Category Archives: Weather

May!

Life, Weather

In which spring is well and truly sprung!

It was 81F in the house yesterday afternoon?! Today I even turned on the air for half an hour or so. Everything’s in bloom and leafed out, and the yard is really lovely and nice. Spring in this town is glorious.

My sleep schedule’s all backwards but I’m not having insomnia, thank fuck, it’s just clock creep. I’m staying up and getting up very late and have been for the past week or so. So far it’s been fine because the earliest I work is noon, but tomorrow (er, later this morning, it’s past midnight already) I have to be at work for a meeting at 9 o’clock. It’ll probably suck (lol) but I’ll probably survive.

Trap has become extremely vocal over the past two weeks. She’s still a very polite cat but holy shit she’ll just start yelling and keep yelling and yelling, for a straight half hour or more (stopping only for very brief scritches), until you get up out of bed and throw her out. And in the past couple days she’s started to talk-talk-talk at me when I’m on the patio couch, too? I suspect she’s decided we’re big dumb kittens she needs to herd around? She’s also been grooming my bare feet, which is fine until she tries to chew on my toe nails. Weird animal.

The day before yesterday I was, foolishly, in my living room in the afternoon when the sun shines directly in, and holy shit do I need to move my couch and clean the floor under there! There’s an insane amount of dust; looks like a quarter inch deep, swear to God. How.

Haven’t been doing any hobbies lately, so haven’t put the film mentioned in my last post into any of my cameras, or even managed to keep up with my journal. But I have been reading at my usual pace, which is a novel every couple days on average. A library card, Libby, and a Kindle are so great for voracious readers!

Right now I’m watching finally getting around to watching the second season of ‘Pokerface.’ I like this show a lot. After this episode I’ll try to put myself to bed, but since I slept so late I’ll probably end up reading.

THE WEATHER

Weather

In which I, with great originality, talk about the weather.

The weather has been shit! Utter shit! Like, Midwestern-style, cold-as-fuck, stupid shit!

Snow, freezing rain, and temps well below freezing! Fuck this shit!

When it’s in the teens, the furnace runs constantly. There are drafts in the living room (it has two plate glass windows). My feet are always cold. And I don’t know what the feral cats drink when the creek is turned off and all other water is frozen solid.

My last two cheese factory shifts have been cancelled (and I’m glad, because I don’t want to walk to work in this shit) and today apparently we never even opened the shop at all. The yeti’s job kept announcing late starts and then just closing altogether. Today he’s only there from 10 to 4 because they started late and are closing early. Because FREEZING RAIN.

This town needs to buy a goddamned snow plow.

Last night it warmed up ten degrees, and I gotta say the difference between 13 and 23 is pretty significant, even from inside the house. The furnace blower gets to turn off from time to time, and you can open the blinds during the day to get a little light without feeling a literal breeze off the cold old windows!

My feet are still cold as shit. Thankfully I can put them on the heating pad on the couch!

 

Hello from Wednesday Evening

Food, Weather, Work

In which I’m making soup!

I’ve just put some vegetables, herbs de Provence, and broth into the Instantpot. Will add cream when it’s done and blend it.

Baked a stunning loaf of bread last night; gonna make a brie sandwich with it and that’ll be dinner!

Pluto has a channel that just plays endless back-to-back episodes of The Love Boat and I’m super into it these past few days. What a weird-ass show! It’s so incredibly horny.

I cut my hair yesterday. The only cut I ever do: pull it all carefully to the nape, whack it off. Instant asymmetrical bob! I don’t really like how thin, straight, dry, and awful my hair is these days, but what can you do. I also don’t like being old and fat, either. Oh, well.

Work is insane lately. They’re making cheese probably four or five times a week, there’s ice cream now, foot traffic is really picking up, and we’re hosting Poutine, Eh? (a Tri-cities Restaurant) in pop-up format every Saturday. I used to order from the distributor every two months, now it’s twice as often and we’re always perpetually nearly out of crackers. I spend a lot of time making custom snack packs for local tasting rooms.

I’m the only person still wearing a mask at work; I’m doing it because the global consensus appears to be that it’s the best approach, even if local mandates say otherwise. As of today, I only know personally of two people who have caught Covid-19 (an uncle of his, and a co-worker of mine) but with everybody going back to normal and variants, well I want to do the right thing.

The kitchen window sill is full of herbs and a jade tree cutting Embo gave me. None of the several tomato plants out front have set any fruit. I guess next year I’ll just put flowers in the raised beds since it’s a rental and I don’t care enough to replace all the soil. (Did tell the owners we’d buy it if it were ever for sale, but I doubt they want to sell since this is their designated house-to-retire-into.)

Today’s the first day the high temp was under 95 in weeks. It’s been unbelievably hot and dry. It’s supposed to get down to 55 tonight so I’m going to turn off the A/C for only the third time in as many weeks (once for service, and a few nights ago to air out the stuffiness) and open the house up.

Time to go eat some soup!

Spring is coming

Admissions, Weather

In which I just looked out the window!

It’s Sunday so we slept in and then went out for brunch. I had a veggie omelet (with sweet potato in it, for some reason) and hash browns and a side of vegetarian gravy because I love gravy.

Then we came home and he studied for his cert exam next week and I took a nap.

Spent some time massaging my music library (I’ve backed up my ancient iPod yet again but this time I’m actually doing something with the data — I put it in MusicBee and am working on art and tags and replacing corrupted/DRM’d tracks) and then I went out into the living room to get something and glanced out the window and

HOLY SHIT! THAT LITTLE TREE OUTSIDE IS BUDDING OUT!!!

I probably don’t have the words for how fucking fantastic it is, like, on a cellular level, to be back out here where I’m from. Spring in Minneapolis doesn’t come until June, so the winters are not only cold as hell but extremely long.

I know this winter has been disturbingly mild, I know that, but there’s been green all winter. Just bits, here and there, in lawns or next to the irrigation ditch or whatever, but it lifts the heart to see it. (Plus, I’ve only worn cleats two days this winter, during that ice storm thing last month!)

Sincerely looking forward to a long-ass season of mild and green and growing and non-blizzard this year.

Really should weed those raised beds out front; maybe tomorrow.

Customer service is still weird af.

Soapbox, Weather, Whining, Work

In which I STILL don’t understand how people can know so little about the services they use.

If you were the majority of Floridian customers I assisted during my shift at work this evening, you’ve just been through a massive 500-year storm that destroyed tons of shit, you either don’t have power or you’re running a generator, and you’re astonished that you can’t watch TV.

You don’t have power! Why in the fuck do you think your cable and internet should work? Irma was one of the strongest storms in recorded history. It did at least eighteen billion in insured losses damage (not counting crop losses or flood insurance), infrastructure is destroyed, farms are destroyed (Irma took almost half of the citrus crop in some areas), you had to fucking evacuate, and you can’t believe you didn’t return home to functioning internet?

Really?! YOUR CELL PHONE’S OBVIOUSLY WORKING, AND THAT’S A GODDAMNED TECHNOLOGICAL MIRACLE CONSIDERING THE CIRCUMSTANCES, but you’re mad anyway?

I have compassion for you, I do. It must have been and must still be incredibly stressful. But being a dick to customer service reps because you haven’t had internet for four days is just weird. Shit’s broken, my people, important shit, and if your neighbors down the block have cable and you don’t, well, I’m sorry. Life’s not always fair. Go watch TV at their house.

Multiple customers told me it was absolutely unacceptable for an outage to last four days. They demanded refunds, threatened to cancel (which, please, if you could get service from anybody else you’d already have it, and we both know it). It was a 500-year storm! Read a book, be glad you’re alive, and chill the fuck out! There are innumerable people out there working day and night to restore power, internet, cable. It takes time!

One customer admitted she had no power at home and was charging her cell phone at the corner store, but still freaked out about not having wifi in her house. It blew my mind. EVEN IF there wasn’t an outage and WE WERE DELIVERING INTERNET TO YOUR HOME, sweetie, IT WON’T WORK IF YOUR ROUTER ISN’T GETTING POWER. How can you not know that?

Furthermore, how can you not realize that if your house doesn’t have electricity, the node providing your cable probably doesn’t, either? Sure, installations like that have generators, but they only run if you can get to them to put fuel in them. If gas or the generators themselves aren’t accessible, they’ll go down. The network is vast, interdependent, and complicated, and service crews can’t even start working on them until cleared to do so by authorities. Internet service doesn’t just fall out of the sky, for fuck’s sake. Power outages, destroyed equipment, line cuts: there are tons of them because A MASSIVE GODDAMNED ACT OF GOD JUST ROLLED THROUGH.

I’m sorry your kids are driving you nuts without screens to occupy them, and I’m sure it’s a bitch, but your internet and cable will be restored when it’s restored. You need to back the fuck off the ignorant attitude and be glad you’re all still alive with homes to return to. It’s not like your provider somehow fucked up; it was an act of God. And at least your cell phone still works. You may be going over your data plan, but at least you’re online.

Eyes

Health, Weather

In which there’s an appointment.

It had clouded over a little, sure, and was only in the 50’s when I checked the weather, but it didn’t say anything about rain online. Notification on my phone said, at 1:46, when I checked, that the rain would end by 2 PM. I looked out the window but it wasn’t raining. Grabbed a vest anyway (so glad I did) and headed out.

By the time I’d carried my bike up the stairs and opened the door, it was raining.

I was soaked within three blocks!

Arrived, locked up my bike, squeezed the water out of my hair, and went inside, dripping on the carpet. Receptionist gave me some paperwork, which I had just finished filling out when Doctor Hansen came out to get me. Did I have my glasses with me? No. Did I have my prescription? Yes, I’ve written it down on a post-it. Did I have insurance? Yes, but not optical. What was my insurance? Hennepin Health. They do optical, give me your card.

Apparently I do have insurance? It doesn’t say optical on the card, and I don’t remember seeing it mentioned in the paperwork, but I got the full exam and was told to order a pair of glasses because the insurance covers it!

I can’t remember ever having eye insurance. Thanks, Obama!

The prescription I wrote down made no sense to the doctor and did not match at all what Pearle Minnetonka faxed over. It matches what’s stamped on my contacts boxes, but I have no idea what any of it means. The doctor said something along the lines of my actual prescription being so different from what I’d written down that he’d have had to worry about things like acute diabetes or organ failure or something. He ripped up my post-it and threw it out.

Note to self: next time you see the optometrist, bring your glasses and the print-out of your previous prescription!

For the record, I still don’t enjoy having my eyes dilated, but it wasn’t half as bad as it was the last time when I had to sit in my truck in the parking lot for two hours before I could see well enough to drive! (It occurs to me now that that doctor may have used too large or too strong a dose.) I was able to see well enough to ride my bike home, but everything’s still weird-looking nearly two hours later.

Doctor says my prescription isn’t changing much at all (which surprises me, considering I’ve upped the strength of my readers and have a hard time seeing my journal well enough to actually write in it) and tells me not to drive with mono vision lenses. My new glasses — which are large and chunky and a clear dark blue — will be distance-only since I take them off to read anyway, and should be ready in a couple of weeks.

The doctor was concerned with the idiotic cluster of zits under my left eye. How long has that been there? (Three days.) Advised me to “see the dermatologist if it doesn’t clear up.” (I didn’t go into how I’d messed with the area the day before with a pair of sharp tweezers and some rubbing alcohol, and that that ill-advised behavior, along with the proximity to the delicate under-eye tissue, might be why it looked weirder than your standard garden variety blemishes.)

Excited to get new contacts and new glasses! Even more excited if the insurance really does cover the entire exam plus the new glasses; I’d been expecting to drop $99 for the exam plus the contacts, but only had to pay for the contacts themselves!

I was really chilled and my shirt and vest and messenger bag were cold and damp by the time I left an hour later, and the ride home was therefore cooler than I’d have liked, but some warm socks and a dry long-sleeved tee put me to rights. I might need some sort of rain jacket, if I’m going to keep getting monsooned on when I’m out on the bicycle. I was completely drenched when I got home from the grocery store last week!

Need to drop a couple of packages off at The UPS Store over on Hennepin Avenue, but my eyes still feel so weird I’ll have to do it tomorrow.

Close enough!

Weather, Whining

In which there’s another slightly wonky Android map of my adventures.

I went for a bike ride! Now I’m melting like a bad witch because: heat and humidity!

I felt like I had to go because it’s my day off, the dishes are done, and I sit around inside ALL THE GODDAMNED TIME, because it’s either a blizzard or a sauna out there. (Or I have nowhere to go. But I digress!)

So a bike ride it was, even though it’s 80-something and 70% humidity.

Went to unlock the Schwinn from under the stairs and it had a flat tire, of course. Went to the Marathon on the corner but their air’s off, so had to wait for the light across Lyndale at rush hour to go to Eric’s Bike Shop for air.

They let you borrow a hand pump, the bastards, rather than having a compressor. Plus you have to haul your ride up stairs and through a manual door to get in, which is weird for a bike store. You’d think they’d let you enter with your bike through the level garage door entrance on the side or something, rather than making whoever’s working the front desk hold the door all day long.

Anyway, then I rode along 28th to the Bryant street Greenway ramps and headed back toward my place. Passed it. Exited the Greenway at Nicolette, rode around a bit, moseyed on home, passed it, went down to Lake and turned left, and rode until I finally found the damned Walgreens.

Bought the mini-scrunchies (that’s how thin my hair is now! i buy mini-scrunchies!) and pair of sunglasses that have been on my to-get list for months, put them on, and rode home.

So humid. So hot already. It’s only the middle of May! It’s only bearable if you’re on the bike and moving (which I discovered when I tried to sit on a rock under a tree on the Greenway for awhile). I hope so much that it cools down and acts spring-like for the next four weeks, because this is bullshit!

Rode home. Nobody hit me with their car!

The apartment building itself seems somewhat bearable in the hallways, but my living room is miserable! Stuffy, hot, humid as fuck, just uncomfortable. I love you for supporting all life on earth, Sol, but sometimes you overdo it on this little ol’ brick building I live in! Ha ha!

LUCKILY, THE BEDROOM NOW HAS AN AIR CONDITIONER. So I turned it on high and stripped off and am sitting here in blessed refrigerated air in a cotton bra and prairie skirt and probably will not actually melt. Yay!

Portable air conditioner

Whenever I tell Scott I hate the weather here, he just ignores it like I’m saying I hate TV commercials or something. I don’t think he groks that I legit do not like Midwestern weather, and that this is not merely my third, but my sixteenth (at least!) year living in it, so it’s not just an offhand observation! I really think it’s not the best!

Compared to Walla Walla — a town with the mildest, most pleasant weather on the continent, and all four seasons fairly represented in their time — the weather here does suck! The grass was still brown a month ago, and now Spring’s over! It’s summer! Turn on your A/C! Fuck you!

But he did buy me an air conditioner (which just basically astounds and amazes me), and I suppose since he won’t fucking move to Walla Walla, it’ll have to do. Heh.

Revision (8:53 PM): I went to bring my bike in just before dusk and it was cooler, so I went for another brief ride. Would still be out except I didn’t have my bike lights with me. Sky was doing a Maxfield Parrish thing, and although the humidity is still high it was much nicer!

Breakfast

Life, Moving, Travel, Weather

In which there’s a blurb.

I slept really late. So late that it’s 2:19 and I’ve only been up long enough to shower, cook and eat, and make the bed! I’m not even dressed!

My hair’s clean, though, and this was delicious:

Breakfast

I have no idea why I thought I needed twelve hours of sleep, but I’ve always slept a lot and still do (more because I can, I think, than because I need to). I keep seeing research about sleep and metabolism and circadian rhythms and the effect of artificial light thereon, and I feel like, well, I’m lucky enough to have such an incredibly open schedule that I might as well just sleep until I wake up, because God knows I’m not limiting my exposure to artificial light at all.

I mean, we’ve got blackout curtains on all the windows, sure, but we live in Uptown where it is never dark, and between the two of us we have at least, what, five tablets, and two phones? And that’s not even counting two dual-monitored desktop computers, two laptops, and a television. It’s literally wall-to-wall blue light up in this bitch, is what I’m sayin’. Scott is perpetually sleep-deprived, but then, who isn’t at his age.

Anyway, it’s gorgeous outside, so after I’ve finished my coffee I’m going to do the dishes, make up a quick grocery list, and head off to the store. Pretty sure the bike needs new tires but hopefully it’ll hold enough air to get to Cub and back with something for dinner.

The birds are chirping, the sun is shining, and the tree out front has gone from only the merest hint of buds to actual greenery in the past six days:

Finally

I really need to get outside a bunch in these next few weeks, because after that it’ll be summer and I’ll be in the bathtub crying with a bag of ice for four months straight. I was so miserable last summer that I’m actually considering one of those floor A/C units. (I’ve also been half-assedly apartment hunting, but moving is such a bitch, and the expense is daunting this year because we’re booked for two vacations: Amma in July, and then my grandmother’s 95th as well as the Wendover-Briggs wedding in September.) They’re, like, three hundred bucks or something, but anything to be feel less terrifically awful during the hot months. This apartment is an oven.

Well, coffee’s drunk and the goddamned dishes aren’t going to do themselves!