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And it just wouldn’t stop coming down. In fact, it’s still misting outside, even 3 days after things started. It wasn’t ever too hard of a rain — an amateur weather station just a few miles from my house has only recorded about 5 inches of rain so far. But it definitely accumulated.

See for yourself, in this picture of the drainage pond at the bottom of the hill near my house. We don’t border on it, so we’re nowhere close to getting flooded. We’d need a Noah flood to get to our house from here. But those trees on the left, in the standing water, are probably almost 3 feet above normal water stage in the pond. And you can see the water trending toward some of those fences on the left.

Sorry for the fuzziness. The weakness of a cameraphone picture, I guess.

Hope everyone else stayed dry, if you were on the East Coast. Our fine governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia stayed dry — by having Democratic Party fundraisers in Memphis and Little Rock after declaring an emergency in the state. (See, both parties’ leaders can be tone deaf.) Have a great weekend.

Maybe you thought I messed up and got the wrong day, but not really. It’s Navy Day — and 234 years ago, the US Navy was first established (as the Continental Navy). So for my Dad, and all of the other sailors and officers who have served in the US Navy, I offer you this little video of the Navy Ceremonial Guard Silent Drill Team winning an international tattoo competition a few years ago. They competed against units from all over NATO and took first prize.

Pretty impressive stuff. Definitely puts the MOB to shame.

Just a couple of observations from the road recently:

1. Well, for starters, my minivan passed 90,000 miles last week. Woo hoo! Almost 6 years to the day, so that’s a nice round 15,000 miles per year. Ouch.

2. Now, about our road driving culture. I don’t think we’ve learned our lesson from last year’s gas price hikes. Yes, gas prices are down 30%+ from last year. It’s still not cheap (at least, from a US historical standpoint). But we certainly seem to be driving a whole lot more.

   Last year, driving up and down the I-95 corridor between Richmond and NOVA wasn’t too bad, at least at the times we normally drive. You could sense folks weren’t driving as much.

   Well, this year, it’s at least as bad as years before last year. In fact, I could potentially make the case it’s the worst ever. Someone in the family has driven the corridor each of the last 3 weekends, and it has been extremely tough and congested each time, especially compared to last year. Part of me wonders if this is the vacation impact due to the recession, with folks spending fewer dollars on vacations, essentially keeping folks more local and/or driving (versus flying).

   I guess higher fuel prices are going to be the only way that folks will cut back on driving.

3. Lastly, on a slightly humorous note (as long as it doesn’t happen to me), be careful if you park a small car near a body of water. I’m guessing many of you are familiar with the Smart Car, one of the smallest cars on the road today. Well, apparently, folks in the Netherlands are finding their Smart Cars being lifted and dumped into the canals as a not-so-nice prank.

   I guess my 90k-mile minivan probably won’t suffer the same fate.

Two quick notes for today. First, I want to note that I haven’t forgotten about posting here. Things have been a bit busy for the amount of time it takes to put in a decent multimedia post, which is where most of my backlog is. Hopefully, I’ll get a chance to post some stuff. It’s interesting — not a whole lot has happened since the 4th of July, but this past weekend has several items of note (pool, Build-A-Bear, Uncle Tim in town, playing in a fountain, I went to a concert last night) that I need to catch everyone up on. Stay tuned.

Obviously, the other thing (which I think everyone is hearing about in the news) was about the 40th anniversary of the first Moon landing. And yes, I actually did witness it as it happened. So what if I was only 2 months old? I was awake and “watching” the TV. So that counts, I think.

At least NASA is getting in the spirit by offering a piece of a giant Moon Pie to visitors today. That would be of the dessert variety, measuring 40 inches in diameter, 55 total pounds with 6 pounds of chocolate and 14 pounds of marshmallow.

Here’s to wishing everyone a happy 4th of July). Stay safe, but have some fun. And here’s a quick musical interlude on how they decided who should write the Declaration of Independence. I’m pretty sure this is historically accurate, although I would have expected Jefferson to be more of a baritone.

NOTE: There are a couple of PG-13 curse words in the song, if you have a young one in the room with you.

Yes, today is Pi Day. No, that is not a mispelling. You know — 3.14159 etc. You can even celebrate Pi Second: 1:59:26pm on 3/14. (That’s pi to the 7th decimal place.) Our US Congress even got into the act with a non-binding resolution honoring Pi Day 2009. Yes, our leaders truly are watching out for the most important issues of the day.

On a more serious note, I have a few things to post, but not the time yet to pull together the multimedia aspects. Cool stuff this week include:

1. Will lost his sixth tooth on Tuesday, almost 1 year to the day after he lost his first tooth (3/8/08). This was in the lower left quadrant, second from the midline. (Whatever it is called.) He had lost the one on the right previously.
2. Will had an after-school event at school yesterday called Gator Rock, which is basically an activity to get kids moving, mostly with semi-organized dancing. I was able to join him for part of it, and I think he had a good time.
3. Today was bed day. Sean and Daniel no longer have cribs. The twins now have twin beds. (No, not bunk beds.) Needless to say, getting freed from the “fences” made for interesting sleep times. We have the video to prove it.

Hope everyone is counting down the days until spring. It’s less than a week away, right?

Now it’s time to get back to work. The fun is over.

I guess this is the first time I’ve really paid attention to the presidential inauguration, but I was helped by the fact that both of the twins are still sick and needed to stay home from daycare. So I had the inauguration festivities on, and believe it or not, but Sean and Daniel were at least mesmerized by the actual swearing in ceremony. They paid attention starting with the musical piece and then into the swearing in of the vice president and president, which is a long time to sit still for essentially boring speechmaking.

But as the afternoon wore on, and there is a private luncheon, and then a bunch of speechmaking — get your photo next to these one-of-a-kind crystal bowls to honor this occasion — that this whole endeavor started to take on the worst aspects of a wedding reception. Honestly, the ego stroking going on serves very little purpose. I’m sad to say that the luncheon (which is something only started in the 1950s) and many of the activities before the parade appear to be absolutely useless.

And then to invest the millions upon millions of dollars in the inauguration balls seems to me to be the height of lunacy in a time when we’re going to be asked to make sacrifices. If people want to party on their own, let them. But to give the seal of significance on these events by organizing and attending them continues to reinforce for me that they’re just trying to repay (no, it’s really not that, they say) the contributors (more ego stroking) and ask them to shell out more money for their lobbying efforts. After all, who gets the invitations to these balls or can even afford them?

Oh, baloney. I don’t think I need to answer that.

I’m not sure why I’m so mad about it at this time. Honestly, I came into today feeling fairly upbeat. I want to believe that it’s all going to make a difference and make my life easier. But I’ve lived through enough of these administrations — Republican and Democratic — to feel pretty certain that it’s a lie. I’m willing to give Obama a chance, because gosh darn it, he comes across as such an optimistic and likable fellow. Or at least, that’s what his body language says.

But also call me torn on the prospects at this time. Because neither party’s kool-aid is all sugary-sweet. And I haven’t seen enough of the ability to lead and make the tough compromises from the leaders of either party to give me great hope for the coming years of our Government.

Good luck, Mr. 44th President — Mr. Obama. There’re a lot of challenges out there to make things right for all of the generations. I pray that you make the right decisions.

How else can we explain the following two situations. First, we’ve got an octopus shorting out lights and juggling his tank-mates. What does he need to be doing that kind of practice of aim and dexterity for?

Then, we’ve got shrimp running on treadmills. Yeah, it’s an old story, but it takes a while to build endurance.

So, be on the lookout. They may just be gunning for us.

I want to wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all of those that we cannot be with or see this holiday weekend. I hope that you have a chance to enjoy the company of friends and family. Let’s be thankful for the many blessings that we do have and remember the things that are most important to us.

(pauses for a moment of reflection)

Of course, what Thanksgiving is complete without football. (Kind of sad, now that I think about it.) But while you won’t get John Madden broadcasting one of your football games today (you do realize he’s at NBC, now, right?), I will leave you with this impersonation of John Madden — by Frank Caliendo on the Letterman show.

Kellie went out first thing this morning, getting in line at 5:30am. She was home just after 6:30am. I’m sure she doesn’t completely feel this way, but that probably wasn’t too bad, considering some of the reports of much longer lines throughout the commonwealth.

I went in at just after 3pm, not sure what to expect. Luckily for me, there were essentially no lines, so it was in-and-out. As of 3:10pm, 2462 votes had been cast at my polling place. That’s an astounding number. I don’t know how many are registered in my precinct (I haven’t been able to find that info easily), but that’s a huge number for any precinct. And that doesn’t even include absentee ballots. As of the 2008 primary, there were 3987 registered voters in the precinct.

That’s huge turnout percentages already (over 60%). I’ll post a follow-up later once the final precinct results are posted. We’re definitely heading over 75% participation in this precinct, I’m guessing. As a comparison, there were 757 votes in my precinct for our state senator in 2007 (3927 registered voters that year), 2294 votes in my precinct for US Senator in 2006 (3961 registered voters that year), 1933 votes for governor in 2005 (3914 registered voters that year), and 2847 votes for president in 2004 (3906 registered voters). That’s a fairly steady headcount of registered voters over 4 years (there hasn’t been much development in the area during that time).