mattie g

Harvested the first of our San Marzano Gigante tomatoes on Saturday. It had the slightest first blush of orange on it, so I picked it before the squirrels could possibly get at it (which is right when they've stolen them the last couple years). Grabbed another this morning. This is the earliest I've been able to harvest in quite a few years (maybe even the earliest ever), and I have a *ton* of others of all varieties that should be ready in the next week or two. Really psyched about it! My girls have been eating the occasional Orange Paruche Cherry tomato for the last week. Looking at the plant and knowing what generally happens with my cherry tomatoes, I fully expect they'll be sick of them by the end of this month and I'll be left with dozens of uneaten fruit by the end of the season.

Sounds like an awesome whirlwind day! I've been to each of those but Ardent. I'm a big fan of TC, but hitting The Answer is cool because they still don't can their beers (and they're damn good). I've had a couple Red Dragon crowlers...damn good, as well.

Moist

Lots of rumbling in Burke. That complex really fired up in the last 30 minutes.

Can you point to any guidance that shows there are supposed to be widespread storms right now?

Gotcha. Looking at CoCoRaHs, it seems that MBY got a little more than that after midnight (showing 0.8" or thereabouts around here). Also, looking at kids bins around the backyard, it also seems like we got a decent amount more than I'd assumed.

@MN Transplant...how did you end up after the overnight back-end stuff?

This storm sucks.

Not looking good.

Getting super fringed by some of these storms popping up. I can smell the rain like a mile away.

Pretty much the same here. There are some more cells firing a little to our south, so hopefully they stick around for a while.

Looking like a possible Burke split. I’m emerging from the basement now.

I'm in the crosshairs of the severe-warned cell. I'll let everyone know how it pans out, assuming I survive.

Yeah...that would be the rough thing about being involved at the official level. I used to be a timer when the older one was only a 6-year-old and wasn't swimming A Meets, so that wasn't an issue, but I'd have a hard time with her now swimming in each meet. Congrats to your girl on knocking it out on the fly! I absolutely love the story of how your encouragement (if "unprofessional") helped out your older one. If I saw my girl struggling a little, I'd hope that if she heard the same encouragement from the wife or I that she'd also do the same!

Yeah...it was bad, but still pretty fun for my first relay carnival. My girl's 100 free team shaved 14 seconds off their best (finished a close second), which was the highlight of our night. There was one guy sitting in front of us who was drinking beers and going on and on about his son's 13-14 "dream team." I mean it was incessant. Sure, they were really good, but how f'ing obnoxious can one human being be? I was honestly a couple minutes from telling him to pipe the F down - and not saying it nicely. Ours went until about 8:45, so a little over two hours. We're pretty strong in a few areas, so we won our share of events, which helped offset the ones in which we didn't swim.

Gotcha - we're a couple miles from there. There's a family who joined our pool based on the fact that the U8 boy had to try out for Burke Centre and he couldn't even swim across the pool at the start of the season! The mom is a big swimmer, so she really wanted him to be on a team. He's actually done really well to get where he is now. That's the big benefit of a lower-division team - giving kids without much experience the chance to swim.

How was the relay carnival? Conditions were bad for us - the swim club is the size of a postage stamp, so there was no room to sit comfortably, and it was surrounded by woods so no air movement whatsoever. We came in second place overall though, which was a really good result given that we didn't even swim in a few heats.

Which pool, if you don't mind?

Oh yeah...I hear you on grabbing all the sodas when you get them for $1 a case or something. I'm all about profit margin on this shite. We do the 1/4 lb Costco patties. A lot of the standard stuff, as well - hot dogs, candy, snow cones, drinks - but we have a neighborhood family who offered to make breakfast burritos for A Meets. Those things are MONEY. Travelling tacos (taco meat and toppings served in bags of Doritos or Fritos) are probably the biggest seller for us. Amazingly, Cup Noodles sell like hotcakes to the bigger kids, even on 95-degree B Meet afternoons. Kids are so weird. We're talking about doing pancake-sausage roll-ups next year...

It's nothing like the good old days of sucking in CFC- and leaded gasoline fume-laden haze when I was a kid!

Multiple Costco runs per week for us, but I wonder if we could get an RD membership as concessions leads for a pool. Hmmm... Yeah, helping with concessions pretty intense. Our pool is known for its concessions (especially our travelling tacos and breakfast burritos), and the wife has been in the pool house or in meetings for prep, execution, and clean up for upwards of 30 hours per week the last month. I've been making Costco and the random Giant/Safeway runs to help out. Nothing like when you realize 30 minutes before a B Meet that one major item was left off the list and you need to run out at the last minute to grab that one thing. Ugh...

Maybe it means we suck less than last year. Four triples is impressive. I haven't volunteered for anything this year since mrs g is running concessions. I do enough to help with that and I have to keep tabs on the 3-year-old during meets - no way can I do anything else.

Double on 2!!

Are you timing/judging? We have relay carnival tonight, too, but it's not at our place so we can wander around. 8-year-old is only swimming the free relay, but we'll probably end up sticking around for a bit.