Christmas Day

Merry Christmas!  

Here's to a happy seasonal holiday of your choosing.  It has been quite the year, has it not?  The good news is that Kyiv is still in Ukrainian hands. 

Christmas Eve Round-up

I feel so badly for all the people who traveled to Tucson to spend Christmas with friends and relatives to bask in the sunshine and the low 80 degree temperatures.  These photos were taken Monday.  We took the Trek road bikes out for a flatish easy ride.  As it turned out, that set my recovery from the crud back two days, but it was a nice ride at the time.

This is a house that was being built in 2021.  When we decamped to Spokane, the front yard was not yet installed.  Who ever did the landscaping did a bang up job of it. 

Look at the sky in the background.  It really is that color.

Then we rode over to look at the mountains behind the Sarasota trail head.  Again, look at that sky.

This is from this morning.  It rained all night.  It has rained off and on all day.  It's cold (relatively speaking.)  The kids that made the trip are stuck in the house, none of them are out driving golf carts around and scaring the old people, hopefully the grand parents have an X box.

As you no doubt recall, last February when we were painting soffits, the fruit trees had much fruit on them.  One is visible here.  This is the sum total of fruit from the grapefruit, orange and lemon trees.  Three grapefruits, that's it.

Other houses have boxes of citrus out front, which is an appeal for passers by to please take some because they're inundated.  I do not understand the trees.  We feed them, we water them, what the heck?

The horrible orange man's administration continues its path off the rails.  He has announced a new class of battleship to be named after him.  Battleships are targets in modern warfare, they bring nothing to the table.  However, Hegseth is very excited about this.  

The EU fined Elon for violating their laws under DSA.

DSA Europe refers to the European Union's Digital Services Act, a landmark regulation establishing rules for a safer, fairer online environment by tackling illegal content, enhancing user rights (like non-personalized feeds & ad transparency), increasing platform accountability (especially Very Large Platforms - VLOPs/VLOSEs), and improving content moderation transparency. It aims to protect users, foster innovation, and ensure a single market for digital services, imposing obligations on platforms to manage systemic risks and identify traders, with enforcement by national Digital Services Coordinators (DSCs) and the Commission. 

It was not an amount of money that will hurt Elon.  Anyway, JD Vance and little Marco are just spitting mad about extraterritorial censorship and blah-de-blah.  It's their territory, their laws.  Anyway, they're denying visas to prominent Europeans because they can.  EU should just shut down twitter.  And talk about censorship, no US platform is legally available in Russia, and they're our buddies, right?

47 has sent the governor of Louisiana to be a special envoy to Greenland so that we can take them over.  Number one, Greenland is a territory of Denmark.  You don't send envoys to territories, you send them to the diplomatic corps of the country, which would be Denmark.  They're already acting like Greenland is a free agent.  I am so sure they want to give up free college and free health care to part of the mess that the US has become.  Denmark has summoned the US ambassador to tell the US to knock this off.

Cuba is becoming collateral damage to the US bombing of boats in the Caribbean sea and hijacking tankers.  Oil is not flowing to Cuba, and it's not good. 

We're both better, but not over it yet.  After 5 covid tests between us and a Flu A & B test I'm reasonably certain this is a really bad cold.  

Merry Christmas Eve y'all! 

 

 

 

Forty

We're better, still sick, though.  Today we might go for a ride in the car just to see something new.  

Today is our 40th anniversary.  I used to collect china, back when we lived in West Seattle.  One day I upped and decided I needed more stuff.  So, china it was.  I got this on e-bay, we used to wonder if we would live that long.

So, happy anniversary to us and our germs.
 

Under the Weather

Greetings!  How are you all in this time of tribulation?  We're both sick.  Thus far, Jim is testing negative for Covid.  This morning he was a veritable sea of mucous and coughing.  As of this afternoon, however, that seems to have quieted down.  I've developed more sore throat and irritated eyes than I had yesterday.  He may be passing it on to me.  Tomorrow we're going to do another Covid test, as well as Flu A and B.  What I don't know is how many negative tests are required to believe you don't really have Covid.  The internet is rather vague on that subject.

So, we've been in the house since Wednesday.  The weather, of course, has been spectacular, and we are wasting it.

The horrible orange man has put his name on the Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, which is utter defilement.  Hopefully the next president will have it taken off.  That name was voted upon by Congress as a memorial to JFK.  What's next?  Putting his name on the Washington Monument? 

Other than this paltry post, I have not too much to say.

Is this not a cute little cactus?

 

The Weather!

OK, I know that most of you are not that interested in the weather in the PNW, but this is a truly epic winter.  I lived there for 22 years, and winters were generally mild and very wet.  Days would go by when there were no shadows due to cloud cover.  When it did snow in the city, traffic was apocalyptic.  No one had snow tires, didn't know how to drive in it, it was just bad, plus Seattle has many hills left over from the glaciers.  So, now this has been issued.  First there was mass rain, now there will be blizzards.

People will try it, they'll get stuck and require rescue.  It's the nature of the people that live there.  The Cascades are the mountain range between Seattle and Spokane.

Governor Ferguson said today that US-2 between Skykomish and Leavenworth will be closed for months.  See the gap in the route that google is showing?  That's the part that is closed, making that a very long drive.

Here is a good article showing how the road has been wiped out.  

The good news is that the horrible orange man has approved disaster relief money.  Washington is going to need it.

Norway has had a good idea.  They make a lot of snow for the ski areas, so flower seeds will be good for the pollinators.

 That's it!  That's all I've got.

Weather in the PNW and Ukrainian Efforts

Tucson's weather is still freakishly warm.  December is supposed to be a wet month to ensure the spring flower bloom.  I set out to see if I could hike to the saddle between Bren and Golden Gate mountains, the answer was no.  Still not in shape for that much climbing.  It's the dip between the two peaks.

On the way to the trail, I observed these two cacti in someone's yard.  They both have a lot going on in terms of sprouting arms.

I have climate survivors' guilt.  The PNW is on round two of torrential rain.  First there was an atmospheric river of water, then there was a pineapple express.  The pineapple comes from Hawaii, the water is warm, and it melts all the snow, thus adding to the flood potential.  These are all tweets from the weather heads.  

MAJOR FLOODING is possible in the Pacific Northwest this week, with BUCKETS of rainfall expected! An intense atmospheric river will slam into Washington, Oregon, and northern California, bringing widespread rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches, with locally up to 14 inches in the higher terrain of the Cascades and Olympics. River levels are expected to rise rapidly, and flash flooding, landslides, and road washouts are all possible, especially in flood-prone and burn scar areas.

 

NWS Seattle has just issued a *High Wind Watch* for basically all of western Washington from Tuesday evening through Wednesday morning! This is for SW wind winds 25-45mph and gusts to 55-65mph. I am not sure if I have ever seen them issue one for basically the entire region before. Models this evening suggest the potential for a region-wide windstorm during this period so it makes sense they issued one. Check the second image for all the details related to the High Wind Watch. 

 

Pacific NW: You are witnessing History folks. This will go down as one of the craziest weather months you'll ever see in the region, with lots more to come. Exceptional landslide and flood risk for most areas, big mountain snows/impossible travel across passes and 1,2,3 wind events incoming. DO NOT TRAVEL if you do not need to! 

 

This is the Hood Canal bridge at 3pm on Monday.  It's closed because the wind is up.  One side is not like the other.
 

 

British Columbia is also getting hammered with water.

 

Today, 10/16, Governor Ferguson said that highway 2 will be closed for months.  This is a big deal. 

 

PAIN AT THE PUMP: Having hacked into Russian train time tables, This morning Ukraine was ready with long range strike drones to intercept 100 tank cars carrying fuel for the Russian army and gasoline for occupied Crimea. 

The Ukranians also took out a Russian submarine with an undersea drone.  One down, two to go.

Peace negotiations in the war of Russian aggression upon Ukraine continue.  

Other than this, I don't want to talk about shootings and murders of nice people.

OK, this is funny, and sad.