Buddy Buck Show

Buddy Buck (00:00)
Hey buddy Buck here back with another episode of Community Connect right here on Duvall TV and today's Community Connect is brought to you by our friends at Zeke's Pizza. Ryan and Carly locally owned and operated. Thank you so much. I personally love the John Candy and the fact that they deliver beer and wine. So there we go. Thanks Ryan and Carly and Zeke's Pizza.

All right, here we are. Dominic Bellemare. We are here. We are on camera. We are ready to roll. How are you doing my man?

Dominic Bellemare (00:36)
Doing great!

Buddy Buck (00:37)
Awesome, very cool. Well, tell us a little bit about you and how long have you lived in Duvall what are you doing? Like, where are you right now too? Tell us a little bit about what's going on.

Dominic Bellemare (00:46)
Right, currently I am down near the Snoqualmie Valley Trail in a railroad neighborhood in Duvall, Washington and I've been here since 07 or something. Got into Washington state into 05 though.

Buddy Buck (01:00)
Okay, very cool. And so how are you loving Duvall? I mean, it's most of your adult life, because you're 20 years old, right?

Dominic Bellemare (01:07)
Yeah, I think Duvall is a great town. I think it's awesome how our community is so small and we're all connected. It's this quiet little town that's not like any other town and it's just, it's a nice place.

Buddy Buck (01:19)
Yeah, that's cool, man. I appreciate that. All right, so I got a question before we dive into some of the things that you're passionate about, But I got to know, Dom, what is your favorite smell?

Dominic Bellemare (01:30)
My favorite smell. I really love the smell of flowers. I don't have a specific one, just smell of flowers is nice, just springtime.

Buddy Buck (01:39)
Okay, and do you think that's from a core childhood memory? mean, you're, you know, technically you're an adult, you're 20 years old, but do you think that smell of flowers is from like a core memory growing up or is there something that you can think of?

Dominic Bellemare (01:51)
I think it's just like growing up, like my family has just like had flowers sometimes on the table, like during certain occasions and stuff. And just, it's a smell that I personally enjoy.

Buddy Buck (02:02)
That's cool. That's cool. All right. So let's jump right into this. So tell us a little bit about what your passions are, because I know you have a few, but maybe just talk about like your favorite passion that you do, because I'm really intrigued, you know, at your age and how smart you were when we were talking about some of these things last time I saw you on the bridge.

Dominic Bellemare (02:21)
Yeah, well, one of my biggest passions is probably weather, meteorology. I love it. I'm always focused on it and I'll post about it when there's big situations. The Duvall flood of December was a big one. I know I walked on the Woodinville Duvall Bridge when it was open in the morning and I walked the bridge. It was one of the catastrophic floods that happened every so decades.

It was a really rare event and when we had Duvall surrounded, I was updating on my Instagram with road closures and when roads were reopening. I'll also track rain amounts, snow amounts, just any type of weather. I've got a weather station at home also that I bought for a few hundred dollars. That keeps track of the wind, the rain totals and all of that good stuff.

Buddy Buck (03:12)
That's so cool. Okay, so you're 20. how did you get involved and excited about weather? what really got you sparked into weather and meteorology?

Dominic Bellemare (03:19)
Yeah, I think kind of just around the age of seven, I've been interested in like snowstorms a lot. And then after that, that passion kind of just grew from there. I have the Weather Channel app on my phone and I use that so, much at a young age and I keep using it now, but I also use more professional stuff now that I'm at the age where I'm at. I use wendy.com to check winds and other sources of information. I keep track about

I've been keeping track also about El Niño, La Niña, and Enzo, which is a neutral type pattern. Currently, if anyone's wondering, we are in a La Niña year, but it's been a strange La Niña year because we haven't had much snow down here. We've only really had one or two days of snow and then it all melted off, which was extremely strange because Seattle didn't get any of the snow.

In a La Nina year, you get snow at least one time. So pretty interesting situation we're in.

Buddy Buck (04:19)
you talked about the flood when we were down there, we ran into each other. And it's funny because I've seen you around town a lot and I've stopped and we've chatted out of my truck when I'm driving by sometimes. But you're walking around and whenever we've talked, you've just blown me away with your knowledge about weather and just your passion for it. It's not just like your...

like your knowledge, you can just hear it in your voice. it really does get you excited. And that comes through even the camera like this today. So that's really cool, man. I just wanted to tell you that.

Dominic Bellemare (04:47)
I think something that's also great is I also run a wildfire account on X and blue sky, which I've been working on for about two years now, which is kind of related with my passion for weather. When there's a wildfire that sparks around Duvall, I'll drive onto it and I'll be safe, keep a safe distance and I'll post information on the fire as it progresses.

Buddy Buck (04:48)
Right on.

Dominic Bellemare (05:13)
and I'll cover the whole state of Washington, but when they happen around here, I'm usually live on the scene getting like live coverage of the fire.

Buddy Buck (05:21)
I love that man, that's so cool. Well, we'll be sure to reference your X and blue sky accounts once we post this content on Duvall TV. How's that sound?

Dominic Bellemare (05:29)
Yeah, for sure. That sounds great.

Buddy Buck (05:31)
Right on. I have watched your account on X. think you were just right around almost around thousand followers on X. I've seen some of your posts, especially with the flood too. So keep up the good work on that, man.

Dominic Bellemare (05:37)
Yeah.

Thank you.

Buddy Buck (05:43)
Alright, so just a little couple of little personal things you had mentioned ⁓ to me earlier that you were a former Minecraft YouTuber, right? So when you say former, I mean you're 20 years old. So at what age were you a Minecraft YouTuber? And for those that don't know what the heck we're talking about, tell the audience a little bit about what a Minecraft YouTuber actually means.

Dominic Bellemare (06:06)
Yes, so ⁓ anyone can really be a YouTuber and my niche was specifically on Minecraft, which a lot of people know about block video game and basically as a Minecraft YouTuber, I started out in 2020 and I was working off of my pandemic desk, which was a small desk that wasn't even like gaming setup like I was working on my dad's seven or nine year old computer and I started this channel called

⁓ Enderglow and it's something that a lot of people at the high school knew about or still talks about and I basically just hopped on hit record and I'd make some Minecraft content which I'd come up with different topics about and just go for it.

Buddy Buck (06:53)
Cool. And so when we're talking about Minecraft, I know a lot of maybe people my age. So I'm Gen X, I'm 50. Some 50 year olds might not know what Minecraft is, if their kids didn't play just real quickly, what is Minecraft? You said a block game. What do you mean by that? Just tell us a little bit more about Minecraft.

Dominic Bellemare (07:09)
Yeah, so when you hop in, you've got ⁓ kind of two different modes. You got survival and you've got creative mode. Survival is kind of where you got to kind of lock in, know, know your stuff. Creative is kind of more for the just relaxing touch. Survival is where you hop in and you mine some wood. You gather resources. You'll craft pickaxes, armor, and upgrade, and...

I guess that's kind of it.

Buddy Buck (07:36)
do you still play Minecraft at all or is that done now for you?

Dominic Bellemare (07:39)
That was kind of an old chapter. left about two years ago now. In the summer it'll have been two years. And it was an emotional time leaving because I was entering college. So I was like, I can't really keep up the pace anymore. And I didn't really want to keep it up from time to time. So I just kind of left it. So I left with a final keep on glowing, which was the end of my videos because

I was Enderglow and it was my catchphrase. So, left with that.

Buddy Buck (08:08)
I love that you had a catchphrase. So I just wanted to tell the audience at home, for people that don't know Minecraft, I just looked this up. 140 million active monthly users, and there's been over 300 million copies sold across all platforms. So PC, console, mobile, all the platforms. So very popular game, yes?

Dominic Bellemare (08:27)
Yep,

very popular.

Buddy Buck (08:28)
Very popular, yeah for sure, that's awesome. Okay, last little thing here. It says that you speak French. how did you end up learning French? I'm guessing it was from family, but tell me about that.

Dominic Bellemare (08:38)
Yeah, so my parents actually grew up in Quebec, Canada. So they learned fluent French from there. And since I was born, we visited almost every year except the pandemic years. We've gone over to Quebec, Canada. So I've just naturally grown up to French around me. And in my household, we kind of switch. Sometimes we'll speak French, but most of the time we'll speak English here. But I still keep my French so that when I go over to Quebec, Canada to my extended family,

I'm able to use that fluent French and communicate with them.

Buddy Buck (09:10)
That's awesome. That's such a good skill to have, obviously. I think you're starting to probably figure that out more and more as you get a little bit older too, because having that second language is huge. It's key.

so I live in the Victorian community. My wife and I live up here. And so I've seen you walking around a little bit. Do you like to walk around the neighborhoods a lot or is that just how you get your exercise I see out and about a lot? Is that just part of your weekly or daily flow?

Dominic Bellemare (09:33)
Yeah, it's actually most of the time I'll try to take 30 minutes, 10 hour walk around Duvall. So I know I've seen a lot of people and familiar faces around from the high school and just people that know me and I'll often just walk around all places. But my favorite walk is really just going up. I think it's 145th and then turning onto Baton Road and then passing through like a paved area in the forest.

I think it's just relaxing to walk through nature and I've loved that walk, I'll take different routes around the city.

Buddy Buck (10:07)
that's cool, man. All right. when you said you had your weather station at home. So tell me just a little bit going back to the weather station. What does that mean to the average person? Because I can't even begin to imagine what that means.

Dominic Bellemare (10:20)
Yeah, so I've got a weather station that I got during the Christmas time. I set it up on my roof. Basically what it does is it has a wind sensor, a temperature sensor, and like a rain gauge. So what will happen is when we get these big rain events, we'll often have, the rain gauge will start picking up on the rain amount and it'll let me know the rain total at the end of the day.

or it'll tell me the wind speed. The wind speed updates every three seconds, so I get live wind data really in time. And as kind of a weather enthusiast, it is awesome because when you got a weather app like the Weather Channel or your own weather app, it'll try its best to tell you like what the temperature is, but your phone will often tell you like it's 46 Fahrenheit, it's 50 Fahrenheit. But mine will go to the point so you'll see

32.7 Fahrenheit, for example, instead of 32. So you'll get the really exact numbers. So when you're getting snow, especially, and you're close to freezing mark, super useful to know that because you know if you're getting really close to freezing or if you're still a few marks from freezing.

Buddy Buck (11:32)
Yeah, that's really cool, man. So what's the next set of tech if you were like, hey, if I could just have this next upgrade of tech, what would be your next purchase for yourself?

Dominic Bellemare (11:41)
Yeah, I think my next purchase would probably be the Tempest, which is my weather station, has a lightweight weather map, which basically will show you like, I guess the weather data on a little screen. So it's kind of just so that I don't have to go on the app or the website. I actually can just look at this, the display that's right next to me.

Buddy Buck (12:05)
that's cool yeah that sounds really neat

All right, so it says you're majoring in meteorology and you plan to attend UW Seattle coming up in the fall. Is that still the plan?

Dominic Bellemare (12:15)
Yeah, that's still the plan. I'll be going to UW Seattle, but I'll also be still at Cascadia in the background. But I'll be joining the UW Dogcast hopefully, which is related to meteorology. And I'm going to start that in the fall.

Buddy Buck (12:31)
That's awesome. How would you feel about coming on and doing a one-off spot on the weather in a future episode of Duvall TV? Would you want to do that with us?

Dominic Bellemare (12:39)
Yeah, I'd love that. I'd be able to talk about the weather for the next few days and kind of give an update on what to expect.

Buddy Buck (12:46)
Yeah, maybe as we get closer to the REF RUN 5K, because you know, that's something we're partnered with. Buddy Buck Real Estate is the title sponsor for the REF RUN 5K, which is the kickoff of Duvall Days coming up on the first Saturday of June. So maybe as we get closer to that, too, that would be some really valuable information to get the weather updates coming up for Duvall Days. How's that?

Dominic Bellemare (13:04)
Yeah, for sure. I'd be happy to help.

Buddy Buck (13:06)
Sweet man. That's really, really cool. Well, congrats on that. Congrats on going to UW Seattle and you're going to be a DAWG My wife and I are both the University of Washington alumni. So go, DAWGS Dom on that. so last thing, and I know you've supported Duvall TV. You follow us at Instagram, YouTube, the whole thing. we've, started posting on Tik TOK recently too. I don't know if you caught that yet, but I figured, Hey, let's just get it out to all platforms everywhere.

Dominic Bellemare (13:18)
very good.

Buddy Buck (13:31)
But if you could wave a magic wand and see something either added on or something you'd be like, ⁓ this would be really cool. Something on the show. What would you like to see on some future episodes?

Dominic Bellemare (13:42)
not really sure about that. I think you've covered a lot on the show, which is great. And I love that you've added these community connects and the giveaways. think those are great additions and I think there's definitely more, but it just has to be figured out.

Buddy Buck (13:57)
Nice. Yeah, I love that you didn't say add the weather because yeah, we already we already checked that we're going to do that in the future for sure. All right. Last thing we're going to do a little hot seat here. So I'm going to ask you either or question. We're going to just end it with this. I'm going to say two things and you just pick one of them. OK, are you ready?

All right, sunrise or sunset?

Dominic Bellemare (14:19)
sunrise.

Buddy Buck (14:20)
Okay, dogs or cats?

Dominic Bellemare (14:22)
Dogs.

Buddy Buck (14:22)
Okay, English or French?

Dominic Bellemare (14:24)
probably English.

Buddy Buck (14:26)
Okay, tacos or pizza?

Dominic Bellemare (14:27)
Tacos.

Buddy Buck (14:28)
Early bird or night owl?

Dominic Bellemare (14:30)
Early bird.

Buddy Buck (14:31)
Texting or phone calls.

Dominic Bellemare (14:32)
Phone calls.

Buddy Buck (14:33)
Okay, last couple, wind or rain?

Dominic Bellemare (14:35)
when

Buddy Buck (14:35)
And last one, thunder or lightning.

Dominic Bellemare (14:38)
Lightning.

Buddy Buck (14:39)
Lightning it is. OK, cool.

All right, Dom, so go ahead and put a bow on this episode of Community Connect for us.

Dominic Bellemare (14:45)
Merci d'avoir écouté Duvall TV!

Buddy Buck (14:48)
Yeah, baby. All right. Thanks for joining us on another episode of Duvall TV. Duvall Washington, small town, real life Buddy Buck Peace.