billroper, posts by tag: weather - LiveJournal (original) (raw)

| | I was outside a few minutes ago looking for something in Gretchen's minivan and discovered that the garbage and recycling bins had both blown off the driveway and into the side yard for at least the second time today. Happily, nothing seems to have escaped, although with the way the wind has been blowing, anything that escaped could be halfway to Oz by now.Gretchen had earlier suggested moving the cans into the garage and I had demurred, but under the circumstances, I decided that she was right (and I was wrong) and managed to find space at the front of the garage to shoehorn them in.Happily, the garbage does not have to be put out until tomorrow evening. I hope there's less wind by then.Tags:home, musings, weather The weather is at one of those in between points. It's too cold to air condition, too hot to turn on the heat, and too humid to be really comfortable.This will pass *way* too soon...Tags:home, musings, weather So tomorrow, the heat goes back on outside, which means that the A/C has gone on inside tonight to get ahead of it. Sadly, the pool closed *last* weekend, or I'd think about sneaking over there.Ah, well. Better swimming luck next year, I guess.Tags:home, musings, weather The thunderstorms have arrived. Boy, have they arrived!Happily, I got the electrostatic air filters back off the patio where I had taken them out to clean yesterday *before* the weather showed up or they would have gotten to dry out all over again...Tags:home, musings, stuff, weather The heatwave finally broke temporarily as the thunderstorms rolled through this afternoon. Unfortunately, this also took the power out for about three hours. It is *amazing* to watch what happens when there is no power and no wi-fi. :)I, however, am old. And my guitar was sitting on its stand in the office, which meant that *I* was easily able to find things to do for a while.Meanwhile, in other news, NBC has officially canceled "Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist", which seems like a terrible waste of a really good TV series. The studio is continuing to shop it around and has suggested posting in various places with the hashtag #saveZoeysplaylist, so let me contribute here and encourage those of you who can stomach Twitter to do the same.Sadly, there are too many twits on Twitter for my taste...Tags:#savezoeysplaylist, home, musings, tv, weather It's Friday and the weekend is here and things were supposed to be slowing down. However, once again time is failing at its basic purpose and everything is happening at once.The kids played well today (good pitching and defense are two of my favorite things; they combined it with sufficient hitting to power out a 17-8 win in five innings). There is another game early tomorrow afternoon where it will be unseasonably warm. And then we'll have a fourth game in six days on Monday.Sunday is K's confirmation, so we'll be up early for that.I am sure there will be sleep again. I am greatly looking forward to it.Gretchen has told me that when school is out, I should take a week off to play guitar and read comic books. I am considering this...Tags:home, musings, softball, weather It's been really too cool outside for a lot of things.Now, we have moved immediately to too warm.This seems hardly fair.I have turned on the air conditioner anyway.Tags:home, musings, weather It was supposed to be getting warmer for Spring, but the weather appears to have other ideas this week. There's a freeze warning tonight, so I went out and brought one of Gretchen's plants that had been hiding outside during the kitchen renovation back into the house, because I didn't want to be responsible for killing the poor thing.It should get warmer again soon, but not soon enough. :)Tags:home, musings, weather Gretchen and I picked up lunch at Portillo's and drove over to Big Bend Lake, where we parked and ate.It was a lovely day. Still a lot of snow though.And there's ice on the lake, but I don't expect that to last a lot longer.Tags:home, musings, weather The snow finally stopped this morning. The total at O'Hare was around seven inches, which looked about right for our neighborhood too. Happily, the AWD Edge was easily able to back out of the garage, past Gretchen's van, out of the driveway, around the neighbor's car (which was sitting in the middle of the cul-de-sac so that he could snowblow *his* driveway), and get me to the dentist's office for my scheduled cleaning this morning.After I got back, I did some work, then headed out to clear the driveway around noon. The snow was lightweight and fluffy, which meant that (with Gretchen's van out of the driveway on an errand) it was pretty easy to move with the snowblower. I left the porch for Julie to clear after school. It strikes me just now that that may not have happened, so we'll have to check tomorrow.There is no snow in the immediate forecast. This is good, because Gretchen told me that there has been measurable snow for the last nine days.And I am tired of moving snow. :)Tags:home, musings, weather It has been annoyingly cold here for the last few days and the forecast for tonight includes another snowfall of many inches. We'll see how much of that we get in the northwest suburbs, as it's looking like the snow is concentrated along the lake. This is fine with me, because I don't live along the lake, although massively inconvenient for my friends who do.But I did make it out to Sam's Club today to pick up assorted groceries, dog food, and a full tank of gas, which was becoming progressively more important. I still need to tell you where the last tank of gas went, but it's been busy.Tomorrow is back to work and back to school, except that the whole school district will be on an eLearning day tomorrow due to the snow. Me, I just have to badger the facilities guy into grabbing the snowblower and clearing the driveway...Tags:home, musings, weather It is clear that I could have planned this better.When I got home from running around today in the snow to take care of various errands, I figured I would grab the snowblower and clear the snow off the driveway. This was a good plan.If it would have stopped snowing. Which it didn't.Now, I could have gone ahead and blown the snow away anyway, but there was likely to be enough snow that I would have to do it again tomorrow. And the snow was going to continue until after dark and I really prefer not to be running the snowblower in the dark.Gretchen suggested that I could do it tomorrow, which seemed like a really good idea.I have now seen the weather forecast for tomorrow.The high temperature is going to be six degrees. That is not a balmy six degrees Celsius. That is six degrees Fahrenheit with enough wind that the wind chills are going to be below -20 degrees.I am thinking that I am going to leave that snow on the driveway for another day.Or two.Tags:home, musings, weather Today's snow was more of a challenge for the snowblower than the previous. It rather reminded me of the Groundhog Day Blizzard from ten years ago, as there was less snow, but it was definitely heavier. But the driveway and sidewalks were cleared.We picked up maybe another couple of inches of snow during the day today, so I will get up early tomorrow and blow that away.In other news, we have now moved Sunshine's litter box and food dishes to the upstairs landing, so we'll see if she's good with that. (Further away from the dog? Yeah, probably good with that.)Tags:cats, dogs, home, musings, weather Dear Amazon:I do not recall ordering more snow. I am *certain* that I did not order another eleven inches of snow, as the six inches of snow that we already had was quite enough, thank you.Please send me a link so that I can print out a return label, as I do not wish to keep this item, even if you do not charge me for it. Normally, I would try to return it at my local Kohl's store, but there is another eleven inches of snow between me and them, so this is not going to work for me.Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.Tags:home, musings, weather I just took the garbage and recycling out to the bins and thence to the curb. It is really cold out there.Of course, I suppose it's also the end of January, so I shouldn't be surprised.Tags:home, musings, weather We got around six inches of snow last night. I had intended to take care of it first thing in the morning, but the snow wasn't quite done yet, so I ended up taking some time off work to supervise the Facilities guy (that would be me) and make sure that he did a good job of clearing the driveway. Gretchen had picked up a fresh gallon of gas yesterday, the snowblower started right up, and the whole job only took about 45 minutes, which was a pretty good time, in my opinion.I managed to get through all of last year without needing the snowblower, so I suppose we were due...Tags:home, musings, weather It was back to the doctor's office today for one more test that I was able to schedule after yesterday's physical. We'll see how the results are, although since they didn't say "Go to the hospital immediately!", I'm assuming that they didn't find anything awful.I got to the office *really* early, because we got snow and ice last night and I wasn't sure what shape the roads would be in. Happily, they were in good shape, so I spent the extra time reading the Internet and listening to music in the car.Before I left, I shoveled about a third of the driveway to get this stuff off it before it had a chance to freeze solid. With about four inches of snow followed by freezing rain, things had compacted down to about an inch of very heavy, but loose ice. I think this weighed about the same as a foot of snow. Ick.Julie came out and helped me clear things when I got home after lunch, which was nice, because it meant I wasn't doing this all by myself. I think K was asleep. :)Anyway, I see that I am rapidly running out of year. I'll have to figure out what we're doing tomorrow night. Gretchen requested that I pick up some champagne for her at Sam's Club tomorrow. I told her that I would get it at Mariano's. She doesn't need a Sam's Club sized bottle of champagne for herself and I can't help dispose of it because of my sulfite allergy. :)One day to go!Tags:doctor, home, musings, weather Against all odds, we completed our highly delayed APBA baseball draft today. For those of you just joining us, this is a continuous ownership, superstar league with eight teams sopping up major league talent from the 30 real MLB teams. We get some very good teams; in order to prevent pitching from dominating, we have a cap on the number of the top starting pitchers in the league that can be rostered. This year, the cap allowed five starting pitchers to enter the league. This will be important in a minute.It was forecast to be a hot, miserable, and humid day, all of which came true. We started at 1 PM, by which time we start to get some shade in the backyard, where we were holding the draft in the interest of social distancing. About the time we started, unforecasted clouds rolled in and provided a bit of cooling, for which we were all grateful. There were also light winds that helped. Even so, it was hot, miserable, and humid.I was drafting fifth out of eight, so I was fairly certain of getting one of the four pitchers that I had on my list. The thing that was also fairly certain was that I wouldn't get a shot a Jack Flaherty, who I wanted because he was both talented and a Cardinal. I tried dangling bodies for a trade, but nothing came of it, so I settled back to see what would happen.The opening pick was Christian Vasquez, probably the best catcher available in the draft, but a bit of a surprise to me, as I suspect he will come back to Earth next year. The next pick was Fernando Tatis, Jr., which surprised no one. Then Flaherty went with the third pick, followed by Bo Bichette with the fourth pick. I thought this was a bit of a reach, but this meant that I had clear sailing to pick Walker Buehler of the Dodgers who may have been the best pitcher available in the draft. We'll see. :)I spent the rest of the draft handling the one fellow who had to draft remotely due to having a family member who is a special risk for COVID. I had him on the phone and he was drafting right in front of me (except in the first round, when he had traded away the pick used for Bichette), so whenever I went to the draft table, I made two picks: one for him, and one for me.In the second round, I was happy to find Mitchell Garver, catcher for the Twins. He had a breakout year last year. This year, we'll find out if that was a mirage or not. I'm hoping not, as Yadier Molina has a finite amount of career left.In the third round, I became the second manager to dip into the pile of relief pitching and came out with Will Harris, a fine pitcher for Houston who had been on my team a few years ago.In the fourth round, it was back to the relief ranks (my bullpen having largely imploded since last season, a not-uncommon occurrance) where I grabbed Cardinal relieve Giovanny Gallegos. This would guarantee that the pen would be fairly solid this season.With Severino and Taillon both out for this season and next following Tommy John surgery, it was time to add some more pitchers to the starting rotation. I was the first into the pile of unrestricted starting pitchers and pulled Max Fried from Atlanta in the fifth round.In the sixth round, it was time for more starting pitching with Brandon Woodruff of the Brewers.There were a number of young position players in the draft that I might have been interested in, but the trigger kept getting pulled on them just a bit before I was ready to take them, so I drafted a lot of pitching. The seventh round finished up the bullpen with Brandon Kintzler from the Cubs. This year, he's with the Marlins. I'll keep my fingers crossed.Marcus Semien of Oakland was another player who had a late breakout last season. I needed more shortstop and when he was still there in the eighth round, he seemed like a really good idea.And as long as I was drafting shortstops, how about Kevin Newman from the Pirates in the ninth round? He also backs up a number of positions, which is useful.Tenth round and the end was near. I added Yu Darvish from the Cubs to provide emergency starts in the hope that his performance late last season indicates that he was healthy again.Eleventh round and my last pick. Oh, look! Because we are not a DH league and he was carded *only* as a DH, so he can't actually play this year, Shohei Ohtani of the Angels had managed to fall off everyone's radar. He had finally arrived on mine. :)And that was it. The draft wrapped up two rounds later. Everyone packed their stuff out and headed home.Within a half an hour, the sun came out.An hour after that, it was raining.All things considered, the weather here was nice to us today...Tags:apba, baseball, home, musings, weather After two days of gorgeous weather, it turned cold again yesterday and got down to freezing last night.I got up this morning and realized that it was distinctly cold in the bedroom. Eventually, I checked the thermometer in the hallway. 61 degrees. Ok, that's just wrong. Obviously, the furnace wasn't running.I went downstairs, found the thermostat, observed that someone (maybe me!) had turned off the furnace, and switched it back on.It's substantially warmer in here now.That could have been much worse.(Sorry, Erica. I hope your furnace is working again now.)Tags:home, musings, weather Gretchen and I went to take the garbage out around 9 PM tonight. It was oppressively hot and humid. Just absolutely miserable.Thank God for air conditioning!Tags:home, musings, weather Today was Curriculum Night at the girls' school. Katie also had softball practice on the field next door, so I left her there to go to Curriculum Night. Now just before I left, the Thorguard system went off, so they had to delay practice and get off the field. Then while I was in the school, the deluge hit and practice was cancelled. Happily, I'd made arrangements with one of the other dads to take Katie home with him in case of rain, so she had a place to go.And thus, everything worked out.Tags:home, kids, musings, school, softball, weather We had looked at the weather forecast for July 4th and concluded that it was going to be hot, muggy, and miserable. Accordingly, we spent most of the day in the air conditioning and skipped going out to see fireworks. (There were too many going off in the neighborhood for Ruby's taste anyway.)We *did* get to grill for dinner, so that was fun.And now, it is time to watch "Elementary" and head off to bed.Tags:holiday, home, musings, weather Previous 25 EntriesTop of Page | | 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