mattie g

59 minutes ago, SnowenOutThere said:

How many team members does your swim team have total? 

Pretty sure last year we had about 70 kids who had times in A Meets. Of those, I'd say that five or six were one-timers who we just needed to fill a lane, and there were probably another five or so mostly younger kids who never swam in an A Meet.

We're really light in certain age groups, especially 15-18 girls and 13-14 boys. Our neighborhood does skew young, as a lot more young families have been moving in during the last 5-10 years, so this makes sense, but it sucks when you get to relays and you have to just give away points because you don't have enough kids to field a relay.

2 hours ago, H2O said:

We filled our 4-6 rookie group in 4 days. Had to cap it. 
 

Welcome to the silly season!!

Damn.

We have a Juniors group (8&U, but mostly 4s and 5s) that we cap at 15 kids per session. July session is almost full, but still plenty of slots for June.

I think a lot of families wait to register until as spring activities wind down and summer comes into full view. We're also a fairly military-heavy neighborhood, so we often get kids of military families who don't start until they move into the neighborhood in June.

There are at least 15 kids who aren't registered who we know will be signing up, but for a small team like ours it's really nerve-wracking to wait!

Summer swim team responsibilities are ramping up hard now. Crazy that I've been meting with my co-rep for four months already, the Parents' Meeting is 10 days away, and practice starts in less than a month!

We're pretty well organized and all, but it's still already taking up a reasonable amount of my free time. Now we just need more families to register!

Looks like it pissed down rain overnight, but I was dead to the world and didn't wake up.

While today is a little chilly with the wind, I'm generally good with 65-75 until mid-May, then we can crank up the temps to get ready for swim season!

I can't believe practices start in a little under five weeks!

15 hours ago, CAPE said:

I have been a bit bored with the usual NE style IPAs, but have generally not been a fan of the 'milkshake' variety either. Enter Cloud Cake DIPA from Lone Pine. A very pretty looking hazy IPA, great smell of tropical fruit and hops on the nose, lovely lacing, and a superior creamy mouthfeel. Definitely get a bit of sweetness from the lactose on the finish, but not overdone at all. Enjoyable and fun beer. Lone pine is one of those breweries that seems to always get it.

Lots of beers are getting a little same-y, but the top breweries seem to always be able to turn it up a notch and separate themselves from others.

I've got a mixed 4-pack of Trillium that I'll enjoy this weekend, and I'm hoping to hit up Juicy for a few crowlers tomorrow (again, for weekend consumption), then again on Sunday for some drafts with buddies.

11 hours ago, mattie g said:

I've got a feeder in front and one in back. The front one is new, while the back one is the one I put up last year and was really popular.

Haven't seen any yet though.

Scratch that. Male showed up at our front feeder early this evening!

Just moved my tomatoes, jalapenos, and basil into a shaded area outdoors to start the hardening off process. Things don't look terribly promising for warm weather in the longer term, but as long as we're not threatened with a frost/freeze or multiple successive nights in the 30s, I'll get them planted in 10 days or so.

12 hours ago, clskinsfan said:

Really interesting early season gardening for me this year. Nothing died after being covered with two inches of  snow and frozen for consecutive nights. For those of you in cooler areas those crops include: Cabbage, Bok Choi, Carrots, Beets, Radish, Lettuce, Spinach, Broccoli, Peas, Turnips, Onions and Kohlrabi. This is by far the most aggressive I have ever been with gardening. I really tried to expand my variety of crops this year. And I direct sowed these "cold" weather crops in early March here. I wanted to see how they would do in zone 6 that early in the season. They do not grow quickly at those cold temps. But they survive. And we are about to head into a warm period where I expect them to really take off. Plants are really incredible with how survivable they are. Happy gardening friends. 

Editing this to include my indoor crops. Tomatoes, Peppers, Eggplant, Melons of all kinds, Squash of all kinds and celery are all doing great. They will be transplanted outside around May 15th here. Which is my guaranteed last frost. Potatoes and corn will also be direct sowed at that time. Pole beans will go in 2 or 3 weeks later when they can use the corn stalks as a trellis. 

Sounds like an awesome garden, and I'm sure you have a ton more space to plant than I do!

On 4/21/2022 at 7:14 AM, Eskimo Joe said:

I'll get my feeder out this weekend. Probably have one buzzing around here.

I've got a feeder in front and one in back. The front one is new, while the back one is the one I put up last year and was really popular.

Haven't seen any yet though.

On 4/18/2022 at 8:53 PM, psuhoffman said:

We will have a couple beautiful days before the threat of the back door front either way.  I just don’t get the focus on the not nice days. Everyone is totally entitled to feel how they want. But I really don’t get it. We’ve had so many gorgeous days in the last month. We have a couple more coming in the not so distant future.  But there is so much complaining about the minority cruddy days. Is the expectation that every spring day be sunny and 70?  Besides we really need it to rain a bit now or we will be in big trouble come the dry stretches in summer. 

Because not-nice days in April suck.

I guess I don't get why you don't get it.

Rainy, cold day in Burke.

22 minutes ago, nj2va said:

Just a casual -20 to -25 departure from normal.

Shh...you'll be told that such a cool departure is nothing compared to our warm departures.

We had sleet that mixed in with rain here in Burke when I checked about 15 minutes ago.

1 hour ago, WxUSAF said:

Low of 66. A casual +20-25F. I.e., WAY more anomalous than the chilly mornings everyone griped about. 

That's because decently below normal sucks this time of year, no matter how big the departures are.

8 hours ago, WxWatcher007 said:

 

Never in a million years would I want that in April. It's impressive, but I'd never want it.

December, January, February, March...sure. April? Nope. Time to move on, so I'm honestly not even moved by these videos.

10 minutes ago, nj2va said:

 Craptastic rest of April. Awful

You know what that means? May blowtorch, which also means a ton of complaining from people who think it's too hot.

On 4/9/2022 at 2:55 PM, CAPE said:

Didn't notice that characteristic with this one at all.

Aslin beers otoh- the odd 'tea thing' seems to be in the background on everything of theirs.

Aslin's quality has fallen off a cliff in the last two years. They're so focused on expanding that they've forgotten how to make good beers. From the perspective of a fan of theirs from the early years, it's really sad.

It might just be a personal palate thing for me with EQ. Their beers are soft and definitely have lots of haze, but they just seem "off" to me.

There's a new brewery - Juicy Brewing Co. - that opened in Aslin's original Herndon location a couple months ago. They're producing some of the best beers I've ever had - period. They're really small and aren't canning (yet?), but you can get crowlers to go. Seriously though...their IPAs are out of this world, their Kolsch and Schwarzbier are truly phenomenal, and they have a line of uber-fruited sours that are getting *all* the hype.

18 hours ago, CAPE said:

Equilibrium Lupus Salictarius Batch 3 Triple IPA

Outstanding.

I find EQ beers to be kind of odd. There’s this slightly astringent tea-like quality to them that turns me off a bit.

How we doin’ so far this drought season?

Does anyone track the hummingbird migration so they can be ready to put the feeders out? I didn't know about this site before, so I put out a feeder about three weeks ago when we had that warm stretch. To no one's surprise, no hummingbirds showed up.

https://www.hummingbirdcentral.com/hummingbird-migration-spring-2022-map.htm

Looks like they generally show up here right around April 10, so I'm going to put another feeder out today.

2 hours ago, H2O said:

Some T&L this morning that I didn’t sleep thru

OK...so I wasn't imagining that there were some rumbles.

9 minutes ago, Eaglesrck63 said:

I had to factory reset my phone and I lost my radar app. What app is this from?

Looks like WeenieRadar Plus

This is going to turn out to be the worst weather April in recent memory. I can feel it.

On 4/4/2022 at 11:10 AM, Eskimo Joe said:

Over/under on first DCA 90 next week?

Not even close, river wind or not.