Category Archives: weather

oddness, snow, weather

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s …

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Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It’s off to shovel snow we go.  It snowed again yesterday and so this morning it is time to clear it off before getting down to real work.

(Courtesy of VSTA Newsletter)

Makes me a bit jealous of L. She headed down to Arizona yesterday for some corporate training this week. Her biggest concern was how not to carry her heavy coat with her on the plane.  After all it is a toasty 3 degrees out right now with corresponding highs for the day compared to the balmy weather in Arizona (in a city where the BCS National Championship game is being played tonight.)

Odd question of the day: Do you have certain actors/actresses you like to watch and yet you cannot put your finger on why you like to watch their work? I do and it often bothers me as to why I like to watch their work.

In one example that springs to mind, the actress in question is not exceptionally good looking, sexy, or even capable. Her acting seems monolithic and wooden when I reflect upon the performance in retrospect. And yet I will scour NetFlix to find shows and movies she is in just to watch. Why? Who knows?

So do you have similar inexplicable quirks in your viewing preferences?

blizzard, cold, weather

The Week From Hell

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Last week was one of those weeks I’m really happy only rarely occur. A week ago Thursday we got our first real snow of the season – with blizzard and white out conditions. Of course, that also happened to be the day I started to come down with the creeping crud that is circulating here abouts. It turned out to be a dud of a blizzard, mainly wind and cold with only a half foot of snow.

Friday more than made up for the dud blizzard of Thursday with more snow and wind and real blizzard conditions. The temperature stayed in the single digits, the wind blew at 35 mph with gusts to 50 mph and the snow dropped out of the sky with a vengeance. When it finally stopped snowing around 3pm on New Years Eve, the wind continued to howl at 40 mph and wind chills were in the -25 to -35 range. The snow was drifting into drifts as deep as 7 feet in places.

(Photo swiped from Google – not one of mine.)

Remember that crud I mentioned? It came on strong and my nose would not quit running. I was supposed to go to a New Years Eve dinner, but I had to call and beg off. I was in bed and trying to sleep by 6pm that night. New Years day I got my snow shoveled and the MIL’s snow shoveled (it was challenging to travel the 5 blocks or so to her house just to shovel) and then crawled back into bed. By now my throat was raw and I was hacking along my merry way.

On Sunday, my throat was so raw I couldn’t swallow, my ears ached, my nose and lips were cracked and bleeding – I felt and looked just wonderful. Couple that with the fact that the infection was throwing my diabetes control off and causing my blood sugar to spike and drop in spite of the insulin, etc. and it was beginning to look like it might be time to visit the emergency room. Fortunately, I finally started to stabilize by evening.

On Monday I still felt like crap, but no worse. Of course it was then that my voice completely disappeared. I slowly got better over then next few days and actually began to feel human by Thursday – just couldn’t talk and had no energy. Today I am pretty close to recovered modulo tiredness and an episodic hacking cough. I could do without another week like the last one. Ever!

Here’s hoping your week was much better.

jury duty, weather, wind

Huff and Puff and ….

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The wind howled today, at times hitting 50+ mph and the temperature never got above freezing. Right now the mercury is dropping and the wind chill is in the 9 below zero range. I think it is safe to say that fall is officially here.

In contrast to the cold and wind outside, I spent all day in an overheated courtroom.

All day from 8:30am to 5:30pm and there is still no jury empaneled. I hope to find out tomorrow if I am on the jury or not. There is nothing like the maneuvering of attorneys in a multiple felony case to bring out the worst of the jury selection process. Thus my new theme song:

Hi ho, hi ho

It’s off to court I go

Defense to the right of me

Prosecution to the left of me

And the judge in the front of me 

How low can we go

So off to court I venture in the morning.

odd thoughts, weather

Odd Thoughts

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Yesterday I caught a bit of dialog in a teaser for a TV show that made my day.

“You’re building a time machine. Right? So what’s the rush?”

Talk about an amusingly deep thought! If you ever succeed in building a time machine, you can always go back to any earlier time with it so that if you have ever built it you already have it now.  If you don’t succeed, it will make no difference and you will have no machine ever. I always dreamt of having one of these

ever since I read H. G. Well’s novella “The Time Machine” in my childhood. I still wouldn’t mind having one, but by the above logic I don’t have a snowball’s chance in ….

In other completely useless information, it is forecast to get up to 60 degrees today and have highs in the 50s until … wait for it … next week around Thanksgiving when the highs will be around freezing. Sort of figures. Wait until the time when everyone has time to wonder about outdoors and then make it turn cool. Oh well.

Time to get on with it. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.

drear, fall, weather

The Drear and the Darkness

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The last couple of days have been dull and dreary with clouds and occasional skiffs of snow, highs in the low 40s and lows in the teens. Typical fall weather for around here. Because it has been staying above freezing for the daylight hours, the snow is now mostly gone and we are back to the dull drear of fall in the period once the leaves have fallen. There is still a hint of green in the grass and the sagebrush is turning brown, but that too will soon fade. Somewhat like this:

(Picture from UC Collection)

L went skiing for her inaugural run of the year yesterday. That means she was both happy and stiff and sore last night when I talked to her. (Ibuprofen was invented for aging baby boomers. {*grin*}) The interesting point was that it was blowing and snowing up there – pretty much the standard weather in the mountains from now until spring. Right now, it is both colder and snowier in the mountains than out here on the plains. L proclaims that it is now winter in the mountains in spite of what the calendar says. At least it can look pretty:

(The glow of Breckenridge in winter.)

Which brings me to one of the things I dislike about this season – the decreasing amount of daylight and advancing time of darkness as we approach the winter solstice on December 21. Sunset is already at 4:35pm and will get progressively earlier as time rolls on. I really dislike the coming weeks when it is dark by 3:30 – it is depressing. It is even worse in the mountains where the valley walls cut the sunlight off even earlier. I often wonder how people who live at far northern (or southern for that matter) latitudes handle it. Days with no hours of sunlight seem like they would be really hard to endure. On the other hand, the shortening days seem to be ideal weather for soup. {*grin*}

Time to get on with real work.