Major Mike’s Musings

What Hillary lacked in support for Barack, Bill Clinton supplied. Bill actually endorsed Barack for President. Hillary’s speech was an, “It’s all about me,” speech. Bill’s was, “Obama’s ready to be President,” speech–in spite of all the things he’s slammed Obama during the primaries. Clinton is a pro and he showed it tonight.

An historic moment. The Democrats have nominated the first black¹ candidate for the President of the United States of America. Congratulations to the Democrats! I’m proud of you.

1. I say black because, even though African-American is the PC term, there are many black-Americans that are not from Africa [↩]

I’ve observed two things from the Democratic National Convention: First, they’ve done a good job of teaching the dignitaries to clap in front of their own faces in case they get a close up during ovations. And Second, Bill Clinton is great at mugging for the cameras. When he sees the cameras on him, he breaks into a big smile, gets wet eyed, and when Hillary is speaking, mouths, “I love you,” and shakes his head just so proudly.

How many calories did all the athletes burn during the olympics?

Five O'clock Radar

Looks like we’re in the clear. Here’s the radar at around five o’clock. You can hardly see it but we’re right where the little plus with the circle around it is. Click on the image and you can see a larger version.

I drove around earlier (had to get a bulb for my left brake light which had burned out and mail a couple of packages) and observed the results of Fay. There are bushels (probably tons) of Spanish moss on the ground having been blown down from the Live Oak trees. Also all of the Villages ponds are overflowing.

The ponds are used to hold irrigation water. We have two water systems: Potable and irrigation. The potable, of course, is treated, but the irrigation is rainwater and irrigation runoff. We use the irrigation water to irrigate (dah) our yards and The Villages irrigates the golf courses and landscaping. 

The golf course and landscaping sprinklers are running in many places to lower the water in the overflowing ponds. We’ve been on water restrictions for over a year, maybe we’ve finally made up the deficits caused by the recent drought. 

Maybe Fay will be kind enough to turn left into Georgia. They could sure use the rain.

Why is it that we get every single vault, twist, pirouette, jump, pose from gymnastics about five times each and we only get 10 seconds of the women’s shot put, discus, and pole vault? Could it be the Chinese don’t stand a chance in field events?

If you’ve been watching the national news or the Weather Channel, you might think we’re drowning from Fay’s heavy rains. Not so. The Central Florida declarations in the media refer to the east coast of Central Florida. We’re in the middle of the state and up until this morning have not had much rain at all…probably less than an inch…since Fay attacked Florida.

Apparently, all that’s about to change. Fay is holding still in the Atlantic¹, but is forecast to begin moving WNW back into Floriada any minute. I think it’s started to move because we’re starting to get some winds and rain.

In a previous post, I made a reference to hearing a tornado warning on our weather radio. In Indiana, there were sirens every couple of miles, at least in Indianapolis there were. We could hear them testing the sirens at 11:00 am every Friday. We occasionally heard them during actual warnings.

Florida has no such sirens. If you want to know if severe weather is approaching, you must tune in on radio or TV. If you loose power, you’re out of luck unless you have a battery powered weather radio. Mine also has SAME, which means I can program it to only give me reports for the counties I choose. I’ve chosen the county in which I live and the adjacent ones, too. When a warning (or test) comes on it first give a loud screeching sound², then a sound like data coming across, then the vocal warning.

The NNOA sends out a test at around 11:00 am and 7:00 pm every Wednesday.

Anyway, so far we’re snug as bugs in a rug.

1. Still lashing the east coast [↩]
2. guaranteed to wake you up and get your heart pounding [↩]

This morning we were awakened to the screech of our weather radio. The US Weather Service initiated a tornado warning for Lake county, the one adjacent to our county, Sumter, to the East. Mrs. Major and I turned over and went back to sleep.

Today we were supposed to have lots of rain and high winds, but we had mostly sunshine. We had brief periods of heavy rain and moderate winds as a couple of feeder bands went by, but all in all, it’s been a pretty quiet day.

The reason: Fay headed further East than forecast. I think we’re going to escape the brunt of the storm.

The latest forecast for Fay predicts that she’ll move more easterly than before, missing us entirely. I’ve still got the hatches battened.

She’s moving up the coast. Tropical storm Fay can’t seem to make up her mind¹. First she’s headed right for us, then she’s heading up the western coast, now, she’s headed for us again.

Later this afternoon, we’ll batten down the hatches, bring in the potted plants and potential missiles², and settle in for the storm. Fortunately, so far the winds are forecast to be only 50 mph with gusts to 65 mph at the time it’s supposed to pass over.

So far it looks as though it will arrive in the middle of the night on Tuesday, but that’s been changing, too.

I’ll keep you posted as long as I can get on the internet.

1. Or more likely, the forecasters can’t figure her out. [↩]
2. Like the bird feeder [↩]