"YABBER-LINER" - ALL ABOARD

Brooke, if you want a tan, here is the place to be, temperature has topped 100 plus for last 7 days and another one coming up today! Bikini minimum requirement less is even better.

now that's more like it, there was a little too much testosterone in some of the earlier posts

Thaw comes slowly to storm-ravaged Kentucky
By ROGER ALFORD " 2 hours ago

CANEYVILLE, Ky. (AP) " Thousands of National Guard troops swinging chainsaws cut their way into remote communities Sunday to reach residents stranded by a deadly ice storm, freeing some to get out of their driveways for the first time in nearly a week.

The soldiers went door-to-door handing out chili and beef stew rations to people cooped up in their powerless homes as authorities ratcheted up the relief effort for what Gov. Steve Beshear called the biggest natural disaster ever to hit the state.

The sight of Humvees rolling up one street in rural Grayson County, about 90 miles southwest of Louisville, sent children bouncing off the walls inside the generator-powered house where Bryan Bowling and 18 other people have been hunkering down by a fireplace.

"The kids were looking out the windows and yelling, 'Yay! We're saved!'" said Bowling, 30, who has a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old.

"It's just good to know that people care."

Kentucky was hit hardest by the ice storm that paralyzed wide areas from the Ozarks through Appalachia early last week. Officials blamed or suspected the storm in at least 42 deaths nationwide, most from hypothermia, traffic accidents or carbon monoxide poisoning from improperly installed generators or charcoal grills used indoors.

At its height, the storm knocked out power to 1.3 million customers from the Southern Plains to the East Coast, more than 700,000 of them in Kentucky, a state record. By Sunday, the figure had dropped closer to 400,000 in Kentucky, with scattered outages in other states.

The 4,600 soldiers Beshear ordered on duty, including his entire Army National Guard, swept through the state distributing food and water, removing fallen trees, providing security and checking houses in hard-to-reach areas. They brought food to Henry Mudd, among others, who said he has had nine family members staying in his powerless apartment, usually home to just three.