Post Race!

[dilettante]

We're in a spell ranging from high 30s to low 50s with misty rain here and there for another week or so. No real record-breaking though. It'll turn cold again after that and probably stay cold.

[dday9]

I got super sick the past couple of days. Running a small fever of 100 and coughing up a lung, but I think I’m over the worst of it.

[dday9]

My son actually got his tonsils removed yesterday and I was dying on the ride home from NOLA, but it hurt me so bad because he woke up from anesthesia in so much pain.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Why'd he get them removed? I thought that was largely a thing of the past.

[dday9]

He was still wetting the bed even though he is about to turn 9, they think it was sleep apnea from his tonsils. Also they were always getting infected and he constantly got tonsil stones.

In fact, his surgeon said that when she squeezed his tonsils after they were removed it was like a millions ants (tonsil stones) running out of an ant hill (tonsil).

[Shaggy Hiker]

Never heard of a tonsil stone. Is that like a nose nugget?

Probably not.

[dday9]

I get tonsil stones all the time, but my parents decided not to take out my tonsils (which I have mixed feelings about).

Basically they are bacterial build up that get stuck in your tonsils. Usually they don’t hurt, but occasionally they do.

[Bonker Gudd]

The alpacas are ready.

[Peter Porter]

The alpacas are ready.

Great! Anyone wanna pet 'em?

[dilettante]

So I tried one of the BuzzBallz. 15% alcohol by volume. Tastes like poison.

Not my cup o' tea, so I'm missing nothing.

[Shaggy Hiker]

That's a bit how I feel about most hard liquor. The taste would be better without the alcohol.

[dday9]

The CFP semi-finals were wild.

1. I did not expect TCU to embarrass Michigan like that
2. I did not expect Ohio State to keep the game close, let alone lead for the majority of the game
3. That kick at the end of the game was embarrassing. I cannot kick 30 yards let alone 50 in a high stress environment, but there are some expectations on division 1 kickers. While 50 yarders aren’t automatic, they should be nail biting but that last kick was absolutely horrendous.

[dday9]

My childhood friend’s grandmother was from Columbus and was a huge fan of “The” Ohio State. Anytime they played we would always pick at each other. She passed away two weeks ago and so I didn’t get to rub the loss in her face.

[homer13j]

So I tried one of the BuzzBallz. 15% alcohol by volume. Tastes like poison.

Sounds like Four Loko. That stuff is just plain nasty.

[homer13j]

I did not expect Ohio State to keep the game close, let alone lead for the majority of the game

I find it highly amusing that all the haters are never willing to admit the Buckeyes are better than they want to believe. Remember it was only a 5-point spread in what was basically a home game for Georgia.

That kick at the end of the game was embarrassing.

Think about this: At the exact moment sports gambling became legal in the state of Ohio the OSU kicker missed the most important kick of the year.

[dday9]

I find it highly amusing that all the haters are never willing to admit the Buckeyes are better than they want to believe.

Outside of Michigan and Notre Dame, Ohio State didn’t play anyone worthwhile this year. It’s like Clemson (every year), I don’t know how to accurately gauge them until they play someone worthwhile. Michigan beat the ever living crap out of them and the Notre Dame win wasn’t very convincing.

That’s why I was surprised at not only how close the game was, but that also Michigan got creamed for most of that TCU game.

[wes4dbt]

I'm not a big college football fan but I usually check out the bowl games at the end of the year. I can't remember ever seeing TCU playing for the championship. It's fun to see a new team in the mix. It would be even more fun if they won.

[Shaggy Hiker]

College football rankings are hopeless. They don't (and realistically can't) play enough games to really get a good picture of the whole field, and it is never a good idea for a reasonably good team to play other good teams. So long as record matters, you're better off playing against teams that are safely weaker than you are. That's especially true because any given game can turn on a fluke play, or two, and you only get one game against anybody in a season.

At least in the NFL, the rankings within a conference are reasonably correct.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Maybe the rankings in college are also reasonably correct. After all, truly figuring it out is unreasonable. You can't play a best of seven series. The rate of injury is so high that the last game would have both teams fielding different players from the first game, though hopefully not entirely different teams.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Meanwhile, it's a new year. There's a chance I might be leaving Idaho this year. I'll be figuring that out over the next few months. If that doesn't happen, I'll be taking a nice, long, bike ride in the late spring. About 1800 miles, is what I'm thinking about.

[wes4dbt]

I think I've found the new Nostradamus,

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...p/10938362002/

Pretty funny.

[wes4dbt]

Meanwhile, it's a new year. There's a chance I might be leaving Idaho this year. I'll be figuring that out over the next few months. If that doesn't happen, I'll be taking a nice, long, bike ride in the late spring. About 1800 miles, is what I'm thinking about.

Has Idaho run out of fish??? Moving anywhere interesting?

[Shaggy Hiker]

Not sure if I'm moving at all, let alone where. Retirement is looming in the not-quite-distant-enough future, and I am figuring out what I'm going to do with that. Changing jobs rather than totally retiring is one option, depending on it putting me doing something I want to do in a place I want to be.

[dilettante]

There is a lot to consider for sure. I had plans that never panned out because the 2008-era economic woes pretty much wiped out the town I was planning to retire to. I suppose I should be thankful I hadn't committed to any real estate there. I'd been eyeballing it for years.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Back then, I considered buying a sizable tract of land in northern Idaho. Eventually, though, I checked Google Maps and realized that I could drive to Seattle, Salt Lake City, Yellowstone, Bozeman, and Reno in less time than it would take to get to northern Idaho. This is a long state...and the one highway that goes the length of the state is not always fast and not anywhere near straight.

[wes4dbt]

It seems the media has feel in love with a new phrase. "Atmospheric River" We've been getting hit with a lot of rain here lately and that is the most popular term to describe the weather. A week ago I had never heard that term. It's like a totally rad phrase man!!!! lol

[szlamany]

AR, pineapple express - all terms in the weather before...media loves a good tag line

Pineapple express roll across lower Canada and hit New England all the time - we hate it here, lol!

[dilettante]

I remember hearing it a lot 3 years ago or so. Not much if it all before that though.

[Shaggy Hiker]

This isn't a media thing. Atmospheric rivers were discovered only quite recently, and it has been only in the last few years that categorizing them has become a thing in meteorology. Without a name, it was just rain. Now that satellites can show the size, extent, and motion of them, it's possible to do real forecasting with them. Therefore, expect to hear about them a whole lot more, now. It's not because of a change in how media is reporting things, it's a change in how the science is describing them.

[wes4dbt]

I sure never heard the term before. Maybe because this is the first significant rain storm in our area in a long time. Though other parts of the country have had significant storms and I never saw that term. One of life's mysteries.

[wes4dbt]

This isn't a media thing. Atmospheric rivers were discovered only quite recently, and it has been only in the last few years that categorizing them has become a thing in meteorology. Without a name, it was just rain. Now that satellites can show the size, extent, and motion of them, it's possible to do real forecasting with them. Therefore, expect to hear about them a whole lot more, now. It's not because of a change in how media is reporting things, it's a change in how the science is describing them.

So it's the scientist fault. Figures.

We've had satellites tracking the weather patterns for a lone time, I wonder what's new/changed.

Never mind, just read the term has been around since 1994. Just took a long time for it to catch on. lol

[Shaggy Hiker]

I don't think it's so much a matter of 'catching on', as being measured. There are several things, like hurricanes, tornadoes, burritos, and the like, where the item was around for a long time, but until we had a rating system...it didn't do all that much good for most people. For example, a hurricane is just a storm. A category 1 storm might be fairly narrow and insignificant, whereas a category 3 storm could result in serious flooding along with wind damage. By being able to classify them, the impact of the thing can be better understood, and people can plan for them more effectively.

I was a bit surprised to hear that atmospheric rivers have been described for so long, but I've certainly been hearing about them for at least a decade. What has really changed is that there is now a categorization scale that might become as commonly used as the scale for hurricanes. It might not, too, because it's a two-axis scale. One axis has to do with volume of water, while the second axis has to do with speed of movement. A high-volume, but fast moving, atmospheric river might not do all that much. Similarly, a slow moving, but low volume, atmospheric river might not do much, either. A slow moving, high volume, atmospheric river will certainly mean extensive mudslides in this part of the country, and flooding in places where the hills are more likely to stay appropriately upright.

I was reading about that scale in just the last couple years. I have yet to hear it used in a weather forecast, though, so we'll see whether or not it catches on. At least the weather service offices are likely aware of it.

[dilettante]

I know this guy has been using it for years in his vlogs: https://www.mrmbb333.com/

He's a bit "out there" though, mixing weather phenomena with wackier stuff like UFOs and crazy talk about "frequencies" in the new age fringe science sense.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Well, some of weather IS a bit out there. Lightning strikes may be associated with cosmic rays. Some drugs can be associated with cosmic thinking. So, perhaps it's all related?

[Shaggy Hiker]

We're getting a 'warming trend' over the next few days. The problem with our warming trends is that we require some fairly strong winds to scour the cold air out of the valleys. We won't be getting much wind, though, so we may end up with the oddly perverse conditions that seem to arise every winter: It can be bitterly cold in the valley, while the snow is melting off the ski areas 4,000 feet higher.

In the worst case, it's not just cold in the valley, but overcast and foggy. The fog will then freeze on everything, which looks quite nice. If one then drives up to go skiing in the cold weather, they will break out of the clouds into a sunny, near cloudless, day, with temperatures warm enough to make the skiing less than wonderful.

I say "near cloudless", because there IS a cloud, and it's a big one, but it's below you.

[wes4dbt]

We're suppose to get a series of rain storms over the next several days. Sacramento could be in trouble, they already have some flooding from the last storm. All the rivers are very high. Luckily most of them have a dam system on them. I'm a little south of Sac so probably not going to be to much problems here, except for the usual street flooding.

[Shaggy Hiker]

No salmon swimming across the roads?

[wes4dbt]

No salmon swimming across the roads?

Salmon walk in Ca.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Salmon chant, in Idaho.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Though only in the evening, I should add.