The Numbers Don't Lie

Did I mention that there was no cotton candy to be found at the Peanut Festival? That had to have been the biggest disappointment of the day. We looked and looked and looked... but no cotton candy. There were at least 10 food booths with menus featuring BBQ, hamburgers, peanuts, gyros, chicken, peanuts, fries, chili fries, peanuts, corn dogs, fried oreos, peanuts, smoothies, lemonade, peanuts, shaved ice, ice cream, and even some peanuts; but alas, no cotton candy at all. It's simply MADNESS!

Anyway, I was reading somewhere today about middle class houses... or something. I really don't remember what that story was... maybe something about middle class neighborhoods on the decline? Anyway, the story specifically defined "middle class" as those families who earn something like 90-120% of the area's median household income. And that got me wondering about The Boro's median income. So, I found this web site (Sperling's BestPlaces) that does a pretty good job of compiling data by zip code (I know, there are tons of others... but this came up first on Google's search results). I was surprised at a few things about The Boro:

1. Since it was the first thing I was looking for... The median household income for the U.S. is $44,684; for The Boro, it's $27,095. Household. Yet our tax rates (income and sales) are higher than the national average.
2. Over 32% of our households (compared to 13% nationwide) have a household income of less than $15,000. Almost one-third of our households make less than the poverty line for a three-person family (based on 2006 figures).
3. We are a town of over 34,000! I'm actually kind of surprised we're that large. We've grown 5.5% since 2000.
4. The median age of a Boro-ian is 24.9. AND over 51% of the population is between 18 and 34. Goodness gracious, we're young down here! Wait... maybe that explains why we're so underpaid.
5. Only about 15% of the houses are over $200,000 in value. The median home cost is $137,800 (compared to a national median of $217,200).
6. The Boro's cost of living is 19% lower than the U.S. average.
7. Climate data makes The Boro look downright pleasant (for the most part). We get more rainfall than the U.S. average (45.7 inches to the U.S.'s 36.6). Ha! We have, on average, 214 sunny days... which is probably more-than-accurate... although the sun comes out just about 365 days a year. So, truly, what's a "sunny day"? What they don't tell you is that the sunniest of days down here can be more miserable than any other bad weather anywhere else! Finally, the measure for heat (average high temp.) is flat-out taken in the wrong month. Maybe nationally it's helpful to know the average high temp. in July, but what you want to ask about The Boro is "what is your average AUGUST temp.?!" July? No, July is nice. August... that's the hot one. I took the dogs for a bike ride this afternoon/evening around 6:00, and the heat radiating off the pavement burned my pawpads! Can't imagine how it felt to Kona's & Cooper's!

So, speaking of weather, this pic was from last week after I ran the last few laps of mowing to beat the storm. The storm is moving from right to left in the picture and quickly overtook the last of the sunset. I took about 10 pictures of this bad boy moving in... and I'm most surprised by the fact that I didn't hit it just right to capture some of the lightning. Of course, I've never been that lucky... not once has my timing been perfect to capture a flash on film... but this was one of those lightning-every-few-seconds storms, so I thought perhaps my luck would turn. Silly, silly me.