One business owner finally took the first step... in conservative little Prosser too!!

Evening you potheads. 

Only because I know that's the first word that comes to mind looking at this picture. That or I look drunk. I am neither in this photo, the sun was shining in my face when my mom took this photo. She did take a sort of cute one that I uploaded earlier. That smile's not BS, either, she took this when we were out floating and I was having a really great time. 

Speaking of pot I have some very interesting news! Prosser just opened their first legal marijuana store. The type where all you have to do is show proof of identification and you can buy high quality bud for $20-$30 a gram. Granted that is not competitive with street prices what-so-ever (1 gram would regularly be about $5-$10), and they aren't claiming to try to be. The higher prices basically reflect the costs of legality issues and tax involved, but they aren't terrible considering the people that are buying it are primarily middle aged adults that don't have dealers and would rather not start asking local high school kids to find one (lol). 

A coworker of my Dad's predicted it will be a "flop" after the excitement dies down. But considering the shop sold their entire shipment of 300 grams (rationed in individual grams mind you, so we're talking $6000, at least $1800 of which will be used as tax revenue for better schools, a safer city, newer and modernized infrastructure in the town, increased tourism and foot-traffic from outsiders... the lists goes on. 

So hats off to you, brave entrepreneur that took the first step in opening the first marijuana store. 

peace. 

Historical Imaging, development over the years...~13~

Alright, so I'm on google earth and I found this really neat setting called Historical Imaging. This is where basically you can look at images of aerial views and how they've changed since 1996. In 1996, I was five years old. I of course had to look at Benton City and how it's changed, as well as my house.

This is the most recent image of my street. I'm pretty sure it's from 2009.

Google Earth image from 1996. As you can see, hardly anything has changed. And if the photo quality wasn't so bad, it probably wouldn't be noticable.

But as I started to search out other friend's house locations in Pasco and Kennewick, I noticed some major differences. This is Jessika's new house location today:

Here's Kingsbury Drive in Pasco, from 2006.

Road 100 in 2006

Kingsbury, among other streets over off Road 100 in Pasco. No wonder I get so confused. These are little McMansion houses, pretty nice, pretty modern.

In 2004.

Off Road 100 in 2003.

And last, 1996. Unfortunately there were no images between 1996 and 2003.

All farmland. Anyway just thought that was interesting. I'm sure the quality of images will get better over time. Crazy how fast places can change.

yours,
Emily