Legalectric

Degasify… degasify… degasify… degasify… Bakken crude must be degasified before it’s put into tankers and goes down the track!  What’s so hard about that to understand?

Yesterday, the DOT issued a letter of agreements with the Association of American Railroads:

DOT and AAR Letter – Feb 21 2014

The majority of which is blather that is make work feel good nothingness, the only thing with some quantifiable demonstrable meat to it is:

Nowhere do they address a requirement to degasify the crude before it is loaded, and it’s that gas in the crude that is so explosive.  HELLO!  When are they going to deal with the issue?

Here’s the DOT letter regarding degasifying:

1_2_14 DOT Rail_Safety_Alert

And here’s the part that addresses degasifying the crude before transport:

Come on, DOT, how hard is that to understand?  Bakken crude must be degasified before it goes rolling down the track.

The DOT map says it all — all the roads are closed in SE Minnesota.  Maybe next week…

Cars stuck on West, a major street in Red Wing, one right here and another a block further downhill who did a 360 or more, now the cops are out there and a big pick up truck, but that car is still stuck, ???  What a mess.  It’s a good night to stay inside, and I don’t regret not going up to Grand Rapids for the Great Northern Transmission Line scoping meeting, though I miss having a visit with Charlotte!

STrib reports “white out conditions.”

And the Weather Underground says “Blizzard Warning,” but it’s 33 degrees right now.  Heavy snow, and lots of it, our boat cover collapsed.  Alan shoveled off the attached garage roof without taking a header, whew, and built a roof rake and got the snow off the garage/shop before it collapsed.  This is more like Minnesota winter as I remember it.  And it sucks just as bad as I remember it!

For your viewing enjoyment, from Jeanne, my SiL, or is it SoL (she’s probably enjoying this beautiful day in Costa Rica right now), I so needed this:

The Keystone XL pipeline has been hit with a significant problem, and a MAJOR victory for landowners in Nebraska!  Here’s the Court’s decision:

Keystone XL Eminent Domain decision — LB-1161-Court-Order-Feb-19-2014

The Nutshell version:

We found a few flower pots in the driveway of a foreclosed and abandoned house, lots of other stuff too, but this is about the plants.

One was this big potted ~18″ long thin rubbery leaved thing, and it spent the summer on the deck, but the deer ate it down to the dirt.  OK, fine, watered it a lot and put it on the table where the deer don’t go, and voila, it grew back to about 9″ but then winter came.  Got it inside, but a little late, and then forgot it on the dining room floor, and Kady Kate ate the leaves.  Then Kate ate the dirt.

KADY!  NO!

So we brought in the iron baker’s rack, stuck it in the dining room window and put all the pots over there surrounded by cat beds so the cat could enjoy the view and the plants were protected from the dog!  It worked, and a couple of weeks later, look what’s there to greet me when I got home from the transmission road show — a Valentine’s Day Flower?  Beats the hell out of a Christmas Cactus, but what is it?