I believe we're doing a SWOT analysis with a management consultant who we're paying a ridiculous quantity of cash to point out the bleedin' obvious...

Ah, the old "I've got 'Management Consultant' printed on my card and I can use phrases like 'conceptualizing ideas' and 'pro-active team guidance', " gag.
My (now former) team leader was fond of that sort of rubbish. I actually heard him saying 'singing from the same hymn sheet' more than once. When I visited Llandudno last year, I bought one of those comedy notices that read "Do you wish to speak to the person in charge, or the one who knows what's going on ?" and posted it to him.
I'm unemployed now....

You've got sun? I'm jealous. We got several inches of snow yesterday, and freezing rain this morning. I just got to work, a bit late due to time spent chipping ice off the windows of my car.



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"I've often said that the difference between British and American SF TV series is that the British ones have three-dimensional characters and cardboard spaceships, while the Americans do it the other way around."
--Ross Smith

Typical American. They always have to do things bigger and better than anyone else :) Blizzards, volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes etc.
Ancient English curse: "May you live in a country with interesting weather".

Hey, I lived through Mount St. Helens! We were out of school for over 2 weeks. We lost about 1/3 of our flock of chickens and about 1/2 of our herd of turkeys. Stoopid birds! Sure was interesting though!

I was almost 11 years old and I remember sitting and watching a kids show on Sunday morning EARLY and hearing a big sonic boom, which, in itself, is not unusual, as we lived reasonably close to an Air Force base. But this was different, it was a lower rumble. But I didn't think too much about it.

Well about 5 hours later, my mom, my oldest sister and I were heading outside to weed the vegetable garden and I remember the air feeling really still and oppressively humid. And the sky to the west was looking very dark and ominous and the way the light was shining on the power lines, it almost looked like they were glowing. There were no bird sounds...no nature sounds at all, it was just REALLY quiet. And I think that was the eeriest thing of all.

With the dark sky, we thought there might be a tornado coming, so we went in and turned on the television and the emergency broadcast system was beeping away telling us that the mountain had blown and that residents were to secure all livestock and get themselves inside and not to breathe the dust.

So we ran around the farm madly trying to get all the chickens and turkeys in. The geese weren't stupid, they were already inside. Couldn't get all the other stupid birds though.

Anyway, about an hour or so later, what looked like very fluffy snow started falling, which was really weird, cuz it was so warm outside. Then the "snow" started turning darker gray as it fell. I think it fell for about 12 hours. If I remember right, we ended up with about a foot and a half of it at our house. I remember putting on face masks and other protective gear and going out and shoveling it like snow. We were told to water it down whenever possible and we also had to make sure it wasn't on the roof cuz if it rained while on the roof, we'd have a nice cement! Not good!

Things were a big mess for a long time. Ash removal was insane. There were piles and piles of it everywhere. And to this day, if you drive I-90 from Seattle to Spokane, there are still little cemented piles of ash along the side of the highway. That's really the only signs of what happened. The farmers were smart and tilled it into the soil and it became some of the world's best fertilizer. 23 years later you can't hardly tell anything happened there. Even the trees have come back on the mountain. Nature's a groovy thing!

I remember spending a happy geography lesson watching an excellent documentary about Mt St Helens. Much more interesting than the agricultural exports of Ghana. Now I can say I know somebody who was there, or close enough ! Shame about your chickens and turkeys, but they are dumb sometimes, aren't they ? Evolution in action, I guess. Like those stubborn people who refuse to leave simply because they've been told to do so.
Famous last (recorded) words: "I've lived on the side of this volcano all my life and it's never erupted on me before."
Probable actual last words "Where the **** is all that ash and lava coming from ?"