Weather....

[D_W]

Inconsistent, I concede, but in the UK we would never say "inside of" (unless quoting Marx, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's usually too dark to read"), but do say "outside of".

The one that really grates for me is "off of".

As for American food tasting better, maybe historically. These days I find it to be over flavoured junk,

We don't tend to feed guests that food that is what I would refer to as gobs of flavoring covering up the lack of quality of the core parts, but that is a big thing in the processed and pre-prepared food here. I guess nobody wants to have people comment that their marketed prepared food is bland, but it's a little out of control.

We do have a couple here who lived in London for a while and they liked the beef better there. It's just a matter of taste - on what the beef is fueled with. There's not a lack of grass fed beef here that tastes similar, but it's not typically the piles of beef packs in the supermarket. I would refer it (and probably English beef) as "tasting like my youth" as I come from a line of mostly farmers and at that time, pastured beef by the full or half cow is what we typically got. Out of thrift, the grain was kept short and most of mass was gained on grass and hay. It makes a beef where the fat and beef are separated better.

Too, as you go further west, the beef is really mass raised in confinement and I don't care for that from an ethics standpoint. It's not typical in the east part of the country here. As a line of farmers, we tended to actually like the cows, beef or dairy, and treat them like pets until they got the bolt.

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The English here is definitely different. There are probably three types at least just in the state of Pennsylvania. Yinzer - which can make people sound like they have a hole in their head, and even folks who are educated leak a little bit of it out from time to time (I'm from the center of the state) and then the center of the state and toward philadelphia there is some chance of not much detected in terms of accent and toward reading and philadelphia (excluding south philly) there is a lot "bay-ud" type pronunciations for words like "bad".

A typical thing here that I find aggravating (used to be an offender) is just to omit words. "Needs done". when you point it out to people, they're indignant that there's nothing unusual about that statement. (needs to be done or needs doing). Along with a whole gaggle of amish offshoot english. Like when something is empty, it's "all". It may come from high german. FIL often says "maynt" and "shant".

Even the chrome browser thinks those aren't words, but we were taught them in school, never to be heard again. Except from the dutchies (protestant rural germans, mennonites and amish).

 

[D_W]

ooh...learned something today. google feels that the more correct spelling is shan't or mayn't , but unpunctuated is acceptable according to google.

We definitely didn't learn them with the apostrophe. the kids don't learn them now because they laugh at FIL when he uses them.

 

[XTiffy]

Having worked a lot with US Navy people, most of these idioms are recognisable. I once had to send a message through a US communication channel to a UK recipient and used the word "whilst". It was brought back to me with "we can't find whilst in Websters, have you misstyped?", I said leave it in they will understand! Then I explained. LoL
I also had a US guy talk about a magazine called oo-ey, took ages to realise he was talking about a magazine called "Qui". Another was a Bouy,(floating marker or fixed mooring float) which we pronounce as "boy", the US version was boo-ey! Then don't get me started on a man from Arkansas talking about "Worcestershire sauce".

 

[D_W]

Having worked a lot with US Navy people, most of these idioms are recognisable. I once had to send a message through a US communication channel to a UK recipient and used the word "whilst". It was brought back to me with "we can't find whilst in Websters, have you misstyped?", I said leave it in they will understand! Then I explained. LoL
I also had a US guy talk about a magazine called oo-ey, took ages to realise he was talking about a magazine called "Qui". Another was a Bouy,(floating marker or fixed mooring float) which we pronounce as "boy", the US version was boo-ey! Then don't get me started on a man from Arkansas talking about "Worcestershire sauce".

There's regions, and then there's rural attached to it. This is similar to our Scot friend telling us that there are people locally in Scotland that he can't understand, even though he's sure they're not speaking a foreign language.

I grew up in a sort of rural environment - the site of a big civil war battle in central PA. The more rural you get, the more local residents insist they don't have any accent at all and they "talk like the people on the TV news".

I can't understand some of the people in the south and in rural areas of the eastern shore, and some of the accents don't make geographic sense. southern West Virginia is close to here, along with eastern Virginia. If you stop there on a trip, it sounds like the deepest deep south accent you'll ever hear, and then as you drive further south, it sounds like you're going north by the change in the language. Until you get far enough south and then you're in a weird version of France.

The armed forces in the US generally draw from rural areas, at least for the enlisteds. Communication has to be a huge problem among even the americans.

 

[D_W]

Canadians should send us a tip sheet. One of the ones I have long been told by older folks here is "put the wipers out" so that they're not in contact with the windshield and can't freeze to them. This isn't usually that big of a deal - you tap them loose. I'll bet they break in Canada if you try that now that they're not metal from end to end. the connector between the replaceable bits on mine and the arm is plastic. Everything else but the wiper contact is metal.

Of course, when I went to tap the wiper loose from the windshield, the plastic adapter broke in half. It's not raining or snowing, but road salt (not sure if that's a thing anywhere in the UK) makes it so that you'll get a constant mist of view blocking white haze on the windshield.

The temp effect here shouldn't be overstated - 0F isn't that big of a deal without wind - actually, without wind, you may not notice it at all. With heavy gusts, it's very unpleasant, though. Mailman is on foot here and he still delivered the mail into stinging blowing snow - hats off to him. Newman would've called in sick.



I did see a guy at Trader joes in a tshirt and shorts with crocs - walking in from the parking lot in front of me, though. There's always one in every town.

 

[clogs]

thought those characters only shopped in wall mart.......hahaha.....

I moved south to avoid most of the UK's weather unplesant excesses....
20C today, no heating needed tonight or for the nex 3 days.....
wish u all a great holiday....

 

[D_W]

thought those characters only shopped in wall mart.......hahaha.....

I moved south to avoid most of the UK's weather unplesant excesses....
20C today, no heating needed tonight or for the nex 3 days.....
wish u all a great holiday....

there's sort of a thing in the US, but maybe everywhere, that at every college, there's a kid who will not wear long sleeves or pants. I went to college north of here a little bit - similar weather otherwise. I remember the guy (won't name him) who did it while I was there. Meteorology major, rode a bike, shorts and a T shirt all year. Figured the first year I saw him in the fall, he'd have to give it up.

Remember getting out of bed with a strong north wind and riding my bike uphill into it to class - not a big problem, just felt a little like being punished. I lived at the lower (elevation) end of campus in the southeast and the cold wind pattern here is NW. At any rate, got to class and wasn't that cold (five minutes huffing and puffing on a bike to generate some heat is far better than 15 to 20 walking into the wind), except for inner thighs felt like they were burning from the cold.

Passed the meteo major that day. Almost identical temps compared to today.

There's some truth that the first reaction to the cold is reflex and if you quell the shivers, the feel of cold goes away for a bit. But there's a reasonable limit to that.

Walmarts are sparse here in the burbs for two reasons - the planning commissions are snooty and the traffic routes go in and out of the city on the "shoppers" routes. meaning the subsidized housing area traffic that uses those routes is pretty rough on the stores as far as theft loss.

Target is everywhere - which is pretty much walmart with higher prices and the store is a different color for people who are too good for walmart to feel better about themselves.

I did see a huge 6'6" or so cross dresser in high heels late weekend nights in the back of home depot at one point - two different days. Once getting an "emergency" toilet, and another for some needed reason. Point of that being, first, it was a surprise as the area is pretty vanilla and boring for someone who grew up in a rural area where you get the whole array, from surgeon's wife to the bearded ladies....who don't shave out of laziness rather than pride. Second, I think the sparse competition made the guy feel like he had his own territory. Imagine, sequin dress, high heels a lot of make up and someone big enough that you'd have no chance in a scuffle.

From a nostalgic standpoint, the pushing up the market of the regular retailers kind of makes me miss the stores that really had true junk in them and really didn't make much effort in trying to package it or display it to make it look like anything else.

I just ordered three t-shirts last week from retailers of my youth - when you were here, I don't think you'd have seen them west - they were eastern regional. Not that we didn't have kmarts. But those are gone now and most of the buildings that they were in were tried for something else (one even an attempt at a suburban walmart that just closed) and even those have been toppled in favor of some higher real estate and building cost setups that just add more to the price of choice imported trash.

 

[D_W]

thought those characters only shopped in wall mart.......hahaha.....

not suggesting the walmart customers can't be found easily or that I'm highbrow or my state is, by the way. Last time I went to Wendy's (one of my two favorite fast food places here because the food is made per order, not in batches to sit), the register lady in Gettysburg had about 25 facial hairs on her lip and chin that were is big and stiff looking as a cat's claw.

I said to my dad "i'm not particularly snooty, but that's sort of an appetite killer". You can't grow something like that overnight and it wouldn't take but a minute to snip those off.

I'm not able to describe well enough for anyone reading to get the chill that they would give you if you were half asleep on your feet ready to order and they jumped out and surprised you.

 

[D_W]

hope you have an excellent warm Christmas in Greece, by the way. maybe Santa will bring you a Turkish oilstone though at 20C, he might need to strip to a thong to deliver presents.

 

[cowtown_eric]

Calgary went from -30C early this week to +4c today .....It's called a "Chinook"- apparently meaning "snow eater" in an unknown to me indigenous dialect

 

[XTiffy]

Hello Eric, I have a sister and her family in Calgary, as I will be phoning her later today interesting to hear the latest weather report! Thankfully we don't have that range of change in temperature. I wonder if the name of the Chinook helicopter is from the same derivation? Merry Christmas!

 

[clogs]

XTiffy
all military US helicopters are named after Indian tribes.......
heard that they r not to happy about it now...
Blackhawk, Apache, Huey - "Iroquios"... to name a few.....

 

[XTiffy]

Hello Clogs,
In January 1968 serving in HMS Scarborough, we were called away from Gibralter to help find a missing Israeli Submarine the Dakar. This was originally HMS Totem, which prevously carried a Totem Pole gifted by the Cowichan Native tribe from Vancouver Island. The tribe said if you carried the Totem no harm will come to you. That Totem Pole was removed when the submarine was sold to Israel. From memory we steamed at full speed to the area for about three or four days only for the search to be called off. We then refueled in Crete and left the area, never having deployed our submarine detecting sonar.
The remains of the Dakar were not found until 31 years later, roughly midway between Crete and Cyprus broken into two parts, two miles down.

 

[clogs]

weather this morn....10am x 18C...no snow on the mountains yet....

 

[Jameshow]

not suggesting the walmart customers can't be found easily or that I'm highbrow or my state is, by the way. Last time I went to Wendy's (one of my two favorite fast food places here because the food is made per order, not in batches to sit), the register lady in Gettysburg had about 25 facial hairs on her lip and chin that were is big and stiff looking as a cat's claw.

I said to my dad "i'm not particularly snooty, but that's sort of an appetite killer". You can't grow something like that overnight and it wouldn't take but a minute to snip those off.

I'm not able to describe well enough for anyone reading to get the chill that they would give you if you were half asleep on your feet ready to order and they jumped out and surprised you.

I love wendys but that's way to speak about my wife!!

 

[D_W]

It's 20 degrees warmer here now, or about -10 in the queens temps. It was about the same for the football game, but it looked like half the fans stayed home. I think they were scared by the temps the day before. Nobody looked uncomfortable at 12f but they would've been the day prior at much colder with strong winds.

There's a famous NFL game that was played in green bay that's referred to as the ice bowl, far worse!

 

[Rewound]

weather this morn....10am x 18C...no snow on the mountains yet....
View attachment 149744

presumably a great lack of precipitation going from the depth of the pool

 

[D_W]

Our weather is back to norm. In a good lesson about acclimation and how fast you can acclimate, it was high 20s yesterday with little wind when I went outside yesterday to do a few chores and fix the broken wiper on car #2. it felt like spring. a month ago, that would've felt really cold.

that's 20s F, maybe -2 or -3C in the queens temps.

We are headed to 50F and possibly 60F a couple of times over the next two weeks. it all generally depends on which direction the upper level winds come from and whether they're fighting against something to create high winds. I haven't checked the forecast, but warm means southerly flow and periods of slow and steady rain with near certainty.

 

[John Brown]

Our weather is back to norm. In a good lesson about acclimation and how fast you can acclimate, it was high 20s yesterday with little wind when I went outside yesterday to do a few chores and fix the broken wiper on car #2. it felt like spring. a month ago, that would've felt really cold.

that's 20s F, maybe -2 or -3C in the queens temps.

We are headed to 50F and possibly 60F a couple of times over the next two weeks. it all generally depends on which direction the upper level winds come from and whether they're fighting against something to create high winds. I haven't checked the forecast, but warm means southerly flow and periods of slow and steady rain with near certainty.

Just like to point out that we apparently have a king now. Also, when the recently deceased queen commenced her reign, we were still using Fahrenheit over here. The centigrade thing is the work of devils on the continental mainland.

 

[D_W]

I will try to remember to call it the King's temperature. While the king's temperature neatly fits in a system, I have a distaste for it because it lacks the punch of F temperatures where 0F is actually cold and 0C is just "you will get cold if you sit outside for a long time and do nothing".

"below zero" is sort of the bar for most of the united states for whether it is cold or not.

if I could sneak into a press group "King Charles - I know everyone loves to talk about all of this William and harry stuff, but it's really just a sideshow. I have a serious question for you. Will you consider demanding that all official systems go back to degrees F so that England doesn't just sound like people following continental Europe, or talking like the Canadians? Will you make zero great again?"