>turtle trap house

This is messing with my childhood TMNT memories.

Thanks for the rec's, I'll have to check those out. I get up that way every so often to go to an XC meet at Lehigh or take Rt 80 out to Central PA.

>I go up to Wilkes-Barre/Scranton to eat sometimes

I was going to ask if you'd ever eaten at The Chicken Coop, but now I've discovered that it closed last year! Sadness.

I know it's just a mom-and-pop chicken and burgers joint, but in college my team (XC/TF) had a tradition of going every year on the last day of the holiday season interim (we were already back on campus by Jan 2nd or 3rd).

Part of the tradition was that every freshman (men's team) had to eat the pig burger*. One year we didn't do that and opted to see how many chicken wings we could eat as a team. We ate somewhere around 2200 chicken wings (55 people). The freshman guys had to go for the pig burger their sophomore year.

I wish I had gone one last time, bummer.

(* A "pig burger" is: 20oz of Fresh, Never Frozen, Ground Beef with American, Cooper, Swiss, Cheddar, Pepperjack and Provolone Cheeses, Lettuce, Tomato, Raw Onion and a Half-Pound of Bacon served on a half loaf of Italian Bread; Served with our Fresh Cut Fries!)

Apparently the clusterf$%^ at the toll plaza on the NJ side of the BFB around 7am this morning was related to the funeral as well. Luckily I was going eastbound (I work in Jersey). However, it just feels like holding up traffic commuter traffic into Philly so the dozen+ NJ police vehicles for this funeral could have all the space is just bad PR.

I'm curious--will the students take a mental health day from social media and/or their phone on these days? Will they just be texting/interacting with their friends in school? Considering the research data and claims relating the two, it would seem to be a key part of it.

I doubt this will be the case, of course, but it's not unimportant to consider.

Per the article, it seems they want to designate it so that kids (and parents) can have more days while also keeping a perfect attendance record.

"As long as it isn't abused." -- it looks like the way they are setting it up, it begs to be abused.

Iowa = 55,857sqmi, NJ = 8,723 sqmi. Larger by a factor of over 6. Population density is where we go gonzo on every other state...

Given that population density, NJ counties are fairly large, but I figure that has a lot to do with factors like historical development patterns, major transportation routes, and land use (e.g., farming). I'm originally from Monmouth County and it's wild how disparate the different areas are.

By the way, any chance you've ever done RAGBRAI? A friend in New Orleans (where I used to live) told me about it; he's gone a few times. Hoping one day to give it a go.

I'm aware. Did you see the comment I was responding to? I may have used plant twice, but the context is La Colombe. The person said the toast smell is the La Colombe plant ("roaster warehouse"), which is in Port Richmond and nowhere near smelling distance from this industrial plant.

Is there a plant in Bridesburg as well? The one in Port Richmond is a bit far from this plant.

Also, it smells like burnt popcorn to me, but not as acrid. I've come to really enjoy it on my runs.

Just FYI, there's also Stephen C Foster State Park in Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge in GA. It is Dark Skies rated. Great place.

They will see you fairly quickly, but not always, IME, and honestly, the impersonal, see any doctor, vitals/stats and done experience left a really bad impression for me.

It was intended as a bit of snark. But the fact that this all goes through Streets, L&I and this Art Commission just screams exhausting bureaucracy.

>“is beautiful, orderly, and appropriate so that the City is a desirable place to live, visit, and do business.”

Clearly they take the narrow view of this.

This post is doing it’s best to conjure what it desires -> current radar

Oddly enough, if we could get a winter season cyclone, i.e., a Nor'easter, we would be much more likely in this area to have a significant snow event, at least so long as the arctic air was present.

Yeah, this is the first year in a long while in which I have finished the holidays and felt a real sense of slowing down--or well, I did until I recently adopted a puppy. But the I feel the desire to just disconnect and hibernate--not entirely, since I am a very outgoing and active person, but relative to my baseline. All the years living in New Orleans were kind of exhausting, even for me. Halloween through like April/May was constant: the holidays, Mardi Gras season, St Patrick's/St Joe's, Mardi Gras Indians, Easter, French Quarter Fest, JazzFest, Bayou Boogaloo...crazy busy.

The summer was the downtime.

I mean, that is a bit of a pedantic point (I don't mean that as a personal attack). The full phrase would be "cities are loud places." The specific things are all human-created machines, processes, actions, etc., and cities have way more people and thus way more of these specific things. I don't get what point the youtube channel is getting at.

The specific things exist in my Jersey Shore hometown, but my current street in Philadelphia is way noisier right now in January than Ocean Ave, thus by extension, the city is a loud place, and the noise is constant. Even 3am is not exactly peaceful on my street.

The weather gods are truly spiteful sometimes.

You are spot on about the quiet and just overall busy-ness. It makes you truly recognize how "loud" the world is, the overwhelming signal to noise ratio (in favor of noise). Makes me miss running on country roads in the spring and fall (for college track/cross country).

Next spring, if the opportunity presents itself, try Wissahickon or Pennypack (or similar parks outside the city if that's where you are) after a good rain and the sun breaks out. I've gotten that feeling of quiet--at least from human created sound/noise--and suspended time at those moments.

What am I imagining? Ocean temps directly affect our weather. Land development from farms to sidewalks and roads and parking lots directly affect our weather. Warm air is a barrier to snow.

So again, what “shit” am I imagining up?

Same. I hate 40° and rain.

I usually cringe when “climate change” comes up as an off-hand response to daily or seasonal weather variability. However, in this case given our proximity to the ocean, if the measurements are accurate, I imagine warmer surface temperatures mean it takes longer for the ocean to cool off enough to not create a significant barrier to snow. There’s also the heat island effect—there’s way more developed land in the whole region than even 30-40 years ago.

These are two major factors creating a weather bubble for the city and metro area. With snow, the ground layer of atmosphere is just too warm, so you get what we had the other day, rain changing over to snow higher up in the atmosphere that is mostly melted by the time it reaches the ground (sometimes it’s the other way around, but it wasn’t cold enough for that).

I mean, once upon a time it meant a snow day and for some (I realize not for all*) a break from obligations and a moment to have fun without all the planning and cost of vacations, whether as a kid or a parent or just an adult temporarily jumping back into kid activities with friends.

It wasn’t even that long ago. I was off from work (law firm) a week in early Feb 2010 while living in DC because it was the third major snowstorm (2-3ft, blizzard conditions, etc) that season and the city budget for clearing the roads was kicked 😆. I wasn’t a lawyer, so I didn’t have a secure work laptop. My roommates and I had blast that week. Internet was down for part of it, we had a fireplace, and lived in a walkable area.

It’s great we’ve solved some issues caused by blizzards now, but the downside is that we’ve also eliminated the enjoyable side of the same coin.

*Especially for major metro/urban/suburban areas, there’s a job/obligation/expectation and class divide that is stark when a blizzard rolls through. Small towns, IME, are more forgiving of this, non-chain businesses might just close for the day, or used to. It makes me sad that we couldn’t have more truly collective, real holidays, even Thanksgiving is a bit poisoned by non-holiday demands.

Come to think of it, the stark class and job obligation divide that is on display during blizzards is in a similar way one of things that really made the COVID pandemic so painful and riddled with anger and frustration. People who were privileged enough to get “hygge” or pursue a new hobby or workout at home or whatever were often the same people demanding obligations and expectations from those that couldn’t.

Didn’t mean for a long comment, it just got me thinking.

Yeah, it's not fun trying to judge these things while practically blind, even worse when you have a paying passenger in the back seat o_O

I really wish they would put more reflectors on the road.