Finally Snow!

We finally had a real snow.  We got about 10" on Thursday.  Our choir practice was cancelled.  It seems like all the "bad" weather occurs on Thursday, the day we had sleet was on a Thursday and choir practice was also cancelled (I think).

Before this snow, we had only a very small amount of snow adding up to a grand total of maybe 2" of snow.  Even though areas around us got much more!

Snow makes for some very beautiful scenes!

Poor CA

It used to be that people came to the US for medical treatment, now Obamacare is leading to this!

Back to CA:

Poor California not only are they one of the most bankrupt states (http://www.usdebtclock.org/state-debt-clocks/state-of-california-debt-clock.html) with some cities declaring bankruptcy (San Bernardino, Calif., is the latest municipality to seek bankruptcy protection for its $45 million budget shortfall, following Mammoth Lakes and Stockton, which was the largest U.S city to ever go bust. Bankruptcy filings by these three California cities have raised questions about the scope of budget issues on the local level and whether there will be more. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/three-california-cities-bankrupt-tip-iceberg-says-fmr-155121281.html )

But I was listening to the radio a few weeks ago and heard that "bitter cold" with highs only in the 50'sF and lows in the 30'sF was striking CA.  It was intersting to me since at the time we were having a hot streak with the High almost 50F and lows in the low 30'sF.

Since that time, we have have -5F temperatures with high almost reaching 10F, my daughter's temperatures have been as low as  -12F (that I have seen maybe it was lower at times).

So poor, poor CA, we must have pity on them!

Rain

We actually had a little rain today. Of course, I am pretty sure the fact that I had the wash outside on the line helped to bring the rain.

Since my LW likes to go to the Courtyard Concert at the library on summer Fridays, we went to the Y together, later than I like to go when I go by myself ( which is around 0420 so I get there before it opens at 0500, so I can get my workout done and back home by 0730).

We bicycled and the weather was nice and not too hot. I only did 20 laps since I wanted to get back so I could get the laundry done and on the line by 1030 or so. I assumed that that was early enough to get it dry before it was too late.

I decided to listen to the Chicago Cubs game on the radio, it was supposed to start at 1320. So I turned on the game around that time. And they said that there was a rain delay (remember our air conditioner is closing the drapes and trying to get the cool air into the house via fan in the morning) so I decided to look outside and to my great surprise there was some drops falling.

So I got the dog and went outside to take in the laundry. Actually, the wash was dry except for a little wet where the raindrops fell on it. Fortunately my LW was inside a store when it was raining on her way home. It rained a little after she got home, but not when she was biking.

It was actually nice to be out in the rain after getting in the wash, since I had the dog I needed to walk him a bit.

Rain, rain go away, come back another day!

Rain, rain go away, come back another day!

Well it is another day! We actually got about 15 seconds of rain today, enough to wet the street but not our sidewalk. We have not had rain for what seems like months. I was talking to someone at the Y and he said that a few miles away from us had over 3 inches of rain over the weekend, but of course except for the few seconds of rain ( which I would have missed if I wasn't watching the radar on the tablet and checked outside that the road was "wet") we just got we have had none.

I guess we are lucky that we are not like the east with loss of power, etc., and we don't have as many mosquitoes as we usually do.

I have been able to bike early to the Y twice this week. It has been too hot to bike in the morning or afternoon. But today I was only able to swim 22 laps, actually, I could have done more, but I was unusually tired at that time so I decided to just take a nice long shower and bicycle home using low gears so I wouldn't get too sweaty.

As you can tell, I lead rather boring life ( though it does suit me).

If it ever cools down I can start ranting again about politics.

Hot Day

My dog and I are sitting outside in the shade.  I'm too far from the house to get connected with our WiFi.  You have to be right next to it to see the signal.

He enjoys sitting outside in the shade because the wind makes it feel cooler then it really  is.  For some reason I caused the keyboard to split (on the iPad you can split the keyboard, I guess to make it easier for competent typists to be more efficient, not that it helps me because the size is smaller and I am not a good typist) but I was able to get it back.  I took a picture of him at the top.

( I just tried mindlessly to use a browser to see if I could add a photo from the iPad to a blog entry, remember the beginning?)

Actually I found some grass I could cut in the backyard it is over the septic tank so it must be getting water from that, but it is too hot to cut it.  See the green sections of yard, they are long "grass" ( many people call them weeds, but we like to be more positive then most people!)

Time to go in and get the dog some water!

Drought Advantages

There are many advantages of a drought.

The grass does not grow as long or fast, so it doesn't need cutting as often!

There are less mosquitoes, obvious advantage!

No flooding of the basement!

Don't feel bad about gardens not growing (obviously not your fault but the weather's).

Just wanted to cheer myself up after having no rain for so long!  It is intersting looking at the radar maps which show rain all around us and seeing dark clouds, but no rain here!  Plus I don't want to think about our well!

Hot! Hot! Hot!

It is hot, hot, hot!  Ir was 95 yesterday and will be in the 90's the next couple of days.  Even the "low" temperature this morning is only 77.

Neither our dog nor us want to go out in this weather.  He (Frisbit) goes a couple feet and then starts the slow descent to the ground.  Getting him up is not easy (when you are over 90 years old it is hard to get up and to get down).

I know that Denver gets above 90 even more often then we do, but at least it usually gets in the 50's and 60's during the night, so the houses can be cooled down.

I am even thinking that air conditioning might be an option!  My LW talked to a person at the library yesterday who was planning on staying at the air conditioned library all day, but I don't think they would appreciate our dog as much as he should be appreciated!

May Showers

After a fairly dry April, the skies have opened up during May.  Driving home from a visit at a nursing home yesterday,  the rain came down extremely hard, hard enough for people to slow down to 30-35mph on a 55mph highway.

When ever it rains hard, our basement feels that a nice trickle or two of water is appropriate.  Fortunately, the temperature has increased downstairs so that the dehumidifier works.  I turn on a fan in the direction of the streams of water and turn on the dehumidifier.  Of course, the same boxes that don't have the sense to move out of the way of the water get wet again!

Since there was lightning this morning, I took the car into the Y.  Rain tends to break up my routine!

****

Gas has decreased $0.10 a gallon at the place I bought it on Thursday!

Mishmash пять

In WI our neighboring state,  the governor and the LT Gov are having to run in a recall election.  They ran on a platform to eliminate the deficit, balance the budget, and help increase employment.  To do that they reduced the benefits of the state workers, since (they said) the workers should have to contribute to their pension and health care like the majority of the taxpayers.  The WI public unions have bank rolled
the recall effort to the tune of millions of dollars.  The above video is a short ad for the LT Gov.  After years of overspending and rising taxes, a responsible Governor has tried to fix things, but for that he is facing a recall vote.

*****

As a commenter said the mortgage deduction is only on the interest of the loan.  It is large at the beginning of the loan with the principal payment only 1-5% of the payment.

******

April showers bring May flowers.  On April 1 during the morning dog walk, we had lightning to the north of us and lightning to the south of us and lightning to the west of us.  But we did not get much rain, maybe a 1/8 to 1/16 of an inch.

After that day, we have had no rain.  Rain cuts down on our bicycling but since we have a well for water we need rain to keep drinking water.  This winter/spring, we have had little rain/snow.  How can we have May flowers without the rain?

Also after a warm winter, it is below normal temperatures for this spring.

Weather

It is 75F right now.  March should be cooler, but it is nice.  We biked to the Y this morning and it was 62F on the way home.  62F is the prefect temperature for bicycling.  It is not too hot and just cool enough to keep away the sweat!

Last year was a very cold one and this year has been very warm.  I am waiting for the BIG snowstorm to leap out at us!  Now if we can just have a cool summer, IL gets very hot & muggy in the summer.  Since we don't have air conditioning (except for opening the windows- doesn't help if it is hot; or keeping the drapes closed - which my W does not like - makes it too dark) so summer is our worst time of the year!

We (of coure) have not tried out the AC in the new car (oh woe it will reduce the mpg), but our old one's AC didn't work very well.  Actually the whole ventilation system (of the old car) was inadequate, the fan did not move enough air!

The trouble with weather forecasting is that it's right too often for us to ignore it and wrong too often for us to rely on it. (Patrick Young)


The weather is like the government, always in the wrong. (Jerome K. Jerome)


You can't get mad at weather because weather's not about you. Apply that lesson to most other aspects of life. (Doug Coupland)


Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning. (George Carlin)


Money is the opposite of the weather. Nobody talks about it, but everybody does something about it. (Rebecca Johnson)

Glass Half Full

Though I complain about the warm weather this winter, there are some advantages.

We tend to go to the Y early in the morning (before the sun rises), and in a regular winter, we (that is me) have to scrape off the frost before we leave; but this winter the car windows have been clear.

Some winters with a lot of snow I hurt my back if I shovel the snow incorrectly; but this winter there has been so little snow my back is fine.

Recently, my hands have been getting cold on the long dog walks early in the morning when it is cold out; but this winter it is usually above freezing so my gloves work better.  One problem is that I have to take off my gloves to pick up Frisbit's production, so warmer weather does not allow them (the hands) to get so cold.

New car part 3:

We have been getting a fairly high mileage this fill up.  The car has a simultaneous mpg meter and a running total mpg for the trip odometer.  Right now it claims we are getting over 48.8 mpg.

I heard that a woman sued Honda for not getting 50 mpg on her Honda Civic hybrid.  She "only" got 42 mpg.  The above article said :


Peters opted out of a series of class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of similar Honda hybrid owners when she saw a proposed settlement would give owners no more than $200 cash and a rebate of $500 or $1,000 to purchase a new Honda.


The settlement would give trial lawyers $8.5 million, Peters said.


On another subject: The only people who win in class action suits are the lawyers.

Groundhog Day

Picture from http://www.groundhog.org/.

Oh well, six more weeks of winter!

We have a tradition that on Groundhog Day (or there abouts) we watch Bill Murray in the 1993 movie Groundhog Day. It is fun little movie about a jerk weather forecaster and his lovely producer and how he repeats Groundhog Day day after day.

I wonder how Phil can ever predict that he doesn't see his shadow with all the cameras and lights around.

The movie was filmed in Woodstock,IL.  

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

In 1992, something astonishing happened in the historic city of Woodstock, Illinois. People came to town and roped off the picturesque city square, moved all sorts of equipment into the park and started playing the Pennsylvania Polka, over and over and over again

They were filming a movie that has become a favorite of young and old for more than 15 years, and the city gathers each year to remember the fun and celebrate the special community that Woodstock has always been.

Picture from http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/groundhog/

Happy Groundhog Day!

Up and Down

Living in the Midwest we usually have 4 seasons of weather.  We know that the Winter is cold with snow, the Fall & Spring are nice with some rain in the Spring.  And Summer is hot and humid (sometimes called icky or yucky).

This year the Winter has been very warm with the temperatures usually above freezing.  In a normal Winter, we get use to cold weather so after a while it seems normal to have low temperatures.  But this Winter, we get maybe 1 or 2 days of normal cold and then the temperature goes up to the 40's with basically no snow, actually today we have a 56 F day.

So when the cold appears, which it does ever week or so, we are not prepared for it.

Where my son lives, the nights are 10-25F and the days are in the 50's for the Winter; where my daughter lives she basically just gets cold though it looks like it will be in the 40's fr a few days.

Up and down is not fun and leads to colds, etc.!


“Three feet of ice does not result from one day of cold weather.” Chinese Proverbs



“In India, "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy.” Mark Twain



“Warm weather fosters growth: cold weather destroys it. Thus a man with an unsympathetic temperament has a scant joy: but a man with a warm and friendly heart overflowing blessings, and his beneficence will extend to posterity.” Hung Tzu-cheng



“Two women placed together makes cold weather” William Shakespeare


“Whether the weather be fine, Whether the weather be not, Whether the weather be cold, Whether the weather be hot, We'll weather the weather, Whatever the whether, Whether we like it or not”



Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death.- Mark Twain



Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating; there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather. John Ruskin


Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists? Kelvin Throop III


No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather. Michael Pritchard


Money is the opposite of the weather. Nobody talks about it, but everybody does something about it. Rebecca Johnson

Snow, Glorious Snow

Frisbit in the Snow

The path we used for the morning walk snow filled it in

This year, we have had very warm weather with next to no snow.  Finally we got some snow yesterday and last night; only 3-5 inches, but every little bit helps..  Of course, everyone has forgotten how to drive in the snow; so we were much more cautious driving to the Y this morning.

Another good thing about the snow is that the Y had very few people there at 0600 when we arrived.  This meant I could get my favorite locker and favorite swim lap lane (I swim 52 laps in the 25 yard length pool when we go to the Y).

Snow makes a much prettier picture then when it rains; of course, shoveling is not as much fun as it might be!

*** 

(The stars mean a new subject)

Last night, we watched a movie called "Christmas Lodge."  It did not have great acting or a complex plot, but it was a good (predictable) movie which the entire family could enjoy (which we did) plus it actually mentioned God and his guidance. It was refreshing having a movie that morally was right.

“Nature has no mercy at all. Nature says, "I'm going to snow. If you have on a bikini and no snowshoes, that's tough. I am going to snow anyway."”   Maya Angelou

The aging process has you firmly in its grasp if you never get the urge to throw a snowball. Doug Larson

Oh! the snow, the beautiful snow, Filling the sky and earth below, Over the housetops, over the street, Over the heads of the people you meet. Dancing, Flirting, Skimming along. J.W. Watson

A year of snow, a year of plenty. ~ French Proverb

Where does the white go when the snow melts?

A snowflake is one of God’s most fragile creations, but look what they can do when they stick together!

Don’t complain about the snow on your neighbor’s roof when your own doorstep is unclean. ~Confucius

There’s one good thing about snow, it makes your lawn look as nice as your neighbor’s. ~Clyde Moore

I love snow, snow, and all the forms of radiant frost. ~P B Shelley

Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.  Alfred Hitchcock

Snowflakes are kisses from heaven. Unknown

Snowmen fall from heaven....... unassembled.

Top Stories

We live in the Midwest.  In the winter, it gets cold out and it snows!

The top stories for all the local TV stations were that it is cold out!  So far this winter it has been mild, but yesterday and today the temperatures are in the 5-20 degrees F range.

It always amazes me that people think cold or snow is unusual in the winter.

It is like the idiot reporters in hurricane weather broadcasting in the rain & wind or the news cast that basically says that an event has happened with no details, but they have a reporter in the area reporting that there is no news.


If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as "candle making industry threatened".  Newt Gingrich


The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if it were. David Brinkley

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. Mahatma Gandhi

Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the protagonists. Norman Mailer

Some people continue to pretend that anchor people are reporters. Peter Jennings

To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea.  Henry David Thoreau

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories. Dave Barry

He who laughs has not yet heard the bad news.  Bertolt Brecht

Hot!

Those of you that know me know that I hate hot weather!   I especially hate hot & muggy!  I think my response to hot & muggy causes my wife discomfort.  Since we do not have air conditioning (I know somewhere out of the middle ages (I guess I won't mention our lack of cable or sat TV)), I try to keep the house cool by keeping the drapes closed which makes the house dark and dreary and it still gets hot!

The last few days it has been near 90 F and muggy.  On Sunday, I bicycled from and back to the church.  I was drenched in sweat.  I almost didn't go back (my wife's Swedish Glee Club spring concert was at our church in the afternoon).

It seems that older people like hot weather, I guess that just goes to show that my lovely wife and me aren't old!


“What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance” Jane Austen


How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another?



Don't knock the weather. If it didn't change once in a while, nine out of ten people couldn't start a conversation.   Kin Hubbard



“There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.” John Ruskin



Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?  Kelvin Throop III



Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning.  George Carlin



In Scotland, there is no such thing as bad weather - only the wrong clothes.  Billy Connelly



You know what they say about Chicago. If you don't like the weather, wait fifteen minutes.  Ralph Kiner



WEATHER, n.  The climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle. (DD)

Weather

My daughter a while back complained (whined, exclaimed, etc.) in her blog about having 2" of snow on the ground.

We have been thru a long period of rain (not much rain in inches but lots of dreary dark days with light rain). It is my hypothesis that snow is better than rain. Snow covers the ground with a pretty white layer; whereas, rain just makes it ugly & muddy, Snow has to be shoveled but you can play in the snow much better than mud field!

“The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.” James Dickey

“Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know” Ralph Waldo Emerson

snow (n) 1 atmospheric water vapor frozen into ice crystals and falling in light white flakes or lying on the ground as a white layer 2 something that resembles snow in color or texture, in particular
ORIGIN Old English snāw, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch sneeuw and German Schnee, from an Indo-European root shared by Latin nix, niv- and Greek nipha.

Fog

The weather has been strange recently. Toward the end of August the last week or so the temperatures were 70 or less for the highs. Since we like to bicycle, these temperatures were great (it seems that 63-66 are the best temps for us) unlike the normal 85-90 we normally have.

For the last week we have had fog every morning. It is fun to walk in the fog (when there are no cars around); however, bicycling (since we have to cross very busy streets wherever we go) has not been as much fun.

I'm glad that Al Gore's dire predictions haven't been fulfilled!

“Living without faith is like driving in a fog.” Proverb

“Derive happiness in oneself from a good day's work, from illuminating the fog that surrounds us.” Henri Matisse

Fog and smog should not be confused and are easily separated by color. Chuck Jones

Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it. Claude Adrien Helvetius

fog (n) a thick cloud of tiny water droplets suspended in the atmosphere at or near the earth's surface that obscures or restricts visibility (to a greater extent than mist; strictly, reducing visibility to below 1 km) • an opaque mass of something in the atmosphere ; figurative something that obscures and confuses a situation or someone's thought processes

ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: perhaps a back-formation from foggy

Relative

When I take out the dog in the morning, I first look outside to see the temperature. A few days ago it was 56 degrees F. When I got outside it seemed to be cold to me; however, in the winter that same temperature would be considered warm if not down right hot. Proving that temperature to me at least is relative.

Time seems relative also. When we are busy "time flies"; but waiting for the time to leave work when your work is done but the clock hasn't realized that it should be later "time drags". In the Navy, the last few days of any deployment seem to last forever. Waiting to get to sleep seems to last forever but morning quite often comes much too soon.

I always found that car trips to a place seem to take longer than the reverse. 50 miles to work each day seem to take a long time but 50 miles to visit a friend or relative are much easier to traverse.

Special relativity is a theory of the structure of spacetime. It was introduced in Albert Einstein's 1905 paper "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies". Special relativity is based on two postulates which are contradictory in classical mechanics:
The laws of physics are the same for all observers in uniform motion relative to one another (Galileo's principle of relativity),
The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, regardless of their relative motion or of the motion of the source of the light.
The resultant theory has many surprising consequences. Some of these are:
Relativity of simultaneity: Two events, simultaneous for some observer, may not be simultaneous for another observer if the observers are in relative motion.
Time dilation: Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observer's "stationary" clock.
Length contraction: Objects are measured to be shortened in the direction that they are moving with respect to the observer.
Mass-energy equivalence: E = mc2, energy and mass are equivalent and transmutable.
from : WikiPedia Special Relativity

More Rhymes

"Rain, rain go away, come back some other day!"

"April showers bring May flowers."

It seems like it has been raining or threatening to rain forever (or a week). We like to bicycle places, but do not like to bike in the rain (slippery brakes, getting wet, etc.). So we have not been able to do much biking the last few days. Biking helps us to use up the calories that we gulp down; whereas, not biking allows the yummy foods to build up in us (& not into muscle).

Also, my wife has been working in what we laughingly like to call our garden, but we can't do much when the ground is soaked.

Of course, since we have a well for our water, rain also gives us drinking water for much of the summer. Oh well, into each life a little rain must come!

“If a kid asks where rain comes from, I think a cute thing to tell him is "God is crying." And if he asks why God is crying, another cute thing to tell him is "Probably because of something you did."” Jack Handy

“The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“A poet is someone who stands outside in the rain hoping to be struck by lightning.” James Dickey

rain (n) moisture condensed from the atmosphere that falls visibly in separate drops • [in sing. ] a large or overwhelming quantity of things that fall or descend
ORIGIN Old English regn (noun), regnian (verb), of Germanic origin; related to Dutch regen and German Regen.