Cooler and windy. Maybe. [80F at 9am, I suck at this, worse than random guessing.]
Yesterday got to be pretty dang nice. Gorgeous even. I ended up not doing my list though. I’ll be doing that today. Couldn’t get to my client’s house in time to get any work done, so today’s the day.
I ended up doing some little things, including moving food and continuing to organize my storage shelves. I have a plan for reorganizing my back corner in the garage, where the shelves for my food storage, my big 40 gallon water storage tanks, and my work bench for gub work, and maybe my non-prepping hobby will take place. I will be moving a couple of tool boxes, and adding shelves. That should result in more stuff in the same space.
I was busy the rest of the day but for the life of me, I can’t remember what I got done.
Dinner was leftovers with some additional pasta and cheese sauce.
Today should be busy…
Money helps with staying in, staying safe, and stacking. Go get you some…
n
Floors poured in the new house, now they have to set for the next two days. Some troubles with the roof – apparently the skylight frames are bigger than expected, so the solar installation has to be adapted somewhat. I thought they would take care of that today, but apparently not – or, at least, not yet.
Once the solar is on, the scaffolding can come down, and it will at least look like a house. Still all the interior work to go, but we’re getting there.
You think you had it tough???
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlIXn0r0AY8
Therein is a lot of the problem today. Too many people get hammered by CPS for discipline their child. CPS workers with a gestapo mindset overreact and refuse to back or admit a mistake.
Have a child throw a tantrum in a grocery store, kicking and screaming on the ground because they did not get a candy bar. Smack the child on the buttocks to get their attention and your life will never be the same. Fourteen cops in swat gear, two fire trucks, an ambulance will arrive. The parent arrested, the child in foster care. Face will be on the news as the local stations scramble for ratings.
What is more traumatic to the child? The butt swat or being taken away from the parent?
CPS will get involved, legal fees, court dates, possible probation. Perhaps sexual assault charges as the buttocks were involved. CPS will do everything they can to make a person’s life miserable. Mostly to justify their existence. Yet real cases of abuse, many times resulting in injury or even death are ignored.
Parents Hoover over their kids today because CPS is incompetent and far overreaching their real job description.
I went through this crap when I would let my seven year old son walk a couple blocks to a video store to rent video games. I was contacted by the police and CPS and was threatened with jail if I continued to let him walk alone. I was livid.
There was a lot of talk about yeast yesterday. Question for the bakers out there: If your yeast is old and not as active anymore can’t you just grow it up on the fly? The doubling time for yeast is about 90 minutes. If your yeast is old and only 1/4 or 1/8 active, say, can you just put that in warm water with a bit of sugar (or flour) and let it sit for 2 or 3 doublings (3 to 5 hours) and now you have enough live yeast for the normal loaf? Or if your yeast is still fully active but you want to extend your supply can you just take 1/8 the amount you would normally use and grow that up in the warm sugar water for 4 or 5 hours? Of course the flour/water ratio of your normal bread recipe would have to be adjusted to compensate for the added liquid.
Because of my usual life schedule I do a lot of overnight rise bread. With that I add a lot less yeast than for a same-day loaf which I assume is because it will double several times overnight.
I think I’m going to experiment with yeast this weekend.
JLP, yes, giving your yeast a lot more time to come to life does work, but you’ll get a much stronger yeast flavor in your bread or whatever. If that’s not a problem, fine.
Depending on how you do it, you might also get alcohol production. That shouldn’t happen with top-floating yeast in an open container because alcohol happens in yeast’s anaerobic stage. However, I’m pretty sure I got alcohol a couple times when I was experimenting with how well different yeasts and different conditions worked. You also have to beware of free-floating bacteria and yeast and I don’t know what else; the little critters are everywhere. It shouldn’t be a problem in a clean house, but be aware that once in a while things may go wrong.
Now that the Father/Son have been arrested in GA for shooting the Black guy, how long before Plugs blames tRump? “He didn’t make a White House statement because he is a raaaayccciiiisss! Vote for me Black People, and I’ll protect you.”
From today’s FEMA summary
n
Parents Hoover over their kids today
They did in my day, too. We were so poor that every day, after walking home from school… my mom would hoover us because we couldn’t afford a bathtub.
@ray @lynn
We seem to have lost the ability as a community to distinguish between authentic abuse and discipline. As well as distinguish the difference between managed freedom for growth experience versus actual neglect.
I think we are also guilty of applying our value systems to other people, and having other peoples value systems applied to us. As we no longer have a shared value system this causes a lot of pain.
I see weird parallels happening in the animal legislation world. While much of the weird animal legislation is driven by folks like PETA who would like to see pet ownership a thing of the past, at least part of the reason they are successful at getting legislation through is people have lost their ever loving minds and don’t understand that animals are, well, animals, and have different tolerances and needs than humans. Keeping a dog on a tether so they can enjoy some freedom in an unfenced yard is not abuse. Keeping a dog on a tether without shelter, food, or water and neglecting it unto death certainly is abuse. But both actions are treated the same under legislation in a growing number parts of the country. I didn’t follow up on it because I’ve been crazy busy, but Anchorage had a big rewrite of our animal law rewritten, with the aid of two PETA lawyers on the board of our animal control (yeah, isn’t that special), and there was a bunch of stuff in their that was going to put the dog sports and conformation people into trouble for normal safe practices.
Child rearing is sneakily legislated too. There’s push back against the success of home schooling, and I don’t think it’s because people actually believe that the majority of serious home schooling families are abusive. If you look at any group of humans who happen to be parents, yes, some subset of them are going to be horrible humans that do bad things to their children. Some of those will call keeping their children out of the public light homeschooling.
There are those who will leverage that into ‘homeschooling bad’ and strip families of parental rights.
Oi.
What a mess we have become.
Having had a taste of home schooling since mid March, I’d love to continue in the years to come. Not an option for us for reasons, but am going to be crunching the numbers to see if can make it happen down the road.
Yard is greening up. Snow is finally all gone. Have a fabric shed to assemble so I can finish emptying the covered chicken run and move the things that over took the greenhouse. I have several pounds of potatoes to get growing. The romaine lettuce and carrots I started with kiddo are already nearly a bust. I have more seeds. I suck at carrots – they grow great for everyone but me up here, I swear. If I had storage I’d just get an end of season sack from one of our farmers that apparently still have them (because the farmers market that runs all winter was gutted by Covid behavior).
3 yards of soil are being delivered next week. I need to pick up a couple bales of hay and get the driveway swept. I unearthed the other rabbit hutch so have split the male rabbits from the female. Second male will go in the freezer eventually. Picked up a second hand cage that I need to clean up and repair so all the rabbits will have private accommodations. About 10 days to go before the eggs in the incubator are due to hatch. No word on the Chantecler eggs I ordered last month. Maybe they’ll get here, maybe they won’t.
Two is one, one is none, and I need a backup.
I was abused as a child. Sexual, emotional and physical. Some of my discipline involved my butt getting beat with paddles or leather belts. Many of those beatings resulted in cuts that bled, sometimes a lot. If I bloodied the sheets I was beat for that offense. When I got one of those beatings I would sleep on old towels that I would wash myself the next morning.
As I got older the discipline involved fists to the body and face by my uncle. My aunt would generally set him off By bringing up some infraction of the rules then egg him on. Then she would sit and watch with a smirk on her face.
This was in the 1950’s and 1960’s. So it has been going on awhile. Back then no one believed the child are were afraid to get involved. The pendulum has swung too far the other direction. Now too many get involved.
I made a vow to never strike my son. If I was angry I would go somewhere else for time to calm down.
I’m reminded that until fairly recently, chickens were too valuable to eat. Chicken was a luxury food, and “A chicken in every pot” was a promise of wealth. People ate EGGS but KEPT chickens.
Raising animals for food is one of those prepper things (like buying antibiotics, or collecting a “rebuild society” library) that is just one step over the line for many people…as almost all of (non-rural) America sees animals as pets or potential pets, and not “protein”.
I’ve got a feeling, based on the reports of chicks being in short supply, that a LOT of people are going to be raising eggs this years. And maybe there’ll be a bunch of chickens for sale in a few months, rather than ending up in a pot….
n
I’ve always said that the biggest thing home schoolers have working against them is the perception that they’re mostly ultra right-wing religious nutters who are homeschooling their kids so they can simultaneously perform the necessary religious brainwashing and indoctrination. Picture young ladies with waist length hair breads and ankle length skirts learning how evolution is satanic.
BRAD
Fantastic! I hope things go well from here. Building a new home can be quite an experience.
I have never once ever been inclined to inflict physical pain on my child. Frankly, I really don’t understand those that do. Perhaps it’s the “that’s how I was raised and I turned out okay” school of thinking that perpetuates it. My child has driven me crazy on several occasions but my reaction has never been “I should hit her.”
It’s one of those things that people are probably never going to agree on.
Of course that has to be prohibited. It gets in the way of progressive brainwashing and indoctrination.
+1
I’m sure that takes place on hippy communes. I don’t think they send their kids to school. Do they still call them hippy communes or are they called collectives now?
Do they still call them hippy communes or are they called collectives now?
Enclaves of performative transformation.
Barbara is still with us – but with bad back spams. Her post this morning: https://www.fritchman.com/journal/?p=6733
It is increasingly difficult to give a child enough freedom to become a self-sufficient human. The hand wringing over stranger abduction is irrational – the statistics just do not support it as a real danger. I do not recall the number off the top of my head but it was in either the low 100’s or low 200’s across the ENTIRE nation annually. Terrible tragedy if it is your child, yet I argue it is equally tragic to wrap the other millions of children in bubble wrap to nurse the neurosis of the adults around them. Our kid gets dirty, is outside unattended, I hope is doing things of which I would disapprove. This summer I expect to grant the run of the neighborhood as soon as I see proof that, at least while I am watching, the bike will stay out of the middle of the road. I do expect broken bones, skinned knees, bonked foreheads, maybe even a bloody nose.
Life is risk. We have immune systems and a remarkable ability to heal for a reason.
The problem is that when people had 6, 8, or 10+ kids, losing a kid was a traumatic event but was not fatal to the family’s long term survival. But when people only have one or two kids, losing a kid can cause the family to fail in the long term. So when people (animals too !) have just one or two kids, they will wrap that kid in bubble wrap and spend excessive time protecting them to the kid’s detriment.
Freefall: Florence is checking the spaceship for micro collision damage
http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3500/fc03432.htm
Florence (the hybrid wolf) is wearing a sack space suit. No legs. I wonder how she gets about on the hull ?
Thanks to Nick and RickH for looking after Barbara. All of us should be on watch for folks who do anything mysterious, such as stopping posts.
Lynn, I don’t think I agree, about the value of each kid today relative to times past. The main reason for my disagreement is that we’re not comparing today to a century or two ago, we’re comparing to four or five decades ago. In the 1960s and ’70s, American families had on average 2.33 children in 1960 versus 1.93 in 2019.
I think that the real reason for the growth of bubblewrap culture is some combination of three things:
Most importantly, we have it too easy. People need some level of adversity to thrive. In the US, there’s no particular existential threat. We’re phenomenally wealthy, to the degree that our poor are fat, have a roof over their heads, and carry supercomputers. Most of us have a degree of leisure time unimaginable a century ago. Given all that, some fraction of people look for threats and troubles. This can take the form of panicking over nothingburgers like global cooling, global warming, or bugageddon as all of the pollinators die for whatever reason.
This is magnified by the 24-hour cable and internet news cycle. Molehill problems are blown up into mountains just to give the talking heads something to talk about and get eyeballs. A few hundred* children kidnapped per year is not good by any means, but it’s a far cry from the 100,000, er 300,000, er 450,000 per year “official number” which gets batted around on news sites and parents.com. In their efforts to build up a worried audience, the news sites leave out the context, that over 99.9% of the claimed cases turn out to be nothing. Similar for bugageddon: yes, some species of bee is dying off in England for unknown reasons, but the pollination is taken up by another species of bee and other insects, so your squashes will grow just fine.
* Under 350 per year are kidnapped by strangers in the US from 2000-2018, according to the FBI. Even that’s an exaggeration, because the statistic is “children under 21”. Furthermore, the great majority, according to some numbers from an unofficial source, are black or hispanic. Not that black and brown children are any less valuable or any less missed than white children, but the vast majority of the fretful mothers are white or oriental, working themselves into a tizzy over a one-in-a-million risk to their precious baby.
And finally, there’s some guilt over their child-rearing. Between twitter/facebook culture (“Look at my perfect life and my perfect children and the decorated cookies we made together!”) and the example set by their own mothers (stayed at home to take care of the kids and meals and house) and being too “busy” with Facebook and such to spend much time in meaningful interaction with their children, some mothers overcompensate by hovering and keeping the kid always in sight. (At least when they’re not focused on their phones.)
The first two factors, above, I’m confident in, and they affect both men and women in America. The last item I’m not so sure of. I’ve seen it, exclusively in women, but I don’t know how widespread it is or how much impact it has on the demonstrated events.
EDIT: Bah. It took almost an hour and a half to type that, squeezing it into small slots when I had a break from both work and making The Brat do her schoolwork and such.
The problem is that when people had 6, 8, or 10+ kids, losing a kid was a traumatic event but was not fatal to the family’s long term survival. But when people only have one or two kids, losing a kid can cause the family to fail in the long term. So when people (animals too !) have just one or two kids, they will wrap that kid in bubble wrap and spend excessive time protecting them to the kid’s detriment.
A lot of my generation (X-er) had cr*ppy parents, born in the late 30s through Early Boomer era. We try not to be our parents, and some try too hard.
This is magnified by the 24-hour cable and internet news cycle. Molehill problems are blown up into mountains just to give the talking heads something to talk about and get eyeballs. A few hundred* children kidnapped per year is not good by any means, but it’s a far cry from the 100,000, er 300,000, er 450,000 per year “official number” which gets batted around on news sites and parents.com. In their efforts to build up a worried audience, the news sites leave out the context, that over 99.9% of the claimed cases turn out to be nothing.
And there is Elmer Wayne Henley, David Books, and Dean Coril. The three of them raped and killed at least 28 young men in southwest Houston from 1970 to 1973. They buried most of the young men in the backyard of a house about a half mile away from our house in southwest Houston. My mother totally freaked on this for a while and I and my two bothers were not allowed to leave our yard for several years (I left our yard anyway, riding my bike all over the place). She calmed down after the trial and conviction of Elmer Wayne Henley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elmer_Wayne_Henley
Coril’s finder fee of $200 for boys was a lot of money for a teen in 1973. I used to ride my bike over to our local record / paraphernalia shop and buy cassettes of Bad Company and such. Cassettes were $5 each IIRC. I sure am glad that I never met Elmer Wayne Henley or David Brooks on my journeys all over southwest Houston on my bike.
I don’t think I had crappy parents. Dad was born in ’26, Mom in ’32. I think they did the best they knew. Could they have done better? A pointless question.
I got Dad’s foot locker a few years ago. The one he brought home from Korea. I Googled the address and sure enough, there’s a house there that looks like I remember him describing. And a couple of blocks away, train tracks. He had a few stories about how all the kids would pick up the coal that fell off of the trains. Which was when he was about 10. That was kind of trippy. 🙂
We were never hungry. Ok, yes, it could happen if what was cooked was too revolting to eat. Spareribs and cabbage? Er, no, I can’t stand the smell. Spareribs and sauerkraut were great. Go figure. Me not eating supper for a couple of days didn’t bother them.
No fond memories of various ass whoopings I caught for stuff I didn’t do but I got because one of my sisters or little brother screwed up and I shouldn’t have let them do it, being the Big Brother. That I was at school or no where near didn’t matter. That logic never made sense.
I forget where I was going when I started typing.
They let us roam. Check in every couple of hours. Be home before dark. I know I did stuff that would not be approved of. Somehow I lived.
“Ted Cruz gets haircut at a Texas salon where owner went to jail for defying a coronavirus shutdown order”
https://www.businessinsider.com/shelley-luther-ted-cruz-haircut-at-texas-salon-coronavirus-shutdown-2020-5
“A Texas salon owner who defied the state’s emergency order and became a hero of conservative lockdown opponents got a new client on Friday: U.S. Senator Ted Cruz.”
“Cruz stopped for a trim at Shelly Luther’s Salon A La Mode in Dallas on the first day salons could reopen in Texas, but his visit was primarily to support Luther, who spent a night in jail this week for continuing to operate her salon despite the state’s emergency order until Texas’ Republican governor intervened.”
Good for Ted.
@Jenny, @Ray, @SteveF, et al, here you go. Clean standup comedy on kids today.
https://www.facebook.com/DryBarComedy/videos/637172313528718/
“When I was 12, somebody told me to put some dry ice in a canning jar and watch it blow up. So I did. When my dad got home my Mom was still picking the glass out of my forehead.””
“Jeff Allen talking to his 26 year old son who is living in his basement.”
“Your mother and I want grandchildren. We have earned
grandchildren. And we worship a God of miracles.
We believe out of 3 billion women on this planet
God has chosen one of those women for you to breed with.
We just don’t think she’s going to fall through our vent
and land in your lap down here in your basement.”
“Souplantation’s buffet-style restaurants closing for good because of the coronavirus”
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-07/souplantations-buffet-restaurants-closing-coronvirus
Oh man, another victim of the craziness ! I loved our Sweet Tomatoes here in Fort Bend County !
No more buffets ? Are you kidding me ?
@lynn – that’s funny stuff !! And all true !!
Thanks for the laughs!
(If you missed it: this -> https://www.facebook.com/DryBarComedy/videos/637172313528718/ )
A while back there was a discussion of battery chargers. @JimB recommended this one:
https://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200332201_200332201
Which is a “BatteryMINDer Plus Battery Charger/Trickle Charger/Desulfator — 12 Volt, 1 Amp, Model# 12117TC”. ($30 on sale from $60 )
One from Harbor Freight popped up in my email – reviews are postitive: https://www.harborfreight.com/4a-fully-automatic-microprocessor-controlled-battery-chargermaintainer-63350.html ($37.00) “4A Fully Automatic Microprocessor Controlled Battery Charger/Maintainer”
I have a three 6V batteries (two from a powered chair, and one on the gennie) that have gone dead due to lack of use. The old charger I have didn’t do anything for any of them.
Would either of these recharge those batteries? Which is recommended? What say you?
Youtube has been heavily promoting the drybar comedy in my recommended list. I have to say that I’ve watched a bunch and find them to be really funny. You have to be a bit cleverer when your audience will be sober, and you can’t use profanity. It’s a refreshing change of pace.
n
@steve, several of my peers were from families of more than 8 kids. Two of my uncles had more than 8 kids. Even in the sixties and seventies. And our parents had only their own parents as examples of how to parent, so you get that stoic attitude carried forward into 2 and 3 child households.
Kids are still finding stupid ways to die even today. We’d get drunk out in the weeds somewhere and drive home, they drive EVERYWHERE and EVERY DAY distracted to a level that we’d never achieve short of passing out.
There’s something else at work too, something to do with the rise in suing companies. When we were kids, we played a game where we threw our pocket knives at each other’s feet and you lost if you flinched. If you got hurt doing something stupid, we called you a dumbass and mocked you for it for the next few years. Then came lawn Jarts. ONE kid gets a Jart in the head and it’s a federal case. CONGRESS passed a law making it illegal to sell Jarts. That was the floodgates opening… and suddenly you weren’t responsible for your own F up, it was those other b@stards fault, and you were going to make them pay.
n
@stevef
Could loss of faith, and presumably loss of belief in after life / an assurance of something better after death, come into play?
I’m sure our founders were scared and in pain often. But presumably they mostly believed in redemption from sin and something better to come (or worse to come if you really screwed up). Death wasn’t the worse thing that could happen to you. Living sans self determination, sans freedom, were infinitely worse. Sure I’ve over simplified and romanticized it but I don’t think I’m wrong.
Now people are reluctant to even discuss death much less contemplate their own in meaningful fashion. People are afraid to be hurt. People are afraid to die. Maybe that gets translated to their kids?
I speculate I’m willing to be hurt, and willing to risk my child be injured in the pursuit of independence, because I experienced mishaps as a kid. While not particularly pleasant, the joy that came of the risks were worth it. I had ponies and spent as much time flying thru the air and coming to an abrupt and painful stop as I did actually riding. As a young adult I was in the SCA for a bit and spent time with friends smacking each other around with what amounted to heavy clubs. For fun. It was kind of a dumb activity but jeez it was a hoot to play at knights in shiny armor. The painful bruises and occasional sprain were totally worth it.
I want my child to have the same joys. I want my child to know that pain does not equate death, that pain isn’t the master of you. How do you learn that except by experiencing it? It’s not that I -want- my child to hurt yet I am wise enough to recognize that pain is part of the human condition and it takes practice to deal with it.
In other news – brought home a 1 year old pregnant rabbit and her 6 week old daughter. Gonna have rabbit for dinner come September. This makes two pregnant does, an immature doe, and two bucks (one of whom will go to freezer camp once I have kits). Tomorrow I’m building our rabbitry. 10 days to go to chicks.
RickH, that Harbor Freight charger has some reviews that claim it would not go into float mode and ruined batteries. I worry about that, if it is not watched at least hourly. I would avoid it. I have a HF Viking 2, 8, 15 amp computer controlled charger, stock number 63299, I was going to recommend, but I can’t find it on their web site, so it is probably discontinued. I have had mine for two years, and it has been reliable, but I would not leave it unattended for the same reason.
With the above precautions, the HF charger you linked seems fine. I checked the manual, and it looks like it can charge even dead batteries. Most “smart” chargers need at least about 80% of normal battery voltage to start charging. If your old charger didn’t do anything, it might be a “smart” charger.
The BatteryMINDer is 12V only. They make a 6V version, but it is pricey.
Before you buy a charger, read on. (You still might want a charger for a new battery.)
If the batteries are dead, and have been for a while (more than a day or two,) they are likely unrecoverable. The best way to attempt to charge them is to NOT use a smart charger, unless it has a recovery mode (that HF Viking does.) If you can borrow a regulated variable voltage power supply of at least a couple amps, connect it and carefully increase the voltage while watching the current. If the voltage goes above approximately 7.5V, and the current is only a fraction of an amp, then the battery is sulfated. My luck recovering those has not been good, especially if they are AGM or gelled electrolyte batteries. Flooded batteries (those that have removable cell caps) are easier to recover, but still not likely, especially if they have been dead for more than a few days. The HF charger might do its thing, and say the battery is “bad.”
If you still want to try recovery, set the power supply to no more than 8V and put a resistor or light bulb in series with the battery to limit the current. If the PS has a current limit control, you don’t need the resistor or bulb; just set it to about a half amp. It could take a week or several for the battery to start drawing current and charging. If it does, it will seem to take a normal charge. When it is fully charged, indicated by a voltage of 7V and current below approximately 0.1A, run a discharge test. Load it to about a tenth of its amp-hour rating (typically 5 amps if unsure) and watch the voltage. Stop the discharge when its voltage drops to 5V, and note the time it took. You can estimate the amp-hour capacity from this test. Recharge and repeat the discharge a few times, or until the discharge time stops increasing. I will bet the approximate capacity will only be about a third or less its rated amp-hour capacity. Also, its internal resistance will be higher than a healthy battery, which is bad for engine starting.
There it is in a nutshell. Once a lead acid battery that is a few years old goes dead for more than a day or so, it is unlikely to be of much use. Buy a new one. The “bad” battery can still be used for noncritical applications, such as emergency charging of your phone.
Couple of thoughts regarding what happened with society and kids:
We have a great emphasis on reducing risk to unimaginably low levels. That is a combination of civil settlements in the millions and insurance companies reluctance to pay for same. The insurance companies will insist on and continue to try to reduce all risks so they never have to pay out. After all, the best insurance customer is one who buys a policy for which they will never have to pay a claim. That affects all of society and so child-rearing had better be risk free or someone will pay. Sad really.
My brother’s observation was that his generation was that last truly free one. It’s summer and you are 10 years old. You get thrown out of the house at 9 and told to be back for lunch. After lunch get thrown out and told to be back at 6 for dinner. In between? Get on your bike and go all over the place with friends. Get lost and figure out how to get home. At 16, tell the parents you are going white-water rafting for the long weekend, see you Monday night. A “who are you going with” and a few “be carefuls” and off you go. My parents were not neglectful, but they both grew up in Europe during WW2 – a different view of risk for sure. Now? It’s that dad-gum smartphone glued to your hand that’s the problem. Need mapping software to know where you are or to tell you where you are going. The adventure of getting lost just doesn’t happen. Then there is the admonition to: “…call every 30 minutes or when you stop for coffee or just to tell me every 15 minutes you are still alive”. The phones encourage hovering by parents and no-ones kids will ever be as free again.
Finally, I rarely report on the weather. It is the deep south of the Great White North so it will generally be cooler than anywhere most of you are (except for Jenny in Alaska). But last night? -4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees F), a new record low. Not going to hit 50F today either. Enjoy your spring, I hope to have one soon.