Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News The RoundTable Round Table For February 5 through 11, 2012

Incredible weather here in Illinois... other than 2 dustings of snow, we've had only one small storm totaling about 2 inches.
Making trips back and forth to the lake. Deer in abundance. Saw 20 on my bike ride a few days ago. Every day in the 40's and 50's. Geese finally left to go south, mid January (usually October). The buds are on the trees, and our grass, that never turned very brown, is becoming green. Barges still travelling up and down the Illinois river. No Ice. Stores loaded with winter outerwear. Food pantries empty.

The deer are lovin' it!

In actuality he was trying to kneel on the one-yard line. The strategy was to run down the clock and kick a field goal with only a few seconds on the clock. He didn't back in, he fell!

I think this is the first time I have ever seen someone try not to score a TD. Brilliant strategy. And note how close that fall came to causing NY to lose the daggone game!

A) Because that is exactly what I used to have to do on those rare days years ago.

B) Because I lived and worked there for eighteen years and came there from Minneapolis, Minnesota, which is do damn clean that you almost find yourself thinking that it really DOES resemble the picture on those Land O' Lakes butter tubs.

C) I've been back well over a dozen times since I left in 1998, sometimes for weeks at a time, at all times of year.
The change is uniform, it is noticeable and it is progressing.
Even some of the hard bitten critics are noticing it.
California intends to clean up its air, and its clean air policies are having an impact.

The one thing that says it all is the ability to see the mountain ranges that ring the LA Basin. When I first moved there, it was rare to see them in detail...people almost tended to forget about them.

Two nights ago my wife and I watched "The Gong Show Movie" which was a somewhat low budget film about Chuck Barris, perhaps his attempt at doing an All That Jazz/Bob Fosse sendup of his zany life.

Both of us noticed the haze and smog in the outdoor shots and we both remembered what it was like when we lived there years ago and we both realized that you don't see that kind of "pea soup" in outdoor LA all that often now.

It used to be an everyday thing.

Phil, I had a great time, even the hiking(;) ), and dinner was delicious! You are a great date! The Mahler concert was stupendous!

I have lived in SoCal for 50 years, and this is how the air is all the time now. The 70's and 80's had terrible air quality, with smog alerts all the time. We very rarely have smog alerts nowadays. Iss, come visit, and you can see for yourself. Bring your sunglasses and sunscreen.

We all liked the Super Bowl halftime show at my house. Even Mr. Scoutgal liked it, and he thinks most of them are boring. His favorite part was the tV screen on the ground. I Liked the men pulling the stage, too. rick!

We visited my dad's grave at Riverside National cemetery on Saturday. Here is a picture of us. I am the first one on the left.



Iss~notice the sky in the backround-clean and clear!

This is cool!

I have it on TiVo and can see it on big-screen - and have - over and over. Yum!