Category Archives: weather

snow, weather

The Weather Outside Is …

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Remember yesterday when I mentioned the snow was continuing. Well guess what? It snowed and flurried all day today. Around noon today, this was the view out to the back patio:

Yep, that is about a foot of snow sitting on the table. That doesn’t include the  snow that blew off the table in the wind Thursday and Friday.

I spent a few hours shoveling the drive and the sidewalks (yet again) this afternoon. L proclaimed that I would be sore tomorrow when we spoke on the phone – we’ll have to see. It was a very wet and heavy snow and has continued to flurry this evening, so we have gotten another inch or two since 4pm. Molly is truly enjoying it. She sprints out and buries herself in the snow and then pops out to try and scare me. She also loves to eat snow – I wonder if that is the doggie equivalent of human iced drinks?

Time to get on with the fun and games.

snow, sports, weather

Let It Snow, …

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It has been snowing since early this morning and has picked up a bit this evening. I thought it was about through snowing and shoveled the walk and drive before I headed over to mom’s for supper (and to fix her phone and computer). During the few hours I was there, my truck got covered with another 3-4 inches of snow and it is coming down. Of course, the under sheeting of ice from Thursday is still in place and it is like ice skating on invisible ice in places.

All of which brought the Olympics and Curling to my mind. There is something magical about watching one of the curlers skate on one foot down the ice. So now I am ready to become a curler – I can skate down my driveway on one foot sweeping with a snow shovel. Or at least waving my snow shovel.

In preparation for some Olympic snow shoveling in the morning, I bring you some other sports for guys my age from a belated birthday card:

interviews, Molly, weather

Sunday Going Down

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Just when you thought the weather couldn’t be any nicer for this time of year, today it is cooler and as the air pressure rises the winds are a-howling. In fact, the weather service is blaring this tidbit over the game I’m trying to watch:

Issued by The National Weather Service
Denver/Boulder, CO
1:02 pm MST, Sun., Jan. 24, 2010

… HIGH WIND WARNING IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM MST THIS EVENING…

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN DENVER HAS ISSUED A HIGH WIND WARNING… WHICH IS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 PM MST THIS EVENING.

* TIMING… STRONG WINDS WILL CONTINUE ACROSS THE AREA THROUGH THE AFTERNOON. THE WINDS WILL DECREASE THIS EVENING.

* WINDS… SUSTAINED NORTHWEST WINDS OF 35 TO 50 MPH WILL PERSIST THROUGH THE AFTERNOON… WITH GUSTS TO 65 MPH. THE STRONGEST WINDS WILL OCCUR ALONG THE WYOMING BORDER AND AREAS EAST OF INTERSTATE 25 IN THE AREA COVERED BY THIS WARNING.

* IMPACTS… THE STRONG WINDS WILL MAKE TRAVEL HAZARDOUS… ESPECIALLY ALONG INTERSTATE 76.

FYI, we are on I-76.

The warning blaring over the TV blocked out the kickoff and first three downs of the Colts-Jets game, so I’m really happy that the Colts didn’t do much. It is really annoying to miss a critical play because you are seeing a black screen with a computerized voice s.l.o.w.l.y reading the above announcement. Now if the weather critters can just hold it down for the rest of the game…

Yesterday was a busy day for me. My undergraduate alma mater does alumni interviews of applicants for admission since there are often 20 or more qualified applicants for each class opening. So early afternoon saw me interviewing a candidate. (I get the pleasure for the one or two applicants every few years out here in the boonies since there are no other alumni here. Many years ago when we were in California it was a group effort and we did 4-5 a day for a few weeks of Saturdays.)  The interview was fun and interesting.

Every once in a while you meet a spectacular young person who makes the  interview a pleasure. This was one of those. The young lady was one of the two most spectacular candidates I have seen in the last 30 years of doing such interviews. The pleasure of meeting a youngster that has not only lettered all three years of high school in three sports, but is also intellectually curious and knowledgeable and is involved in literally tens of charitable and community efforts as both a leader and a follower is all too rare. The interview ran an hour longer than normal just because of the interesting discussions on topics ranging from philosophy to literature to mathematics to politics. I really hope she is admitted; I think she would be a definite asset to the campus.

After spending an hour getting my notes into coherent form and filing them with the admissions office, it was time to go to a working meeting related to my real job. Dinner was catered in – by one of the attendee’s sons running to Sonic. It was that kind of a meeting. {*grin*} In any case, it was after 10pm when I walked in the door to the guilt inducing stare from Molly, asking “Where have you been? Where is my chewie? Huh?”

Molly is currently laying on the floor giving me the doggie evil eye:

She wants to go for a walk but the breeze outside and the game inside is making that a slim possibility. We’ll have to see if the guilt of not listening to Molly eventually exceeds the pleasure watching the game.


prison, speaking, weather

Posting Potpourri

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I knew it was too good to be true. Today was overcast and misty/drizzly highs in the mid thirties. Made the whole day dreary and depressing. Even Molly thought it was downright low – she came and curled up at my feet and slept most of the day as I worked and talked to every Tom, Dick, and Harry on the phone. By the time I got free of the instrument of Satan it was drizzling and looking really miserable outside. Not to be deterred, Molly and I headed out for a good five mile walk. It was after dark when we got back to the house which just made the day seem even gloomier.

In other news, I got a confirmation call from the prison today. I am the honored guest speaker at the vocational program graduation on Friday. They originally asked L, but since she is up in the mountains they settled for me. {*grin*} 

It has been almost three years since I spoke to a vocational graduation at the prison. (The others were college and GED graduations.) The last time I spoke I was introduced by a lady I had known for years.  She was the Son’s grade school principal and had left to work in the vocational programs at the prison about the time the Son headed off to middle school.  Since I last spoke, she lost her battle with cancer.  It will be interesting to see who introduces me. If it is the assistant warden, I can count on it being hilarious. Let it be some of the other muckety-mucks and it will be as dry as two month old toast. There may even be some of the inmates from this post and this post in attendance as graduates. I hope so.

It will also be interesting since there was an inmate murdered in his cell last week – he was housed with a high risk offender due to the state budgetary constraints not funding opening the new high rish offender prison just completed. As a consequence, high risk offenders are now crowded into the medium risk populations. That leads to higher incidences of violence within the prisons, amidst other problems. Makes me suspect that security may be a bit edgier than normal.

One of the side benefits of gloomy days is that I tend to put on random music and listen to some really different stuff. Apropos of a gloomy day, I heard some music I haven’t heard in 40 years. Which is a topic for gloominess in and of itself. But in any case, I give you The Chocolate Watchband with Come On:

Hard to believe they used to open for the Grateful Dead at places like the Filmore, isn’t it? Even more amazing was that they played with groups like The Mindbenders at the Filmore.

I think it is a safe bet that you, my dear readers, haven’t listened to either The Chocolate Watchband or The Mindbenders in recent days.

derrieres, monday, weather

The Back Has It

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The unseasonably nice weather continued here and boy is it great! Molly and I went walking and it was close to 50 degrees this afternoon. The downside is that there are sometimes rather strange people out walking when we are.

This afternoon was a case in point: a lady and her teenage daughters were walking in front of us at about the same speed. Molly and I got the pleasure of following them from about 20 yards to the rear for a couple of miles. That in and of itself isn’t interesting; the fact that the lady and her daughters were carrying on a discussion in voices that approached foghorn levels was.

I was a bit confused over their topic of discussion for the first part of the walk. I was torn between believing that the topic was basketball, soccer, or vinyl siding. Some of the phrases I overheard were:

“It is so big that I can’t fit it through the hoop.”
“Mine is so straight and thin that everything keeps falling off.”
“I’m jealous of you because mine won’t fill them out.”
“I’m jealous because mine won’t fit in the gap.”

Of course, the bits and snippets Molly and I overhead were tantalizing but very uninformative as to what exactly was being discussed in such stentorian tones.

After 15 minutes, the conversation became clearer. They were discussing their derrières!

I still cannot fathom why they felt the need to discuss this topic in such depth and so loudly as they walked in the park, but it kept me entertained.

Now all I hope for is to see this on tomorrow’s walk: