Impressive

Those t'storms on July 9th were -- bar none -- the most impressive storms I've seen during my eleven years in the Capital Region. They looked like storms you'd find over the Upper Midwest and Plains, not over the Northeast.

What does that mean? The structure of the storms was enough to invoke a "wow". Impressive volume and vertical development, lightning bolts shooting out the side of eight-mile-high storm towers, visible mesocyclones... you name it.

Extra Large with Cream and Five Splenda... and Bleach

My wife bought some coffee filters the other day. Unbleached.

I could have spent my whole life not realizing they actually use bleach to make coffee filters white. Why they are white is one of those things a person fails to question. But it sure opens up a bunch of other questions...

Why do they bother bleaching them in the first place? Are unbleached coffee filters like BGH-free milk? Should I not be using the white ones? Am I saving the environment by using brown filters? Maybe I should grow my own tomatoes fertilized with natural compost, eat eggs from free-range chickens and brew my coffee with unbleached filters.