Thankful for every drop of rain

There’s general agreement that the Great Plains and High Plains have the most unpredictable weather in America. I won’t dispute that, having spent a fair bit of time traveling that part of the country.

Arkansas weather isn’t so much volatile as it is strange. What happens here doesn’t follow the rules. A big part of that is geography — the state sits at what’s often called a “collision zone,” a kind of battleground for systems and fronts, amped by Gulf moisture.

A line of enthusiastic storms rolled over The Mountain for seven hours yesterday morning. About 8:30am, I pulled up my Windy app to see what the surface currents looked like. Check out this animated loop:

That’s what a “collision zone” looks like. It’s crazy. Very little of what I learned about weather growing up in Ohio applies here.

*Miss Smudge and I splashed our way through a list of errands in town Monday morning.*

We did get some healthy rain yesterday. I’m not sure exactly how much fell, but it was enough to make the driveway spongy — a promising sign.

The ongoing drought is no joke. We seem to be crawling out of it, albeit slowly.

National Drought Monitor collects its data today and will release them Thursday morning. I expect that to show that we’re still moving in the right direction.

Story time.

At this point in 2020, my ex-wife (the second one) and I worked at a security wholesaler in Columbus. She was fired the first week of July; strangely, they didn’t show me the door the same day.

The inevitable termination happened four months later. During that time, there were a couple of interesting developments, the first of which was that plans for a motorhome odyssey (chronicled subsequently here on Ubi Libertas Blog) took shape. I knew I’d quit in December anyway, but I put in my hours, did my job well and collected checks ’til the day I got canned.

The second development was that the company ultimately replaced my ex-wife as manager. Not that it mattered to me, but this woman clearly was out of her depth. Also, notably, she proudly sported a Daffy-Chuckles sticker on the rear glass of her minivan.

(I’ll leave further characterizations to you.)

This business, as I’ve mentioned before, was located in an industrial park surrounded by high-crime neighborhoods. As Election Day approached, it became obvious that my new manager was making no preparations to secure the shop in case of civil unrest.

I initiated a private meeting with her on Thursday, October 29th and expressed my concern — tactfully, mind you, even delicately. I’ll never forget what she said:

“Well, if you’re suggesting that we carry guns next week or something like that, I’m not about to allow anything of the sort. That’s what the police are for.”

I was fired the next day.

This woman would’ve been horrified, I’m sure, to learn that the whole time she worked with me, I carried a loaded 9mm pistol and a total of 31 rounds of JHP ammunition on my belt — all day, every day. There was no policy prohibiting it.

She didn’t ask. I didn’t tell. Bottom line? It was none of her damned business.

I bring this up today because although I say a lot here about firearms and my attention to matters of security and self-defense, I don’t tell you everything. In fact, most of what I do with regard to tools and tactics I’ll never disclose to anyone.

That’d be stupid.

I’ll continue to discuss basic principles, however, and the importance of ordinary citizens being extraordinarily prepared. Nothing wrong with that.

To that end, I was back on the range this morning.