5 years later and it's rainin' again!

I wanted to revive my little blog and as I looked back through the few posts I've made over the past five years (where did time go?!), I noticed that I wrote about a wet spring five years ago. Well, here we are in the same situation 5 years later!

2009 has been one of the coolest springs in many years, and one punctuated with much moisture. The trend continues as we ease into a very cool and damn spring. I'm hoping we will recover before July ends so we get more than ONE month of 'summer'

Man, it seems that we've had some crummy weather the past ten years or so. I remember 12 years ago the beginning (at least in my mind) of this trend of substandard spring/summer weather came screaming in with a series of nasty wind storms in early spring. I vividly remember one wind storm that was so turbulent that the four story building I was working in was moving around a bit!

Over the next decade it seems that we've had very windy winters and summers, and cooler overall temperatures. I will need to substantiate my claim with data, but that is my sensory perception of our seasons during the past 10 years or so.

Now, as I look back through my blogs from five years ago and wonder about weather, waxing reflectively on the parallel between now and five years ago, I wonder if we are indeed locked in some sort of cooler weather pattern here in Upstate, NY. OR, if my perception of this 'trend' is askew. I should try to see how easy it would be to collect data to verify or refute my perception. Until then, here's hoping it warms up--- as I write this on June 30th at 7:47pm on my front porch, I am wearing pants, a sweatshirt, and I'm COLD!

Cheers,
Ben

Things I learned in 'Pennsatucky'

Things I learned while visiting my relatives in the Nazareth "Pennsatucky" PA area...

Things I learned in “Pennsatucky”

1.A new accent is emerging. I call it “Pennsatucky” It's a combination of a traditional Eastern PA accent in which vowels are slightly accentuated, and a true southern drawl in which vowels are REALLY accentuated and drawn out! Peeeeeeeennsatucky!

2.My cousin Amanda is probably a chief proponent of the Pennsatucky dialect


3.Pennsatucky residents REALLY love tattoos. Not just single, small tats but large body-encompassing tats.

4.“It's a small, small, small, SMALL world” in Pennsatucky! Everywhere we went, my Pennsatucky cousins either saw someone in a car that was a teacher, friend, or friend-of-a-friend that they knew. Not to mention they kept referencing this guy 'Hansol' every damn place we went! It's a small, small, SMALL world in Pennsatucky indeed.


5.Code word “Flannel.” I discovered that Pennsatucky ladies loooooove plunging necklines and letting that jiggly cleavage hang out there in the wind for all to see. I also discovered that my cousins code-names such brazen displays of jiggly lipid collection “Flannel.” As in “Oh, flannel at 2-o-clock!” Ohhhhh, I wish I wouldn't have looked! Baaaaaad flannel in Pennsatucky

6.Pennsatucky dudes with Diesel pickup trucks really seem to think their F250's are Peterbuilt big rigs. I saw more 'big rig' steel exhaust stacks fabricated to these backwoods bugggies than I saw at the Monster Truck show I went to when I was 15! Come on dudes, that F-220 ain't turnin' into no Peterbuilt, and why in the hell do you wanna sound like a mud-buggy when you're takin your lady and her 'Flannel' out to Red Lobster on a Saturday night?!

7.Pennsatucky observation number 7--- A lot of ladies look like that Kate Goselin (Jon and Kate Plus 8) chic. Is there in-breeding going on in Pennsatucky or what?! Oh, and I spotted a lot who looked like one of my cousins as well. Weeeeeird. Maybe it's just the German influence. Or, maybe it's one too many games of Quoits with your Flannel relatives?!