Yeahhh it does indeed seem like a bit of a hole in the security system there, yikes ...

>They were trading guns for drugs, which I'm told hardly ever happens here.

I don't know who told you that, but I would bet that nobody's even scratched the surface of how often this does in fact happen. A good friend's brother is a cop in CT (about an hour outside NYC), and he says it's pretty widely understood among law enforcement down there the degree to which VT is effectively supplying the guns used in drug and gang wars in NY/NJ/CT. Woodchucks act like it's all one-way traffic of drugs coming here, when lol nah -- it's absolutely a two-way situation.

Yep. Interested to see OP cite New Yorkers as an example of people who prefer to pass. Maybe they should know better? 'Cause I learned why "doing the line" is the way to go back in my heedless early 20s, after doing a 180 off the Northway from the left lane and needing a tow out of 2 feet of snow in the ditch. Turns out snow can unexpectedly drift, even the day after a storm.

This one, except I'd also extend it further south from Portland (following the existing Amtrak route from there toward Boston).

I gather that people in Boston love it, but when I lived down there years ago, the combo of Stop & Shop and (when I wanted to be slightly more fancy with a local twist) Roche Bros worked fine for me.

Double-check the guidelines at the transfer station, too -- I'm reading all these comments with interest, wondering if it varies by area what you can compost. In Chittenden County, meat, bones, and (within reason) compostable paper like coffee filters can be included.

Any possibility this race could ever get rescheduled to later in the winter when we would be more likely to have better conditions to start with? I mean, this year I can only imagine the scramble they must have had once it finally got cold enough to start making snow -- two weeks before this event it was 65 degrees up there!

https://www.okemo.com/

There was an earlier (and absolutely larger) "great flatlander migration" in the 1960s-80s and somehow we all survived it. People moving here isn't the problem. Bad financial incentives and policy around home building are the problems.

We're similar age/area of origin -- lol, we might even know each other but happy to not go there -- and yes, "middle-aged road rage guy in a big truck" is a thing in Vermont now that absolutely did not exist when we were kids. But my experience is these guys aren't the newcomers, they are the natives. They're our old schoolmates, or thereabouts. Some of them are also my relatives, so best believe I am speaking from close-at-hand experience. They are still here and they, too, are mad that the place has changed. (Who thinks that there's some magical place that is exactly like it was in the 1980s, btw? Who would WANT that even if it did exist?) TBH I think they are just being constantly riled by whatever media they consume.

Old woodchucks weren't teed off all the time about everything. Sure, they'd get exasperated with the flatlanders, but they had a low-key way of showing it. They were men and women of few and well-chosen words, with dry senses of humor and quiet compassion. I don't know how the woodchucks of my age group ended up like this but I'm pretty sure too much reality TV had something to do with it.

Co-sign! One of my colleagues showed up to a Zoom meeting last week wearing a T-shirt of cartoon laser-eyes Dark Brandon. (We work somewhere you can do that kind of stuff, heheh.)

Also I'm actually from Brandon, so, you know, I approve this message. OK, unlike the other half of people in Brandon who put Trump flags on their garages, but we purple town folk do what we can.

Um, I can do and am doing that right here in the US of A. Ear still clogged up after a sinus infection that started end of August, ENT at UVMMC can't see me until January. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's not impossible or "free energy:" the issue is that the way your space is heated is completely different and it's hard to understand/explain for people new to the tech. The heat pump is not producing heat like an oil or gas furnace do, hence why their efficiency percentage can never go above 100%. It's circulating colder air out of your house and warmer air in (yes, the design of the evaporator/condenser is such that it can do this even when it is below freezing outside). So the 200% number, or even higher for top-rated models, is accurate. But you're right that the efficiency rating can drop in colder temps and also depends on how well your house is insulated. My heat pump heats my 1980s condo-boom condo very nicely (and more evenly than my Rinnai gas heater) in fall and spring and on warmer winter days, but when temps get down into the teens I start to notice a dropoff in performance so I switch to the Rinnai. Improved insulation and a newer model would probably improve that to the single digits or even just below zero.

I also really like NEFCU, but I do wonder whether the whole merger situation has left them taking a bit of a PR hit. VSECU customers are REALLY loyal, and I think the activist members opposing it have a point when they question who is really going to benefit most.

This. People in Richmond assumed a thing was happening because it was the responsibility of a guy whose salary they pay. Their kids' dentists would have made treatment decisions based on this thing that was not actually happening because this guy made a secret decision by himself.