Early Summer Lightning
June 2012 Rain
I will try to be better about posting my rain notes as they occur. It gets hard to consolidate my notes after the fact.
2.125 inches - Sunday 6/10
1.000 inches - Thursday 6/14 (an inch in 15-20 minutes)
1.000 inches - Sunday 6/17
0.400 inches - Tuesday 6/19
0.400 inches - Wednesday 6/20
The weather service is talking about signifcant rains over the next 5 days in our forecast area. The magic will be where it actually occurs. Since we have a new dog kennel that with a slab that was poured yesterday and lots of open/exposed dirt I figure that I am at risk. I did layout the tarps over the areas where erosion might be a problem. --Cross my fingers and see what happens.
May 2012 Rain
I was keeping track of the measureable rain at my home during the month of May. We have rain gauge in the front yard and I wrote down the values on a post it note until I had time to total them up.
0.125 Monday
0.750 Thursday
2.125 Saturday
1.500 Wednesday-Thursday
2.000 Memorial Day weekend
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6.5 inches of measurable rain
We started in a drought rate (acording to the weather service) this spring and the month of May almost brought us back to normal.
Tailgate Swapfest 2012
On Saturday I drove into the metro with Paul KC0HST to check out TwinsLan Tailgate Swapfest 2012 at the 3M campus in Maplewood.
Purchase #1 - One dollar
Purchase #2 - One dollar
Purchase #3 - One dollar
Purchase #4 - Five dollars
Purchase #5 - Five dollars
Purchase #6 - Six dollars
Purchase #7 - More than six dollars
Item #7 is a CNC mill for creating circuit boards. Nylen WA0VEX built it and used it for several years. He has a bigger one at home so he is sold this one to me. I will drive into the metro later today to pick it up. I figure that I probably should get a test run with him so that I know how to set it up. I have been looking at buying or building one of these for about 18 months. The price and timing were right.
From a builders point of view... the hamfest was a home-run for me.
73 de NG0R
Infrared Photos
Late last week I recieved my dSLR in the mail back from having the Infrared Mod applied to the camera. I think that the camera was gone just over two weeks and that includes shipping both ways.
I am extremely happy with the result. I am still working through how to tune the raw image files so that they have the proper contrast levels so that will get better as I work out the details. It makes mid-day photography a lot of fun.
Camping at Whitewater State Park
For the Memorial Day weekend (last weekend) as a family we went camping at Whitewater State Park in southeastern Minnesota.
Joe (left) and Ben (right) cook dogs & brats outside over the fire in a light rain.
We were located in site #1 which was a good sized camp site.
As one of our standard camping meals we grilled kabobs. This picture only shows part of the batch that we cooked. We make enough for lunch & snacks the next day or so.
Jacob hanging with Max (the wonder dog) at the campsite while hashbrowns cook over the fire pit.
Max is on guard duty at the campsite. No kids, people on bikes, or hikers could sneak by the her as she pretended to be early warning system.
Some wild flowers along one of the many hiking paths.
This lily near the ranger station was pretty incredible.
Overall it was a pretty nice weekend. We did have a couple of rounds of rain but it was not a big deal since we had the camper. We logged a couple pretty long hikes and Max's first camping outing went well.
Lightning - 5/18/12
Ben and I (+ Max the wonder dog) made a quick run around McLeod & Meeker county on the evening of 5/18 to see if we could get in front of the rain and capture some lightning photos.
These are the uncropped images that have simply been resized for the web. I could probably make them look a bit sexier if I cropped them down tighter. I will save that kind of fun for when they potential go out as a gift or artwork to someone in the future.
I have not gotten a lot of lightning photos so far in the 2012 season this made for a fun evening.
Max the wonder dog
I am a little behind on my posts. Here is a picture of Joe and Max walking on the beach a Lake Ripley in Litchfield. (Clearly Max has already been playing in the lake.)
Max the wonder dog
I took Max to Woodland Park this afternoon after work. What can I say... it is five minutes down the road. She took a couple of swims in the ponds as we went through the park.
Today was probably the last time that we will visit the park till late fall... the poison ivy is starting to grow pretty agresively which is a problem for me. (Lots of sandy soil with the proper mix of shade & moisture.) --Yuck... it makes me itchy just thinking about it.
