This is an Unhosted Cafe
But Diane’s Cafe will be along later.
But Diane’s Cafe will be along later.
Coffee, tea, and hot chocolate to warm you up.
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Umbrellas by the door for all of us having yet another downpour.
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Please recommend (and unrecommend the Cafe/Lounge from earlier)
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May the 4’s be with you
Good Morning Everyone.
Beautiful sunrise or sunset picture.
Morning Family Man.
It’s yesterday’s sunrise. And just about it for the sun since then. After yesterday’s all day rain, we’ve been storming all night.
Hope your weather is nicer.
Morning Andi.
We’re supposed to get rain today, but it looks like it will be north of us.
I was so hoping it would rain. Another excuse not to do the yard.
It’s much too wet to do yard work in Indiana, so to show your solidarity and sympathy, you shouldn’t do any either.
You convinced me. 🙂
This has to be a group effort and I’ll take the banner for high weeds and leaves.
Morning all.
We’re in a lull between storms.
Morning Mary.
Are you expecting more bad weather?
We’re still under a tornado watch. But nothing much is happening right now.
Most of the dangerously bad weather was from the south suburbs and further south. But we had lots of lightening and, while, we never lost electricity, there was constant flickering.
That’s the only thing I hate about spring time weather. The constant thunderstorms and tornado/high winds.
BTW you did a wonderful job again with the cafe last night.
this car that ended up on top of a house might be too dark to see
Not a way I’d like to wake up. Lucky it didn’t go through the roof.
Was this the result of a tornado?
I don’t think so. This was in Jefferson County, where our southern suburbs are. About 40 miles from me.
The tornado was in Perry county right on the river near the bridge crossing to Festus (IL). It’s about 100 miles from here. Where it hit was not too populated. Although they say two people were killed in Perry County when their car was thrown at least 75 yards into a propane tank. I assume that was from the tornado.
I can see it fine. I would have hated to be in that area when the weather hit.
When the sirens start here, we have to drive about 2 miles to get to the shelter. People out in the country just have to weather through it.
Because no one has basements right? But how much lead time do you have from the sirens? We don’t have much (but most people have basements).
Nope no basements. Long before sirens start we have a local access channel and local news that put up the radar, so when it really get bad, we’re already there.
My mom is very afraid of storms. It comes from when we lived in Arkansas. I kid her now, because when we were kids she would put us under the bed and sit on it, or drived up and down a muddy dirt road during the storm. Neither a good idea, but didn’t know better at that time.
I like to watch storms. When I was a kid I would go outside and lie down on the sidewalk to watch them. Drove my mom crazy. She was always trying to drag us behind the huge furnance in the basement.
Storms don’t really bother me and I’ve only been afraid here once. Some of the roof shingles got blown off. Otherwise I’m happy to sit in the living room and watch the show.
Mary, you be careful in that weather. I know there really isn’t much you can do. I know cause I have lived through tornado watches, warnings and actual tornados but they do make me nervous sometimes. LOL
Thanks. I don’t really get too nervous. It’s just a fact of life around here.
It IS a little early in the season for them to start but weather isn’t what it once was is it?
I don’t get nervous fpr me but for other people. LOL I will sit and watch storms right up to the point you have to run and hide. LOL
You’re up early. Did all the storming keep you up? I slept really bad last night — I’m such a light sleeper that bright lightning flashes and thunder can wake me up.
I was up really late Friday night so I was pretty wiped by the time the storm hit last night. I love sleeping with storms (unless the warnings go off) so I was asleep by 11:00.
The birds chirping their spring love songs outside my window woke me up.
I love sleeping to wind and rain. But I can’t sleep through bright lights and loud noises so I need my lightning to be distant and my thunder to be muted.
So were these really loud birds or were you sleeping with the windows open?
Both
It’s about 55 degrees right now but the humidity is 85 percent. So it feels warmer.
Good Morning!!! Well, I got all the business cards designed but now have to go buy cards as I am out. LOL Thank goodness my printer is a fast printer and I can print 60 or more cards in less than 2 minutes. I did a different card for each shop.
I will be around some this am but then will be gone most of the afternoon.
Morning Refinish.
You’re chipper and busy as usual.
I don’t think I know how to be any other way anymore. LOL I actually have two things I have been invited to today but I think I will skip the second one so as not to cut short the time with the people from cafepress. LOL
The second event is one to meet Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) at a Democratic reception but since I really don’t like Dkos that much I think I am going to skip it.
Aren’t we the important one. 🙂
Pretty soon you’ll be talking about taking trip to Washington.
ROTFLMAO!!!! I am not important but I know a lot of people who are and belong to almost any civil rights or political group you can think of so I get invites to lots of events.
I was just kidding with you. 🙂 I think it’s great you do know these people and your voice gets heard.
I knew you were joking. LOL
I am doing a happy dance right now cause I found an extra box of business cards so I do not have to go out and buy any this morning!!!
I do enjoy meeting bloggers. I met quite a few bloggers last summer at DEMFEST 2005. That is when I got my start blogging cause I cought the bug. LOL
I went out to get the paper and heard an unusual bird call for my neighborhood. A moderately loud and slightly raspy sort of quick kak-kak-kak-kak-kak. Well, I looked up into the trees and located some sort of smallish hawk and then saw its mate (I presume). I went inside and got my binoculars and went into the backyard to get closer and enjoyed the sight of what turns out to be a pair of Cooper’s Hawks. One was larger than the other(the larger being the female).
One after the other, they launched from pretty high up in the trees and made some exciting twists and turns as they disappeared between and through the fairly dense trees in the neigborhood. I haven’t been birding for long, and I’m not extremely serious about it, but it was nice to see these in my neighborhood and then identify them and put them down on my personal list of birds I’ve seen.
The link above is from the Cornell U. ornithology labs website, and it is OUTSTANDING if you want to figure out what kind of bird it was that you just saw. You do need an idea of whether it was a hawk or a sparrow or a wren, but if you use the taxonomic order list, you can check through all the hawks, for example, and begin to narrow it down. Then, if necessary, you can listen to the calls of the various species. I like that feature because you can use it to compare with what you heard and get a good positive ID even when the species are sometimes hard to tell apart just by looking…
Hawks can be some of the most amazing birds to watch in flight.
The other morning, I watched a hawk swoop in, grab the dead rabbit carcass out of the middle of the road in front of my house, and fly off with it. It was incredible.
I don’t think people appreciate just how much strenght a hawk has.
Hawks in flight take my breath away. It’s one of those times I almost believe in God.
I sat and watched hawks from the front porch of the farm a few days ago. Spectacular.
A couple of days ago there was a giant turkey vulture (which we called buzzards back in Ohio) standing in the middle of my suburban street feasting on a dead squirrel, and he refused to move for me. He just paused, looked at me in my approaching car, and went back to sticking his ugly, bald head into the carcass. Then he walked away just far enough for me to pass…but he looked so damn annoyed with me.
I was laughing about your buzzard. Down here they’ve learned not to be so pushy. You don’t dare a redneck that’s got a rifle rack in the back of the truck. 🙂
Maybe I should get me one of those big Ford 1500 pick up trucks with a confederate flag for a front license plate and a gun rack in the rear window. That’d teach them!
I had a bad experience with one of those yesterday. He cut me off in traffic and then I saw his bumper sticker that had a confederate flag and a gun and it said “happiness is a yankee headed north.”
Grrrrrrrr!
LOL I’m not going near that one.
It’s scary that there are people like that. Thinking that way is one thing, advertising it on your truck takes a special kind of asshole.
Yes, but it goes back to what I’ve said before. They’re everywhere.
His ex wife is probably a yankee
Youse guys are crackin me up…!!
Not going near that one either. 🙂
She probably stole his mudflaps with the chrome naked sitting girl silhouette on them too when she left. In Colorado the cowboys all drive trucks. We had a big rig next to us on the highway a while back and my son asked me if that was a cowboy. I didn’t know what to say. I said that it was sort of a cowboy…..maybe the Southern version of a cowboy.
Don’t forget the picture of a deer in the backwindow. LOL
You seem to be familiar with this species.
we call them buzzards too. And if they don’t move, you drive around them. They could HURT your car.
we moved to Alabama. I think they are cool. My husband dislikes their attitudes….he thinks they’re too cocky. The only vultures I ever saw were at the Cheyenne Mtn Zoo and came from far away lands. I got to check out nine wild turkeys a few days ago. Those I have seen in Colorado and Wyoming very infrequently because they are so damn smart and people shy. It was a cool treat too.
Damn cocky buzzards! In Hinkley, Ohio, they have a celebration every March 15 as the buzzards return to Hinkley. Sort of the Ohio version of the swallows at Capistrano. Hey, in Cleveland, we need a reason to celebrate in March.
I have to share this story about buzzards. ON the way to Greenville, NC to go dancing one Saturday night, we heard a thump but diodn’t see anything in the road. We got to Greenville and parked and we had a buzzard- who I quess miss judged our speed- stuck to the grill. LOL The girl driving the car turned to me and said get it off and I laughed and said “Honey I ain’t touching that damn thing.” We finally found a stick to knock the carcess off the car. LOL
I love her saying “get it off” like it was a bug and you were the man, so of course that was your job.
LOL So did I. It was one of my best friends from highschool and she could go from being the biggest tomboy to Scarlett O’hara in a second. LOL
I live out in the woods so birdwatching is something I get to do a lot and love to do and hawks are just wonderful to watch. Besides coopers, we also have red-tailed hawks, red-shouldered hawks, and rough-legged hawks (winter only).
I’ve got some great photos of a red-shouldered hawk I took at one of our state parks last year. I have a medium telephoto and it let me get within about twenty feet of it while it was perched in a low branch. Also, I followed it around for a while and got some shots of it sitting on the top of a dead and broken off tree (there’s a word for those, but I forgot it…)
I haven’t seen a rough-legged hawk yet, but I have seen numerous variations of red-tails and red-shoulders. I saw a red-shoulder about two years ago that was so yellowish, I thought it coulda been a golden eagle or something, but it was nowhere near big enough or the right shape for that.
That’s cool!
We have peregrine falcons that nest on top of our building so I occasionally see them from my office window.
Gosh, I feel like such a slug sleeping in until almost 8 when all of you are up so early and talking about storms and birds and stuff.
It’s one of those sparkling, perfect mornings that you wish you could clone about a thousand times over. Sunny, about 65 degrees, light breeze, about 30 different types of joyful bird songs. Me?…just drinking my first cup of coffee on the deck and thinking about reading the paper. Nah, why spoil it?
I’m jealous of your storms, though. We don’t have many down here and I miss them.
Morning SN.
I would have thought ya’ll would get some good one.
For some reason we are in an area that is sort of protected between the mountains and the shore. Weather fronts split up and pass either north or south of us. We’ve had very few storms in the almost 4 years I’ve been here.
Well that’s good and bad. The good part is you get to miss the really severe weather and the bad part is you also miss less severe weather shows.
And to tell you the truth, if we did have a good, midwestern type thunderstorm with strong winds, I’d be scared half to death that my basementless house would disintegrate around me. What’s with the South™ and their crawlspaces?
The mystery of the crawlspaces I don’t know. 🙂
You’d have to get in the bathtub and pull a mattress over you.
My favorite part of the weather alert “take shelter” announcements is that first they give all the basement/interior room/bathtub instructions and then they say “and if you live in a mobile home GET OUT NOW you are not safe there”
I know it’s not really funny that trailer parks are tornado magnets but I think its funny that they’ve just given up any HINT of subtlety about it like they used to have. Now they just tell it like it is.
LOL I grew up in NC and remember the ” Trailer” parks and how we would drive past them after a bad thunderstorm just to see how many had been blown off their cement blocks. LOL
Crawlspace= 3 to 3 foot area between the floor and the dirt your house is built on. most heating and water pipes are run under the house but up off the ground. Great place for the dog to hide from their bath or stray kittens to be born. LOL Usually there is a brink or block wall built to hide this view from the neighbors. It was also good in flood season as it meant the water had to be above 3 feet to get in the house.
My nephew lived in Raleigh for several years and it seems to me that what you miss in thunderstorms, you make up for with ice storms and hurricanes.
My street is famous for the last tornado that came through about 15 years ago…it apparently travelled right down the middle of our particular street, wiping out the trees for about a half mile. So now it’s weird because our street is pretty long, about 1.5 miles, and it is nearly cut in half by an invisible color line…black at one end, white on the other. So the “black” end of our street has tiny replacement trees and the “white” end has huge old oaks and pines.
One of the things lots of folks don’t know about Mississippi is that we are pretty high up on the list of states with the most tornadoes every year. We have lots of violent thunderstorms here, where the cold continental air meets the warm humid gulf air. I’ve lived through a tornado myself. :O
When I lived in Boston for several years during college, I REALLY missed the booming, swirling thunderstorms of home. I am a bad-weather-holic, and in an alternate universe somewhere I’m a meteorologist and storm-chaser. 🙂
Trivia buffs will want to know the word for that smell right before the rain comes after a dry spell – it’s called petrichor.
Morning blueneck. When I was away from home I sort of missed the storms too. I guess ever place you live at makes up for it’s own way in bad weather.
petrichor
I love that smell!
and its hard to explain to people from other parts of the country how you can FEEL if a tornado is in the air. How the air is still and has a distinctive smell and the light is slightly tinged with green.
Living where I have all my life……they don’t get much for tornadoes and any little whirly wind is considered A HORROR. I can smell hail coming really well. Fascinates my husband that we can be driving along and suddenly I say we need to take cover and a minute later the hail comes. That tornado stuff though…….the first time I experienced a tornado conducive environment down here, I considered that maybe I was wrong about religion and the apocalypse had arrived. It still freaks me out…..the air feels “so wrong” to me.
Welcome to just another wonder of Alabama Tracy.
it does feel “wrong” but its hard to describe it to someone who hasn’t felt it
I don’t how you would describe it. The Green Doom maybe……but see, some of raised around it are energized by it so how do you explain to one person sure they are coming to their end that you want to run through the trees like a Celt.
LOL
wanting to run through the trees like a celt (with body paint only of course) IS how it feels, but of course you SHOULD stay far away from trees.
You are absolutely right, it can get positively puke greenish overcast. Those are the times when you know some BAD weather is going to happen somewhere….
I love the smell of petrichor in the afternoon…. :^)
I’m going to try to use that word at least 10 times today.
but you are blanche, you are!!! LOL No really with all the projets and stuff you always have going I think you are allowed to sleep in once in awhile
Was reading gadfly’s diary and realize that I have never known the definition of feckless. I have read it numerous times in my life but I really haven’t ever known what it means. I know that it isn’t a good thing though…..maybe even a bad thing in certain situations huh? I have always read it and then thought to myself “Oh, that isn’t good”. Just one more day spent cracking my own self up.
Thanks Tracy, I never really knew what it meant and now that I’ve looked it up I do.
and you aren’t going to share the definition with us? This early in the morning?
cruel
You’re like a school teacher…..”Go look it up”
wait a minute I’M like a schoolteacher? uh uh
YOU’RE the one making ME look it up.
Trust me; I had two teachers as parents. I know this game.
yeah, but “back in the day” looking it up meant hauling out the big-ass 10,000 page dictionary and paging through the microscopic text. Now it takes 4 seconds. Still a pain in the butt.
I thought we were the only ones with that big ass dictionary.
I also thought that we were the only family that DIDN’T have a set of encyclopedias. Because it was so much better to go to the “source material”. Well duh. But in 3d grade?
OK Mary considering your slacker status.
freckless – Generally incompetent and ineffectual.
I knew I could rely on you! But not for spelling.
You got the gist.
I like your word too. Meaning…having no freckles.
freckless — having ineffectual or incompetent freckles
or
being ineffectual and incompetent BECAUSE you don’t have freckles.
I like that one 🙂
OK my spelling isn’t great!
but we love you anyway!
But execllent for generating good fun. 🙂
Yeah, much better — I think we should go with your definition (I take it you don’t have any freckles either).
no I’m very competent and effectual
I’m leaving…but your assignment is to use both feckless and petrichor in a single sentence. Bye everyone.
I haven’t been to the cafe/lounge in a while. I forgot how fun it is! 🙂
It is fun. You need to come more often.
I agree with Mary on that.
Thank you both, I believe I will…..
What with everybody this morning. Usually one of these sunday morning dealios is good till noon or later.
I guess I’ll have to go open us a new cafe.
It’s past 8:00 am here and if I don’t get started doing stuff, I won’t start at all.
See ya’ll later.
New cafe here.