mattie g

I took the little one home after older one swam her last heat (25m breast)…which was already at like 8:30 pm. Little one was up until 9:30, older one until 10:15. 8 and under practice is at 8:00 am and juniors at 8:30 am. Makes things kinda rough. Ouch…I’m a morning person, but I’d have a few words with you if we worked together. Today is an in-office day for me - left the house at 6:30, which made things tough after my older girl woke me up at 3:00 due to having a bad dream. Ugh…

It must all be variety-related when it comes to hydrangeas. Our NNW-facing side of the house - which gets *very little* sunlight - is awash with mop head hydrangeas in full bloom all summer, every summer. We prune them from time to time, but generally we just let them ride. We have others (limelights) around the house that were more mindful of pruning on the right schedule, and those also do quite well.

By the way…apparently a lifeguard saw lightning a couple heats into our B Meet tonight. 30-minute delay for what turned out to be some wind. Fabulous…

Not a drop. Boo.

We have three different RTIC coolers! One is a “30-can” soft cooler, another a 45 qt hard cooler, and the last is a backpack cooler. I was referring to the many tumblers that litter the sides of the pool once Thirsty Thursday hits! Same here. We’re technically not supposed to have food or drinks on the lower deck, but that’s never been enforced since we’ve been here, and as long as you’re not flaunting it, no one is concerned about adult beverages that are respectfully “hidden.”

Thursday through Saturday evenings, there are more Yetis and RTICs surrounding the side of our pool than one can count...

But to follow on to my post... I do think that being in a lower division really helps. It's not overly competitive, and nearly every kid on the team lives in our neighborhood. That really helps to develop a bond among the kids and parents that I don't think you would get if it were a pool that drew from a much larger area. Volunteering to help has been a great feeling thus far, but I can certainly see how it would become a drain as the years go on. We'll just enjoy it for now! One of our neighborhood friends is team rep, so we get a lot of inside scoop, all of which is pretty enlightening. We've got just shy of 90 kids on the team, so there's plenty of opportunities for all them to swim...though it was pretty funny this weekend when the 16-18 girls breast and fly only had one girl (from the other team) swimming in the race. Our neighborhood is going through a phase in which there are lots of little kids around now (young families moving into houses sold by original owners and the like), so the older classes have far fewer swimmers in them. I'm so used to that now that I can't imagine what it must be like at the top of the rung. We do have some kids that are phenomenal swimmers (one of the coaches - also an 18-year-old - is on scholarship to swim freestyle next year), so it's always cool to watch them swim, but I was shocked when I heard that his 50 free didn't even make the NVSL top 24 this past week. I mean...that's crazy. Like I said - I couldn't imagine being at a higher-level division meet. My older girl (8-year-old) just adores swimming. She's not really competitive and she's much more artistic than an athlete (though she also dances), but to see her enjoyment and growth this season so far is amazing...so much so that she's said that she wants to swim in the fall. She has other 8-under friends on the team who do it, so we're going to see if she's still up for it by the end of the season. Our 3.5-year-old girl is on juniors and is raising hell in doing so, so I imagine she's going to be the next in line to keep us sucked us into the summer swim vortex!

@vastateofmindand @H2O...I do love being involved with summer swim this year, but I was mostly being contrarian with my post.

I love attending swim meets and watching my oldest and her friends swim. Our team is in Division 17, so there aren't that many heats at B Meets, and she's still learning and hasn't placed in breast and fly, so it's a good opportunity for her to get out there and try them in a meet format. Our pool is also pretty awesome - the center of the social scene for the whole neighborhood in the summer - so we're really enjoying the camaraderie with the other parents who are getting involved. mrs g is running concessions and I'm just doing random stuff to help (may be a Timer or Stroke and Turn judge at some point), but we just feel great to get involved and help our kids enjoy their summer!

We have winter?

The dual cherry trees down the street from us registered 63db earlier. Definitely the loudest section of the neighborhood I’ve walked recently. Still a decent number of fliers on the walk to the pool, with lots of live/dying ones on the ground under the oaks at the club.

Seems like we're in a seasonal pattern over the last few years in which we see trough west, ridge east in winter and ridge west, trough east in summer. That might just be recency bias, but it feels like that's generally where we've been for a little while.

Same here. It seems like cherries are where they're all partying at now. There's a house down the street with two cherry trees out front that are still loaded and loud, but everywhere else is virtually silent.

Wow, man…that’s incredibly impressive!

Today isn’t so bad, but 8:00am swim practice is going to be chiiiillee the next couple days!

The split filled in. Pretty amazing call by the mesos that showed the southern edge of the storms poking down just far enough to get Burke in on the action.

Burke split. I drought.

Good to hear the Sluggo seems to have had an effect. I was seeing slug damage on my lettuce, basil, one jalapeño plant so I applied some Sluggo and haven’t noticed new damage since. I had to delay putting my cantaloupes in the ground, so that didn’t help. I was hoping to build a new raised bed this spring, but I didn’t get around to it, so I had to plant them in the old cucumber location that no longer get the sun it used to (neighbors’s tree has grown out to shade that spot more now). We’ll see what happens. If I get some fruit, then great, if not…there’s always next year!

That cuke looks good…much better than my cantaloupes, for sure!

Looks like the NAM Burke jack will end up verifying out in the northern Loudoun area. Not unhappy about that.

If a model is run enough times, it's bound to be right sometime.

12z has the same jack area, but cut the totals by a couple inches.

Burke jack. No thanks.

We had a deluge for an hour or so (with light rain after) as cells popped overhead at 5:00-ish. Swim practice was cancelled. Within 15 minutes of the rain starting, our back window well filled up and water started coming in through the basement window. Had to go outside to clear the gutters, then bail the water out of the window well. Good thing is that side of the basement has a drain in the floor and is our storage/HVAC/water heater area and not the finished section. We were able to wipe it all up and get it dried out pretty quickly. 2.29" from yesterday at the nearest reporting PWS (just ESE of Fairfax City), but I suspect we had a bit more as we were closer to the main cell than that PWS. Been raining pretty good so far this morning and it looks like plenty more on the way.

I guess this happened.