still covering the upper slopes of Aspen Mountain, the Aspen Skiing Co. will open the top of the mountain to midday skiing this weekend.

Seven runs and 45 acres of mostly intermediate terrain will be served by the Ajax Express lift, officials announced Monday.

The mountain will be open to skiing and riding Friday through Sunday; the Ajax Express chair will run from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. daily. Skiers and riders must upload and download on the Silver Queen Gondola, which will be running from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the last ride down at 4:30 p.m.

No, that's not a misprint.

It all evens out

It's been really hot here on the east coast, but on the west coast, all that climate change has people dying.

A Bellevue man who intended to spend only the day on the slopes of Mount Rainier has died after being caught in a blizzard.

Two others in the hiking party, suffering from frostbite and hypothermia, are awaiting rescue at Camp Muir at the 10,000-foot level.

What? It's June. Surely that can't be right. Hmmm, better check another story.

As Western Washington residents thaw out after the coldest June week on record, forecasters say drivers heading for the mountain passes could expect up to 5 inches of snow to fall by Tuesday morning.

What the hell? That can't be right. We were all supposed to be suffering the hottest temperatures ever seen. Well, I guess not in Washington.

With summer only 11 days away, what Seattle has is higher sustained heating bills from the unusually persistent chill of what is now the coldest spring on record for the Seattle area, traction tires required to slip through the passes Tuesday and a threatened growing season for local farmers.

Overall, daytime high temperatures in the region have averaged at least 10 degrees below normal -- while overnight lows have been only slightly chillier than normal -- translating into more gas and electricity use higher bills.

Whew! So I guess they'll be spared a little longer than us.

Almost a Darwin

So close. So very, very, close.

Some of the folks on my project team were meeting with the people in the VDOT bridge section to discuss a new product being built with our GIS Roads layer. It's intended to help steer overweight vehicles over appropriate roads, and to keep them away from weight restricted bridges.

In the middle of the meeting their beepers and phones start going off.

A one-lane bridge in Giles County collapsed yesterday when a heavily laden cement truck tried to cross the weight-restricted span.

The state Route 713 bridge over Walker Creek was posted with a restriction limiting the maximum weight of vehicles to 8 tons.

"It appears that an overweight vehicle violating the posting collapsed the bridge," said Malcolm T. Kerley, the Virginia Department of Transportation's chief engineer.

The 2003 Mack truck was carrying 15½ tons of cement, said state police Sgt. Michael Conroy. "The [cement] alone . . . pretty much doubled the limit on the bridge."

"This is an example of why we post weight limits on bridges," Walus said. "We want to remind all drivers to heed posted weight limits and follow posted safety instructions."

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.