Afternoon, everyone.
Steve, that looks like it must have been one hell of a hot fire. Great picture with that menacing sky too. I forgot about the fat German guys in their Speedos. Man, even Rex would look good in one compared to most of them.
Chris, the H1N15 is the Avaian/Bird flu that has been around since the early 90's. With the exception of a few small outbreaks in Central America, which occur on a yearly basis, there is no evidence that it is about to become pandemic. This is pure panic. I own stock in Roche, Sanofi, and Glaxo, the three biggest makers of flu vaccines and drugs like Relenza and Tamiflu. I bought them last year to make money off the panic and I did. They are now way down and I'm looking to dump them on any upward move. If there was a real threat, these three companies would be performing much better.
Terry, Agatha was a good example of the type of tropical storm that blows up fast in the Pacific and drags lots of rain over Central America. It is not, however, a very good predictor for the Atlantic hurricane season. The forecasts that have been issued to date have a long term success rate that's about 5% above flipping a coin, so I place very little weight on the results. The oil spill will have no effect on hurricane formation or intensity. The area of the oil spill is about 60 square miles. An average hurricane covers about 5,000 square miles. Since a hurricane acts a giant blender, it would probably help to dilute and disperse the oil. It certainly isn't going to cause some giant sea surge of oil, as some of the pundits in the press seem to think.
Tom, sounds like a rough weekend but I'm glad to hear your daughter and the team hung in there. You deserve to be proud of her.
Corey, I think the idea with sunscreen is you're not supposed to get any browner. SPF 8 is sunburn in a bottle for most of us white folks.

Start in on those trees. They really aren't that hard to make, and you'll be surprised how good they make the layout look. Too bad kitty has to go back to the vet again but at least they have short memories of you have some treats for them.
We've already had a couple of downpours today, which is really helping things turn green again. It's primary day so I dodged the showers and went out to vote. If they wre an incumbent, they were out for me. We are having a few a of our usual strange campaigns. If you haven't seen this guy's ad yet, check out Dale Peterson on YouTube. He's our own version of John Wayne.
