mattie g

Need the HRRRRRRR to beef up in these parts.

Rain is far more reliable in winter.

I might steal that idea about asking the teacher for some schoolwork! I think they're using tablets for a bit of their work this year, so we could get B to bang out a couple assignments before enjoying the rest of the day.

That's a great idea. It was nice to be able to do that before B started school, and we've actually decided to forego our end-of-summer trip to HHI in favor of taking the girls out of (pre)school and flying down for 5-6 days over Columbus/Indigenous Peoples' Day.

We started after Labor Day in South Jersey, with much of that due to the extension of the summer vacation season for the Shore. I guess I don't mind so much that schools go back a week or so before Labor Day as long as there's a long weekend to close out the summer, but man...early August? Are there lots of folks from NY and NJ that go to the Outer Banks? Seems like such a long trip when you have plenty of really nice places along the Shore to choose from.

I assume they do follow the same rules about the number of days in school, but that's still so early. It's odd to me that kids even go back before the end of the summer vacation season (Labor Day), but to go back a full month before that? It just boggles the mind.

That is insanely early. Lots of kids down south have been back for a week. Just crazy.

^ Thanks, @H2O

Maybe rhino…virus?

About to dip into some Eagle Rare…or Buffalo Trace. Had a few good hauls from the ABC the last month or so, and these are the “lesser” of the pickups, so might as well set my Friday base with a few-finger pour of one or the other before we hit the pool for happy hour.

Small shifts from run to run.

We’d be running naked through streets, except the only problem is that we’d be going from a prog of 41 and dry to 34 and rain.

But seriously...lots of guidance has shifted well NW today. Might be a local droughtbuster for some!

Euroed

NAMmed

Sounding suspiciously like we're not actually going to bake all this week and that we may get some storms before heading into a wetter period. Weird how that works, huh?

You’re not interested in 31-degree snow that flips to 37-degree heavy rain?

But it's dry and it's (maybe) going to get really hot. We'd rather complain about something that may or may not be true / may or may not happen.

Same here! I'm all about competition. As a competitive athlete all my life through college, I thrived on it. In fact, that's something I really miss nowadays, which is just one reason I've picked up my golfing in the last year - to be able to feel that competitive spirit, even if I'm only competing with myself! But competition and fun don't have to be mutually exclusive, which I think is lost on far too many people. And while I would love to see our team go undefeated and get promoted through the divisions, I wouldn't want that to happen at the expense of the kids having a blast while it all takes place. As for the geographic split...given the relative ages of the neighborhoods, I would imagine you generally have newer pools with a more modern setup and amenities in central and western Fairfax County than you do with pools closer to the Beltway, particularly the eastern/southeastern portions of the county, as well in Alexandria and Arlington. There are also some of the upper-class areas in those parts of the county, so you're also dealing with a higher proportion of folks with a...certain mindset. And some folks just get uppity when they encounter any infrastructure (including pools) that just seems older and doesn't have the luxuries they're used to.

Or the mid-range look could moderate.

We can always pretend we're in a drought or something. That's easy to complain about.

Couldn't agree more about how all kids with the drive and natural ability - regardless of division - can make it to all-stars. I mentioned our one coach, who is a 17-year-old graduating from Lake Braddock this year...he has always swum for our neighborhood pool (Burke Station Square), despite our never being higher than Division 14. That's not to say that he'd have been able to swim for one of those top NVSL teams, but I imagine he could have. Instead, he swam with our little team/his neighborhood team for over a decade and got to partake in all the activities and the dancing and the meets as an 8&U to ultimately handing out paper plate awards and being made into an ice cream sundae by his team this year. It sounds like you...ummm...have a lot of experience with NVSL . We're just getting into the swim thing, but I sincerely hope I don't came across too much of what you experienced over the years. It's not terribly surprising to hear some of your anecdotes, though it's truly Karen-esque for someone to sh*t on a local pool that's just trying to put its best foot forward for the league. I mean...the pool that hosted our division relays is tiny, old, and decrepit, and while my wife and I (and some other families) definitely talked about it among ourselves, we wouldn't have dared to think of demeaning them. Our pool is really a tight-knit community. It draws mostly from our HOA (which isn't all that big), but there are families who live outside the subdivision who are part of our little family, too. Fun is the first thing we shoot for. Anything else is gravy. We're in Division 16 - we have no delusions of grandeur, even if some of the kids are incredibly talented and work really hard - so fun is first and foremost. And while I want my girls to be competitive and I would love them to be superstars(!), if that means we have to deal with some of what you mentioned, then I'd probably have to think twice about that!

It'll change again in a day or two.

There certainly is a decent argument to be made for that. I didn't do any real research into who was in NVSL all-stars this year, but I assume it's just as you mention, since the leaderboard was mostly populated during the season with swimmers from the same teams (in divisions 1 and 2). In a way, I'm kind of OK with that, since I figure that Divisionals serve as a kind of mini-all-stars for the remainder of the divisions, and it's only the elite from those other teams that make the league all-stars. My main issue is that (I can only assume) the top teams "recruit" the top swimmers to swim for them. For me, summer swim is about community, about having fun. I figure that the real competitive swimming takes place the rest of the year. If you have the top teams poaching from all the other local pools, then it just doesn't really sit well with me - they might as well just form their own elite league at that point.

I'm curious to see if there's a longer-term upper-level pattern shift that reflects what we've seen the last few winters and summers - *generally* ridge west, trough east in summer and trough west, ridge east in winter - which has had a somewhat moderating effect on these seasons.