Cellphone talkers as bad as drunk drivers.

"Just like many people who have been drinking, the cellphone users did not believe themselves to be affected, the researchers found."

More evidence that talking on the cell phone while driving isn't a good thing. Of course, how many police officers do you see talking on them while they pass you, not to mention legislators?

I guess a few people will have to be killed before anything is done.

We currently are the owners of a very tall, yet soggy back yard. I cut the front yard before the current period known as "The Sun Doth Forsake Us", and thus haven't been able to cut the back yard. The rain brings that double-edged sword: you can't cut grass because it's wet, but it also makes the grass grow twice as fast.

Last summer when we bought our house, my grandmother donated her 12 year old lawn mower. The engine runs great, but the deck and handle bar is rusting out and the clippings flap is coming off (currently held down with blue painter's tape). There's a place just across the road that works on small engines, and I probably could have asked them to help repair the mower, but I figured it would just as easy and a better decision to get a new one.

Wow - I was running off prices from 10 years ago when my parents bought a $99 mower from Wal-Mart. Now the cheapest is about $140.

All hail Craigslist. I found a 5 year old Craftsman mower with a 6 horse-power engine and bagger for $65. Not too shabby.

Except whenever I go to pick up a used item and hand them cash, I always feel like I'm participating in some sort of black-market deal that could go wrong at any moment. How, I'm not sure.

The awkwardness and increasing rainfall didn't help out, but all in all, I saved some money. I want the mower to last at least 5 years - and we're still keeping the other one in case we ever want to cut the grass twice as fast!

/Here's to hoping the rain will stop so I can actually use the thing.

I drove up 301 from Hanover into Caroline County behind a storm that was moving generally north. I ran into heavy rain at the road to Woodford and diverted northwest to skirt around the storm. As I crossed into Spotsylvania County near Guinea Station, I watched the back edge begin to wrap up. The feature moved northwest as the storm back-built toward Massaponax. The below pictures are from the northeast of Massaponax Church Road.




On my way home on I-95, to my southeast was the below storm. I saw what could be a wall cloud on the southern flank of the storm. I then looked to my east at Doswell in northern Hanover and saw what looks like some sort of shelf cloud. Neat!

Well, we're in Day 2 of our chase on the plains. Yesterday featured the world's largest ball of twine, a drunk local, deja vu, a can caught by the truck, and a distant tornado.

Seeing the ball of twine and the drunk local have set the tone for the trip - we learned early to expect the unexpected. Yesterday was a success, but as we rolled into Holdrege, Nebraska we realized we would be staying in the same hotel as we did two years ago during our last trip... and we ended up eating at the same Pizza Hut.

The tornado was brief and at least 10 miles away... we're 95% sure it was a tornado, but with the distance we couldn't confirm. We saw some crazy lightning as the storms coalesced around us and went off towards our south.


We then woke up this morning to the fresh smell of cows and targeted Limon, Colorado. We spent several hours in the middle of nowhere watching some clouds trying to rise up over a small ridgeline. After storms closer to New Mexico threw up a large anvil shield, prevening any further development for our location, we gave up and headed toward Denver and the Rocky Mountains.

Tonight at Outback we witnessed a drunk cowboy/Brokeback Mountain/Rocky moment... you had to be there, but be glad you weren't.

Tomorrow we'll wake up and head to southeast Wyoming to play a triple point and see what we can see. We'll be up there for a couple of days and hopefully we can swing over to South Dakota and see Mount Rushmore.



Our progress so far: The blue line was Monday (about 350 miles), with a red X where we saw the tornado. Green was today, Tuesday, another 350 miles, at least.