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You might want to check on those rental properties. I saw a lot of pictures of larger hail from the east side of Madison, and lots of cars in the surface lot at the airport were properly damaged by the hail. I know DeForest also had some gnarly winds overnight Monday night. We're in Middleton, and there were parts of town that also had the very large hail.

The severe weather in general this week. We avoided the baseball sized hail that some of Dane County received, but we still had golf ball sized hail. Fortunately, we have a metal roof, but there are a few small dents here and there, and somehow the solar panels appear undamaged. Our neighborhood is very sloped, with our street being pitched, and all of our back yards slope downhill (we're 2 blocks from Lake Mendota on a hill). Our neighbors on the high side of our house just moved in over the winter, and they inherited broken gutters that cause a lot of water to pour into our yard. The previous owners somehow mitigated it, but this year water has literally cascaded down the steps we have in the back yard, and it pools under our deck. The neighbors are aware that their gutters are broken, but didn't know the scale of runoff we were experiencing until we met with them the other day. New gutters won't be installed overnight, so I'm hoping they can come up with a solution to stem the runoff into our yard.

The ID.4 is on my list as well, but I've read horror stories about them having issues and being in the shop. My hope is that a used one will have been repaired already, but perhaps it was returned/traded in because it's such a problem child. It's probably one of the best options for us size-wise. I want something that's a small-ish SUV with AWD, but I'm sort of lost figuring out what to get. I'm looking at used because the depreciation is already built in, and I can pay cash for it rather than financing. The Mach-E is on my radar, but not much else right now.

Definitely not the same level of dominance over the course of 6-10 years, but the Middleton boys swim team has won the last four state championships, and the girls have won the last three. The two best boys swimmers are seniors, but the best girls swimmers are sophomores and juniors, so I suspect the girls run will last a couple more years.

We're just past the halfway point in February, and we have produced more energy than we have consumed for the month so far. Looking at the forecast, I expect that to change, but I cannot wait to see what our electric bills moving forward are.

I probably ranted about this before, but youth sports culture is bugging me. I have two daughters, both are in club swimming. My oldest daughter also swims in high school, and her high school team is very, very good, so she needs to do a bit extra to be good enough to make the team each year. Between club and high school swimming, she gets a total of 6 weeks off a year from swimming. She will be off from early March to early April, then off for about two weeks in August. During the seasons, she has practice 5-6 days a week, and also sees a personal trainer to help with strength (I feel like that's a bit over the top). This all has led to her being at a level of injured since the end of October. She has shoulder tendonitis, and now a pulled hip muscle, both of which have caused her to miss parts of swim meets. The problem is if she doesn't do the club season, other swimmers on the high school team may pass her, and she could run the risk of getting cut. Swimming is her life, but I wish there was room for something else. (I am encouraging her to go out for track- I feel like that could actually help with conditioning for swimming.)

Because the College Football Playoff is a separate entity than the NCAA, so it's not an NCAA championship.

One played at an AAA stadium because the city decided not to help pay for a new stadium and the owner threw a tantrum. The other team played at a spring training stadium because a hurricane significantly damaged their main stadium. If you want to discuss whether or not Tampa should have a team based on attendance, that's fine, but they weren't in a small stadium this past season due to oversaturation in baseball, and the A's won't be in a minor league stadium forever.

It's become an annual tradition that someone in my family is sick. We had three years in a row where someone had a stomach virus, several of us got sick over Christmas on a trip to the Dominican a couple years ago, and now this year one of my kids has a fever. If it's not Christmas, it's Thanksgiving (another stomach flu one year, pink eye, random fever)...

Got panels in September and it's been awesome so far, with the exception of when we had a foot of snow on our roof (our roof is too tall to clear snow from the panels). Unfortunately, you won't be able to get the tax credit anymore, but I would still get them even without it. We're in the Madison area and went with Drews. They are a local company and were great to deal with. We have a Solar Edge inverter, which is inside our house. There are other inverter systems that are outside- you should do your research as to which is better for your needs. I can't recall the size of system we got, but solar companies will work with you to size one based on your energy use. We provided over a year's worth of energy use data and had a system built for when we decide to get an EV. We paid cash instead of financing, which is recommended if you can afford it. No matter what, avoid Everlight. We didn't even contact them, but I read enough to know they are high pressure, expensive, and not a great company to work with.

Yet, they won't level the playing field at the MLB level.

We've gone with artificial since my wife and I have been together. Our current tree is a hand-me-down from my parents that was a pre-lit tree and some of the lights stopped working. My dad painstakingly took out all the lights and gave it to us, and I just put my own lights on it. My parents stopped getting real trees because they had one fall down twice within a couple of days. Even though I have fond memories of getting trees, we stuck with artificial because the cost of a real tree seems excessive (though pre-lit artificial trees are as well). The worst part of the artificial tree is that somehow, it can collect dust in the offseason even though it's kept in a bag. A few years ago, I got tiny little cuts on my hands when I was fluffing it, which created a severe allergic reaction from the dust. It took a few weeks (yes, weeks) and many medicines to get it cleared up, so now I wear gloves when fluffing it.

Yamamoto did to Toronto what he did to us. Unbelievable.

I was texting my cousin after the game (he couldn't watch or listen until the 9th) and said the 9th was, strangely, the inning that was the least stressful in the game. Credit to Uribe.

The walk up to the Clingmans Dome observation deck is a somewhat gradual incline that's fairly short and paved. It's still probably a half mile up and down, but it's probably the most accessible walk in the park. The Laurel Falls trail wasn't bad, either. You can see a lot of old houses/buildings on the Roaring Fork Motor Nature Trail, which starts/ends in Gatlinburg. It's not a bad hike to Rainbow Falls or Grotto Falls, either. Drive around Cades Cove, or you can rent a bike and go on a day where the loop is closed to motor traffic and bike around the area. The Newfound Gap Road is breathtaking. Edit: the name for Clingmans Dome has changed to Kuwohi, which is the native name for the mountain.