CP has been ruling the roost lately. Just today, she reached her feet with her hands and began playing with them. She has also become more adventuresome during tummy time. She spins around on the mat like Curly from the Three Stooges did. It takes her a while and her mechanism is different, but she still ends up spun around from the way that we put her down. She did it in the crib last night and the LW almost grabbed the wrong end to pick up and kiss this morning. The pic in the yellow onesy is the one that says, "if daddy says no, ask grandma" and yes folks, that's her standing up on the couch. She is perpindicular to terra firma. Today, after I got off the phone with the family's newest retiree, she started pulling her knees up under her hips as if to get only half of the crawling machinery in order. She's posing here on the right while the LW holds her upright. The LW's Fetish Cycles - Discipline is in the background on the rack. Mmmmmmm daddy's gonna steal those forks someday......

I've been sick and has noticed that the LW, well, the LW's feeling a bit stressed and (according to me) may be riding that old-school wooden-trussed hormone coaster that comes as a prize for carrying the majority of the organs and chemicals that are necessary for procreation. It doesn't look like a fun ride and I'm trying to keep his neck off of the tracks.

The LW and I have been watching as Dutch and Wood, the main grownup characters at SweetJuniper, make their way across places where grass grows without irrigation. It screams of the inevitable super long car trip that hangs out there somewhere in our future. The LW grew up making car trips with 3 siblings and remembers all of the games that her mom used to keep them occupied. I mainly remember wrestling with my brother and then being threatened repeatedly with all manner of beatings. I seem to recall a time when we rode, oblivious to any hidden dangers along I-20 and the famous MS Hwy61, in the back of a 1975 Toyota Pickup that had a camper shell and thick foam mats for our protection. We went all over in the back of that thing. My dad was nice enough to install an intercom so that we could ask, "are we there yet?" without having to use hand signals.

The LW just walked in from her latest haircut and just seeing her with short hair brough tears to my eyes. She looks exaclty as she did when I first met her five years ago at that Junior Brown concert in Lawrence, KS. Seeing her smile with that short hair makes me think of our first big trip. We'd just met and we decided that New Orleans was the place to go visit. I wanted her to meet my grandparents anyway, and we could see them on the way through. It was a strange thing going across Ponchartrain, to have a car full of elderly women look at us. I was driving and the then Lovely Girlfriend was my cowboy-hatted co-pilot. They all smiled big happy smiles as they passed and I was struck by how happy we both were. Rolling into a town that we didn't know and into a life together that we couldn't have really imagined or hoped for - those ladies had the wisdom to smile at true happiness when they saw it.

Got a letter in the mail today about how the new insurance company wants to exclude my knee for five years. Now I could understand excluding related things like patellar cartilage, but not everything in the entire knee for five years. I have good ligaments, but if I fall off of a ladder while trying to get my monkey ass up to the swamp cooler to fix it or shut if off for the winter, I'd like to have the ligaments fixed. The insurance broker is going up to Marrricopa county tomorrow to talk to the underwriters and will see what the deal is. My doc seems to think that they can only exclude it for a year under AZ law. The top two circles show the patellar cartilage before the doc went in there to work his magic. The bottom two circles show the same view after he was done. (2nd row is the stuff as he was trimming it and the ligaments. 3rd row is the meniscus.) There's alot less crunch~n~munch goin' on in there now.

CP has been a bit funky lately. She got her 2nd round of shots on Saturday. She did well, but has been a bit cranky and just a bit out of the norm. Friday night she slept all the way through the night. 9pm-7am. She's been going until about 5 or 6am since then. Her great-uncle Mark gave her this onesy and her mom absolutely loves it. Grateful Dead....pfffffffffft

An interesting woman passed away Sunday. Whenever people like this pass away, I wonder who will fill their shoes. Newdow recently tried, but didn't seem to get very far and I doubt that many others will get very far when they follow against the supreme court. Shermer and his ilk do what they can, but it's going to take quite a few people like Mrs. McCollum to keep things in check around here in adult fairy tale land. If any of these self righteous right wing nuts lectures my daughter about anything....ever....they'll be waking up to the taste of their own blood and several dysfunctional bones, joints, and/or teeth.

..and then there's this from Sam at ProRev.

CP managed to keep her mom up for most of the night and then slept until about noon. So quiet and cute. Today was her first day to roll completely over and sleep prone. It's funny to see the small changes. Last night was cool and dry. The effectiveness of the swampy was way high and we woke to a bit of a chill before the heat had a chance to catch up. I put CP in a onesy and some socks and she was good to go. We think that she's teething since she's got a few little white spots on her gums that look like pressure spots from teeth. She's aggrevated and yesterday went on a bit of a milk strike.

There was a show on Science Friday about local foods. It was good to hear someone call in and mention LocalHarvest.org and hear about local agriculture being supported. The fact that Iowa imports almost all of its food was mentioned again. That's just sad.

The other day they had a story about BioWillie. Pretty funny stuff to recruit truckers and rednecks for positive change. That, my friends, is genious. It makes me wonder when ADM will want to take it over and sell it off to the highest offshore bidder though. When the used stuff gets to be scarce, then it'll get interesting. Or course, when prices at the pump reach the fresh veggie oil prices on the shelf, things will change also. Folks in other parts of the world are already buying it right off the shelf to run in their cars. The old diesels on the market are already becoming a hot commodity. The LW and I have been chasing an old Mercedes or an old TDI for the last few years, but good ones come at a stiff price.

It looks like rain out, so the laundry has to come in.

Funny stuff this morning:
Baby Rock Records

Nutjobs

Not so funny stuff this morning:
Compare this story with this story.
Deregulation lowering costs?

It's hard to believe that 5 days have passed since I last attended to this page. CP has been keeping us busy. Yesterday was her first outing alone with me. The LW has taken her out plenty of times, but yesterday it was all dad and we were traveling without the rescue boobs.

Our first stop was at the Historic YWCA, where we checked out the Tucson CSA group on pick-up day. Philippe, the guy that runs the place, only had time to say hello as it was busy in their little room. There were all manner of vegetables and cheeses available. It all looked great and CP really enjoyed looking around. I hope that the Community Gardens and the CSA folks can work together in the future.

Next stop was Antigone Books down on 4th Avenue. The LW had some things waiting behind the counter - she absolutely loves this book store and it's easy to see why. What's not to love about one of the few remaining independent book stores in town. Arrgghhh....I forgot to take the checkbook and had to use my debit card. I hate seeing local independent places getting dinged for the 2-6% that the card companies require. It reminds me of The Raven and the Dusty Bookshelf in Lawrence.

CP fell asleep as soon as I put her in the car and we were off to Costco for some essentials. I didn't think that we were going to make it into the store. There was an octogenarian in front of us who didn't seem to be able to get his wallet out of his pocket and then couldn't seem to get his card out of his wallet to show it at the door. Note to octogenarians: please take the time before you stop your cart right in the middle of the entrance to the store and block out everyone else, to get your wallet out and have your card in your hand. The guy behind you with the tired infant will appreciate your forethought. After this, we were off to the races. We made the rounds and even a dash into the cooler for some lettuce before bailing out and heading home. CP was wonderful the whole time and it was a great first trip.

Wow! We actually made it out of the house and down to both places that we wanted to go yesterday. The farmers market was really nice, if a tad small, but we still managed to get 2lbs of tomatoes for salsa and a pint of apple butter that's made over in Willcox. It was sprinkling on the west side of town and CP wore her little white hat that her Aunt LaRue recently sent to her. We were glad that it had the strap because it was a bit windy as well. By the time we made it home, the little one was beat tired and was having nothing but a bit of the boob and some sleep. The above picture was taken yesterday afternoon when she was wide awake and happy as a clam.

We hit the Ordinary for a bit of Chariot bike trailer/stroller/hiker consumerism and before the wife took a 2005 Aurora out for a spin, we ran into Matt Zoll, who is Tucson's Bike & Pedestrian Coordinator and his family. Wonderful folks. There are alot of great things that go on in this town with regards to bikes and there are alot of people who work very hard to make it happen.

On a similar vein, I'll have to go against the Tucson Bicycle Advisory Committee when it comes to the proposed ban on motorized bicycles like the bikes offered by Spooky Tooth. It seems that road cyclists in town want to cry foul whenever the cars don't share the road with them in a way that they'd like, but also want to cry foul when someone wants to use the bike lane on something a little different than a titanium seven. "Oh, but it goes faster than 25..." is the cry, but I bet that you could clock the shootout (Saturdays at 6am) at faster than that if you'd like to get going with that argument. These motorized bicycles are kinda stuck in no man's land. They can't be called motorcycles because they don't come that way and they can't be called mopeds because that cuts in on some other things. I say just let folks use them and bust them when they're running them on the paths that are specifically non-motorized.

I started playing with things on the blog today. I added the Flickr badge to the right after I saw in over at SweetJuniper. The Feedblitz box below the pictures lets folks subscribe to the blog feed using email and there's also an RSS feed from Feedburner down at the bottom of the sidebar for those less technically challenged than me. (Yes folks, you can put your email in that box and get my daily rant delivered to you without even having to go near those internets.) Firefox was doing some strange things to the layout earlier and I'm glad that's over with. It probably has something to do with the Norton Internet Insecurity/Processor Hog that I have running.

I stopped off at the bird store up on Grant and got a refill of the thistle seed that I give to CP's goldfinches. It was a warm one out yesterday and I was driving home from picking up Aunt Melissa at the airport. As I was paying for the thistle, the guy at the counter remarked about the cash being damp and asked if I'd been caught out in the rain. Man, I was tired, sweaty, and as usual, I wasn't quick enough on my feet to take the opportunity to mess with the guy. On the way home I thought of all kinds of things that I should have told him:

"I dropped my wallet in the toilet down at the truck stop...and after I fished it out....."
"Yep, I was standing still down at the park and some lady's great dane peed on my pocket.."
"The baby spit up on it, but I hope that I wiped off all of the solid stuff, you might check that..."

Ahhh....the things that I wish I was quick-witted enough to do.

The LW met her deadline and as usual, just plain rocks. She's been bustin' it late into the night this week and it's good to see her taking it a bit easy today. We hope to go to the farmers market tonight to check things out and to get out of the house. I think we'll stop down at the Ordinary and get CP's Chariot Cougar ordered as well.

It's fairly quiet here today. No police helicopters overhead, only a couple of fire truck calls out on the main road, and CP only wailed for a bit this morning. She overslept this morning with the LW and as a result, skipped her morning nap and went down in between her morning and afternoon nap time slots. This could have ugly implications for the remainder of the day.

I pulled a huge watermelon out of the garden the other day and just cracked it open. It's ripe all the way out to the rind and is very sweet. I wonder if there really is something to that bit of folk wisdome that my dad imparted about planting a hill of cantelope next to watermelons to make them sweeter. Just like the number of licks required to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop, the world may never know.

The knee is quite sore this morning and it hurts on the backside of the knee in the area of the popliteus, which is a strange little muscle, but evidently quite capable of making a grown man wince. I remember learning about it in my A&P classes and not really finding it remarkable - but ohhhhh, how I've remarked about it this morning......

The LW and I have been eyeballing this car this morning and wondering what the scoop is on it. The price is definitely right, although I'm well aware of the saying that there's nothing more expensive than a cheap Mercedes. It would be relatively easy to make some money on it if only the transmission holds up. I noted with consternation that the owner leaves the post very vague in the areas of mileage and transmission condition. Replacing a $2000 transmission is a pretty big "quirk". The 78-80 W116 models are supposed to have lower gearing than the later models and this makes them feel stronger. Who knows, the LW and CP might be toodling around in an old Benz that runs on biodiesel someday....

Humor enough for an entire day.

CP enjoyed my rendering of the Cat this morning. She was cooing along as I went through it and it had her mother in stitches. We got some of it on video, so it'll make it into the next video. The current video will go in the mail some time in the coming week.

Speaking of stitches, mine are doing fine and the knee only twisted a little bit when I tripped this morning whilst trying to weed-whack the pigweed in the garden and back yard. It's close to amaranth, which does well here, and will grow to about 4' tall in short order. I caught them in the pollen stage, so I hope that the seeds they're carrying will not germinate. I'd really hate to have to go sprinkling the back yard with monsanto's perfectly safe products.

After 28 years or so of my mom working to help people get the benefits that they need and have (most of the time) earned, she's being hit with a grievance for not hiring the sibling of the union representative in the office. It wasn't filed by the chicken- that got beaten for the job, her sister filed it for her regarding an issue that's blatantly trumped up and is outright slander. I can't for the life of me understand why, people who can't get fired....ever, need a union. Gompers would be rolling over in his grave if he hadn't long ago turned to dust. I remember when she started in MS when she would come home upset by not being able to help honest folks and then seeing the scammers getting all the gubment $$ that they wanted. She's done it all. She started basically as a clerk, got transferred and accepted into a new office (sight unseen) since her name is spelled a bit differently than most caucasians, and finally, after working hard, after raising two boys and cleaning up after a husband for 27 years, moved into her own office. She commuted from another town for the last year since she knew that retirement was coming and endured her husband complaining about the separation the entire time. All of this to quietly retire and spend more time with her nose in a good book and to have the time to spend with grandkids.

The LW and I looked up lawyers this morning in her area. I hope they own this girl, her house, her cars, and her belongings as a result of a slander lawsuit. I hope that I then get invited to sell all of her personal items back to her at a yard sale.

In other news: I still can't believe that Asscroft's thugs were stupid enough to arrest Tommy Chong. For a guy who was beaten out of office by a dead guy, he sure lived up to his potential as a jackass while enjoying his appointment by Shrubby.

The LW and I had a good laugh at the Daily Show posts over at Crooks and Liars (see link on right side of blog). It was a nice break from the misery that was yesterday.

CP's sleep timing continues to shift and we're trying to deal with it as best we can. This is exacerbated by the LW being under some pretty heavy deadline stuff right now with work and I can't drive or care for things around the house very well. Last night at about 11pm the LW had finally had all that she could take of an entire day's worth of CP's catnapping and ensuing crankiness. I've been lobbying for the Ferber type deal where she just cries it out and begins to realize that crying at nap/bedtime will not bring the parental units to the rescue (unless of course, there's something really wrong) for anything other than some reassurance and a bed check. At 11:42, 40 minutes after she was put in the crib kicking and screaming, she tired herself out and took off into dreamland. I'm sure that my mother and brother will tell me that it's about 2 months overdue.

I'm managing to hobble around a little better and the knee's returning slowly toward a normal size. It already feels less crunchy. I got out to the garden meeting yesterday and things seem to be going well. A little fine tuning here and there, but good on the whole. One of the committee members is going to China soon with a group called China Focus. It sounds like an interesting trip and I look forward to hearing him tell the tales. I only got to see a bit of Hong Kong when I was there in '94. It was a dash from the liberty boats, into Wanchai, off to Kowloon, and then back to the boat.

I got called a bigot recently for posting what I thought about the recent immigration woes and about a recent crash that left quite a few "suspected illegal immigrants" injured or dead after the suburban that they (21 of them) were packed into. Interesting stuff, but no big deal really. It's hard to know someone from just a few sentences of a post on a website. I've done similar stuff, but have learned lessons from it.

It's a good thing to see good people getting written about in the paper and that evidently happened yesterday while I was getting my leg worked on. There are some people that cross your path in this spec of time that is life who, when they cross your path, you just know that they're good through and through. I know a few people like this. I married one of them, and I'm lucky enough to know others as friends or clients.

The knee feels about like it does when I twist it or fall on it, but nothing more. I still can't get out of the poang while holding CP, but that will come in time. The LW is off to the airport to drop aunt MM. She's headed back to the midwest to visit "family" and to see her brother off on his way to don't drop the soap prison. Crazy stuff. It's things like listening to her stories that scare me back into realizing how lucky I was to have a family who wasn't crack-addicted, hateful, and just plain criminal in sooooo many ways.

Then, there's this.

Today was up and out for a bit of versed. Oh how sweet the sleep was. We packed the car this morning for a short trip over to the Tucson Surgery Center where I was going to go on a mini-vacation while my ortho doc did a little bit of mining for cartilagenous gold in my right knee.

There was this tree back in '97 that was just minding it's business when my wretched hubris led me and a 54-horsepower dirt bike (my first!- that damned Honda CR250), out of the sky -literally- for a visit. It didn't go so well for me or the bike as the tree brushed me off and hung onto the bike. It took four or five guys to go back and get it out of the tree. It took 3 months before I could walk, or work again. I still remember the office ogress (that's as nicely as I could put it), at that car dealership where I worked, telling me that she hadn't filed my disability insurance paperwork. After that incident my re-located shoulder didn't work very well and my knee had a big frown on it in the form of a scar (see picture) where the handlbar crossbar mount had torn it open. Billet aluminum parts aren't really soft and fuzzy, especially around the edges, but then again, you're not supposed to slam into them with soft fleshy parts of your body. Silly me.

My kneecap was fractured on the proximal medial corner and the lovely ortho guy there in BFE Missouri (aka St. Joseph) told me to just let it heal. Nice. I let it heal and every time I kneel down it crunched like that sound your mouth makes when you munch the chicken cartilage off of the end of a hot wing at Hooters. Nine years of that hopefully ended this morning, but I'll know for sure sometime soon. It's a bit swollen since they distended it with water and sliced into it, but it really isn't much. I didn't even bother filling the scrip for the Vicodin. That crap is only good for a headache anyway.

The lovely wife (LW) sat and waited on me from noon to around 3:30 or so. When I finally got out of recovery she was famished, flustered, and had fed CP twice. I take forever in recovery. I made sure that she had $$ for lunch, but she said that she didn't want to lug CP all over the place to find the cafeteria in the hospital. We dashed off to a burger joint for some lunch and then home where she settled CP and I in and, after a while, went back to work.

CP's been busy this morning with the drooling and all, so it's tough to read and comprehend anything as my shirt has begun to look like I was on the wrong end of a water balloon fight.

It took me forever to get through this Time article that I found, thanks to AGITPROP. The time digesting what "Ghosh" has to say, was in part due to the baby and in part due to the fact that the outcome for Iraq seems to be getting pretty dim and it's a sad thing to see. Why are we even there anyway? WMDs? That was a bad joke on Colin Powell. I can ony think that folks will read about this in history books someday and think to themselves how could we have been so stupid to think that our country (~200 years old) could fix a civilization that has pretty much been around for, ohhhhhh.... alot more than 2000 years. To top this off, it's proposed that some vertically challenged Korean guy is the real danger in the world.

Last night was CP's second night in her room/home office in the crib. It's gone well for both of us and CP has begun to make it through the night until about 3am before needing the boobs. I think that it's made us happier and hasn't bothered her a bit.

The above picture is from the garden meeting where she got to play with 'Oma' Darlene and George under the pomegranate tree. We were late due to a bit of regurgitation into the car seat. The LW had just fixed her in the seat when it appeared that she was a small milk pump and began shooting every bit of liquid from her stomach into the crevices and basin of the car seat. We got a little bit of training about how the covers go on and off of the Britax yesterday. Not as bad as expected, but, as an acquaintance noted the other day, "man, that's a huge car seat".

We went over to Oma's for dinner last night. CP got to swim in the pool again and absolutely loved it. Her schedule was a bit off though, due to a really long nap on the LW's chest, and her sleeping times got a little mixed. I got to try out a new addition to my salsa experiment - roasted anaheim peppers. It turned out really nicely and after blending, it ended up looking similar to the salsa that we really like over at El Charro.

Found out this morning that our good (master gardener) friend Sam is helping to put on the Great Tucson Beer Festival. It sounds like it'll be a good gig and it benefits Sun Sounds. They deliver print news and information to visually impaired folks through audio broadcasts. It's beginning to look like I'll be the designated driver for this gig since I don't drink beer. Maybe there will be a bourbon festival soon that's closer than Kentucky!

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

CP is three months old today! The LW and I began to talk about different ideas of co-sleeping and doing the Ferber tricks. We'll see....

Caught part of this show today while I was making lunch for the LW and I. It was good and it made me think of my great uncle Coot. His body got hammered by multiple myeloma for a few years and it finally got him this year. Coot was, as a student of anthropology might say, mother's father's brother.

Every time he saw me, he asked whether or not I remembered cutting wood with him as a kid and how I tied a red rag on the back of the truck because he was carrying more than I thought to be safe - as if a red rag dangling from the tailgate mattered when one was driving a bright mint green colored pickup with a buttload of firewood in it down the road. It was something to him though, and it stuck with him.

Jason and I never really got to spend much time with him and aunt Dot. We lived in different parts of MS and eventually in different parts of the world. When we were little, we got to see him at christmas gatherings once a year or so at my great grandmother's house in Learned. He always greeted my brother and I enthusiastically - it was as if we were his favorite people on earth every time we saw him. When you're small, shy, and have a father who is a bit of an authoritarian, having someone look at you as if you're the best thing since sliced bread really has an impact. We heard about him, as we grew up and made families of our own, through my grandfather from time to time and kept up with him and aunt Dot that way.

Hearing that he had cancer was quite a shock. What do you do? What do you say? Is there anything really? I don't think so. All one can do is hope and that's what I did.

On June 6th of this year, he passed on into the ether. He was, as my mom always says, "a good egg". I couldn't really bring myself to send a card to the family or to aunt Dot because there's nothing really that I can say that's original other than what I have written here. I can only hope that I have the presence of mind, when dealing with the little ones in my life, to greet them with the enthusiastic "heyyyyyyyyyyyyyy" that he always gave my brother and I, listen to what they have to say, and watch for the little red rags that they hang for me.

Knowing Coot was quite a gift.

Just been doing some light reading today.
I can't believe that these things are going on in MY country.
Just aint right.

http://www.2theadvocate.com/news/3416941.html
http://openvotingfoundation.org/
http://www.nbc10.com/news/9574663/detail.html

Back from the whirlwind trip to Dallas. It started out a little rough and rainy and ended quietly with puddles of water resting everywhere upon our return. Ya see, I'd never actually used the Park 'n Ride part of the Tucson airport. I've been past it plenty of times, but never actually had to get my vehicle into the place in the dark...when it was raining. I thought that I was going to self destruct when we couldn't find the correct entrance, were running late, and were running late. Did I mention that we were getting there behind the schedule that I'd attempted to set. We made it to the plane with about 10 minutes to spare. I learned some things on this trip.

Lessons learned:
Pad time 45 minutes - 1 hour
Pack everything into the fewest number of bags humanly possible
Britax Boulevard car seats are built strong and as such are HEAVY
My wife would be a saint if she believed those kind of fairy tales
Carry cash, so you don't have to stiff someone after they load heavy things on a bus

We made it into Dallas on time and happy and the nice folks at Hertz had everything lined up and waiting. CP did well on the plane and only started getting antsy when she couldn't exit the plane when she wanted. It took me a while to get the car seat into the car. The seat tracks on the Malibu that we got were typical American car stamped-metal cheapos that weren't set up to accomodate the front strap of a rear-facing car seat.

Lessons learned:
Hertz Rocks!
Ask for a Japanese car if you're given a choice

Trying to find Gramma's house turned out to be an almost knock-down-drag-out affair thanks to the lovely folks at Google Maps. The directions were so far off of the mark and convoluted that I would bet that the best cartographers would need a valium or two if they were forced to follow them. When CP started screaming we had to pull in behind a strip mall and just vent a bit. It wasn't pretty. All of us calmed down after a bit and the LW called her aunt to save our bacon. We made it to Gramma's shortly after and were met by air conditioned air and huge smiles by Gramma and one of the LW's cousins.

Lessons learned:
Google maps still has a bit of de-bugging to do - cross reference with other map offerings
Stop the car when the baby really goes ballistic and you're hopelessly lost
LW can soothe baby in short order, but also inflames tired husband with similar expedience

The weekend went really well. We stayed at a Homewood Suites in Bedford, TX and that place was nice. It's really the same four stick & stucko walls that you get anywhere, but the staff were top notch. They transferred us from MIL's "holding" room to our other respective rooms after the cleanup crew got them ready and everyone got settled in. They even had a crib set up and waiting in the room when we got there.

Later on, CP got to meet and snuggle with her cousins and other relatives. The LW and I tried to lay low and get some relaxation time, but there wasn't any of that. When planning this trip, we sat around in a dream-like state thinking of how we would hand little CP off to some of the anxious relatives and sneak back to our room for a nice nap together (since we haven't had one since May 3rd). You can almost hear that big buzzer coming........ ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. That didn't happen. CP's schedule was a bit off and this meant that her naps were shorter and more frequent than usual.

Lessons learned:
Pay some baby-eyed, but baby-less relative to watch baby so that you can nap with the LW

The weekend was full of laughter and eating. Two good things in equal portions. The LW soaked up all of the time with her family and it was good to see. It seemed like all too soon when Monday rolled around and we had to pack it all in. We arrived home to find our town dealing with flooding due to rain measured in inches, not just in hundreths of inches as it has been for the last few years.