Ruth Thompson

All-around great lady, known regionally for the best king cakes ever (don't take my word for it, she won WWL's contest), but know locally for much, much more.  Suddenly dead at 64.
Here is the obit in The Echo, and here is a real article about her and her life.
Ma'am, you will be missed.

A new news site for a very old part of town.

...where I happen to live.  It's the 4th Ward Cleaver.

Well that's incredibly useless.

But also pretty funny.  Uncyclopedia.  The content-free encyclopedia.
Did you know that they have an entire article on Kitten Huffing?

From the Birth of Mountain Biking

An old T.V. news story from 1979, seen here.  Six and a half minutes, worth every second.

Sam Fuller Fest

I've always been a big fan of Sam Fuller, but just didn't know until this year.  Two movies steered me toward him.  First, Pulp Fiction.  I'd always felt that Quentin Tarrantino was copying (or at least borrowing way heavily) from an older genre.  Then there's my Dad, who put me onto Fuller's The Big Red One.  Dad, a WWII vet in the 1st Division, always liked that movie as one of the least romanticized WWII flicks made in the post-war period.  Watching the extended cut, then watching the additional features on the disk steered me straight into the maw of Fuller's works.
I've been watching my way through them ever since.  To date, The Big Red One, The Steel Helmet, I Shot Jesse James, Pickup on South Street, and just last night The Baron of Arizona.  I'm not going into individual reviews, but place them all in the 3 to 3.5 star range.  The titles above are Wikipedia links if you want to see what they're about.  Caution though, they do have some spoilers.  Next up in the Netflix queue is The Naked Kiss.  Although I haven't done an exhaustive search, pretty much everything he made can be found over at Netfilx.
So if you're a Tarrantino fan who's always been slightly disappointed since the glory days of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and can do with a little less of the oh-so-90's irony, go look up some Fuller movies.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Not much to Lee.  Maybe 3' of extra tide, a few wind gusts, and a LOT of rain.

Still got a bike ride in this morning, even made it back home before the next rain band hit.  Man, it's not exactly new, but I do love online real-time radar.

Surfing with Flare

Yes, flare, not flair.  As seen here.  Might've been even cooler after the BP oil spill...