From the indefatigable Ozark Hillbilly:
I snapped this one of the Woofmeister last week. Somehow or other he never lays down on them. Maybe he enjoys seeing them at this time of year as much as I do.
Another promise of impending spring, here in the Northern Hemisphere, from the Washington Post
Winter may still have a few tricks up its sleeve, but we’ll be one step closer to spring when daylight saving time begins this weekend. At 2 a.m. Sunday (March 11), we “spring forward” one hour and leave standard time behind for the next eight months.
We lose an hour of sleep, but it’s a small price to pay for that extra hour of evening sunlight. Once daylight saving time begins, most of the country will enjoy daylight lasting until after 7 p.m…
While the economic and public health affects would take a while to parse, the most immediate impact of scrapping DST would be a dramatic change to the sunrise and sunset schedule many of us take for granted.
Instead of summer sunsets after 8 p.m., it would suddenly get dark closer to 7 p.m. And those early June sunrises — when you begin to stir at 5 a.m. because it’s already getting light and you hear birds chirping at the crack of dawn — would be even earlier still…
…[G]etting rid of DST [in Washington DC] means sunrise would occur before 6 a.m. from late March until nearly October. Meanwhile, the first 7 p.m. sunset wouldn’t happen until May 1 (as opposed to early March, when we “spring forward”). By late September, it would already be getting dark before 6 p.m.
I imagine quite a few people would be unhappy with this kind of daylight schedule, which would leave us with much darker evenings for most of the year…
Under a year-round DST schedule, sunrise and sunset times would remain similar to what we’re used to, because we already observe DST for eight months of the year. However, from November to March, our mornings would be significantly darker. Sunrise in D.C. would be late as 8:27 a.m. in early January.
On the flip side, our earliest sunset of the year would be at 5:46 instead of 4:46 p.m. And even in January — America’s least favorite month of the year — the sun would still be up after 6 p.m. on all but the first few days of the month. Not bad, right?…
Myself, I look forward to being able to keep working out in my garden until 8pm during the height of tomato season. I think Florida has the right idea in keeping Daylight Savings Time all year round.
Mary G
As a night person, I’m with Florida. Also, too, the clock in my car will be right again.
Woofmeister and the flowers take a great photo. Is that a crocus?
Glad to see garden chat is back.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
Beautiful ???
ThresherK
I’m agog that Rockland ME has the same time zone as, what, the eastern half of KY.
The contretemps on DST happen in places out of whack with their solar noon, don’t they? I can’t claim any experience for others as I have lived in nearly the same spot my whole life and never had to adjust to sunrise / sunset changes one gets by moving far away.
NotMax
@ThresherK
We’ve got only four time zones to deal with on the mainland.
For complicated and frequently changing time, see Russia.
NotMax
Have recently been on and off watching a British drama series from 40 years ago about the occupation of British islands in the Channel (particularly Guernsey) by the Germans during WW2, Enemy at the Door.
First season was sometimes a bit of a slog, second season more engrossing. Overall, holds up well for a program of that age.
ThresherK
@NotMax: I know Russia still (still?) spreads over 12 timezones.
But I don’t care about Russia much. I might even be hostile to their concerns a bit, which puts me at odds with the Church of the Savvy.
Over here, there are counties in Indiana which switch observation of DST the way Trump changes Communications Directors.
And all the time zone lines W of about the 100th meridian might be revisited: They were drawn in antediluvean times when there were very few cities out there, and certainly no megalopolises.
ETA: It doesn’t come up in conversation with the assorted jackals, but I have been a radio amateur since that meant “radios with tubes”, and am well-acquainted with Greenwich Mean Time (love those Brits–still gotta be the center of attention) and also timezones around the world. It’s the only way I can talk to someone on another continent and we can agree in our logs that that’s when the contact was made.
raven
@NotMax: They had to have run out of money or someone died for it to end the way it did? We finished “Dickensian” last night. It was a bit hard to follow with all the characters but seeing Scrooge and Fagin together was fun.
raven
What’s the pup laying on?
tybee
just to the left of that front paw are 3 pale purple flowers
raven
@tybee: AH! Nutso St Paddy’s comin up!
OzarkHillbilly
@Mary G: Yes, crocuses.
@raven: Grass.
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: Yes but what type of grass?
The buds on the dogwoods are about to burst open. I love seeing the white flowers appear in the woods.
Steve in the ATL
How would you describe multiple Oscar-winner The Shape of Water?
I’m torn among “boring”, “slow”, and “pointless”.
tybee
@raven: yes. and it’s on a saturday which saves me the grief of trying to get downtown on a st. paddy’s work day
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ThresherK: My dad was a ham.
joel hanes
Florida’s in the south.
In the north, and with Standard Time, the winter sun sets at 5:15 PM.
With DST, it’d be full dark out before people got off work.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mary G:
I answered your question about bread-making in that thread yesterday. In case you didn’t get back to it, you want “No-Knead Bread 101.”
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: The weedy type.
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Mine was a flank steak.
satby
@joel hanes: I think you mean “without”.
I love DST, because I love having evening light until nearly 10pm at the height of summer. The next month of dark mornings is a fair trade, I guess.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly: You’re on the list.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@satby: Being that I’m nocturnal(as is AL), I love DST. Also it’s much better for the photography thing.
MattF
I counted up the clocks in my apartment last night– twelve.
ThresherK
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I hadn’t heard that yet (considering you’re a regular poster here), I’m surprised I don’t remember.
I don’t know what stereotypes there are about hams and society at large, but I can say I’ve dropped a fair amount of interest in my hobby since that month in 2015 when 1) most of the ACA was upheld 2) gay marriage bans were ruled unconstitutional and 3) Americans woke up and objected to flying the “Civil War Participitation Trophy” Flag in public places.
Right after that I went to a big radio fest, with dealers, small vendors, symposia, and all the fun stuff. There was a palpable something in the air with every office-park SUV carrying a “Civil Defense (ammosexual)” sticker.
OzarkHillbilly
@joel hanes: Way back when, one winter I worked in a machine shop. I don’t remember our start/stop times but I started in the dark, and at the end of the day it was dark again. I hated it. Once a week I was blessed with the duty of taking out all the used acid (IDNR which) (probably the highly carcinogenic type) I lived for that brief sun shiny interlude.
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Oh noooooooooooo…. Not ‘the list’!
Raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: As I sit here in the dark at the bakery with my pups!
satby
@?BillinGlendaleCA: But, living in Indiana now has, as @ThresherK: points out, a bit of constant confusion about what time it is. The Rolling Prarie school district has 2 clocks on the wall, for students living in each time zone. It’s really disorienting, and it’s only 20 minutes away. I think because we associate time zone changes with state lines, not county lines.
Indiana’s weird. They just repealed the blue law that kept alcohol from being sold in stores on Sundays, and it caused a heated controversy.
Raven
@ThresherK: Is this the same as ham?
Betty Cracker
What a handsome doggie! The white on the muzzle gives him a distinguished look.
ThresherK
@ThresherK: ETA: Shorter me:
Radio engineering was the internet of the years before the internet, and drew much of the same “libertarian, just give me my defense engineering job, GI Bill education and house loan” Rugged Individuals, with a bit more of “going outside to put up antennas” in the mix.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: starting work in the dark and ending in the dark is a regular occurrence in Chicago over winter. And I didn’t like it either.
WereBear
Word.
My last visit to my birthplace, my mother took a couple of us siblings to a favorite restaurant when she was dating age. They are still operating… and still putting lots of green food coloring in their Green Goddess dressing.
We looked at it, at her, and she was laughing and saying, “It’s supposed to be green.”
Indiana. Yeah.
satby
@Raven: How’s Lil Bit doing?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Raven: Yes, my dad used to do “phone patches”.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@ThresherK: Yeah, but my dad was a Roosevelt Dem until St. Ronnie.
Raven
@satby: She’s OK. The heart doc didn’t even to an ultrasound because her ticker is just the same as it wa 6 months ago. She doesn’t recommend the “tie-back” surgery now, it seems like her labored breathing is just going to be there and I have to get used to it. Hot weather is going to be a real challenge.
satby
@WereBear: South Bend is at least a small patch of blue because of all the colleges, but it’s surrounded by the cray-cray.
Raven
@?BillinGlendaleCA: It was pretty funny because you were supposed to use military radio procedure, the old man got it having been a signalman on a tin can but the rest couldn’t fathom “over”!
ThresherK
@Raven: MARS is not amateur radio, but a system involving amateurs. Before the era of having telephone service (let alone internet and smartphones) in far-flung bases, the main function of it was to ETA: get phone calls and pass private messages (akin to personal telegrams) between folks stationed all over the place to family and friends stateside.
In the modern era there is less need for it, in normal times. Who knows what a real war would bring.
satby
@Raven: ?
ThresherK
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Glad to hear that.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
That dog looks like our Roxie.
It’s very dark here.
Raven
@ThresherK: Yea, I called home twice.
WereBear
@satby: I was reading a book about the early history of the state, and a then-pioneer visitor wrote a relative something like, “These are good hard-working folk but are of the opinion that no man should disturb the harmony of another’s mind with a contrary thought.”
In other words, conformity on steroids. That’s why that hideous green salad dressing stuck in my mind. They will play with Reality to make it conform to what they think it should be; and ignore what it is.
OzarkHillbilly
@Betty Cracker: The “Woof”meister! It appears he is in the earliest stages of congestive heart failure. The vet says there are a couple drugs they can give that will help, but we are in the last year of time with our beloved Woofie, who is truly the sweetest most loving dog I’ve ever met. It is good it happens this way, giving my wife the time to prepare for the inevitable. It will of course hurt, but we have the opportunity to make the most of the time that is left.
WereBear
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s never easy to hear such news when our animal friends are so open-hearted and trusting it lets us be the same way.
Enjoy him!
mainmata
In the vast majority of countries around the world, the changing of the clocks is not ever done and so much more efficient. We only did it because of World War 1. Maybe time to stop now, please?
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
OzarkHillbilly
The woman who rode Australia’s longest trekking route – a photo essay
The final picture is absolutely astounding.
Baud
A noble hound.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: I am in the same boat.
Matt McIrvin
@satby: Massachusetts used to have blue laws forbidding supermarkets from opening before some set time on Sunday, but it didn’t apply to little mom-and-pop convenience stores, so when the movement came to lift them, naturally there was opposition from them (and some arguments to the effect that it would be better to retain the laws just to preserve these businesses).
There are still complicated laws on the books sharply restricting the sale of alcoholic beverages by food stores.
satby
@WereBear:
That is a completely on point observation. Brilliant!
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: @Baud: I am too, with two elderly animals of the herd. It’s bittersweet, this drawing down of the time left.
mainmata
@ThresherK: I am currently in Indonesia, which has only three time zones despite being much wider than the USA, for example. The largest time zone there is Western Indonesia Time Zone, which is about 2,300 miles and is completely ridiculous. Time zones are really political things.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: It’s hard.
WereBear
@satby: I was devastated when I lost my James Bond at 18; after three years of diminishing returns with some old age challenges that eventually overwhelmed him. So I saw it coming, but still!
At such times, I remember that they gave everything, and I gave everything; and really, what more can we ask of them? Transaction completed.
Time to save another. Which is the greatest tribute I can make to their memory.
satby
@WereBear: very true!
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: @Matt McIrvin: Blue laws are strange and among the strangest things I ever came across was Sunday beer sales in Alabama. Gas stations and quick marts could sell beer, but the cooler glass had to be covered so nobody could see what was in the case, and you had to get a brown paper sack from the sales counter to put your beer in so nobody could see what you were buying. Every one knew what was in that cooler, and everyone knew what you were buying, but as long as they didn’t have to actually see the offending cans it was OK.
I can only imagine what they thought of a bunch smelly unwashed Misery cavers trekking to the sales counter loaded down with multiple bulging paper sacks at 10 AM on a Sunday.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@MattF: There’s always one more. This morning we got the one in the car. I didn’t do the one in the thermostat because I never got to it in the last time change last fall.
Elizabelle
Good morning, jackals.
Woofmeister should grace more blogposts. Lovely dog.
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: that’s weirder than just outlawing the sales entirely ?.
And I agree with @Elizabelle: Woofmeister is a magnificent boy. I’ve planted crocuses everywhere I have lived, but seldom get many blooming. I assume squirrels feasted on the rest. Now I plant these and their blue versions. I naturalize them in the lawn, they bloom early and tend to die back before the first mowing. And they spread.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
I was really glad to read last night that your son’s doing better!
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly:
I love that picture! What a cute dog.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: In Massachusetts, private retail of alcoholic beverages is allowed, but mostly only by liquor stores that are not food stores. Food stores can sell wine (and wine only)… but only in some sharply restricted number of stores per retail chain (two stores in the whole state? I think), and I think they still have to have that part of the store blocked off on Sunday mornings. Cooking wine is exempt.
So, for instance, the local Butcher Boy can sell wine because that’s one of the special Butcher Boys where the chain has opted to offer it, but the local Market Basket can’t. And neither can sell beer.
Periodically there’s a ballot initiative to change the situation, and you get these weird political campaigns with liquor-store chains warning you of the moral catastrophe of wine being sold at Stop & Shop and 7-Eleven.
Libraryguy
@OzarkHillbilly: So sorry to hear about the CHF diagnosis. :(
Our Rosie dealt with that, and a combo of diuretics and Vetmedin kept her feeling better and relatively active for almost 18 months.
Best wishes, and good luck.
Sab
@satby: Last year we had some very nice tulips that my spouse’s squirrels stole from the neighbors’ yard. They dug them up and replanted them in our yard.
joel hanes
@satby:
Thanks. Commenting before coffee.
Big Ole Hound
@OzarkHillbilly: Great photos and story…thanks.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: I have seen those. They are a sweet early bloomer.
debbie
@satby:
I like that there’s an extra hour of daylight for post-work walks now. Providing the weather cooperates.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: My daddy was a ham, also.
CQ, CQ, CQ! THIS IS WA6GRX, etc. I was the harmonic sitting by his elbow, handing him the parts when he built his 6 meter Heathkit rig. He had one in the car for a while, and his license plate was his call letters.
satby
@Sab: What a great gift! My squirrels are just moochers and looters.
@joel hanes: ? Always dangerous.
@OzarkHillbilly: they’re very naturalized throughout my old Chicago neighborhood, some lawns are a sea of blue in early spring. I planted lots in Michigan and they were just starting to spread ?, now I’ll plant them here next autumn. I’m the Johnny Appleseed of the perennial bulb world, evidently.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@opiejeanne: My dad was WA6JBE and had it on his license plate as well. Funny thing is I didn’t even have to think about what his call letter were.
satby
@debbie: which it really hasn’t so far. But after trying to figure out which one was the baby elephant in my pictures (hint, the one NOT wearing tie dye) I dug out the Fitbit and will be walking off some tonnage as soon as the ice on the river walk is gone.
WereBear
And then Fundies wonder why we accuse them of hypocrisy.
WereBear
@Matt McIrvin: In our area, it is drug stores that sell beer. Lots and lots of beer. They are devoting more and more room to it.
chris
@ThresherK:
In the late 60s I was in grade 7 in Montreal and had a friend whose Dad was a ham. One day some of us nerds went over after school to see the setup. His Mom gave us hot chocolate and cookies and we went down to the rec room to see the radio gear. Also saw the big Nazi flag on the wall and the John Birch Society posters and mimeographed stacks of antisemitic and anticommunist pamphlets. “My Dad’s a little funny,” the kid said. We never went back.
When I went home and told my mother she told me those people were just stupid and that I shouldn’t go back. In a way I’m glad that she didn’t live to see the current surge of “those stupid people.” Wish there was some way we could send them back to SW radio and mimeographs.
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: Maybe if women dressed in burkas when going to abortion clinics the fundamentalists could pretend that they were just there for the tunes?
opiejeanne
@Sab: Your spouse’s squirrels? You don’t claim them?
Our squirrels just dig up our tulips and I assume they eat them because there have been no tulips coming up in odd places in out yard or the rest of the neighborhood. I foiled them this year by planting tulips in big pots around the garden and they haven’t noticed them, yet.
opiejeanne
@?BillinGlendaleCA: I didn’t either. I doubt my sister could tell you what his were because she didn’t spend that much time playing radios with him. He showed me how to build a crystal radio with bits of wire and other junk, and how to tune it by uncoiling and recoiling a bit of the wire around a pencil until you had the Dodgers broadcast on KFI on a Saturday afternoon, with Vin and Jerry calling the game.
Hafabee
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, very different by state and sometimes by county. Where I lived in MD, counties ruled. My county licensed liquor stores (not grocery stores) for liquor/beer/wine but only allowed beer/wine on Sundays. Neighboring county itself sold liquor and only allowed one store in each grocery chain to sell beer/wine. Another neighboring county allowed liquor stores to be open until 3 am instead of 2 am.
Here in WV, the state makes the rules. Liquor/beer/wine all private, number of licenses are limited, but — fun fact — every 7-11 in WV sells liquor (but not on Sundays, or, as I discovered to my dismay in 2004, Election Day). I also buy in neighboring VA, where the state runs the ABC liquor stores (and taxes are lower) and where, starting several years ago, now open on Sundays.
Kay
Gun nuts have a flag with an image of an AR-15 on it now.
Instead of doing a psychological analysis of everyone else in the country, wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to just study gun nuts? Why have I never seen a study of people like this- people so obsessed with the worship of weapons they gather under a flag with a gun on it? This is a distinct sub-culture. What’s the one constant among mass shooters? The one thing they all have in common? They’re gun nuts.
OldDave
@opiejeanne: I miss Heathkit. That is all.
WereBear
@Kay: Gosh, Kay, you make so much sense are you sure you are a US citizen?
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I took a picture of a traveling preacher man’s trailer a while back. It had an AK-47 emblazoned on the side and he called himself the “Machine Gun Preacher”. Not sure exactly what his schtick was, but the image was rather jarring considering Jesus’ remonstrations to “turn the other cheek” and his lofty reputation as “the prince of peace”.
GregB
@Kay:
They aren’t even original.
They stole it from Hezbollah.
Betty Cracker
@OzarkHillbilly: I am sorry to hear of Woofie’s declining health. I hope your time together, how ever long or short, is happy. Our Daisy is 10 this month, which is officially elderly for a boxer dog, and she’s getting a bit deaf and arthritic. I can hardly bear to contemplate life without her and hope I don’t have to face that awful prospect for at least a few more years.
debbie
@Kay:
Tie her to Dana Loesch and let them both sinkk.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: These so-called Christians’ beliefs are simply alien to me. They don’t seem to spring from the same Bible I read in Sunday school or heard about in church, but then we weren’t Real Christians according to some because we used the Standard Revised version and not King James, and we were only Methodists. I’ve had them tell me that to my face as they were trying to recruit me to their perverted versions of the gospel. The Sermon on the Mount is ignored as something only hippies ever talk about and not really important, and let’s just not ever mention that verse about visiting the prisoner, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, etc.
Betty Cracker
@Kay:
That’s a damn good idea. According to Pew Research, only 30% of Americans own guns. Of that subset, 29% own five or more guns. Let’s study them. I’m sure many of them are perfectly normal people. Maybe they simply collect guns, the way some folks collect tea sets. But I suspect there’s a percentage there — maybe 27% or so — who fetishize their weapons.
Brachiator
@?BillinGlendaleCA: In college, a kid who lived downstairs from me was a ham. He would use his rig to call home once a week, mainly to talk to his mother, in Minnesota, I think. He was a very nice guy, but the whole ritual seemed ostentatiously eccentric.
He was a little Lake Wobegon, long before I knew anything about “A Prairie Home Companion.”
Jager
I grew up in North Dakota on the Minnesota border. ND Blue Laws made the bars close at midnight on Saturday, bars and liquor stores closed on Sunday. Minnesota was a 7 day a week state, but no liquor stores were open on Sunday, the only beer you could buy to go on Sunday in Minnesota was 3.2 and it had to be packaged in brown paper. In ND the service clubs like the American Legion, VFW, Elks, country clubs, etc had fancy bar-restaurants and memberships were super high. The local Knights of Columbus had a bar that looked like the Plaza Bar in NYC. When the Blue Laws were dumped the membership of the service clubs went to hell in a hand basket . The Central and Mountain time zone in ND is the Missouri river. Part of our family lived in Bismarck and it was a race every Saturday night to get across the river to Mandan for the extra hour of drinking…to quote GWB, “that was some weird shit”
satby
@opiejeanne: I can’t tell you how many times I was told, as a young Roman Catholic, that I wasn’t a Christian and should convert. I’m no longer a Catholic (or even religious) either, but the churches who claim Catholics aren’t Christian all fall under the heading “not Christian” to me. Especially since their God is the vengeful Old Testament guy, not Christ.
MomSense
Aww, woofmeister is a beautiful old salt.
Watching am Joy and Laffer is talking about how much he disliked TPP.
Kay
@WereBear:
We had a trial here 2 weeks ago – meth manufacture. Prosecutors presented this photo-boxes and boxes of ammunition in the children’s closet in the family home and all the guns they found lined up on a table. The point of the photos so was jurors would say “these are some scary people!” There was so much of it one of the boxes fell off a shelf when they searched. This was presented as evidence of criminality but as it turns out they’ve had all those bullets in there for 15 years. The family didn’t see anything unusual about it- they have tens of guns and bullets stored all over the place. The gun nut subculture is distinct from the drug subculture. That was the defense. They study all kinds of subcultures – god almighty you could fill a building with the studies on “gang signs”- why not this one? If we really want to crack mass shootings maybe look at the one thing they all have in common? They’re armed to the fucking teeth and they worship weapons.
Skepticat
@ThresherK:
But Maine is considering going to the Atlantic time zone, though I sincerely hope we don’t. I’m already confused enough. And as someone who really, really needs a lot of light and becomes basically nonfunctional as soon as the sun sets, I’m very in favor of year-round day light saving.
oldgold
Wish we could set our clocks ahead to January 20, 2021.
OzarkHillbilly
@opiejeanne: They like to Jesus Jesus Jesus (usually with Christ) this heretic but then always quote the Old Testament on how people should behave.
Immanentize
@opiejeanne:
Funny how Xians always ignore the Sermon on the Mount — which is the longest sermon preached by Jesus in the whole friggin bible. It’s like Dylan sang:
chris
@OzarkHillbilly: Machine Gun Preacher
If it’s the same guy there’s a movie and he has a website. He built an orphanage in Sudan and fought the LRA.
JPL
Chuck Todd certainly isn’t sleepy eyed this morning. Mnuchin is not a happy camper that he got up to interview on MTP this morning.
Twitter tells me that Trump is happy with his lawyers and the NYTimes article was fake news. Emmet Flood must have turned him down.
MomSense
@Skepticat:
Did you see the Bangor Daily News article last week about how Bangor used to be 25 minutes ahead of every place else in Maine?
OzarkHillbilly
@Brachiator:
Above average, eh?
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
They study school shooters. REAMS of studies. It’s bullying (dead end- doesn’t hold true) or it’s mental illness (too broad and unfair to the vast majority of people with mental illness) or it’s bad parenting (impossible to determine) – why not look at the subset of kids who have problems and ALSO a weapons fetish? THAT you could quantify. It has the added advantage of not pulling the entire country into the dragnet.
Immanentize
I messed my back up shovelling last week . I am moving very slowly…. And there is another 10 inches headed our way Tuesday.
So no gardening for a bit. I saw some tree buds starting to appear, but no crocus yet — Ozark, you and WM are two lucky old dogs to have Spring and eachother
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
NPR had a feature where three gun owners were interviewed. None were rabid; two had left the NRA; all recognized the need for CDC studies and the need for restrictions (baby steps). How long till they’re all tossed out of the gun owners’ union?
OzarkHillbilly
@chris: Might be the same guy, he was advertising a book on the trailer and he there was some cryptic quote about children. I never saw him much less talked to him, just saw his trailer in the WalMart parking lot.
OzarkHillbilly
@MomSense: That ain’t nothing, everywhere I go in the Ozarks I’m decades ahead of 99% of the people I meet.
ETA and quite often centuries ahead.
satby
@Immanentize: Feel better! After I had ruptured tendons in my shoulders and frozen shoulder, I found the best pain relief and mobility with naproxen. YMMV, but you may want to try it.
Skepticat
Bed in Summer
by Robert Louis Stevenson
In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.
I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.
And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?
Skepticat
@MomSense: I didn’t (though I’ll look for it), but when I lived there, I always thought they were about 25 years behind!
Matt McIrvin
Florida seems like the last place in the US where they’d want or care about having DST all year round–a priori I’d guess they’d be like Arizona and just not want to bother with it, stay on Standard Time. I guess it might make sense for the resort industry, since places like Disney World are open year-round and attract people with nighttime shows–year-round DST might make those slightly easier to mount in the winter months.
satby
I need an intervention, I just bought more plants. Strawberries and an orange Echinacea.
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: The “Woof”meister is the perfect name for your pup. I love that you call him Woofie. Glad to finally see a photo, but terribly sorry to hear about his heart. As one vet years ago put it “we’re not at the end of the road, but we’re on the road”. You guys will treasure every minute, and Woofie, too.
OzarkHillbilly
@Skepticat: I remember being soooooo angry at having to go to bed while my brother and sisters were still playing outside and I could hear them laughing and screaming.
opiejeanne
@satby: I had a Catholic (nominal, I think) neighbor make the comment that Catholics aren’t Christians. I corrected her on the spot. I had to explain the difference between Catholics and Protestants and point out that Catholics were the only Christians around for a very long time before the Protestants split off.
She was a bit odd; one day we were talking in my front yard and a military plane buzzed the neighborhood. She looked up and said, “Sometimes I wonder if they do that because the government is trying to warn us.” Her husband just shook his head in disbelief and walked away.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay:
Easier, cheaper, politically forbidden with public funds.
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: You and me both. “Stop me before I plant again!!!”
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I remember when the Old Testament was suddenly very popular with certain churches, people declaring that they liked the rigidity and certainty of what was right and wrong. It was a jarring shift, and the articles in the local paper and the LA Times about this shift quoted a lot of lay people expressing just that.
That was about the time when a couple we were friends with at our church decided they weren’t “saved enough” and left their lifelong Methodist church for the local book-burning Assembly of God so they would be told what to think, what was right and wrong and not have to figure out things for themselves based on the Gospel. Really important things like whether the theory of evolution was an abomination or not.
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I learned to tell them I’d pray for them, which really upsets them when they try that crap on me.
I no longer attend church, I haven’t found a connection in either of the two near me. If I lived in my daughter’s neighborhood in Seattle I’d attend the one there because they seem to be trying to be more Christ-like. The nearest one to me seems to be filled with gun nuts and the preacher seemed to be apologizing for every liberal-sounding Bible verse in his sermon. The other one has a large group of teens which is usually a good sign in my denomination, but half of the year the road is flooded out between my house and that church and the work-around is pretty bad and adds quite a few miles.
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: How do the tulips make it over the winter if they are in pots?
opiejeanne
@Immanentize: I understand the Sermon on the Mount better than those lyrics.
realbtl
I’ll be the contrarian, I like DST. Up here 60 mi. from Canada the summer nights are incredible, total darkness by 11:00 PM or so. Winter daylight sucks anyway so enjoy the extended twilight.
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly:
Ah, yes, I remember living in Missouri.
But CT isn’t much better sometimes. A surprising number of Trumpanzees around here.
opiejeanne
@satby: Don’t look to me for help, I’m just as bad. And I think we lost almost all of our strawberry plants this winter. We started with 20 plants at under $1 each 8 years ago and last summer had three large raised beds full with the pups spilling out of them onto the gravel walks. Probably more than 200 plants, all brown now. The plants aren’t so cheap these days, our favorite supplier had them at $4 each last year. A miraculous resurrection is deeply desired.
WaterGirl
@Immanentize: The Immp should be shoveling! Tell him I said so. :-)
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s just not fair.
Heidi Mom
The Woofmeister is one of the handsomest dogs I’ve ever seen!
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: I have always had to dig and refrigerate them in warm climates, but in WA it’s cold enough that they come up and bloom after every winter, unless eaten by squirrels. I guess these pots are big enough that it’s not a problem if it gets very cold. Trying to remember, I think the lowest temp we had was in November, something like 18F. They were all coming up when we left Washington two weeks ago so we should see some blooms when we head home next weekend.
Citizen_X
@Kay: @GregB: The flag is actually taken from the Texas revolution. They got the slogan from the Spartans. It means nothing outside of Texas.
opiejeanne
@WaterGirl: I was the oldest and they made us both go to bed at the same time. As soon as school was out when we were little all of that stopped and we could stay out until it got dark, and sometimes longer. I remember lying on the grass in the backyard at 9:30 as the stars came out, looking for Echo 1. Or maybe it was Echo 2.
FlyingToaster
@Skepticat: Atlantic Time Zone is the same as Eastern Daylight Savings Time. GMT-4. I would LOVE for all of New England to switch; Maine is directly south of NB, which is already on Atlantic time.
But we need to agree on a minimum standard for streetlights so that none of us run into schoolkids on winter mornings.
opiejeanne
@Citizen_X: Is that a chili pepper on that flag?
Immanentize
@satby:
Thanks. I just pulled out the Aleve! I am always worried the allowable dose (1 ever 8-12 hours) is just too damn little to be effective….
WaterGirl
@opiejeanne: I am pleasantly surprised to hear that! thanks
satby
@opiejeanne: I just bought these: 25 plants with two growing bags. And another Biodome because they rock and this Echinacea. All on sale with free shipping.
I’m like a crackhead, but I have good luck with Park’s stuff.
satby
@WaterGirl: I put a bunch in pots this year, and after the first hard frost put them in an unheated shed. They’re already sprouting in there with very little light. Last week I gave them a drink because I didn’t all winter, and after next week I will pull them out onto the porch. I think the squirrels won’t come up onto the porch to eat them because of the dogs.
WereBear
@satby: You won’t get any help from me :)
opiejeanne
@satby: Enjoy fresh berries without crawling around in the dirt! LOL!
I remember when Parks had “penny packs” which were just the sweepings from the packing floor from the looks of it. The kids would get those in the 70s/80s and we’d sort them into groups of similar seeds, and things we recognized like radishes, beets, carrots and beans, and certain flower seeds. The unknowns were planted in a separate garden area and most of them were flowers. One year we had a tremendous crop of yellow wax beans that grew up a couple of poles and the kids were enthusiastic about eating them as well as beets because they grew them. The love for beets did not last past childhood, but was revived when roasted beet salads with goat cheese became a thing.
Citizen_X
@opiejeanne: Heh.
There’s all kinds of riffs on the flag, my favorite being from an Austin baking festival, with a cupcake on a flag that says “Come and bake it.”
satby
@opiejeanne: well, they tempted me because my next move is to attach gutters (with drain holes) to the sunny side of the garage for planters of shallow rooted things that love sun. If the grow bags don’t work well the gutters will.
Edit: and thank the Lord they don’t still sell penny packs!!
satby
@Immanentize: hope it helps! I sometimes juiced it with an Advil after the 8 hour mark, but seldom had to.
I try never to take any version of acetaminophen. It is of the devil.
WereBear
Agreed. Strangely enough, I get on best with the herbal combo white willow bark and devil’s claw. They have a synergistic effect (together they amplify the effect) and don’t upset my stomach.
WaterGirl
@satby: Hmm. I wonder if it would work if I did that but moved the pots to the house side of my screened in porch for the winter?
Immanentize
@satby:
I support your habit! I am an enabler!
Also, I love cone flower, but I’ve never harvested the roots for tea….
MomSense
@opiejeanne:
I’ve given up on roses. I’m going to dig up the last, pathetic rose this spring.
Hafabee
@Immanentize: Try to get your doc to prescribe Naproxen — the medically effective maximum dose is 500mg twice a day, and I get 60 such pills for $3 on my plan with my rx. When it went OTC, they made it 200mg pills so you cannot take the maximum effective dose, and OTC (Aleve or generic) is *much* more expensive.
Immanentize
@satby:
Yes Tylenol is poison. That’s actually why they mix it with opioids — generally it will hurt you (liver especially) quicker than the pain meds. In fact, some addicts I know say they were driven to heroin because of the bad Tylenol side effects. But, take that as you will — they were addicts!
This is why I worry about our huge anti-opioid movement. It is not a movement against addiction, it is a movement against opioids, which can be very helpful pain reducers…. Sadly, I am now we’ll versed on the benefits of a wide range of heavy duty pain killers.
Immanentize
@Hafabee:
Thanks! I will!
Immanentize
@MomSense:
I replaced my back yard fence two summers ago and ended up with three or four surprise rose plants. I’m just starting to try them.
Later, I will seek your northern advice about not killing them and keeping them bug free
satby
@WaterGirl: probably! The main thing that kills tulips in pots is rot, they get too wet over winter and the pots don’t drain effectively because the water freezes up. If they’re well watered before being stored, it should be enough until they break dormancy, and once under cover they won’t get more water so shouldn’t rot out.
satby
@Immanentize: actually, @Hafabee: reminded me that I learned somewhere that the safe maximum dose of both naproxen and ibuprofen is 1000 mg / day. So if needed you can safely take two of each instead of one, you’ll still be under the maximum at the end of the day, and it might just be the anti-inflammatory you need.
Sab
@opiejeanne: No, those squirrels are his. I gave up on them when one of them grabbed my pants leg demanding peanuts. I still fill the squirrel feeder occasionally.
WaterGirl
@satby: I am holding you responsible for my purchase of the strawberry bags! :-)
I won’t shame myself by telling you how many strawberry plants I had already ordered a coupe of months ago for April delivery.
I hope these turn out well. I called to see what they recommend for soil in the bags, but they are closed on Sunday, and the free shipping expires today.
Any idea of what kind of soil to use for the strawberry bags?
WaterGirl
@satby: Maybe I’ll try that with some tulips on the fall. thanks
edit: what size pot would you recommend?
opiejeanne
@MomSense: We are still figuring out how to make the roses happy here, and some varieties are fine but others are poor choices for this climate. We have a climber that’s just too exuberant and I’m tempted to dig it up and plant it along the fence line, where it will be pretty and stop grabbing at us.
WereBear
@opiejeanne: Roses have an incredible range of bloodlines. Here in the frozen North, we have great luck with rugosas and their hybrids, which are Japanese seacoast roses who shrug off extreme cold and the road salt we have to use.
opiejeanne
@WereBear: The resistance to road salt I didn’t know about but I do know a tiny bit about roses and their bloodlines. My husband was a Rosarian for the American Rose Society and we at one time had over 250 roses in our garden but I can’t remember anything of importance. Just junk like the British Navy allowing French ships through to France as long as they were carrying roses for Josephine’s garden, most of which were coming from China IIRC.
We tried to help so many people who wanted to know what would improve their scraggly plants and the first thing we’d tell them when we saw their garden was to water them more than they were. “Oh, I watered them a couple of days ago. They get enough water.” This was in the summer in SoCal, and in August and September even the healthiest plants will look like hell in that area. It got up to 112 most summers.
satby
@WaterGirl: I’m going with potting soil because most of the reviews mentioned that they thought the bags weren’t heavy duty enough.
@WaterGirl: and I have two fake washtubs that I used, I got about 9-10 bulbs in each. They don’t have drainage holes, so I will have to watch to keep them undercover even after I bring them out. Tulips don’t like wet feet, and it’s easier for me to monitor the water if I keep them out of rain. But before next year, if I use them again, I will drill some drainage holes into the bottom.
WaterGirl
@satby: Interesting. I couldn’t get any reviews to come up when I was placing the order. I opened the page just now in Chrome (hiss) instead of Safari, and the reviews showed up. I will have to keep that in mind for next time.
Ella in New Mexico
Jesus H. Christ “daylight savings time” and its sequelae are just arbitrarily made up manipulations of our perception of time. They’re not real. They’re out of sync with our bodies and our brains and our lives. Why do we have to inflict misery on ourselves?
Forward-Back-Forward-Back-Forward-Back over and over again. And as much as we all hate losing an hour, it’s not the Springing forward that is the problem. It’s the fucking Falling back. When do we as a species have the most impairment from all these time changes? Winter. With with shorter and darker days that make us all want to start the cocktail hour at 05:30 and be in bed by 8, but our ridiculous 21st century defiance of all that is natural wont allow us. So we get sluggish and fat and depressed.
JI just lost a whole fucking hour I could be doing a shit-ton of homework and cleaning and laundry before the day ends. Thank you Gods of time manipulation.
Just leave shit the way it is Goddamn it. It’s enough to make me consider moving to Arizona.
HuCat
A-N-D just as rightly, there is absolutely, positively no reason to ever go to DST north of the 45th parallel (unless you find soaking up the rays until 9:30 PM reasonable). Also, many winter days have only 8, to slightly fewer, hours of daylight, so any way you slice it the sun rises in the middle of the AM commute, and sets during the PM commute.