Home…FINALLY…

Welp, yesterday was an ‘experience’ I don’t care to repeat…

Got up early to catch and earlier flight home from SMF, only to have one pilot turn up sick. Back on my original flight to DEN. Got there, looked at the weather and went and bought a big bottle of water. There was a SOLID front scheduled to hit DFW about the time I arrived!

Sure enough, a half hour out of DEN on what was supposedly a 1+20 flight to DFW, we started hitting turbulence. And couldn’t get out of it!

And then the fun started! A reroute NORTH, not south around the southern edge of the storm front. We ended up north of Ft. Smith, then routed down about to Alexandria, LA, then in the back way to DFW, all in what ‘I’ would call moderate turbulence. I could tell we were changing altitudes every 10-15 minutes, but we never got any smooth air. The flight attendants spent over an hour in their seats, and our 1+20 flight turned into 2+30 when we finally landed an hour late (and sketchy on gas).

But I did have a first on that flight! The first time EVER my bag was the first one up the conveyor belt!!! Grabbed the bag and ran to the car (many thanks to JimJim for coming to get me). We had just gotten on 820 heading out when the RAIN hit, closely followed by wind gusts I’m guessing were upward of 60mph, that were moving my SUV from one lane to the other. And we had to dodge at least one of the big road signs that been blown into the roadway! Folks were hiding under overpasses, or in some cases just stopped in the lanes (IDJITS).

It took right at an hour to get to Rhome, normally a half hour drive at speed, but we were doing 25 to 30mph and there were times we might have been able to see 100 yards…maybe… And more people stopped in odd places. Pretty much everybody was running their hazard warnings, and skating around due to the amount of water on the road.

A little over 2 hours later, I was finally home! And as soon as I finished this post, I crashed…

So don’t expect any replies early this morning. And a last update on PP, she is doing better, had her second PT and they ‘exercised’ the joint and nothing came apart! Great news, even if she was hurting afterward.

And some people were asking about the amount of snow up in Lake County… From a commercial photog who got a drone up!

6 inches of snow lakeside, 12 inches up where we were, and 18-19 inches on tops of the hills!

On the road…

Travelling back to Texas today (hopefully)…

Go read the folks on the sidebar while my able assistant works on tomorrow’s post…

Reality in 3, 2…

And the ‘joys’ of EV ownership…

YouTube personality Steve Hammes leased a Hyundai Kona Electric sport utility vehicle for his 17-year-old daughter Maddie for three reasons: it was affordable, practical and allowed Maddie to put her cash toward college, not fuel. Now, the upstate New York resident has a dilemma many EV owners can relate to: finding available charging stations far away from home.

Full article, HERE from ABC News.

Personally, I think  Subway has the right idea…

But I’ll never own/lease one. My trips are too long and I don’t want to spend as much time charging as I do driving…

Much less what the ‘cost’ of charging stations will be sooner rather than later.

Your thoughts?

Whupped…

Sigh… The grand’s dad took them snowboarding at the VERY hilly golf course day before yesterday and wore their butts out… THEY slept in yesterday morning, but the pups were whining and scratching at the door at 0600 as usual… Kids got pancakes and bacon for ‘brunch’ when they finally rolled out about 1000. PP is doing better, but arm is still hurting. And snow is melting, but they are now calling for more snow tonight and tomorrow. Oh joy, oh joy…

Fast forward a day- The kids slept in again, the dogs didn’t… And the kids wore me AND the dogs out.

Now they’ve cancelled school for tomorrow… Sigh…

Ramping up…

This used to be a once in a while thing…

The U.S. Navy plane had been in the air over the South China Sea for a few hours when a warning came crackling over the radio.

“No approaching any more or you will pay full responsibility,” said a voice from a ground station belonging to China’s air force.

Full article HERE from NBC News.

Now days, it seems that just about every flight and every Freedom Of Navigation (FON) trip in that part of the South China Sea gets intercepted/threatened…

A number of years ago an EP-3 (PR32) was hit by a Chinese fighter attempting to ‘bounce’ them. After that the Chinese became a lot more circumspect about approaching, but now…

I can’t help but wonder if the next ‘provocation’ is going to be a shootdown.

Book promo…

First up is Postcards from Mars

As always, click on the cover for the Amazon link!

The blurb-

A collection of illustrated micro-fiction.
During MarsCon 2023 the three Moms of the Apocalypse handed out images to anyone who wanted to enter the contest. The rules were simple: write down a complete story in fifty words, and then send it to us. These are the winners of that challenge!

And next up is another anthology Space Cowboys

The blurb-

There’s something about the Cowboy that speaks to us all. So it only makes sense that, as humans expand into space, they’re going to bring their Cowboys with them.

Join 10 authors as they explore what Space Cowboys would look like, why we love them, and how they deal with the livestock that travels with humanity.

I  will admit I’m surprised mine is the lead story in this one, as it doesn’t involve cows in space…

And now we have snow…

Thankfully, PP’s PT session was yesterday. It spit snow off and on all day, until about 1700…

And an hour later…

Meanwhile, ‘I’ had to go pick up pizza…

As of 1930, there was easily 4 inches and it was still snowing hard.

And the kids were still out playing in it!!!

Quick update on PP…

The shoulder surgery went well, she is slowly recovering and the pain is becoming manageable.

She’s doing the first sets of exercises, but hates the sling because it rubs… And I’m taking her for her first rehab today!

The hubby and kids have been super supportive, the dogs and cat, not so much. They have ‘their’ schedule regardless of the situation around the house, and they’ve ‘adapted’ to me being their provider… sigh

The kids doing homework last night were funny, as Jace was doing a heart rate test vs. caffeine use. So he took a base reading for each of us, then we drank a coke, he took it again, and then a second coke and another reading.

Of course by then, the kids were WIRED!!!

Which led to the inevitable, when the caffeine/sugar high wore off after supper.

She was going to get a cup for her glass of milk… And that was all she wrote!

Daddy carried her off to bed. LOL

Ummm…errrr…

Okay, who had zombie apocalypse for Wednesday???

Let’s face it: having just gone through a pandemic where denialist political discourse turned a significant part of the population into something resembling zombies, the prospect of a new pandemic where a microorganism itself devours the victims’ brains is an unsettlingly real prospect. 

Full article, HERE from World Crunch.

OBTW, the author is actually a microbiologist… HERE

But there is a bit of pushback, and apparently she says (in not so many words) it’s not a high probability!

And just for fun, there’s this scientific study that was released on Jan 19th… HERE

Sigh… I’m gonna go find a hole, climb in, and pull it in after me.

My surprised face…

I have it around here somewhere…

In case you missed it, over the weekend, the U.S. military announced it was ending the search for weather or hobby balloons President Joe Biden ordered to be shot down over Lake Huron and Alaska. The news came in a very late, Friday night news dump as the three-day holiday weekend began. 

Full article, HERE.

Per usual, the infamous Friday dumps continue…

And one wonders if they are ensuring that nobody can actually come up with debris to say what was really shot down for a half million dollars each.

I guess the balloon club is out of luck…

Sigh…