mattie g

Pouring..,just pouring in Burke right now.

Monday was interesting and some good fun here in HHI, but the last two days have generally been a bore, to be honest. Hope we get some more interesting weather at home over the next couple days than I’ve seen here since Monday!

The center has moved significantly over the past six hours compared to the previous 12-18 hours. I think we’ll see some strengthening since the center is pretty well off the coast at this point. Wife and I want to take advantage of the extra few days down here with the kids’ grandparents, so hopefully we can get and about at least a little tomorrow! After 8+” of rain yesterday, we’ve gotten 1-2” today. Really need this thing to beef up tomorrow if HHI is going to get close to the 20” being bandied about a couple days ago!

Since I’m down here in HHI, I’ve been watching the radar closely for the last 36 hours. The center of circulation has definitely hopped around in the last 4-6 hours and is now significantly offshore, whereas it had been sitting basically just SSE of Savannah for ages. Not sure what that means for things at home, but just making my own observation. Hopefully it results in 25” of rain in six hours up there!

It's been just a regular rainy day down here, but definitely some heavier showers started mixing in about an hour or so ago. It's impressive that the rain is wrapping around so far west. Get that to keep wrapping all the way around the circulation and it'll be some decent rains here again.

My daughter and I just measured 1.2” of rain in the last 10 minutes here in HHI. it’s absolutely f*cking dumping rain right now.

Yeah man...bring it home for the Mid-Atlantic!

Probably so. Fire it up, tropical man! First really angry band coming ashore in HHI now. Conditions definitely going downhill and a tornado warning close by. Lots of alcohol procured, so we're ready...

Just got back from a run out on the bluff on the northern end of the island. Conditions are so much different on the sound than they are just 1/2 mile inland. Quite blustery out there but pretty blasé at the house. I'm sure that'll change as the center gets a little closer.

I’m currently in the pink area in SC. Don’t really care for 20” of rain, but would be cool to experience. I really hope we get a decent drought buster back home…if for nothing else than to stop the whining.

Thanks. It was frustrating because I was willing to wait, but then to get hung up on and then have to go back into the queue is just bullshit. Called again last night and was told that the wait would be more than two hours. I hung up, cancelled our flights home, and rebooked for Friday on the credit card - didn't want to risk getting stuck flying through Chicago on Sunday or something. We'll just use the American credits for another flight in the future. Flights into and out of HHH are already cancelled, so I think it was the right (if annoying) call. Thank God I really like my in-laws and don't mind staying with them for a few more days.

It wasn’t like this at all last year or the year before.

Was on hold with American Airlines for over 1.5 hours to try to reschedule our flight out of HHI on Tuesday…and the call simply hung up out of nowhere. I’m not concerned at all about postponing our departure (I’ll just cancel and rebook if I have to), but I just want to say…fuck all these companies that no longer actually have customer service but charge more than ever for their services. Fuck. Them. All.

We're in Hilton Head through Tuesday. Prefer to get this this thing here and out in time for the flight home, but kind of looking forward to possibly Good thing is that, besides planning to go to Bethany Beach with friends on Thursday-Sunday, there's nothing forcing us to head home that day since I've got PTO planned for the week anyways. Could just reschedule our flight, if needed.

Looks like MBY jackpotted with those cells - about 0.5". We headed out of town first thing in the morning and it was surprisingly wet when we left.

I spy a Beltway Split...

16z initiation was spot on with that complex in west/central VA.

I've been using the same one for quite a few years now and I can attest that it works flawlessly. So flawlessly, in fact, that the squirrels prefer going to my garden for an easy snack (and apparently to get a drink) instead of eating sunflower seeds from the bird feeder.

I'm just to the south of Fairfax City (maybe just west of where that last lightning strike showed up), so I feel you on having missed this one. Fingers crossed for today...

Yeah...that was pretty awesome. Dudes were so pumped to win a medal - any medal!

I despise squirrels, to be completely honest. Though we did have a very cute ginger squirrel that would clean up the sunflower seeds that fell out of our feeder this spring. Haven't seen it in a couple months, so I'm guessing its reddish fur drew too much attention from the local hawk or fox populations and it made a tasty supper for one of them.

I just threw a shoe at a squirrel that had one of my unripe tomatoes in its mouth. Then I chased it. Hope I scared the shit out of it and it doesn't come back, but that's unlikely. F'ing squirrels... Edit: I threw a shoe, not a show

I shouldn't complain because we got absolutely dumped on for like 15-20 minutes the other day, but missing like this in much the same way for days on end is incredibly frustrating!

I recall you mentioning your experiences before and I 100% understand where you're coming from. We have a family for whom swimming is *the* sport and one of their kids is one of our All Stars (the other is a coach and the other is one of the top in their age group). They're an absolutely wonderful family, but I get concerned that the kids might run into that burnout phase, which I don't want to have any responsibility for. There are a number of other year-round swimmers on the team - some of whom are quite good - but I don't have quite the same concerns about them flaming out...hard. I feel that a huge part of my job is to maintain that fun atmosphere - I dress up according to our themes, I dance (for a minute or two) after the meets or just on deck during meets, and I go out of my way to cheer each and every kid in the pool no matter their skill level. I'm a very competitive person (and was a very competitive athlete back in the day), so I feel that being competitive is a key to having fun, but winning at all costs and being competitive are two entirely separate things! Summer swim is supposed to be pure fun, so I've been doing my best to build the team so that we can actually fill lanes (we're still not quite there yet) while also making sure that the culture is built around enjoying every moment of an intense summer swim season! With all that said, I understand that teams need to go up and go down the ladder so that there's some semblance of parity in the divisions. It's not a perfect science, by any stretch (our season is testament to that), but I do think the league does its best to match up teams of similar size and ability (I won't get into what it's like in the top divisions because they're playing a completely different game than the rest of us). We might surprise some folks next year, but I also know that it's likelier we'll get knocked around a little, so I'll just set the expectations at the beginning of the season and emphasize (again) that we're all out there to have fun!

Our little team ended up with eight(!) swimmers in NVSL All Stars this year. Pretty incredible considering that I think the most we've ever had in one year was four! With a 5-0 record (all very convincing wins), a Division Relay win, an All Star relay team, and all those kids in Individual All Stars, there's really not much more we could have possibly done this season...except win the Sportsmanship Award! I came into the season feeling good about 5-0 and relays win, but never thought it would happen the way it did. Couldn't be more proud of what all of our kids - from the youngest first-year swimmers to our year-round senior swimmers - accomplished this year! I'm a little nervous about how many divisions we'll jump next year, but it should be a really nice challenge for our kids and coaches! Really looking forward to sewing up the season this Saturday at All Stars and taking a little break to get away...