In which I’m totally thinking about you guys!
I’ve been watching the news and it looks like Iowa’s even damper than necessary.
One of my co-workers just sent me this link and said, “Looks like you got outta there just in time.”
I checked Fairfield weather and y’all don’t seem to be swimming yet, but my thoughts are with you anyway. Can I get all my babies in Iowa to check in and tell me you’re not drowning?!
In which the weather is totally gorgeous.
I took this picture with my cell yesterday. It’s March and this is what’s happening outside. Spring!
I asked Gramma if there’d be another cold snap yet, and she declined to speculate. She never gives weather predictions; she just shrugs and says, “We’ll see. I’ve seen years when Les had his potatoes in by St. Patrick’s Day, and I’ve seen in snow in May.”
Perhaps my life isn’t much besides working and sleeping with occasional bright spots of music, but at least I’m not shivering my arse off in an ice storm. And the benefit of working is that not only am I paying off bills but I get to go to DC next month, just for the hell of it. Small favors, no?
In other news, I had two books in the mail this morning. Booyah!
In which there might be snow.
…COLDEST AIR OF THE SEASON ON THE WAY WITH SOME SNOW EXPECTED…
AN ARCTIC COLD FRONT WILL CROSS THE AREA SUNDAY BRINGING THE COLDEST AIR OF THE SEASON TO INTERIOR WASHINGTON AND OREGON. TEMPERATURES WILL REMAIN BELOW FREEZING FROM SUNDAY AFTERNOON UNTIL FRIDAY AFTERNOON…WITH VERY COLD OVERNIGHT TEMPERATURES IN THE SINGLE DIGITS AND TEENS. WINDS WILL BE GUSTY BEHIND THE FRONT INTO MONDAY PRODUCING VERY COLD WIND CHILLS. SNOW IS EXPECTED TO DEVELOP SATURDAY EVENING AND CONTINUE INTO SUNDAY EVENING. MOST AREAS WILL SEE A LIGHT ACCUMULATION OF SNOW…BUT HEAVIER SNOW IS POSSIBLE OVER THE BLUE MOUNTAINS…BLUE MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS…AND OCHOCO MOUNTAINS.
PEOPLE EXPECTING TO TRAVEL THIS WEEKEND SHOULD PREPARE FOR WINTER DRIVING CONDITIONS AND CARRY EXTRA SUPPLIES IN THEIR VEHICLES DUE TO THE VERY COLD CONDITIONS THAT ARE EXPECTED.
I’m not really excited about snow, but at least some real winter weather will be different than the lovely mild greenness they usually call winter here!
In which the weather went just plumb crazy.
A massive storm rolled in this morning. We had 60-mile-an-hour-PLUS wind gusts, and the atmosphere was filled with tons of suspended dust.
All the stuff on the porch ended up in a pile. Gramma went out and released our retired Christmas tree from its stand, and the whole damned tree blew away – we haven’t seen it since.
Tree limbs hit the roof and fell to the ground, littering the yard with broken branches.
Two of the three guy-wires holding my uncle’s old ham radio antenna have snapped. Half the shingles came off our neighbor’s rear roof elevation and are piled up in our yard (but I didn’t notice any missing shakes from our roof when I went out to look) and very few people still know where their garbage cans are. The entire city lost power for over five hours.
My employer’s data center (‘the vault’) was down for 45 minutes, because the generator battery failed. I didn’t have to come to work until 3 o’clock, because with no power the call center couldn’t operate. And now that I am here, I’m calling hundreds of customers who’d left voice mails to explain why our auth and email servers didn’t work earlier today.
Here are more pictures of the carnage, taken by a co-worker’s friend.
There are houses with trees through them, cars with trees on them, downed power lines, and general chaos everywhere. (In other words, if you’re an insurance adjuster, you should load your fuckin’ ladder and get the the hell out here. There’s mega mad damage, yo.)
In other news, there’s capuccino cream pie in the break room!
Update: It’s 9:17 and I just spoke to Gramma. She tells me the power’s still off at home, which means no reading in bed for me. Ugh.
In which there’s a weather warning for my area!
CONTINUING SNOW IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS THIS AFTERNOON…ANOTHER CHANCE FOR SIGNIFICANT SNOW ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND THURSDAY.
A PACIFIC STORM SYSTEM PUSHED INLAND OVERNIGHT SPREADING PRECIPITATION ACROSS THE AREA. NOW A STRONG WEST TO NORTHWEST UPSLOPE FLOW INTO THE BLUE MOUNTAINS IS AIDING TO PRODUCE SNOW SHOWERS WHICH WILL EVENTUALLY TAPER OFF BY THIS EVENING.
ANOTHER STORM SYSTEM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE INLAND ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT. PRECIPITATION WILL BE LIKELY ACROSS THE AREA ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT AND THURSDAY WITH SIGNIFICANT SNOW POSSIBLE IN THE BLUE MOUNTAINS AND THE BLUE MOUNTAIN FOOTHILLS.
In which it’s raining like hell, and me with only one windshield wiper.
The weather’s here, wish you were beautiful.
Oh, wait, you are beautiful! Well, it’s just started raining cats and dogs here and Truck and I are leaving in a few minutes to drive to Ottumwa for a gig. On the porch a few minutes ago he looked at the lowering sky, dubiously, and then at me, equally dubiously, and said, “Is my shit gonna get wet in your jeep?”
“Oh, no,” I replied. “Not wet at all. Just dusty! It’s got five years of gravel dust all up in it, but it doesn’t leak water anywhere.”
He narrowed his eyes, grumbled and went into the house, coming back out a few moments later with a baggie he put some guitar component or another into. He stuffed the item into his backpack, which was sitting on the porch next to the rest of his gear waiting to be loaded out, and went back inside for a shower.
Then the sky darkened, opened up, and started to pour. (It smells so good! Ozone!) Bghead took my keys and moved my jeep into the driveway for me, rolling the windows up in the process, and any minute now the virgin Connie Swayle Truck will be done with his post-shower primping and we’ll be ready to roll out.
The only water-related problem the jeep has is with the windshield wipers. Only one of them works. Fortunately it’s the driver’s wiper, but when it’s raining buckets visibility does become a problem. Worst case scenario: I pull over for a bit. Luckily we don’t absolutely have to be there on time, since we’re special guests.
Ciao, babies – I’m off to do the rock! Yay! I love gigging!
In which GUESS WHO UNTHINKINGLY WASHED ONLY HER SUMMER CLOTHES like a dumb ass?!
I’m no stranger to the mountains. I’ve been meaning to check the Vail forecast for a week now, because I knew it would be cooler up there.
I finally did. Check the forecast, I mean. And a good thing, too, because I wouldn’t have packed warm enough socks otherwise. Behold the weather forecast for Vail this weekend:
FRIDAY – Partly sunny. Isolated thunderstorms in the afternoon. Highs 50 to 58. Southwest winds 10 to 15 mph. Chance of thunderstorms 20 percent.
FRIDAY NIGHT – Mostly cloudy. Isolated thunderstorms in the evening – then a slight chance of rain showers and snow showers after midnight. Lows 24 to 32. Chance of precipitation 20 percent.
SATURDAY AND SATURDAY NIGHT – Cloudy with a 40 percent chance of thunderstorms and snow showers. Highs 48 to 56. Lows in the lower 30s.
Not even 60 degrees during the day!
Yeah, I know. MOUNTAINS. Rarefied air. Whatever! I guess I need to wash a heavy sweater or a light coat tonight while I’m packing.
In which it’s so sweet, the weather is!
This morning (and by ‘morning,’ you should understand that I mean ‘early afternoon’), I went to the gas station and bought the Sunday Des Moines Register. Then I came home and, in my Indian cotton wrap-around skirt and purple built-in bra tank top that AmmZon gave me as a hand-me-down yesterday, I sat on the porch and read it. The breeze was blowing, it was nearing 80 degrees, and all the neighborhood folks were out.
Bindu met the next-door neighbor dogs, a Lapso Apso and a Shih-tzu, and we – Bindu and I and our roommates Truck & AmmZon – met the next-door neighbor people, who had a flat tire. Folks rode bikes and walked down the street. Others drove, peering at the garbage pickup piles for treasure.
I took a nice fat nap in the middle of the day.
Later, I sat on the porch and chatted with The Ex and my roommates while Bindu stretched out in the yard trying to get cool.
Such a lovely day!
In which I’m amazed, dismayed, and groovin’.
1. It fucking snowed. Snowed! On April 11th!
2. I drove past Los Portales and it appears to be closed. Like, permanently. WTF?
3. My b(r)other and I send each other MP3s via gmail. I finally got the last few he’d sent me downloaded and imported into iTunes and synched to my iPod, and damn if this isn’t just wonderful. (It rocks when your bro is a kick-ass drummer.)
That is all.
In which this weather is giving me a sore throat.
I’m cold.
It’s 28 degrees out and there are flurries. SNOW FLURRIES! The neighbors across the street have half their yard covered in towels to keep their tender young plants from freezing to death.
Brrr.
In other news, I suck at balancing checking accounts. (That’s what I’m doing at work this morning: balancing the checkbook. Badly.)
In other news, here’s my desktop. (It’s a huge file because I have no graphics software on this machine and couldn’t convert and compress it. Don’t click if you’re on dial-up!)
