Wild Sunflowers Revisited (from September 2008)

When I was in Nebraska earlier this month, I was immediately greeted by the wild sunflowers that I loved all over the edges of the highways and empty fields. I had planned to take some pictures but forgot. Oh well. At least I have this blog post from September 2008 to remind me of how pretty they are. Enjoy this "Rewind":

This type of sunflower is a Helianthus annuus.  The wild ones have smaller flowers (~5") than the ones you plant for seeds, such as those in western Kansas and Nebraska.

Wild sunflowers are in bloom in E. Nebraska and W. Iowa. They just popped up all over the place, like how Queen Anne's Lace pops up in PA and WV, and how wild thistle grows on the sides of the highways in NC.

So I pulled a Maryann and pulled over on the side of this country road while driving back from Toys R Us in Iowa and took some pictures.



This is what a single plant looks like...



And here's a group of them.



There's a HUGE field near Timmy's preschool, I should get over there and take some pics soon before they're over with.

My New Commuter Life, Part III: Food, Folks and Fun*

*Wait a second, wasn't that a major fast-food corporation jingle?

While I was in Nebraska, I did make some time to visit with my Pokeno girlfriends, have a nice dinner out with Shannon (who took me in at her house when the Offutt Inn was booked for the week), and enjoy a trip to Trader Joe's!

Several neighborhood Moms in Bellevue get together for a breakfast pot luck once a month, and a dinner potluck and game of Pokeno also once a month (on another separate day).  The girls elected to move Pokeno night around a little so I could join them!  I shipped a box of Mardi Gras decorations to the ladies, and we had a blast dressing up and enjoying Cristi's tater tot casserole.

We have pictures of the Pokeno ladies from every month!

Guess who???

Who else would appear for the world to see on the Internet in Mardi Gras deely-boppers?  If you look closely, you can see the blinky lights...

Shannon and I also had a chance to go out together for dinner. Shannon was my adventure-buddy when I was in Omaha...she braved the 3-hours-each-way drive to the Ashfall Fossil Beds last summer! We also checked out numerous out-of-the-ordinary restaurants together, and this time around we had a hankerin' for Ethiopian food!

Shannon did the research.  She found two places, both in the downtown Omaha vicinity.  One was called "Ethiopian Restaurant" and the other called "Lalibela's".  We chose "Ethiopian Restaurant" because it was closer to the highway and the weather still wasn't great.

The restaurant shares a business space with an Ethiopian grocery, and the grocery side was very full.  The store owner -- a very pretty young lady, probably in her 30s -- came out and told Shannon and me that she was out of food.  What?  On a Friday night at 6pm???  Don't even go there with the irony of it.

We're hoping it was from the weather...we got back in the truck and headed up the street to the 2nd choice (what are the chances of that???  TWO Ethiopian restaurants within about 5 minutes of each other!!!).

The restaurant was rather empty, just two other couples at tables, eating their respective dinners. We ended up talking to one of the other couples, asking about what they were eating and getting some tips of what's good and what's not. Shannon and I each chose one entree and we grazed freely on both of them. I ordered something with seasoned lamb, while Shannon chose a vegetarian combo. I wish we had ordered two of the veggie combos, I didn't care for the meat too much, but the rainbow of lentils (on the left) was awesome!  Learning how to eat the food without utensils was also fun!

There's a basket in front of Shannon filled with injera, a flatbread that you use as your plate and utensil.  Rip off a piece of injera and scoop away!

Finally, even though I was quite tired from my 4-days in a row of work (wow, what happened to me?), I took a trip out to the recently-opened Omaha Trader Joe's and stocked up on the family favorites!

This will last us till my next trip to Omaha!  I hand-carried this home in a single TJ's reusable shopping bag.  I got crap from Jacob for not picking up some Dorothy Lynch salad dressing...sorry!

Thanks to Shannon, Cristi and Laura for helping make my weekend back in Nebraska so great!

My New Commuter Life, Part II: Just Because I Now Live in Florida....

....doesn't mean I never have to see snow again, right?

Or drive in the snow again?

(As promised in my previous post, here's the story of why I'll never buy a Ford Mustang north of the Mason/Dixon line!)

On last weekend's trip to Omaha, I was fortunate to travel in between major winter weather systems.  Temperatures were in the 50s on my first day there, quite nice!

We were forecasting 1-2" of snow on Thursday, February 24th.  We told EVERYONE 1-2", and not just us: the National Weather Service, the television stations, everyone!

What happened was pretty freakish, didn't last that long, and happened right on top of the afternoon/evening commute home.  I only caught one iPhone screen capture of the event's Doppler radar.  I wish I had taken more:

You know how folks talk about great things (or not-so-great things) that happen when "all the stars are aligned?"  Well, in this case, several things "aligned" in the atmosphere to make this nearly-horizontal dark green line form across central Nebraska.  I'm not going to get into the wintertime "convective symmetric instability" here.  That line is HEAVY SNOW, and it dumped about 5" of snow in 3 hours in Bellevue and in areas just south of Offutt AFB.  And the line barely moved for those 3 hours.  It was NUTS!

And I got to drive home in it.  Whee!

I had reported for duty very early that morning, so I figured I'd be heading home around 1:00-1:30pm, but at the last minute I had a meeting that took me to about 3:00pm.  The movement of this line was very slow, and I was itching to leave for the day, so after a few minutes of monitoring a non-moving line, I bit the bullet and left.  If I had left when I thought I'd be leaving, I'd have made it back to where I was staying without incident.  Instead, I fishtailed and skidded all the way back, with heavy snow making things all the worse.

I ending up coming back into my old neighborhood right as my boys' former elementary school was letting out.  The neighborhood is hilly, and there were cars slipping and sliding everywhere.  Since only 1-2" of snow was originally forecast, the salt/silt trucks didn't even come out to prepare the roads.  What a horrific mess!

I couldn't get that #$%  Mustang up the last hill before getting to the house.  I tried several times, but it just wasn't happening.  If there wasn't so much after-school traffic, I might have had the room to roll backwards down the hill, and get enough speed to do it.  But I simply had to abandon the car about a block from where I was staying, and walk in the heavy snowfall, and on unshoveled sidewalks, to the house.  I had my full winter-weather gear, and nice warm boots, at least.  It wasn't a long walk.  Uphill, of course.

About 1/2 hour later, my hostess loaded a few supplies into her Suburban and drove me back over to the car.  With less traffic, I was able to roll backwards back down the hill and tear with full power up the hill to the house.  And here it is right after I got it parked -- POINTING DOWNHILL on the legal side of the street.

How incredibly frustrating -- I'm not a bad winter-weather driver.  I could hold my own in places like Pennsylvania, Ohio and South Korea.  Even our 2 1/2 years in Nebraska, we were fine even driving our Toyota Prius.  But with this Mustang, I was dealing with a very lightweight, rear-wheel drive vehicle.  Ugh!

The local National Weather Service office had put out this map of snowfall totals from that one event, note how there was 5+" of snow in a narrow ribbon across south-central eastern Nebraska, but NONE in northern Sarpy and Douglas Counties.  Downtown Omaha saw no snow, but 10 miles to the south was buried in 5-6" of snow that fell in just 3-4 hours.

Image created by the National Weather Service office, Omaha/Valley, Nebraska

There were cold temperatures and snow showers for the next couple days of my stay in the Omaha area, and the snowy weather turned into a freezing rain risk that lasted right up until just a couple hours before my flight out on the 27th.  Since I was heading into work each day at about 4:45am, luckily I could slip and slide around without other cars in the way.  It was nerve-wracking, but I survived.

I'm so glad the next time I head to Nebraska will be well after the winter-weather is done.  I'll only have to worry about tornadoes next time...

Next up, Part III: a happier post about my fun times on this trip: trying out Ethiopian food, enjoying Pokeno with the girls, and shopping at my favorite store, Trader Joe's!

My New Commuter Life, Part I: Getting There is Half the Battle

I might have mentioned it, I might not have, but I kept my Reserve position at Offutt AFB, Nebraska even though I now live in Florida.  I've received dozens (yes, dozens) of inquiries about why I would want to do that.

Three reasons why I kept this position:

1.) There's very little else for me to do in weather in the AF Reserves.  I could switch to something non-weather, which is okay, but I preferred to stay in weather.  Call it the Geek in me!  I expect there will more options if Dave ever gets assigned to the Washington, D.C. area after this.  I'll also only have a couple years left in the AF before I'm retirement-eligible by then. (How time flies!)

2.) This position has a lot of flexibility.  I am known as an "Individual Mobilization Augmentee" type of Reservist (or "IMA" for short).  In other words, I'm like an understudy-type capability to an active duty staff element.  If something were to happen that the active duty element needed more people, I could get called up to help out.  In my previous position in South Carolina, I was a member of a Reserve unit, and I was expected to be present one weekend per month.  As an IMA, I'm presented with times on the schedule that my help would be appreciated, and I balance their schedule with my own...and I'm allowed to stitch together several "one weekend per month" equivalents and not have to travel monthly.

3.) I'd only been in the Nebraska position for about 1 1/2 years.  It took nearly a year to receive all my training for this position, so I was trusted "unsupervised" only since last summer, and I feel that I owe more fruitful time to this position and the team I work with.

Therefore, around Christmastime I worked out with my active duty boss that I could give 4 work days to my shop in late Februrary, and I bought a plane ticket.  For these "one weekend per month" type work periods, I'm expected to supply my own transportation, so YES, I'm eating the transportation costs in this case.  Thank heavens for credit card reward points!

Right after the President's Day long weekend, I kissed my boys goodbye, put them on the school bus and set off for the airport.  Fortunately, there was nothing hindering my trip TO Nebraska, a small snow event was putting itself together for a couple days later.  I picked up my rental car...as usual they were "out" of the super-ultra-mini-sub-compact cars I usually reserve, so I was offered this Ford Mustang.

I've always wanted a Ford Mustang, and this one was a lot of fun to drive...at first.

After I got my rental car arranged, I then went to collect my suitcase. Yes, I checked a suitcase on Delta airlines. But I traveled in uniform, in part so I didn't have to pay to check the bag, no questions asked!

It was a good thing I was in my uniform...my suitcase never showed up. Even though I flew from Fort Walton Beach to Omaha via Memphis, my suitcase flew via Atlanta and hadn't arrived. I filled out the appropriate paperwork, and the luggage office clerk assured me that the suitcase would be delivered that night. So I stayed up till about 12:30am waiting for it, but then it didn't arrive. Boo!

So with my gracious hosts providing me some sleeping clothes, toothpaste and soap, and Delta airlines providing me a cute little toothbrush and a flimsy comb, I had JUST ENOUGH stuff to sleep, clean up and be presentable for work the following morning.

Did I mention my coats were in my suitcase? Uniform yes, coats no. Fortunately, it wasn't that cold, about 35F.

While I was at work, my suitcase was delivered, hooray!

Coming next...Part II: The Ford Mustang...Worst. Winter. Vehicle. Ever.

Nebraska Discoveries 9: Runza

Tonight for dinner, we went out.  It tends to be a necessity 1-2 times per week in the fall while the boys are in soccer 5-days per week (Jacob 3 days, Timmy 2).  I do what I can to cook but it's rather aggressive; when I do cook I try to get the dinner on the table at 5:30pm, the boys have to be finished with dinner by about 5:50pm.

I asked the boys "Where would you like to go?"  We have several choices between our house and Jacob's practice field.  I had suggested a family favorite, Jimmy John's, but Jacob had a roast beef sandwich for lunch and said he didn't want another one for dinner.  Since roast beef is the only kind of deli meat he eats.  Sigh...

We ended up at a local restaurant called "Runza".  It's a chain throughout Nebraska (the first one opening in Lincoln, NE in 1949), with a couple of additional stores in Iowa, Kansas and Colorado.  It's quite good, a fun fast food alternative to your typical hamburger joint.  Definitely not the healthiest option, so we'll go there 3-4 times per year.  Jacob LOVES Runza sandwiches!  The kids' meal isn't enough now, we get him an adult-sized combo meal!

Fortunately, they also sell hamburgers so Timmy doesn't mind going either.

So...what's so great about this Runza place?  Well, Runza restaurants feature these unique sandwiches: a seasoned blend of ground beef, onion and cabbage sealed in a special bread.  Cheese optional.

Today I made a cool "Nebraska Discovery".  Runza is not only the name of this restaurant chain, but it's also the name of the sandwich featured there.  It came to the Americas via "Volga German" immigrants.  If you do a Wikipedia search for "Runza", you're presented a choice: Do you want to learn about the sandwich itself, or the restaurant chain with the same name?

I'm not going to regurgitate what you guys could click on and read for yourselves regarding the history, but I thought it was pretty darned cool.

PS: Our local Runza puts a package of Silly Bandz-like bracelets in the Kids' Meals! Whoo hoo!

Offutt Air Show 2010

We've done this two times before here and here, but it's worth discussing again.

It's late August at Offutt AFB -- time for an AIRSHOW!

This year's airshow lucked out with a last-minute booking of the Thunderbirds after the Coney Island Airshow was cancelled. (Don't know why, message boards have speculated it was financial). Unfortunate for an entire airshow to be cancelled, but yay for us, right? When the airshow was first announced in mid-July, the F-22 Raptor Demonstration Team was the headliner.

Like the past two years, the aircraft start to roll in around mid-week and we can see the air traffic from throughout my neighborhood as the aerial demo teams start to practice their shows. While the propeller planes and helicopters stay pretty close to the runway, the jets need more maneuvering space and often have to turn around over our neighborhood. Whoo hoo! So we were seeing the Thunderbirds, the F-22 and F-18 several times right from our yard! The kids at school had quite a treat during their recess on Thursday and Friday too :-)

In 2008 we watched the Thunderbirds from the local bike trail. In 2009 we watched from a local neighborhood that offered a good view. This time, the boys and I watched right there in the middle of the action.

Enjoy some of our experiences from the airshow.

These KC-135s are Nebraska Air National Guard planes from Lincoln

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

I'd never seen a Global Hawk UAS up close before, after all the times I'd forecast for them....

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

In a T-1 Navigator Trainer jet.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

Timmy couldn't quite reach the top of the game here...we won a Koozie, though....

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

A tricked-out Mustang.  Check out the seating and displays inside.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

My neighbor and recruiter, Dave, is in front of this formation wearing a ballcap.  He's practicing the oath of office with these 64 new recruits.  They would receive the oath from the Thunderbirds pilots later that afternoon.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

B-2 Flyover!

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

The F-22 demonstration was so awesome!  At the end of the demo, the F-22 paired up with this P-38 for a Heritage Flight.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

The boys enjoyed their ice cream snacks from under an A-10 (still Jacob's favorite USAF warplane).

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

Towards the end, the boys played in the bouncy castle area.  It's a great place to watch the show...in case your kids get a bit bored.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

Some pictures from the Thunderbirds show.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

Every year I tell myself I don't need any more pictures of the Thunderbirds, but then I can't seem to help myself.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

You couldn't ask for better weather for watching -- a bit hot, but there was a good breeze.

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

From 2010 08 28 Offutt AFB Airshow

The Corn Debate -- Starch or Veggie?

Considering I'm in Nebraska, it makes sense that we should take some time to discuss corn here, right?

The nickname "Cornhusker" was first adopted by the University of Nebraska football team in 1900.

The little farm stands popped up all over the Omaha Metro, as they do every year in mid-July. I'm partial to this nice stand at about 15th St. and Cornhusker Ave. The two polite young men who operate the stand are both in college and happily accept tips to help their tuition :-) I'll pick up corn that's was picked less than 24 hours ago at 50 cents an ear. I've probably done this 5 times so far this summer and I think everyone's had their fill.

I know I can get corn for 10 cents an ear at Walmart, but I learned that their corn came to us from Florida!

Now why would I buy Florida corn in Nebraska of all places????

Anyway, it had gotten me thinking about how folks serve up corn in their households. I'm not talking about recipes with corn, but rather how corn is regarded for dinner service: starch or veggie?

I remember it being treated like a veggie in my house growing up, but knowing what I know about corn's chemical composition, and how easily it can become corn chips or corn tortillas, we have migrated it over to the starch group since we've had kids.

So instead of rice or potatoes, we'll serve up some corn.

I noticed, based on my oh-so-scientific poll from August 2nd, that 2/3 of my sample set continue to treat corn as a veggie, while 1/3 of us treat it as a starch. I guess that makes sense. I was definitely on the fence for this one, too.

Fontenelle Splashground

Today Shannon and I took our boys to this new "splashpark" that opened 2 weeks ago in North Omaha.  What a fun, FREE, way to spend a hot summer afternoon! School starts Monday!

Since the original post this afternoon I've had a chance to add more commentary about this place. The City of Omaha has built several of these "Splashgrounds" around the city and they're a great time for the boys. Papillion has one, but Bellevue has none (hint hint!)

Today the boys spent nearly 3 hours at the park -- then the horseflies started attacking and the boys were happy to go. Shannon and I sat under a tree in the shade and had a good old fashioned chatfest.

This particular one was intriguing: there's this innocent looking post stationed near the entrance to the fenced area -- you rub the top of the post (yes, I know what I'm saying here) and that activates the water for 5 minutes.  As long as a kid runs back to the post every 5 minutes or so, the water stays on.  A nice conservation tool.  You can see the post in the 3rd picture here.

From 2010 08 13 Fontenelle Splashground

In the picture below, the young man behind Timmy (their friend Dean) is at the post that activates the water.

From 2010 08 13 Fontenelle Splashground

From 2010 08 13 Fontenelle Splashground

I took all these pictures with my iPhone -- I'm impressed with the zoom quality in these next two pictures.  This is with maximum zoom, I was 20-25' away from Jacob!

From 2010 08 13 Fontenelle Splashground

From 2010 08 13 Fontenelle Splashground

From 2010 08 13 Fontenelle Splashground

Nebraska Discoveries 8: Ashfall Fossil Beds & "Fossil Vacations"

A couple weeks ago, Jacob and I (Timmy was in NY visiting Grammy and Grampy) headed out with our friends and neighbors, Shannon, Brandon, Connor and Dean to the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historic Park, which is near the small town of Royal, Nebraska.

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

We had learned about it from our visits to Morrill Hall State Museum in Lincoln, there's a room dedicated to the skeletons assembled from Ashfall, along with an advertisement for the facility.

Ashfall isn't close. About 180 miles from Bellevue, and well over 3 hours worth of driving each way. So Shannon and I aimed for a 7am departure time, and headed out.


View Larger Map

Not only is Ashfall not close, but the nearby towns are VERY small. However, the drive is very scenic and really not that bad. My GPS gave me some problems because it didn't have a couple of by-passes in the system and we had some adventures going off road looking for the right way.

Once we arrived, we explored the visitor's center and the scenic trails:

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

We then headed to the "Hubbard Rhino Barn", which was a huge building expressly built over the active site. The building was completed in June 2009, over an area that had been worked on for 12 years, and there's probably 20+ more years of work enclosed in the building. I imagine a single winter up there could undo a lot of the archeologists' work during the warm season. This was a pretty cool facility...it's not all that interesting just watching scientists gently brushing away at skulls for hours at a time, though. Lucky for us, we got to see one of the senior paleontologists chiseling away at some extra-compressed soil:

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

Like I'd said before, this place is really truly in the middle of nowhere. And it isn't huge. We visited everything in about 2 hours. But I was in awe of how many cars were parked here.

From 2010 07 30 Ashfall Fossil Beds

I talked to a couple families, one of whom had arrived in a Chevy, I mean, Chevrolet Suburban with California plates and California Angels stickers decorating it. I was curious as to how folks knew about this place. One of the families was bringing their teenagers on a "dinosaur fossil" vacation! Whoa. Inside the visitor center I had learned more about all the fossil sites in Nebraska, and the California family was planning to visit several of them.

So there's this "Fossil Freeway" in Western Nebraska which has 8 sites to visit, from which you can turn east on U.S. 20 and head towards Ashfall.

I never considered a "fossil vacation". Fascinating. Would you or your kids be interested in a fossil vacation???

See more pictures from our day in Ashfall here.