PhineasC

If you are an organized business-minded person who likes to work with your hands, there is a ton of money to be made in the trades right now. Biggest hurdle I see with these guys is they have so much work being thrown at them they lose track of it all and get stunted to where they can't grow. Skilled tradesmen are literally being flagged down in parking lots and begged to take jobs, but they are not able to handle the business back-end aspects of that. It's funny and sad to see.

The skilled contractor I have overseeing the work at my house says he has more jobs than he can handle, but his two issues are shortages of materials and shortages of helpers. It seems the work is there but the usual younger helper types don't want to do the work, or they can't for some reason (work ethic, personal issues such as drugs, etc.). It's concerning if construction numbers are already down in the summer, as that is when business is usually booming for these guys. Winters tend to be the lean time.

That VT number seems like an outlier. Did they have a tighter lockdown that is to blame?

Get off my lawn!

The people who become wealthy off the restaurant business have several of them and they are high-end/pricy. They also take their money from that and parlay it into other more profitable ventures. The guy who owns the local Italian place in town is not getting "rich." I cringe when I see young idealist types point at someone like that and put them in the same category as Jeff Bezos: a rich fatcat who needs to be taxed to death.

I feel like a lot of people are just "floating" right now without a job and exhausting every last source of credit they have, which gives the impression that all is well, but the huge crash is coming soon. There is a lag effect at work.

There is plenty of work out there, you just have to want to do it. Many don't. A lot of kids from the middle class don't even work in HS anymore. When I was in HS, we all worked part-time jobs. You had to make money somehow.

They have thin margins and require good management. There are many stories of packed restaurants with great reviews that still somehow end up underwater and forced to close because the management was not watching supplies, pay for employees, taxes, fees, etc. It's a very tricky business.

Storms that overperform are one thing. I was thinking about storms that are forecast to miss wide right but instead you wake up to storm warnings.

Same here. Tankless krew 4 lyfe.

One of the saddest things as a weather weenie is knowing a "surprise storm" like in the past is now basically impossible.

It sounds like you are a lot more engaged with local gossip and happenings than I am. I have three houses in different states, and I can't recall ever caring what the locals were yapping about online. I just pull in my driveway, go in my house, and go about my business. Never had an issue. Maybe the grannies are peering through the blinds at me and making posts on Facebook about it; I wouldn't know. I did have one neighbor in DE send me some BS text in March about how me coming down there would be "a huge risk given the health situation." LOL it wasn't a big deal, dude is always a bit of a butthead and we followed the state lockdown orders anyway.

Very fascinating to see. Even a bad winter in NE is equivalent to a great winter in MD. The funniest thing is the fighting over high temps and dew points, as if those are unique and exciting metrics to track. LOL

Pretty much. Certainly in a ratter January which is 9/10 of them. I keep telling my wife that an average, even warmish December in Randolph would be considered a nicely above-average entire winter in our part of MD. She hasn't run away yet!

Where I'm from, that's early December.

Topped out at 55. Prior 4 days: 57/49 72/47 66/45 62/47 This is no way to run a torch.

I can feel winter coming. It's awesome.

OK, I had no idea who that was.

Feels like late October to me (by MD standards, I mean).

Webbed hands.

Why not both?

Why do you subject yourself to worrying about what people are saying on social media? It's toxic there. I would pay it exactly zero mind.

15.06" of rain JJA for Randolph according to my weather station. CoCoRaHS site had 14.63"

When I'm in Randolph, it's very easy to forget almost entirely about COVID, protests, riots, and politics. It isn't until I return to MD just outside Baltimore that all that stuff comes rushing back to the forefront. We are rapidly heading towards making Randolph the primary residence for the foreseeable future.

I never wear a mask. I am always blazing hot when skiing. I am the guy with the jacket half unzipped when it's single digits.