Remember my squawky, tantrum-throwing blue jay nestling from a while back? Looks like he’s in his angry adolescent phase:
Here he is in profile:
I’m not sure why he’s so pissed off. Maybe even the birds know about Trump.
Is anyone having trouble with the site? I ran into a problem on the backend on the laptop, but it seems to be working on the mobile. I’ll report it to the proper authorities.
What are y’all up to today? We’ve been hiding from the heat most of the day but are about to grill some hotdogs.
It’s stupefyingly hot here — walking outside is like being enveloped in a steaming towel. I fucking hate summer.
Open thread!
Yutsano
I had a comment disappear earlier. Not even sure this one will make it.
Villago Delenda Est
Summer in the SE US just blows, bites, and sucks. No doubt about it. It’s not so great in the NE or Upper MW, either.
Best to be out west of the Rockies, IMHO.
ruemara
I thought this post would be about another group of protesting womens.
Elizabelle
Drinking an ale; just had 2 tapas and a lightly cooked codfish omelette.
Name that bluejay Alex, if you would. Have a friend w a wildly spoiled teenager who squawks a lot. Your bird might grow up one of these days.
Sab
@ruemara: How’s your sink?
Elizabelle
Out roaming. Saw a lot of jogging dogs today (the unpaved hill road).
scav
Angry Birds.
Not having any trouble with the heat here in the upper left (granted, the natives / really acclimatized likely will disagree with that characterization — the 70°s!).
Sab
I think blue jays are obnoxious nest robbers, but I like to see them around these days because it means we’re probably not having a West Nile outbreak.
NotMax
Currently 72° here, light breezes.
Divf
@Villago Delenda Est: it’s sunny and 68 degrees here in Berkeley. OTOH the Hayward fault runs directly underneath my house.
Villago Delenda Est
@Divf: I’m up north a ways from you, Tracktown USA, where we’re stuck between a massive subduction fault and dormant volcanoes.
Good times!
Waratah
I love your blue jay Betty and all your photos. Your new camera is great. We had to add an extra water as the birds were drinking and bathing in the dogs water. Now it is constant work keeping them clean and with fresh water. Must be the only water available here.
The last two years we have helped raise some cute doves with their parents.
Raoul
It’s 74 degrees with a dew point of 52/46% humidity here in Minneapolis. I fucking love summer (here, mostly, except when it’s 90° + 90% humidity a coupla times between June and early Sept).
eta: I am also perfectly fine with MN winters, but that isn’t the case for many of my friends and neighbors. Oh well.
MomSense
I’m currently making stuffed lobster toys for a bunch of little kids.
Major Major Major Major
Great pictures!
It’s about 70 here in San Francisco. Doing a little shopping with a friend in between lunch and seeing Baby Driver. Last night I drew a few tarot cards.
Old Dan and Little Anne
I swear I went my whole life without seeing a red wing black bird. Now I see them all over the place. I had one buzz my ear a few hours ago while poolside. It scared the shit out of me.
Another Scott
It was very sunny and mid-90s until a brief, intense thunderstorm rolled through here (NoVA). It looks beautiful out there now (about 30 min later).
We’ve got a family of grackles in our back yard. One of the youngsters didn’t want to grow up and was always screaming to be fed until a week or so ago. Now they seem to be fighting over the bird bath, but the parents seem to finally have “weaned” him and might get their lives back soon.
Oh, and males and female Jays have the same coloring, etc, so your noisy youngster might be a girl. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
kindness
Florida summers. There’s a reason the snowbirds leave in the spring. We won’t discus the pros & cons of humid v dry heat like we get out here on the inland left coast.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Old Dan and Little Anne: I believe they’re very aggressive if you get too close to the nest
Mary G
@Major Major Major Major: I like the 10 of swords best, but I like them all.
West of the Rockies
@Elizabelle:
Could be worse: a trio of spoiled failure-to-launch 20-something’s. My girlfriend’s three sons are living with us.
Spanky
Thunderstorm passing through right now. Actually just a rainshower down here, but looks like Baltimore & environs got hammered, according to NWS radar. Maybe I’ll take this as a sign to stop working & take a shower. Been sticky as shit.
pamelabrown53
At my little Florida house in the woods, I concur about the noisy aggressiveness of blue jays. What I love at my bird watching casa is the regal woodpeckers quietly feed and the blue jays know the wood peckers can’t be bullied.
I’m experiencing the same “stupefying” heat; even though I walked fairly early (@ 9:20 AM to 10:20 AM), I was dying for the shade. Plus, since it’s not only a week end but a holiday weekend, walking at the beach is not an option.
Anyway, I wish all you BJers a delightful 4th holiday. We deserve a little fun and if not into the big boom fireworks…at least some sparklers and a Sufi dance.
Emma
I am in the process of launching a photo project as a way to get back into serious photography. My current physical limitations had driven me away from the camera — I am a landscape and garden photographer and love walking and shooting for hours and can’t (for now) do that. So I have decided to photograph the view from my window at work. I am in the third floor and the window is small but there’s definitely a view. Each day, I take four or five shots right after I get there, same at lunch, same right before leaving. Pick one of each to represent my day. At this point I am re-learning Lightroom and spending time researching. We’ll see what happens.
Another Scott
@Sab: The Cornell Ornithology page for them says:
Creating oak forests, also too, is a really big plus in my book! :-)
Cheers,
Scott.
Major Major Major Major
@Mary G: thanks, that card has a hard design to beat, really.
Old Dan and Little Anne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I believe it. My first sighting was on a Seneca Lake Wine tour. Then I started seeing them in my neighborhood in WNY. Now in Ohio near Lake Erie. They’re plotting against me!
Shell
Its a steam bath here in NJ too; my dog Kate’s already picking up/stressing on the approaching thunder storms.
Just made a nice shrimp salad and taking a look at the Game Of Thrones marathon.
Another Scott
@Old Dan and Little Anne: I first saw RWBBs in corn fields of Ohio when I was a kid. They’re neat birds. I’ve never had one buzz me though!
Cheers,
Scott.
satby
It wasa gorgeous day at the farmer’s market. Low 80s with a breeze that came through the open doors. Everyone was in a great mood, probably because they were laying in supplies for the long weekend of barbeques.
Kinda funny too, during a busy stretch I looked up and there was my office manager (probably checking to be sure I really was selling at the market). She gave me Saturdays off though, so we’re copacetic. But it was a funny moment. She even bought soap.
Major Major Major Major
@Another Scott: we had them back in eastern Colorado and Nebraska when I was a kid, not so much out here in California. Always liked them.
Iowa Old Lady
@Emma: I once tried to take a picture a day and post it for a year. I was into the 200s but winter defeated me and I didn’t finish. Still I learned to see things I otherwise wouldn’t have noticed, particularly the way light changed.
Yutsano
@MomSense:
I was hoping you would stop right there. That sounds amazing.
efgoldman
@Old Dan and Little Anne:
We’re too far above the river to see them regularly. Each spring, some get lost and go to our feeders, but then they go back to their natural environment near the water. Goldfinches, too.
Every yard in New England has Bluejays, Noisy buggers.
@pamelabrown53:
We see four sizes of woodpeckers in our yard. Mostly the little Downys at the suet feeder, but occasionally the bigger kinds, including the sapsucker, which is actually a ground feeder. Bigger than a Bluejay!
Oddly, while we see them every day year ’round, we never hear the characteristic pecking sounds.
@Another Scott:
They show up every spring, shortly after the robins arrive. Fortunately, their greediness keeps them from emptying the feeders. They all mob one side, and the weight makes it roll over so they can’t get to the seed. If they were smart enough to wait in line and eat one by each, they’d empty the things every day.
satby
@Emma: @Iowa Old Lady: something like that as a project sounds so intriguing. It reminds me of Monet and the way he would paint the same scenes in different seasons and times, and get totally different qualities of light and shadow.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Villago Delenda Est:
It’s a dry heat.
MomSense
@Yutsano:
Ha! I do make those, too!
MomSense
@Major Major Major Major:
I like them!
Betty Cracker
@Shell: Is the GOT series wrapping up? I’m waiting for it to end to start watching it so I can binge watch at my leisure.
Major Major Major Major
@Villago Delenda Est: @?BillinGlendaleCA: Denver is nice, also too.
Mike in NC
We went out shopping today and my wife commented on feeling like we were back in Florida. After last week in Tampa, she’s vowed never to go there again in the summertime. Works for me.
Near Ocala we stopped for breakfast and the waitress told us they had run out of orange juice. How do you manage to do that in Florida?
Mnemosyne
Repeating for the afternoon/evening crowd: if you’re doing Camp NaNoWriMo and would like to be in a Cabin with me and Miss Bianca, send me an email via my linked website or via Gmail at Mnemosyne dot muse. If you’re wondering what the heck Camp NaNoWriMo is, check it out here. If I have your email address and know that you write, I’ve already emailed you directly about this.
I just spent about 90 minutes reading every word of the Octavia Butler exhibition at the Huntington, and now me and my Chromebook are going to find a quiet spot to write 250 words (or more, but at least 250).
schrodingers_cat
Its about 100% humid and 80 degrees here. Do. Not. Want.
Karen
it has been a “balmy” 78 most of day with 80’s% humidity; thunderstorm headed this way the rain has started and I do believe it has gotten hotter. checked the NWS and tornado warning. just like still living in WI only with mountains
Mnemosyne
@Old Dan and Little Anne:
They’re VERY protective of their nests. I’ve seen public places post warning signs.
I once got attacked by a bird on a public street in Westwood, presumably because I got too close to its nest. I still resent the people at the nearby bus stop who snickered at me and the other passers-by who got dive-bombed. ?
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: Does the writing project have to be a novel? I have been working on a memoir/family history/history of Mumbai and have written about 500 words since T got elected. It is stalled, stalled, stalled.
eclare
@Villago Delenda Est: It also swallows here in Memphis, 91 degrees, feels like 97 according to The Weather Channel. Trying to keep cool and keep an eye on a dog with an upset stomach. Don’t ask how I know her tummy is upset….
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: how’s the chromebook working out!
Mnemosyne
Weather report: 80 degrees and 55 percent humidity, which is pretty good for So Cal on the first day of July.
Now I’m wandering off to write.
eclare
@ruemara: Read your comment in the downstairs post regarding you having to do all of the cleaning…I would find that stressful too.
Mnemosyne
@schrodingers_cat:
It does not! You can write anything you choose. Check your bloggy email for more details.
@Major Major Major Major:
It works well as a mobile writing device, when I bother to write. I’ve been blocked for a bit, and I’m trying to get unstuck. I used it in a wilderness park a few weeks ago.
My favorite Tarot deck is the Mythic Tarot, which is all based on Greek myths. I was able to buy an electronic version and I use it on my iPad occasionally.
Emma
@Iowa Old Lady: @satby: I am giving myself some leeway as to what I photograph. Closeups are ok too if they have an interesting story behind them. But I am very lucky that beautiful clouds are common in South Florida. I am wondering what will happen as we move into winter and I get less and less light in the late afternoons.
eclare
@Major Major Major Major: Love the color palette.
Uncle Cosmo
@Spanky: Well yeah, we got hammered, but not for long – I wuz holed up in a supermarket ~10 blocks S of JHU Homewood campus for all of 15 minutes as the animals went by two by two…
West of the Rockies
Stuck in moderation. My name didn’t pop up when I tried to comment (been commenting here for years). Yup, site problems definitely a thing for me today.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: When I’ve been to Denver in the summer it’s been a bit on the sticky side.
Calming Influence
It’s the normal cold and rainy summer here in Seattle. Summers here are even more cold and rainy than the winters. No one should ever consider moving here.
Seriously. Don’t even think about it.
Shana
I think it’s about 80 with lowish humidity here in Northwestern Illinois. Went on a tour of my old high school this morning. I’d forgotten it was built in 1938, largely as a WPA project. It has all this terrific art deco detail, center main door flanked by gymnasium and auditorium wings with the names in fabulous art deco lettering. Wonderful detailed ceiling light fixtures, a “little theater” with a semicircular ticket booth with curved walls and horizontal metal strips on the side walls of the theater itself. It reminds me a bit of the high school scenes in The Bachelor and The Bobby-Soxer.
Tonight’s the reunion dinner followed by a picnic tomorrow and then the drive home to Virginia.
?BillinGlendaleCA
Tomorrow morning, I’m off to shoot birds(with my camera) out at Sepulveda basin. The Japanese Garden is close by so I’m thinking of shooting that in IR since I’ve done that in visual light before. The folk who didn’t make it to last week’s Milky Way shoot are clamoring for another, though the organizer was talking about a Sunday night shoot. That’d be difficult for those with a day job, so I’m not sure there’d be that big a crowd.
Oldgold
Mueller was appointed Special Counsel May 17. By now, this highly experienced prosecutor knows what’s up and where this proceeding is headed.
Yesterday Mueller added Andrew Goldstein to his growing team. Goldstein was former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara’s top public corruption prosecutor.
Trumpelstiltskin is in trouble – bigly.
eclare
@Oldgold: Thanks for the news, just looked him up. Mueller is assembling quite a team.
Timurid
The Donald is taking more hits off the Twitter pipe this afternoon…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Timurid: What a sad little man.
JPL
@Oldgold: It needs to be soon. just sayin
Phylllis
We had almost spring-like temps and low humidity earlier in the week throughout South Carolina. I was in Greenville for most of the week & it was fabulous.. Mother Nature is making up for it today. Horribly hot and sticky.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: there’s sometimes water coming out of the sky but it’s not a very humid place, or at least it wasn’t when I was growing up there!
JPL
@Timurid: Well he is going to see his evangelical friends tonight, so they will forgive his sins.
What’s up with the Melania and Hank Siemers rumors, and who is Hank Siemers. Unfortunately now we know that the National Enquirer buries Trump stories, they are no longer a source.
Suzanne
Spawn the Elder was supposed to be handed off to her father last night for two weeks (he gets one longer “vacation” with her every summer, though he’s working the whole time and they aren’t doing anything special). Anyway, it turned into a total shitshow last night, because he made adult plans for her first night there and was going to leave his children with his mother, who is THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD. She’s so awful. Spawn had an anxiety attack, and her father handled it about as poorly as possible, including screaming at her about “there will be consequences!” and how she should feel bad bad bad, then tried to literally physically pull at 13-year-old girl out of the car. Eventually, he gave up and we took her home, with the agreement that we would drop her off this morning.
So we did. And then we (me, Mr. Suzanne, and Spawn the Younger) went out for brunch and I had a Bellini, because FUCK WHY IS MY EX-HUSBAND SUCH A FUCKING JACKASS. And then I came home and fell asleep on the couch, cause for some reason (all of the above + Mr. Suzanne snores) I SLEPT POORLY.
debbie
@Sab:
But they’re such a beautiful color.
Suzanne
I bought some sockeye salmon and sangria and that’s what tonight is all about.
ThresherK
@Shana: Built in 1938? What is your HS named?
My mom grew up in a city with several of them and hers was built in 1923, so she had the honor of graduating from Warren Harding High School.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
You have to remember, Bill is a native Southern Californian. Any humidity above 50 percent is The Most Humid Day EVAH!
And I got my words written. 293.
JPL
@Suzanne: That is horrible, and I don’t know how you let him know that is not acceptable.
I feel for all of you.
eclare
@Suzanne: Enjoy your salmon and sangria! Sounds wonderful! Good luck for the next two weeks, what happened last night was awful.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Karen
@Calming Influence: that was part I loved about SF bay area, the fog rolling in middle of day; so it would be hot in morning, cool and comfortable for evenings
hard to believe that parents bought 3 bedroom home in what is now Silicon valley for under $5k, end of street was apricot orchard
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major: Remember I grew up in SoCal, we may have different definitions of humid.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
IIRC there are two seasons left.
Pro tip: do not grow an attachment to any character.
Suzanne
@JPL: I told him to stop. He’s such a fucking dick. I was thiiiiis close to whipping out the phone and taking video in case I needed to demonstrate assault to a court, but fortunately he stopped. I don’t believe that he is abusive—just a fucking man-bun-wearing man-baby—but he made Spawn feel horrible. Ughhhh.
It has cooled down and it is now only 111 degrees. Come at me and tell me it’s a dry heat. COME ON I DARE YOU. We’ll be taking Spawn the Younger to the playground around 9:30 pm.
schrodingers_cat
@Mnemosyne: I think I will join you. My lack of progress is eating at me.
chris
OFFS! Scary Afghan teenage girls department.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/hilarybrueck/2017/06/29/denied-afghanistans-all-girl-robotics-team-cant-get-visas-to-the-u-s/#5db51c8b367f
Happy Canada Day to all.
frosty
@Another Scott: Same squall line of thunderstorms came through South PA too. It’s nice now if a tad humid. We have pretty good summers – I can make it w/o AC for all but a couple of weeks.
Heading north out of Baltimore you can see the thermometer in the car drop 5 degrees through the Hereford Zone.
Major Major Major Major
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Denver is extremely dry, I get a nosebleed within a day if I’m not staying somewhere with a humidifier, which doesn’t happen when I visit socal.
ETA: it *can get* humid in the summer but as a general climate it’s very dry.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Sorry, Mark, but Trump is a bad person. And so are the people still supporting him
Big Ole Hound
@Divf: Just east in Concord…82 and breezy. Just perfect for the last week with no faults except for traffic if I wan to head west.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@Suzanne: Your ex handled that horribly. Man-buns are the new hipsters
JPL
His latest tweet
We are so f..ked..
Suzanne
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?: My ex-husband is pushing 50, can’t maintain employment, can’t maintain sobriety, can’t pay child support, is actually someone who refused gainful employment in order to maintain consumption of social safety net programs, is currently mooching off his girlfriend in between stints of living with his mom, AND HE WEARS A DOUCHEY FUCKING MAN-BUN.
God.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne: It’s 43% here in the cave and I feel oppressed.
Iowa Old Lady
@Suzanne: Wow. I see why he’s an ex. How maddening.
d58826
@JPL: And using the term advisedly a comment from the first lady. Well so much for giving the Melanaia the benefit of the doubt
Grown from the same low growth pond scum as her husband. There is an old saying about ‘class with out’. Well so does lack of class.
And shouldn’t he be doing his home work. He has a meeting on Friday where Putin will probably take him to the cleaner.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/…..spartandhp
?BillinGlendaleCA
@d58826: And remember her “cause” is anti-bullying.
? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?
@d58826: She’s his Russian handler. Wouldn’t be surprised to find out they met previously on one of his trips to Russia
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
She’s probs afraid the Donald will beat her if she publicly roasts him for his bullying
hitchhiker
@Calming Influence:
Second.
I can hardly stand this place today.
Timurid
@JPL:
G-20 is gonna suuuuucckkkk…
Iowa Old Lady
@hitchhiker: I had to scroll back to make sure you weren’t talking about BJ.
debbie
@Suzanne:
Years ago, I stood in line for a cab in Las Vegas on a 125-degree day. You’re right, dry heat is bullshit.
debbie
@JPL:
Modern day, as in trolley cars?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@hitchhiker: I tried to tell the kid how awful it is up there, but she persisted on going there for her vacation in early Sept.
efgoldman
@eclare:
There are some conspiracy theorists hither and yon who are jumping up and down and screaming that the investigation is all a sham and part of the cover up. because Mueller is nominally a Republiklown.
Of course, all those high-powered investigators would sign onto something like that in a heartbeat, right? For career advancement, maybe?
People are so fucking stupid; and not just the mouth-breathing, knuckle dragging flying monkeys. either.
debbie
@debbie:
I just checked my email. Up top: a Nordstrom ad, “SPANX for every summer outfit.” I can’t imagine that would be comfortable in hot weather.
d58826
@debbie: Just like dry cold in Minnesota. -19 is COLD in any man’s language. Major challenge is keeping the nostrils from freezing shut.
eclare
@efgoldman: Wha???? Had not heard that. Idjits. As you say, fuckem.
schrodingers_cat
@efgoldman: The constant doom and gloom of some and the talk of a civil war/anarchy are becoming tiresome to say the least.
d58826
@Timurid: An earlier thread had a link to a Guardian article that said Der Fuhrer is preparing a list of ‘deliverables’ for him and Putin to agree on. Even w/o the list he has had so few wins that I beat Putin will allow him a WIN in exchange for the nuclear codes.
efgoldman
@Suzanne:
Not true. I am the worst person in the world. ME ME ME!!
Schlemazel
picked & pitted 3 gallons of cherries then picked another 3 gallons worth. When I bought these dwarf trees I was worried that the birds would get all the fruit not I which they would!
efgoldman
@? ?? Goku (aka Junior G-Man) ? ?:
He’d have to catch her, first. I’m betting he couldn’t. even if she’s wearing 5″ heels.
trollhattan
@Suzanne:
A decent government would declare Phoenix “unlivable” for six months/year and end the experiment, but do we have a decent government? We do not.
Has monsoon season started? That’s always fun.
I can sympathize because we hit 110 a week ago and there’s simply no “getting used” to that crap.
As to the ex: bear spray.
Iowa Old Lady
@efgoldman: These people have no dignity.
ArchTeryx
Love Blue Jays, though the great Jack Aulis spoke truly when he wrote “It is easy to tell a Blue Jay, but it is impossible to tell one to shut up.”
Just enjoying having income again, and health insurance that (at least for now) our Republican Congress can’t take away on a whim.
ArchTeryx
@Suzanne: At that point your skin doesn’t care if it’s dry or wet. You cook either way. “Dry heat” means something when you’re in the 90s. Not so much the 110s.
Suzanne
@trollhattan: Officially, monsoon season starts on June 15, but we haven’t had any storms yet. I just hibernate all summer. Fuck this noise.
@efgoldman: My ex-MIL is just awful. Spawn the Elder hates her so much that one time when she was forced to spend time with her, she got so anxious that she threw up. And my kid is admittedly high-strung, but that is a reasonable reaction.
Suzanne
@ArchTeryx: Yeah, the oven is a nice dry heat, and I don’t hang out in there, either.
Calming Influence
@hitchhiker: It’s absolutely horrible weather. I think Seattle might get freezing rain tomorrow. Only fools and masochists would want to live in the Pacific Northwest.
Californians would be smart to stay in L.A.
eclare
@Suzanne: That has always been my response to people who say 110 isn’t so bad, it’s a dry heat. Yeah, like my oven.
ArchTeryx
@Suzanne: The one good thing about “dry heat” that high is that it’s easier for air conditioners to actually work against it, especially ones that work via evaporation. “It’s only a dry heat” is fine for A/C. Meaningless if you’re actually out in it!
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: We can only hope the Mango Menace goes after Luke Skywalker…even some of Trumpov’s followers would be like, “wait, what?”
Jeffro
Went and saw BABY DRIVER this afternoon…good flick! Not sure what all the ga-ga reviews are about, but it was good.
Picked up some banh mi on the way home, too. C’mon Powerball, let’s make every day be like today!
Gelfling 545
@Suzanne: Because if he weren’t a fj he wouldn’t be your ex. I had a similarly idiotic ex. When my elder daughter turned 18 she never spoke to him again.
Jim Parish
I spent a year in Tucson, about thirty years ago.
Brief digression: there are two kinds of spicy food. One kind – e.g., Mexican spicy food – lets you know immediately what you just put into your mouth. The other – typically Indian – lets you savor the first bite; you’ve put the second bite in before the fire of the first bite hits you.
Dry heat, if it’s not too hot, is like the second kind of spicy. You’re out in it, you’re doing fine, not even sweating much as far as you can tell, and then suddenly you realize that you need water STAT.
Suzanne
@ArchTeryx: My HVAC unit is nearing the end of its life, but it’s working like a charm today! WOOT!
@Gelfling 545: My only question is when current girlfriend will finally be done with him. He’s a serial monogamist.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim Parish: Indian food does both kinds of heat. The first type is with hot chilies, cayenne etc and the second type is with the spices that go into garam masala (black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom etc)
J R in WV
@Major Major Major Major:
The Ten of Swords reminds me of the Murder on the Oriental Express, an Agatha Cristy novel. Everyone committed murder and the deceased was very dead.
Uncle Cosmo
@Jim Parish:
Yeah, well, I spent a month in Houston one August night in 1970. Ran a line of thunderboomers on the flight in from L.A., landed at 10 PM in a torrential downpour, air temperature 86 F. By the time we got to the motel across from NASA the rain had stopped. They felt sorry for us & kept the pool open for our party but they could’ve saved the trouble – humidity was so high the air/water boundary didn’t exist. Blech.
Denali
My angry birds story is about two titmice(?) who sat on my window sill and glared and chirped when the bird feeder was empty(after the squirrel visit). Never been so openly scolded by birds before.
J R in WV
@efgoldman:
We have all sorts of woodpeckers in our wooded hillsides… The biggest are Piliated Woodpeckers. They’re nearly as big as Ivory Billed woodpeckers were. They fly away and you can see semi-circles of white on their otherwise black topsides. They also scream like dinosaurs. We know this because Birds are Dinosaurs.
You can hear them hitting a tree for hundreds of yards.
We have Flickers and Downys and Sap Suckers – which I know we have from tree damage around the trunk…
CZanne
@Suzanne: If Spawn the Elder is getting up into adolescence, there’s a good chance she can petition the courts to suspend that long visitation, prevent any contact with the grandparent, or alter her visitation entirely. Have her write it down and date it now, then mail the document to yourself (email or snail) and put it in the file unopened against when/if she chooses to be done with him. And again with future incidents. She may choose to be done a lot sooner than 18. Basically, have her pull a Comey and write memos. Contemporaneous testimony in her own hand is one of the strongest forms. Child support is her right – she did not ask to be born. Visitation is his privilege and he’s abusing it.
I was almost 18 when the custody thing got sorted between my parents. Smother got all the kids and responsibility and no cash; the Asshat had to cover our car and health insurance until we graduated our Bachelors or turned 21 — there’s a reason I got my Baches as fast as I could — and provide cars. He wasn’t great at any except the health insurance, and eventually quit his job so he wouldn’t have to anymore. At 18, I cut him off in terms of visitation and talking to him, but held him to the money I’d earned in 18 years of abuse. Sibs were 3.5 and 6.5 years younger. Sib -3 petitioned for a deal like mine within 3 months at almost 15 and got it; Sib -6 petitioned at 13 (the next year) and got it. All three of us petitioned through Maricopa County in the 1990s, so it can be done. And about 13 years later, Half-sib-17 also petitioned, and called Sibs -6 and -3 to show the pattern of behavior, and got it, too.
J R in WV
@Denali:
A good friend has a farm outside Athens, Ohio. She gardens hugely, and has maybe a dozen hummer feeders out. One day she was working in her garden, and the last feeder went empty.
Suddenly she was surrounded by a huge cloud of hummers, angry hummers, seeking the person-in-charge, who was falling down on the job. Dix had to drop the tools and retreat to the kitchen to make more nectar for the angry hummers – report was dozens, like a hundred or more!!!!
Hummers are small, but, well, emphatic. Very emphatic, and certain of who is to blame, and who needs to get with their program. Great place to visit mid-summer.
Another Scott
@ArchTeryx: NewScientist:
(Emphasis added.)
“and humidity”
40C = 104F
Humidity matters. 100F in the desert is hot. 100F in a normal city is brutal. It got up to 107F in Switzerland during the deadly 2003 heat wave. Few would notice 107F in Phoenix (the maximum recorded that summer, in August 2003, in Phoenix was 115F).
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
mainmata
DC Metro area also suffocating though we had a big thunderstorm that cleared the area and dropped the temp a little.
Sab
@debbie: Used to live in Vegas. Had to get my shepherd puppy a treadmill so she could get exercise. I gave her a bath once and took her across the street to meet the neighbors new rottweiler, and she burned her pawpads to blisters just standing on the sidewalk with damp feet.
mainmata
@Another Scott: Places like Iraq and Arizona routinely soar well into the hundreds (as much as 140 degrees in Iraq). As a PCV in Ethiopia, we went to Masala on the Red Sea. The temp was 125 degrees and the humidity was 90+. We literally couldn’t move. Meanwhile, local stevedores were unloading freight by hand and not just dying immediately. Humans have amazing adaptive capacity but there really are limits. (We were coming from living in the highlands so were also not used to the severe heat.)
tybee
i have no issues with the heat. i’m on the border between south carolina and georgia.
it can’t be any warmer or more humid in the tampa area than it is here.
i love summer. :)
Sab
When I lived in Vegas my car didn’t have an air conditioner because I bought it in Ohio. I used to drive around brain dead in the summer. Then I got a plant mister spray bottle. Used to squirting myself when I was stuck in rush hour. A miracle in dry heat. Just increases the humidity in damp heat.