Kevin McHarvick Part II

So I log into Statcounter today to check on what is normally the slow trickle of visitors. Traffic has picked up some since I blogged about my brief and anonymous brush with greatness over PhotoShopping Kevin Harvick's head onto a picture of Ronald McDonald. What I did NOT expect was a crap load of hits, about 90 to be exact. Granted those kinds of numbers won't pay the bills, but it normally takes a couple of weeks to have that many visitors.

Turns out that there is some fresh buzz over the picture. As you recall Tony Stewart showed the picture to a national TV audience during Daytona 500 pre-race interviews. Well Kevin decided to have a little fun with this and raise some money for a good cause. Here it is in his own words from KevinHarvick.com.

During the Daytona 500 pre-race show, Tony Stewart held up a photograph of Ronald McDonald that had been altered so it appeared that Kevin Harvick was wearing Ronald's suit.

Now, those of you who are familiar with Kevin know that he does not let a practical joke go unanswered. So here is Kevin's retort:

Kevin's new colors may indeed be similar to those of Ronald McDonald, but have you seen Tony Stewart's chest and back? Because Tony is such a great guy, he has offered up a solution to his follicle issues.

Tony said on his SIRIUS satellite radio show, Tony Stewart Live, that if someone would raise $100,000 for charity, he would wax his chest and back. Who are we to pass up an offer like that? Call it "revenge for the Ronald McDonald photo," call it a great opportunity to raise money for Victory Junction Gang Camp or just call it plain funny. (Think Tony will scream like a girl when they rip all that hair out?)

Visit Happy's eSHOP and make your donation. You can donate in increments of $1.00, $5.00, $10.00, $25.00, $50.00 and $100.00. Every penny collected in "Operation: Wax Smoke" will be donated to Victory Junction Gang Camp. We will be accepting donations until we reach our goal.

Tell all your friends, and tell their friends to tell their friends. $100,000 to get us to put Tony Stewart in a salon chair, cover his chest and back with hot wax, place wax strips on it and rrrrip the hairs right out. Good times!

Once we reach our $100,000 goal, and Tony is ready to go under the wax, we’ll give you all the details of when and where it is happening.

Most of the hits came from this post on the Harvick Online message boards.

I think it's great that what started as a joke to be shared among friends has actually prompted a fresh movement to get much needed donations to an extremely worthy cause. So whatever you do, donate, here's the link to Operation: Wax Smoke at Happy's eSHOP.

Spring Has Sprung!

Well here it is April 1st, which can only mean it's time for me to get into severe weather mode. No this does not not mean hiding under my bed and crying as some may have you believe. I'm just fascinated with Thunderstorms, and I do have to admit that this fascination was born out of fear, anough fear to have mild panic attacks (still no crying under the bed though).

About 4 years ago my life was in a tumultuous state, which is a fancy word meaning it sucked. I was dealing with the recent death of my Mother, a very uncertain future and also a very bitter and confusing ending to what I thought at the time was a strong relationship (Oh boy was I wrong, but that's another blog for another time). Well, I'm not one to just deal with the stresses in my life directly, usually it's funneled into one unreasonable obsession or another. Well in this particular instance it was the weather. At the time I had 2 crappy jobs driving for a living, which means that whenever the big storms hit and the sirens went off, I was out in that shit. It was especially scary for the School Bus job, because if anything ever went down while I had a bus full of kids then their lives were in my hands, and that scared the crap out of me.

Later on that summer (I drove summer school), we had the stormiest July in Chicago history. We set a record with 16 straight days of Severe Thunderstorms. Another record was set for number of warnings. Over a normal Summer, the Chicago office of the National Weather Service in Romeoville, IL may issue 60 to 70 Tornado and/or Severe Thunderstorm Warnings for northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana. Well in July of 2003 they issued over 200! Almost every night over that 16 day stretch i would sleep with the lights on with the TV tuned to The Weather Channel. (Still no crying under the bed).

I knew I needed to deal with this in order to function, it was almost to the point of affecting my work. What I did was educate myself more about severe weather. I knew that not every thunderstorm was severe, and even knew that not every severe storm produces tornadoes, but I wanted the knowledge to be able to see what was happening and hopefully gague the real chances of something bad happening. Watching the Weather Channel and looking up the National Weather Service website were tremendous sources of knowledge, as well as the Storm Prediction Center, which is the agency that issues severe weather watches (local offices issue warnings).

Another great source I discovered a few years ago was an annual severe weather seminar hosted by Tom Skilling, who is the chief meteorologist for WGN-TV in Chicago. Tom is probably the best in the business and is one of the few TV weather reporters that's a true meteorologist instead of some hack reporter with a Broadcast Meteorology Certificate. All kinds of speakers are brought in every year to discuss the latest research into severe weather, as well as insights into past events and what we've learned from them. There are also speakers from the National Weather Service that speak about updates to the warning system. All in all it's a very informative event and I would reccomend it to anyone, plus it's free!

So that puts us to here and now. I find myself getting excited about the Spring storm season now, and was even disappointed that I didn't get a good lightning show out of a squall line that passed through the area last night, but I also count my blessing because an apartment building about 10 miles away lost it's roof in what appears to be a microburst. I love tracking the storms on the radar, but still get a little quiver in my stomach when the heavy stuff is bearing down on me.

One other thing I'd like to share is some photography, although not my own this time. A local photographer goes on storm chases every year and shoots some amazing photos, you can find them here.... David Mayhew Photography

A couple other photo sites.... In The Clouds Photography and.... Cool Images from the Storm Prediction Center.

That's all for now.