Bogieblog

The Meeting That Wasn't

So we got about a foot of snow last night and early this morning, then it turned to sleet. We got up early this morning, early enough to snowblow 1/2 the driveway (that's all we need to get WS's truck out), and shovel the paths to the driveway and from the back door to the dog pen. I checked the town website and the local TV station to see if they had postponed the town meeting (they hadn't). After shoveling / snowblowing, we had time to go get breakfast in Hillsboro, stop back home and put the dogs in the pen, then get to the town meeting.

As we were checking in, the Moderator was explaining that town meetings can only be postponed because of safety issues (apparently someone asked why it hadn't been postponed) and that since the snow was predicted to stop about midnight, and the town road crews were out, it was not felt that safety was an issue. I totally agree with the decision - the roads were nice and clear (slick, yes, but easily passable). After all, this is New Hampshire, we have had town meetings during a Nor'Easter (after about 12" had come down, we voted to postpone the rest of the meeting), this one is pretty much over except the crying.

And, crying there was. The Moderator told tales of people calling him because they didn't have the time to dig our to get to the meeting. So, maybe the small population that came to the meeting could vote for postponement? Out of the 30 people there, about 20 of them voted for postponing the meeting because people were too stupid to figure out it was snowing and that they might need to get up a little earlier to clear off some snow. It's not like we had no warning and we just woke up to the snow. It was even forcast fairly well on how much we would get (I could see if they forcast 12" and we got 3 feet, how that would throw the best laid plans akilter).

Next weekend is going to be a killer weekend for me homework wise (yes, our teacher lets us know what the homework load will be). Unfortunately, I can't start it early because most of it is reporting on a lab that we will be doing Tuesday night - and no, it's not a lab that can be done in advance and the average report length hast been 15-20 pages. Thanks to all the stupid people and their enablers, I will have to bite the bullet and pretend I don't need any sleep so I can attend the meeting and get my homework done.

Cripes people, it always snows for our town meeting, that's what it does in New Hampshire - get over it!

Pet Food Recall

There is a recall for cat and dog gravy-style canned/pouched foods from Menu Foods. You may not recognize the name, but they make such products that are sold as NutroMax, Big Red, Ol' Roy. Special Kitty and about 43 other names. Click on the dog or cat section of the website to get to the list of brands affected. If you click on a specific brand, you can download an Excel spreadsheet with manufacturing lot numbers and dates.

The recall comes after several reported kidney failure deaths and even more kidney failure cases where the pets recovered. It has not been determined how the food is linked.

Our cats and dogs get canned food in addition to their dry, thankfully we don't use the brands listed.

It Wouldn't Be a Town Meeting Without It

Last week we had record lows, and record low highs. This week we had record highs (about 72 in Nashua), today and tomorrow we get a Nor'Easter. I could of told youit would happen, Deering's town meeting rarely happens without a fairly significant snowstorm either the night before or on that day (sometimes we have to continue the second half of the meeting until the next weekend). Last year was an exception in that we had fairly mild weather (it was so unusual that I actually mentioned it).

So. that is where we will be bright and early tomorrow, the town meeting, after even earlier we have shovelled our way to the truck.

I'm Not Herbie Anyway

I'm a Ford Mustang!

You're an American classic -- fast, strong, and bold. You're not snobby or pretentious, but you have what it takes to give anyone a run for their money.

"Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.

Link received in an email.

Voting Day

Last night we went and voted on the School Budget, School Articles and Selectman (yes, 2 out of 3 of our select"people" are woman - get over the use of the work "selectman").

I have never had to actually wait to get to a booth before (or if so, it was so long ago that it doesn't even count). I'm guessing the 7.6% increase for the school budget is not going to pass.

That particular article was not worded as it normally is; normally it states that if the budget does not pass, the default budget will be XXX (subject to state rules blah, blah, blah) or a special meeting will be held. Okay, that is pretty much what the article stated. But usually the next article is one that allows the voters to decide if the default budget will take affect or whether we want a special meeting. There was no such article. Which means that if the budget is defeated, there will be a meeting held when it is most inconvenient for everyone except teachers and staff (perhaps 9:30 AM on some weekday morning on a snow day), so that they can get the full budget passed at the special meeting.

Yep, someone thought they were being sneaky - I wonder if that is legal?

And the Winner Is

Congratulations to Lance mackey for winning the Iditarod and to Paul Gephardt for finishing second.

Martin Buser, Zack Sterr, Jeff King and Ed Iten have left White Mountain and should be coming in to the finish soon. They and whole slew of teams behind them are just amazing to even attempt the Iditarod!

Last Leg

Lance Mackey has already made it into White Mountain, laid over for 8 hours, and exactly 8 hours later headed on his way to Safety. It looks like unless he has really bad luck, that he will keep the lead as the nearest competitor arrived at White Mountain about 2.5 hours later than Mackey did (and has a mandatory 8 hour layover).

It looks like Jeff King has either had some sort of difficulty or his dogs are really tired. He still hasn't made it to White Mountain and has dropped to 5th place.

Of course, there are plenty of teams behind him, including the all Siberian Husky team that is currently in 58th place with all the "babies" still in harness.

Short Iditarod Update

Lance Mackey has only a few minutes of lead, going out of Elim, on Paul Gebhardt who has a several hour lead over Martin Buser, Jeff King and Zack Steer. There is one more mandatory 8 hour rest stop at White Mountain, then it is an all out chase to Safety then to Nome.

DST

I tried to leave a comment over at Matty's place, but apparently Blogger hates me. She has a post about Daylight Savings Time.

Me, I hate it. Just when I can see the sun starting to peek over the horizon when I get to work, they change the time and I am plunged back into the darkness. The only thing that DST does for us is to make it hard to get to sleep since it is still daylight when we go to be (in the middle of summer), the rest of the time, it just fucks with my sleep schedule (and the dogs' schedule - which means my schedule is doubly screwed).

Anyway, don't forget to change your VCR (then change it again in a couple of weeks when it thinks it is time to change), your older computers (my laptop will have to be changed twice also), PDA (twice - again), cell phone (I think ours are new enough that they get time from the sattelite), Answering machine (twice) and God knows what else.

Oh, and hope that your IT administrator figured out how to change everything at work. We were actually told not to electronically schedule meetings for a couple of days before and a couple of days after the change because all the patches might not work correctly and everyon'e calender could get all screwed up (oh, we're running a Linux server - it's supposed to be sooo much better than MS - NOT).

Oh yeah, I am soooo glad that the government had to go and screw with the established order of things.

From Boiling to Snow in Nothing Flat

Right smack-dab in the middle of global warming, Mt. Washington has experienced its coldest March 6 temperature. The old record was -23, the new record is -37. They were just short of reaching the lowest March temperatrue ever reached of -38. A record low was also reached the next day (as it did in several areas of the state).

So, what do you do on such a cold day? Why, you boil some water and throw it into the air and make instant snow. The You Tube video is here.