It's A Beautiful Sunday in Spring

After a wet and blustery start to the weekend, the clouds blew out yesterday evening and today has started bright, clear, and beautifully blue skied. It is also one of those always surprising days when we a cooler than Boone and Floyd. I will probably be out playing catch up on the yardwork after the last few wet weekends.

I saw in the paper that Alberto Gonzales is using an op-ed to try and explain away his responsibility for the mismanagement of his department. I can hardly wait for his testimony in Congress this week...I've just watched the Vice-President of the USA call me irresponsible for I don't know how many times because I disagree with his opinion of how well the administration is doing in running their "War on Terrorism" in Iraq.

Let me get this straight, we are supposed to trust and agree with the people running this administration as they strip the constitutional guarantees we have that protect us against just these kind of people.

Sorry for the rant, I should know better by now than to listen to Cheney or read opinions by the man who approved torture and discounted the Geneva Conventions.

See ya'll tomorrow...

Spring or Summer or Winter Still?

Sitting here looking at the current weather as I have my first cup of coffee I am trying to decide what the season might be. As I was pouring that cup, the weather station on the wall was telling me 68 with a 84% humidity. That comes close to meeting my definition of summertime weather. Then my morning email tells me the temperature right now in Boone, NC are 32 degrees. Floyd, Va is reporting 36 degrees. Now those temperatures scream winter to me (granted I am a southern boy by training and birth so what do I know about winter). All I can say to all my friends on the Blue Ridge is throw another log on the fire and pull the covers back up, it ain't time to plant them gardens just yet even though the sun keeps teasing you with 70's this year.

As I was out driving the John Deere around the backyard last evening I notice the Red Oak tree I planted when we first move out here is covered with little curled red leaves, just opening and starting to grow. That's pretty much the last of the trees to leaf out this year. Even the Mimosas have been showing green for a while.

Here is an interesting tidbit from the middle of an article on the erosion of power in the White House...

A telling sign of America's inability to solve chronic problems is the IMF's discussion of our addiction to oil -- something President Bush talks plenty about but lacks the political will or congressional support to change. The IMF has gathered some shocking statistics: U.S. gasoline consumption as a share of gross domestic product is nearly five times that in the other major industrialized countries; gasoline accounts for 43 percent of U.S. oil consumption vs. 15 percent in other countries; fuel efficiency in America is 25 percent lower than in the European Union and 50 percent lower than in Japan. No wonder the world doubts our seriousness on energy issues.

Source: David Ignatius - A Power Outage At the White House - washingtonpost.com

Interesting numbers, don't you think?