What will the weather be like? Nippy!

I went to a website today trying to find out what the weather would be like for our first stop, in the greater Detroit/South Michigan area, early next week. I was more than slightly amused to find the term ‘nippy’ mentioned as the weather condition for several days next week. Is that a technical term? What is the history of nippy? How does one tell the difference between nippy and chilly, another word used to describe the weather on one of the days? Are there arguments around the water cooler at the office? “Boy it sure is chilly out today.” “It is not chilly, it’s nippy.” “It’s not nippy. Nippy is much worse than this.” “No you idiot, today is very clearly nippy, not chilly!”

OK, enough use of the word nippy for now.

A special visitor

We had a special visitor to our fine city today. US President George W. Bush made a low-key entry . . . .well . . . .low key if you count two, yes two identical 747s, 6 helicoptors, more than 7 semi-containers full of gear, and over 700 security and other logistics personnel (according to local newspapers) all being covered by hundreds of reporters and show on live television for nearly every second of his visit.

We read he was to land at approximately 9:50 this morning, but at about 9:25 we looked out our windows (our balcony has a great view of the local airport) to see a giant blue and white plane that said “United States of America” on the side taxiing along the runway. Darn!!! We missed seeing Air Force One land.

We stood outside watching all the hubbub and waiting for Marine One to take him off for his next trip to some nearby places. Then as we stood there, a second 747 landed. We saw that one, but were not ready with the cameras. Darn!! Missed that photo op.

Finally we watched as 6 helicoptors took off in two sets of 3, going in opposite directions. We took some video of the one we thought he was in, only to figure out later he was in a different one. Darn!!! We missed again. We are really not doing well at this.

Four hours later (yes, all that equipment, fuss and all those people just for him to be here for 4 hours) the helicoptors landed again. This time we filmed the right one(s). Then a few minutes later one of the 747s took off to the west, and a few minutes later the other one took off to the east. We have no idea which one he was in, so we filmed them both.

Whether you are a big fan of GWB or not, you can’t deny that he puts on a good show when he makes an entry or exit from a place like this. It was impressive to see.

One of the fun things about today is that in the interim, while President Bush was out cavorting around town in his 6 helicoptors we took a family photo. The way we were facing, Air Force One (one of the two anyways) ended up in the background of the photo. It was totally unintended, and to the naked eye you can not see it. But when viewing it electronically, and if you know what you are looking for, you can clearly see it. Maybe it will be like one of those ‘Find the hidden object games we could do with people when we give our new photo cards to them in the next few months.