7. If You Blog It They Will Come. This year showed me some of the power of my writing. After 60 Minutes covered the CIA spy plane in March, I wrote about the plane’s connection to North Carolina. Two months later, I got a call from a reporter from the New York Times who wanted to see what else I knew. While I wasn’t a source for the article that came out later, it did make me realize that what I write here could gain attention, and quickly.

I got another reminder of that when my former neighbor Ronnie Williams became mayor of Garner. Ronnie found my post via Google and stopped by to say hello. Behold the power of Google!

Google itself was the topic of a series of posts when bloggers discovered them visiting the Triangle. I posted a few more articles before the story appeared in the papers. Soon after it appeared Google was setting up a sales office and not hiring any useful employees! (Disclaimer: I work in sales, too, so nyah.)

[Update 18 Sep 2017: I have chosen to remove any discussion of the murder case here as things have run their course.]

The year 2005 has given me more confidence in my writing. It has shown that blogs can be worthy news sources, especially given their timely nature. Y’all really do read the stuff I write up here. Thanks for allowing me to entertain and inform you. Sometimes even accurately!

Number 8: Reut Visits. Some events don’t get blogged about. This is one of those occasions, though looking back I’m a bit surprised I never mentioned it. Our good friend in Italy, Lamberto, has a sister-in-law named Reut Cohen who was days away from her mandatory service in the Israeli army. She wanted to brush up on her english beforehand, so she contacted her friends in the States to set up some visits. We hosted her for a week in September.

Reut’s english is already pretty good. Hallie and Travis absolutely adored her. We enjoyed visiting with her and learning about different cultures. She seemed to be very happy here, which of course made us happy, though Raleigh isn’t as exciting as New York or DC. Reut didn’t have the benefit of a car while she was here, which severely limits what she could do during the day. I never gave much thought to how important a car is to life in Raleigh before she came to visit.

9. Extreme weather. There’s weather every year, of course, but this year had some interesting stuff. It started with a bang (though fortunately not a literal one) when a tornado whizzed by our house close enough to hear. I like to think I’m prepared for most any weather emergency but that really, really spooked me. I purchased an automatic weather radio the very next day. Now when severe weather is announced the radio will alert us – a very prudent investment.

January will live in infamy from the surprise snowfall that paralyzed the city of Raleigh. While at first I made fun of the bad driving, once I joined them my tune quickly changed. My 30 minute commute stretched to over three agonizing hours. I was one of the lucky ones, too! The city of Raleigh got some really, really bad publicity, the government put a better snow plan in place, and eventually we all moved on. It remains to be seen if anything will change for our next snowfall, however. I’m not holding my breath.

One March morning the sky got ominously dark. We were just sitting down for breakfast when a terrible racket enveloped the house. Hail the size of quarters was falling, pelting the roof, cars, and everything else. I managed to measure and photograph one hailstone before leaving for work. It was the biggest hail I’d ever seen.

We got more hail in December from a freak storm. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Neither could our local forecasters, who differed on whether it was hail or sleet which had fallen. Quite unusual.

Sandwiched in the middle of all this was a long, hot drought. Droughts are becoming routine here, unfortunately. Some experts opine that the city should enact permanent water restrictions. I say that growth restrictions would be more effective. Raleigh citizens need to stop subsidizing sprawl. We should put plans into place to ensure that new development won’t put an unmanageable burden on our overdrawn water resources. Y’all newcomers want to live in a starter castle in the boonies? Fine! Don’t expect me to ration my water so you can fill up your pool.

Here’s hoping there’ll be no freak snowstorms or searing droughts to write about in 2006.