Oh how the wind does blow

It's not all that windy. But if I blow the snow to the west with the snowblower, it all comes blasting right back at me, coating me from head to toe in a powdery white.

No, I didn't take pictures.

But I did have to change my pants afterwards.

It is heap big snowing

Big. Like bear.

I got to use the 4wd all the way to work. Tonight, I will come home from work and plow the driveway with My Beloved by the delicate light of My Precious's headlights. Then, I will eat with my loving fambly, and head out the door to Fat Camp.

I can't imagine a better day.

Now, Just One Minute

You don't get to tag a person who has already been tagged at one of his other blogs. Just because someone has two or three blogs doesn't mean he has to respond to the tag two or three times.

But, in the spirit of Christmas, here are a couple bonus little-known facts about Me, CherkyB.

1. The story of how I proposed to The Mrs. is one of those stories that never gets told except after midnight if people are buying me drinks. Lots of drinks. I'm not sure The Mrs. has actually ever told anyone the real story, other then perhaps her mother, who is the person in the family known for having at least a modicum of a sense of humor. We haven't yet gotten together to agree on an official lie about how it actually happened, but we need to before The Childrens start asking. Not a day goes by the The Mrs. doesn't wish that I wasn't by far the best she could do.
   
2. For my part, I think the proposal was perhaps the best flash of comedic brilliance I have ever had. And, like a true artist, I paid for it with my life.
3. I have difficulty processing language. In any conversation, I understand only about 2/3 of the words spoken. The rest I kinda fill in. But I fill them in assuming you're a stupid, but clever, ass, so I find what you're saying to be quite amusing. If you're ever talking to me, and I seem to be finding you funny, it's probably because what I'm pretending you said is a lot funnier than what you actually said. I crack myself up all the time. I've had my hearing checked, and it comes out fine. Maybe if you cut to the chase?
4. As a child, my choices of instruments to play were, in this order: drums, guitar, and saxophone. As a reward for such ambition, I was given a clarinet. I still think I would have made a fabulous drummer. Hell, I love to drink. And beat the shit out of stuff.
5. In Ft. TomCollins, there are at least three barmaids who knows what I drink. However, none of them know my name. In San Schmose, only one barmaid knew what I drank, but she knew my name and the names of all my friends. I'm actually much happier if they just know what I drink.

Should I go tag myself at the other blog, now?

Unheard of

Yes, I got to ride My Beloved two days in a row.

That's how much snow we've had. Probably, a good 4-5" over the past couple days.

I went out there last night to clear the snow in the evening. The Mrs., who has always been insanely jealous of my affections, and The Beloved is not spared from this, challenged me, "Why did you go out there and snow blow when it was still snowing?"

To which I replied, "Because it's so beautiful and peaceful to be out at night when it's snowing."

"Peaceful until I get out there."

Yeah, Baby

It's snowing.

Snowing so hard that it took out the satellite dish last night. Apparently, DirecTV doesn't work with a 1" thick coating of slush on the dish.

The trees are so purty. Driveway, sadly, has been melting. No job for My Beloved.

The Mrs. sent me to the liquor store to stock up on wine just in case we got snowed in.

I hope it snows a lot.

A true weather story

The Mrs.: "They've changed the forecast. Saturday's forecast is now 4-6 inches."

CherkyB: "What a coincidence. So is yours."

Unfortunately, they've updated the Saturday's forecast to be more coincidental with mine - nothing.

Woo Hoo!

Oh oh oh, let there be snooow

I don't think you've lived until you've heard John Goodman sing in Frosty Returns. I can't imagine it's any worse than Spock Sings.

It's supposed to snow tonight. 1-3" of accumulation, and another 1-2" tomorrow. Oh boy. I took the mowing deck off and put My Beloved onto My Precious on Sunday. I'm ready.

There are days

when you're just not feeling connected to the world. Days when you wonder why it is you care about the particular things you care about.

For instance, today, I am wondering why I feel guilty for not having a better Thanksgiving drink than The Leaf Blower. It's not like any of my readers at all have ever tried any of my three fabulous concoctions. Even though the Screw Yu is, without a doubt, is wonderful drink. I'm just wasting my time.

Oh, and the weather is in the not-really-cold, not-really-warm no man's land that is so annoying. I want it to snow! I got new tires for the truck just for the winter. The old tires probably could have gone another year, if it never rained or snowed. Of course, never raining or snowing means you can drive most tires down to the fabric, I guess.

Yawn

I'm bored. Bored bored bored.

So are you, though, or you wouldn't be hanging out at a blog about the weather, would you?

It was cold last night

But HannahC and I went in the hot tub anyways. We sat there for 45 minutes before getting up the nerve to brave the cold and get out.

Happily it wasn't windy.

Today, my sinuses are stuffed up.

Coincidence?

Some Days

You just have nothing to say.

That's why it's nice to have a backup blog where you can post utter crap.

A lot of people post their utter crap on their main blogs.

It's cold

Kinda cold.
It got warm in the middle of the day in the hot sun.
But now the sun is gone.
Will it return?

Where has all the temperature gone?

It was supposed to be 70 degrees today. I was going to clean the pond filters and add water to the ponds and hot tub. When MaxieC woke me up (at 8:15am - bless his little soul for sleeping in today), I took a shower and then consulted the thermometer to determine what I should wear.

It said it was 34.3 degrees. That's a long way from 70.

What's up with that?

First Snow

As I noted in the previous post, it snowed on Sunday. Here are a couple photos from the "storm":


MaxieC and Me, CherkyB decided to hit the tub. The ladies joined us shortly thereafter.

It snowed today

Just like they said it would. It snowed for maybe two hours. A wet, sloppy, big-flaked snow of the kind that happens when it's just above freezing. It didn't really stick to the ground.

When I came downstairs, The Mrs. had The Childrens all bundled up in their winter jackets and mittens and boots. One of them asked me if I wanted to go out to play in the snow, and I replied, "I don't have any clothes on." I was still in my camouflage jammies.

So they all went outside, and I went upstairs to change. I changed into my bathing suit, grabbed a towel, and headed for the hot tub.

Note to self - next time wear shoes. The deck was very cold, as it had about 1/4" of slush accumulated on it.

Shortly thereafter, there were four people in the hot tub. Apparently, with this kind of snow, the best way to play in it is from the hot tub.

We lost 4 degrees in water temperature over the course of about a half hour. Snow landing in water cools it off quickly, it would seem. That was always the case with the ponds last winter, too. The only time they would freeze would be during a snowstorm.

I probably need to dig out the pond heaters and hook them up pretty soon.

The Lawn

It is mowed. It is winterizer fertilized. It is ready for the arrival of Flatulent Granny. I didn't pick up the dog poop, as Granny likes to do that.

Supposed to Snow Sunday

The Mrs. can barely contain herself. I think she likes the weather even more than I do. Maybe I should let her take over this blog.

Today it is raining

It's cold, too. Only 41 degrees.

The Childrens and I went outside to do the weekly hot tub maintenance. HannahC was pretty good at hosing off the filter cartridges. MaxieC tried, but he got soaked and bored. The both got to add chemicals.

I'm adding water to the back pond right now. The front pond also needs water. I will get to that after breakfast.

Today we had hail

It was cool.

Everybody's Friend Jack

I got up this morning, looked out the window, saw The Mrs. and The Childrens in the hot tub, and I thought of Jack.

It's been quite some time since I though of Jack in the morning first thing out of bed. The summer, with its many hours of warm sunlight, really helps me forget about Jack in the morning. But fall is here, and there he was. My old friend Jack.

Jack Frost.

The Wind, the Wind!

At about 5pm today, the wind suddenly kicked up, and the temperature dropped about 15 degrees over the course of a half hour. Naturally, The Mrs. decided this would be a great time for me to take The Childrens to the hot tub.

So we sat in the hot tub for a half an hour. My face froze from the driving wind, but the rest of me stayed warm in the water. The hot tub lost 1 degree while we were in it. I wonder what will happen in the dead of winter, when it is truly cold and not just chilly.

We had about 3000 bird fly over the hot tub while we were sitting in it. I don't know what kind, though they looked like some kind of generic blackbird. A gigantic flock flew over almost non-stop for the entire time we were there. It was freaky.

Snow, Damn You!

Been having a comment conversation with a dude named Eric on my world-renown snowblower post over at the other blog. It's gotten me itching for snow. I bet it won't snow an inch this year, just to spite me.

Speaking of Fall

That bottle of Captain Morgan sure didn't last very long.

I can tell it's fall

After a bit of a dry spell, I am once again getting buttloads of hits to my snowblower review.

What a Storm!

I was outside today trying to get one of the projects on my never-ending list of projects done. I had spent some time debating between putting water seal/stain on the play structure or starting the concrete and mortar on the rock borders of the mulch beds. The play structure doesn't appear to ever had had water sealer applied, and the wood has gone all white and has those little black mold spots on it. I was contemplating trying to sand the whole thing with my belt sander and palm sander, but as I looked at it more closely, I decided that was crazy.

So I called up the local rental place. $50 for a pressure washer for four hours. It seemed like a lot of money, but compared to the suffering that would happen if I tried to sand this thing, it's a steal. I decided, however, that I wanted to pressure wash and then seal the next day, so I put that off until next Saturday.

Thus, it was concrete day. Now let me 'splain to you folks what exactly this project entails. See, way back in April, we started sprucing up the planting beds with fresh mulch. The previous owner of my house (RIP) was a landscape designer of sorts (not clear to me if he was professional or not), and the planting beds are a delightful combination of mulched areas, 1"-2" river stone areas, and plants. The Mrs., with her keen artist's eye for detail, decided to create stone borders around the mulch areas using the larger (6"-10") river rocks we had kind strewn around in the other rocks.

Naturally, anything that looks nice turns out to be a major pain-in-the-ass. That's why we all eventually eschew trophy wives after the first few wives. With respect to the matter at hand, the problem is where the stone border also borders the lawn. In my quest not to have to use the Weedwacker, I run my precious lawn tractor right up next to these guys. Then, they invariably tumble our of place on onto the lawn. If I'm lucky, they miss the blades. If not, well, I've gone through $72 in blades already this season. And I only replace the blades when they can't be sharpened anymore due to the extent of the damage.

So I got it into my mind that this could be fixed by laying down a bed of concrete and then mortaring the rocks to the concrete. I got this into my mind maybe 5 months ago, and I bought a a few bags of concrete and mortar. Then, of course, the trampoline project popped up. The concrete and mortar bags have been stacked up in the garage for months.

Today, I got out the concrete, a trenching shovel, the digging bar, the wheelbarrow, the concrete trowel, the concrete float, a 5 gal bucket, some metal shears, and a roll of 1/2" hardware cloth. I dug a trench about 4" deep by 4" wide, then filled it up about 3" deep with concrete. I added in some of the hardware cloth to act as rebar. I managed to do 17' of this before running out of concrete. I only had 220 lbs. of concrete. I measured up how much was left to go in this section of the yard, and it was 22'.

Then, I said the The Mrs., "I'm out of concrete. I could quit now, or I could go buy more."

She said, "There is something that needs you attention in the yard."

"What's that?"

"Well, the metal edging that you hit with the lawnmower - you really made a mess of it and managed to turn it practically into a knife blade."

"Oh. I can fix that. It just needs to get hit with a hammer."

It needed more than that. I smacked it around with a 12 lbs. sledge, and not much happened. I got out a polishing wheel for my drill, and it did nothing. So I called in the big guns.

I got out the Super Sawzall. I simply cut out the sharp parts. I left a gap of about 2' in the edging, but I didn't care because that's the part I always hit with the mower, at great expense to the blades.

The Mrs., however, was not convinced. She thought the cut edges might still be sharp.

And they were.

"I gotta go get a grinding wheel for the drill."

"From the garage?"

"No. I don't own one. I gotta go buy one at Ace."

"Oh."

So HannahC and I schlepped off to Ace. She loves it there, as they have free popcorn. After much perusal, I realized they had not a grinding wheel for a drill other than a pretty small one that was really almost a glorified Dremel Tool wheel.

This got me to thinking. Hmmm... There are very few tools I wish that I owned but don't more often than an angle grinder.

My new angle grinder makes a lot of sparks when it's grinding down the sharp edges of metal landscape edging.

As I was grinding down the sharp edges on the edging, a storm rolled in. I had to hustle to pack up all the concrete project stuff before the rain. It poured! We had thunder and lightning, and one was so close we wondered if it actually hit our house. It managed to take out our DSL and one of our satellite receivers, though both recovered after power cycling.

It was the kind of weather I love. Violent, yet brief.

It was cold

Then it was hot.

What's up with that?

And just like that...

...it's fall.

Bozzetto tells me it'll be summer again tomorrow, though.

Oh what a beautiful morning

Oh what a beautiful day.

I accomplished many things today. In fact, I accomplished so much today, I'm not sure what I'll do tomorrow.

First, I put the semi-gloss top coat on the primer on the side door frame. I had scraped and primed that a couple weeks back, but didn't get to the actual paint until today. Paint goes on so well over a good coat of primer.

Then I caulked the threshold, as water would come into the garage under it when it rained from the west.

Then I caulked some holes in the stucco at one of the back corners of the house. Just the corner was worn off, so it didn't require stucco repair. Just a little caulk on the corner. I had a color called "Aluminum Gray" that matched the house almost exactly.

The next thing I did was to shoot weed killer on every weed in the grassy area of the yard. This started out slowly, as MaxieC wanted to run the sprayer. So I walked around carrying the tank, pumping it up when necessary, and pointing our weeds for him to spray. This slowed progress by about a factor of 4. Then, of course, MaxieC blasted me in the face, including my right eye. I had to go inside to wash out my eye and contact lens.

This kind of weed killer doesn't really burn all that much, as it turns out. This was Ortho Weed-B-Gon, so in case you're ever thinking of spraying the weeds in your lawn, and you think there's a chance you might get some in your eye, this is your best bet. RoundUp burns a lot more.

As soon as I had my eye all taken care of, HannahC came out to take over the spraying job. She managed not to spray my face at all, though she caught my big toe once. She got bored when we were about half done.

I finished up over the course of the next hour or so. Used almost five gallons to hit all the weeds. And my lawn isn't all that weedy.

Then I got out the RoundUp to kill the weeds in the landscape rocks. It kills better and faster than the Ortho stuff, but it also kills grass, so you can't use it on the lawn.

After that, I mowed the lawns. It was actually a number of hours since I had put on the weed killer, so it was OK to mow. I cleaned the air filter of the mower, cuz I crossed 50 engine hours, and that needs to get done every 25.

Then I cleaned the hot tub filters. The hot tub is in tip-top shape, as I've been keeping up with the chemicals much better since I moved them out to the storage counter on the deck from the garage. I really wanted to get in it, but there was more work to do on such a sunny day with a nice cool breeze.

I then took down one of the back light fixtures that had been coming apart. I had tried to JB Weld it back together while it was hanging on the wall last year, but I couldn't get the clamps to stay, so it fell apart. JB Weld is great if you can clamp. If you can't, it might as well be toothpaste.

This time I decided to do it right. After removing the light, I took it all apart until I got to the one little piece that had broken. I ground off the old JB Weld using my Dremel tool. Then I drilled a hole in a piece of plywood scrap so that I could use it as a clamping jig. I used wax paper to keep the JB Weld from sticking to the plywood.

It needs to set overnight.

You should be happy

I could make this a blog dedicated to discussing how much I like to do web design, but without any useful examples or tutorials. Just yapping about it.

On the weather side, I learned today that some people think if you throw a dead snake onto a branch in a tree, it'll bring rain.

People are so retarded.

I saw part of a rainbow today

As I topped the climb up into my posh neighborhood, there between the horizon and the cloud cover was about 1/8 of a rainbow. It was very wide. It wasn't even raining.

How about that?

Again with the lawn

Got fed up with work today and left just a little after 5. Leaving at this time is unheard of in my bidness. When I got home, I decided to mow the lawn. It really needs to be mowed twice a week, like all my neighbors do.

I grabbed HannahC, and she mowed most of the back. She's getting to be a good driver, though I still have to work the pedals cuz she's not even 4 feet tall.

Then HannahC had to go inside to practice piano and viola, so MaxieC came out to help me finish up. He went around in the back a bit and was quite upset at how HannahC had already mowed most of the tall stuff. So he insisted we go out front.

We did. He's a terrible driver in comparison. And he had a hard time sitting still. Then, he fell asleep. I finished the front, but the back is still only partially done.

It rained on us a little bit right after MaxieC came out.

An Extra-Boring Post

Today I heard thunder. I don't know if it rained because I was at work, and I would have had to stand up to look over my cubical wall to see out the windows that are about 25 feet away. And I didn't look cuz it wasn't anywhere near time to go home, so it did not matter if it was raining outside.

I didn't not even matter that there was such a thing as outside.

I had to work.

I met a new guy a work today that I had conversed with a bit on email, and I decided it would be easier to talk to him in person than to try to go back and forth a bunch via email. So I walked over to his cube. We chatted a little bit, and he asked me, "So, can we work with you on this, or do we have to work with [this other guy]?"

I said, "I should be able to give you all the help you need."

Then he said, "Good, cuz if we had to work with [the other guy], I was going to say, 'No. We're too busy to help.'"

I guess in person, I am very charming. Despite not having coffee or my muse.

I had someone in my office a couple times today for a total of two hours. She wanted to discuss the methods used to compute reliability of certain components and whether the follow-on project to mine is doing it differently from the way I do it, and which way is right, etc. At the end of it all, I think she may have decided that the whole field is so f'd up with warring factions that she should find a different part of the design to work on.

I actually said this to her, "Yeah. That's how I ended up with this job. See, I hate everything about equally, so I just take the jobs no one else wants. So I ended up in [this field] I hate, but everyone's always looking for someone in [this field] on account of how horrible it is to work in, so at least it's a little job security."

It's hard to blog while sitting at the bar staring at my muse. I cannot touch her, though. Not until Thursday.

It will be a happy Fat Camp.

MaxieC and I played air hockey today. He told me we had to play "gently and quietly", so we played in slow motion. Nobody scored. I was boring as all hell, but better than work.

Someone drank all the Diet Cokes from my bar and filled up my bar fridge with Sprite Zero instead. I am not at all happy about this. Jack will be angry later this week, too. I imagine there's time to fix this if the person who did it is reading. You might want to drop her a line on the matter just in case she isn't.

Our deck passed inspection today, though The Mrs. had to beg the inspector to sign off cuz there was a violation of 1/8" on one step.

HannahC wants me to go cut up an apple for her. Joy.

MaxieC and I Mowed the Lawn

We had nice weather today. It was sunny and warm for HannahC's belated birthday party. They did arts'n'crafts and spent a lot of time in the hot tub. At one point, there were seven kids in the hot tub. Two of them kept fighting with each other.

My two.

The others, even the ones who were siblings, all got along great.

Later, after dinner, I was snoozing on the loveseat in the fambly room while MaxieC was watching a DVD. Suddenly, I got smacked in the face by a book. MaxieC wanted to read.

No wait, he wanted to play upstairs.

No wait, he wanted to read a different book.

No wait, he wanted to go downstairs.

No wait, he wanted to watch the DVD.

No wait.

"MaxieC, how about we go outside and mow the lawn? You can drive."

"Oh, right Daah. I'm gonna drive. Rrrrrrrr!"

So we went outside to mow the lawn. We went to the back yard first, as it's easier for MaxieC to drive back there where it's a lot more open and expansive.

The lawn was quite long. Last week, I got to thinking how Rico had told me that he always mows his lawn on the highest setting, and I said to myself, "Self, maybe you should try mowing the lawn on a higher setting on account of the grass growing so fast." I use height five out of seven normally, with seven being the highest. So I mowed the lawn last week at setting six.

This week, the whole time I kept thinking, "Rico is a moron." The grass grew faster, given its larger surface area, and it looked like hell in just six days.

On top of that, the mower kept bogging down. 20 HP would seem like plenty to mow a lawn, but I could only move about 3mph without sputtering.

I was OK, though, cuz MaxieC isn't all that great a driver, and going less than half speed makes it easier for him.

Is it fall already?

No.

But it's cooling off nicely. The hot tub is maintaining its temperature more closely to the setpoint, as when it is hot and sunny, it tends to heat up beyond the setpoint despite not running the heater. I think I have the hot tub chemical thing figured out now. It's quite different from a swimming pool.

We have 50 bazillion crickets. The babies that finally hatched are each about 1/4" long now.

HannahC's birthday party is tomorrow. Her birthday was like 6 weeks ago, but we didn't have a deck. So we held off until we had a deck and hot tub, and she's having some of her little friends over for a hot tub party. Then, of course, the contractor comes back to tear up the deck on Monday in order to fix the steps that failed code inspection.

I need to defrost my bar refrigerator. But I probably won't any time soon.

My whole house fan sucks air in from the garage. This is making the garage smell like dirt, as outside the garage the dirt was recently dug up to run the power line to the hot tub. I need to replace the weather stripping on the door from the house to the garage, it seems.

I can hardly wait to mow the lawn again. I should fertilize more often. When the grass grows this fast, I can't run drive the mower at full speed (~8mph) and still achieve a good cut. So I get to drive more slowly and thus spend more time mowing.

I did not die this week from any chronic health conditions. Keep your fingers crossed for next week.

No one dies from male pattern baldness. One fewer thing to worry about.

Rico was asking me today what kind of whiskey Jack Daniels was. I said it was just whiskey. According to wikipedia, "Tennessee sour-mash" is actually a classification of whiskey. I did not know that. It's bourbon without any of the quality control rules for bourbon.

A Change in the Weather

We've been getting a lot of rain this past week. The grass is quite green and growing like crazy. Sunday, it decided to pour while I was mowing the lawn so, like a good little law-abiding automaton, I flipped on the headlights. Then I said to myself, "Self, I sure am happy the doctor confirmed that we do not have pneumonia, cuz this rain is mighty cold and would kill us for sure if we already had pneumonia."

Then, strangely, my self replied, "Go get your fireman coat before you catch pneumonia and kill us both, you moron."

See, I got a "Las Vegas Fire Department" coat at one of my neighbor's garage sales a couple years ago back in San Schmose. Her son had used it as a Halloween outfit. It's a real fireman coat, not some stupid costume version, though I can't attest to whether it's really from the LVFD. I needed a rain jacket, and it sure seemed like this would do the trick. It turns out to be great. Waterproof. All kinds of straps and bindings to seal against wind. Big pockets. Reflective tape. And warm as hell. All for the garage sale clearance price of zero (she comp'd me the coat in the great Las Vegas tradition cuz we were regular customers at her sales).

Now that I have my waterproof hunting boots, I am in no way hindered by big rainstorms when I want to work outside. Nice and toasty warm. Though my baseball cap has a tendency to soak through after a while.

If my sprinkler controllers supported "rain" mode, I might even be able to stop watering the lawn for a few days.

But they don't.

Oooooh yeah

We had a nice cool rain this evening. The Mrs., MaxieC, GrammaC, and I hit the hot tub.

I still gotta figure out the chemicals. Seems like I gotta add bromine every time we go in, but my ozone generator claims that shouldn't be necessary.

Excellent!

We're having a massive thunderstorm this evening. Lots of rain, which we can really use. Thunder, lightning, the whole nine yards. I missed this kind of weather in San Schmose.

We had great weather

It was sunny and warm, though with a cool breeze coming off the snow melt-fed mountain lakes. HannahC, however, managed to do a face-plant into one of the lakes after which she didn't think it was all that warm.

I hope it's nice out

We're heading up into the Sugarloaf Recreation Area of Medicine Bow National Forest tomorrow. I hope the weather is nice at 11000 ft.

It was done

That's right. Despite a brief interruption due to a thunderstorm, I finished the trampoline retaining wall project yesterday.


Or so I thought.

Today, I will be removing the spring mat, a bunch of the springs, and two of the plywood sections to add one more piece of plywood to fill in a teeny-tiny gap in the plywood rim at one spot that was due to me really needing plywood strips about a foot wide and only having them 8" wide. It was fine everywhere but this one spot. The Mrs., who was in the foulest mood all day yesterday, declared it too dangerous to leave. This, despite the overall installation being an order of magnitude safer than what has been there for the last year...

Trampoline Weather

Looks like the weather is going to be great for finishing the trampoline project tomorrow. The first trampoline work day under 100 degrees.

Once that project is done, I'm thinking of starting on the sprinklers. I have a few heads to relocate, and I need to add a head to one zone, and I need raise up a couple heads that the turf has grown up around and now they don't clear the grass anymore.

I isolated one sprinkler zone today that was causing my anti-siphon valve to chatter. I bled the valve, and I also noticed that the solenoid was loose which may have been causing it to suck air. I couldn't test it afterwards since the evening watering cycle had kicked in during that time, and once water is flowing through the anti-siphon, it won't chatter anymore.

It's sunny

I like sun.

It's cooling off.

A much more moderate temperature today. It was only about 84 when I got home from work. That should make the whole-house fan we got installed on Friday quite useful this evening. I've discovered that the outside temperature has to be a minimum of 6 degrees colder than the inside temperature in order for the fan to not make it hotter. I think that's because of the humidity difference between inside (AC) and outside.

Speaking of air, one of the fancy tires in the wini-van has decided to slowly leak. It needs air every couple days. Now, normally this would be easily fixable with a can of Fix-a-Flat, but this van is new enough to have the Democrat-mandated central tire pressure monitoring system, and Fix-a-Flat will gum that all up according to the manual, though the Fix-a-Flat website claims it is "Tire Sensor Safe". In addition, these particular fancy tires (Michelin PAX run flats) are only available on this one wini-van with this one option package and on no other vehicle in the world, and only specially-certified Michelin dealers with special equipment can service them, and only the Honda dealer in Fort TomCollins is certified. The Michelin store a mile from my house is not.

So this slow leak will likely cost me upwards of $200.

It's going to be hot again

It cooled off quite a bit during the week, but it has decided to get hot again just in time for me to have to go outside and dig holes in the ground and put in the trampoline retaining wall.

It's like the weather is just trying to be mean to me.

On a lighter note, The Mrs. let FreddyC bite the next-door-neighbor's dog today. I tried to prevent it by putting him inside when they, their dog, and their mother's dog were out behind our yard chasing their daughter's puppy (who had escaped). But The Mrs. immediately let him out again with the promise that she'd watch him. But, instead, she let him jump over the fence, and he promptly bit the next-door-neighbor's dog on the ear. I had to grab him and put him back inside where he should have been in the first damn place. It was a 100% preventable incident.

It's cooler out today

But I still miss my super-secret blog.

So Maybe I'm an Idiot

Not positive about it, though.

Saturday was a very hot day. It got slightly over 100, according to our thermometer. Well, round abouts 5:00, I started to notice that it was getting noticeably warmer inside than it had been all day. This despite the air conditioner running non-stop. I thought this odd. I investigated, as that's what men do.

I put my hand in front of a few registers, and the air coming out was not noticeably cooler than the general ambient temperature of the room. So I went outside and put my hand in the airflow coming off the compressor. Normally, this is quite hot, but like the registers inside, it did not appear to be any warmer than the outside air.

Hmm.

I checked the hoses running in and out of the compressor. The big cold line was quite cold, but the small hot return line was not hot at all.

I saw this as a bad sign. The AC is producing cold, but the cold is not absorbing the heat of the house.

I had memories of the conversation I had with the previous owner of the house a couple days after we had moved in and the shower had begun leaking through the dining room ceiling (leading to the $12k shower fiasco), and how she had mentioned kind of offhand how she used the same company to repair the shower that she used to repair the HVAC and how the AC had cost them $3k in repairs just months earlier. And I figured if that company fixed AC's as well as they fixed showers, I was completely e-f-f-e-d, f'd.

But I continued to investigate, as that's what men do.

The lack of heat exchange led me to suspect a problem with perhaps either the heat exchanger or the airflow. The airflow being easier to check, I pulled out the filter, and it was a very dirty mess. So I charged out to Ace to buy a replacement. Of course, Ace was closed.

When I got back home, I decided to see if I could check the heat exchanger. I opened up the furnace and looked up. I could not see the heat exchanger. I could see where it was supposed to be, but I could not see it. All I could see was a big block of ice.

Uh oh.

I thought for a bit what could cause a heat exchanger to ice over. Our heat wave was only 2 days old, and we had had one for two weeks last year without an icing problem.

Oh, sh!t. I forgot to turn off the humidifier in the spring. I've never owned a humidifier before. But there it was, trying to maintain 40% relative humidity inside the furnace. I turned it off.

We've now made it about 52 hours without icing.

It rained today

I wasn't really expecting it. The past few days were quite beautiful, sunny, and warm, and then today as if out of nowhere, it rains. I was forced to make a decision - do I take the army duffel bag filled with bungee cords and ratchet tie downs that is in the pickup bed out of the bed and put it in the back seat so it stays dry, or do I leave it in the bed?

Which do you think I did?

Did I put the duffel bag in the back seat or leave it in the rain?
	Back seat.
	Rain.
Free polls from Pollhost.com

I'll tell you, it was a tough decision. But not really.

HannahC, darling that she is, checked the weather report in the paper last night for Sunday. She's following it closely to decide if she's taking me bowling or to miniature golf for Fathers' Day. I'm hoping for sun, cuz my thumb joint has gotten larger, and my thumb no longer fits in my good bowling ball. I need to get it drilled out a bit, but I haven't gotten around to it. Plus, the miniature golf place also has go carts.

The weather report called for scattered thunderstorms. Hmmm...

The Temperature of the Beast

Oh the wind!

It gets windy here. Windy enough to make it seem very, very cold when you're out there barbecuing ribs on your fancy new grill, even though it's close to 50.

This weekend it will be back in the 70's. The last frost of the season is likely behind us, so we'll be planting the post-frost portion of the garden.

Maybe we'll even get to finish the mulch. Wouldn't that just beat all?

Why do you need snow tires?

I live in a place where it actually snows somewhat regularly during the winter, and where world-class ski resorts are a half-day drive away. Yet, almost no one has snow tires on their cars or trucks. But, I was up in Portland last week, and everyone had snow tires. Why?

Cancel Fat Camp for the Weather?

This was The Mrs.'s brilliant idea tonight. There's a winter storm watch in effect. I'm wondering if I should take the mower deck off the tractor and put the blower back on. That'd take about a half hour, I think. I may do it preemptively tonight so I don't have to deal with it when I get back from Fat Camp.

What Terrible Weather

It's April, and it's snowing. Now, don't get me wrong, I love the snow. In fact, I was just reading an abstract of "Simulation of Spacial Variability in Snow and Frozen Soil," and I came across this passage:

"Simulations of the Minnesota River show that the new snow algorithm makes little difference to regional streamflow but does play an important role in the regional energy balance, especially during the spring snowmelt season."

I sat back and said to myself, "Self, this right now is the spring snowmelt season. SnowMELT, not snow. Why in the hell is it snowing." Then, for some reason, I thought about going fishing.

Then I thought about my house. In particular, I thought about how this morning, I looked out the window and thought to myself, "Self, it kinda looks like it's snowing, but it's really hard to tell for sure if it's snow or a light drizzle." But then I went upstairs and looked out the window from there, and I could see the top of the kids' plastic playhouse on the deck, and it had a small amount of accumulation on it.

Aha! Snow!

But, if I hadn't had a two story house, and if the kids hadn't had an outside big plastic playhouse (in addition to the inside one and the outside wooden "fort" house on the swingset), I would have had to go outside in the freezing cold weather to really be sure whether it was snowing or not. So, in this case, I think these two houses (my full-sized real house and The Children's plastic play house) were both assets in that they prevented me from having to freeze my assets off.

In the new deck remodel, I don't think we'll have room for the big plastic playhouse anymore, as I believe either the outdoor kitchen or the "serenity spot" is slated to go there. I'll probably have to sell that plastic house. We got it for free, so really anything I get for it would be a profit. Probably, we'll end up either giving it away or taking it to the dump, where it will cost me $15 to dispose of. Not a very good money-maker, this plastic house asset. You really have to factor in the costs of disposal before you start cha-chinging the value of all your plastic play houses.

Or, I could cut it up with my Sawzall and dispose of it a little at a time in the household garbage. That would have no incremental cost. It's a process I like to call "garbage cost averaging" whereby some weeks I can have more than 64 gallons of garbage, and I can save that excess to dispose of on weeks when I have less than 64 gallons, since I am required to pay for 64 gallons of garbage whether I fill the bin or not.

See, when it comes to proper disposal of assets, if you spend a little time thinking about it, you can usually find a way to do it that doesn't cost too much.

An important lesson.

Spring is in the air

I saw a baby bunny in the yard last night. It ran under the deck where the other bunnies live. They must have had babies. Too bad they'll all die when we replace the deck.

29.7

That was the temperature when I got up. It was almost 50 when I went to bed. Doesn't that just beat all?

Getting Colder

A cold front is supposed to move in to town tomorrow. It's a good thing I mowed the lawn already.

I wonder when I should turn on the sprinklers. Guess wrong, and I could freeze the pipes.

Grass-Growin' Weather

I mowed the front lawn today. I didn't mow the back because there was too much dog poop.

How can it be?

I went away to Santa Clarabelle for a day, and it decided to snow in Fort TomCollins. I missed it! It was all melted when I got back.

Stupid Rain

I took my truck to the car wash on Sunday.

Monday it rained.

Isn't that, like, always the case?

Boob Clouds

HannahC and I were walking out of her dance class today when I looked up at the clouds and said, "It's going to rain."

HannahC said, "Are the clouds shaped like boobs? Cuz if they are it means it's going to thunderstorm. If they're like a whole bunch of boobs, it means a tornado."

It's interesting that wikipedia specifically says that the idea that boob clouds are an indicator of potential tornadoes is a "common misconception", though they might be a byproduct of tornadoes. Heavens. Wikipedia and HannahC's science book are in direct contradiction.

Awww Hail

There's something liberating about having a terrible blog that no one reads. In a way, I feel closer to CJ and JohnnyB.

Today, I got back from my trip to Massachusetts, and about two hours later, it began to lightning. I had just picked up all the toys outside. Then, the thunder arrived. Then hail. Not big, nasty, roof- and car-destroying hail. Just 1/2"-1" hail that makes a lot of noise on the windows.

I love thunder and lighting. 11 years in the San Schmose area deprived me of the big electrical storms. They are so exciting!

In the middle of the storm, The Mrs. sent me into the garage to throw a bunch of garbage in the big garbage can. I noticed that the floor was beginning to flood under one of the doors. I opened the door, and I noted that the gutter was overflowing like crazy right there, dumping a massive waterfall down, and it was coming in under the door.

I checked the downspout that was a mere six feet away. Almost nothing coming out. Uh oh. Something is plugged up.

I go inside to get a raincoat and to announce to the fambly that I am about to go outside and climb up a ladder in an electrical storm. But don't worry, I'll use the fiberglass framed ladder rather than the aluminum ones. I should note that this gutter runs across the front of the garage on the eve just above the doors. It's the lowest gutter on the house. It's not like I'm getting up on the second story or anything.

I go back and start to remove the fiberglass extension ladder from the hooks on the wall. It is tough going, as they're not actually ladder hooks on which is hanging, and thus the opening between the top of the hook and the wall is slightly less wide than the ladder rail. During this time, The Mrs. and HannahC have processed my information and have decided they are opposed to the plan. The both come into the garage barking orders about how I'm not allowed to climb the extension ladder during an electrical storm.

Especially not right now when the delay between the lightning and the thunder is effectively zero, meaning the storm is directly overhead. What a couple of wusses. But I have to listen or risk chastisement for the rest of my life and then some.

So I put the ladder back on the hooks. I instead get out a footstool that is actually the bottom half of a chair that the back broke off. Standing on that, I can reach into the gutter. I reach up right at the top of the downspout, and I find a ball lodged there. A smallish, green rubber ball reminiscent of a raquet ball, but slightly smaller. A hand ball?

I pull out the ball with an air of triumph, show it to the ladies, and say, "There. All fixed." A massive amount of water is now flowing out the downspout, and the waterfall over the edge of the gutter has stopped. I put the stool back.

Then I notice that the waterfall has started up again. I check the downspout, and it is down to a trickle again. Hmmm.

This time, it was a tennis ball.

I waited a while to assure no more balls were going to show up. Balls usually come in pairs, I guess.

I think I now know why there was such an ice damn in the very spot of the waterfall during the winter.

Ahhh...weather. I LOVE IT!

Wow wow

We had really nice weather today. It was 79 degrees. I spent a lot of the day outside draining two ponds and putting fertilizer with crabgrass preventer down.

I'm glad I don't live in awful Massachusetts like the other half of my project at The Company, where the weather is New England wintery. And where you need a class B firearms license to own a BB gun.

Weather, The Graduate Stylee

Continuing on with my weather historical, after graduating from UB with a degree in electrical and computer engineering, I decided to go on to graduate school. In fact, I decided I wanted a PhD. However, I couldn't really be moved to collect all the information necessary to apply to graduate schools, since I didn't actually want a PhD for any reason other than that my oldest brother had one, and my older brother was in a PhD program at the time, and thus I figured it was a sign of mental weakness not to also get one.

I had always suspected that I was the dumb one. I'm still pretty sure that I am, but I've managed to do alright for myself nonetheless. Not as well as The Mrs. has, but I can't really complain. Plus, I make up for any perceived deficiencies by being a card-carrying member of the NRA.

Anyways, I was pretty much on autopilot for the first 38 or so years of my life.

Luckily, my loving girlfriend at the time (aka The Mrs.) saw that my lack of motivation to collect applications to graduate schools was a threat to her longtime financial well-being, so despite her being in Sillydelphia and me being in Barfalo, she managed to collect all the material for me and help me write my stupid-ass essays about why I would be an ass-et to the PhD program at this school or that. Thanks to her great help, I got rejected from nearly every decent school I applied to. MIT rejected me within 10 days of me mailing the application. UI Urbana rejected me twice, though I applied only once. However, the wonderful University of Rochester not only accepted me, but they gave me a fancy fellowship. Graduate school would be free at last. Free at last.

Cha-ching.

So I packed up all my worldly possessions and headed east. A whole 73 miles. I figured, hey, how different could the weather be in Rottenchester compared to Barfalo?

Well, it was a lot different. It had all the horrible cloudiness and wind and the unpredictable rains, only it was colder in the winter but didn't snow very much. The summers were about the same - chaotic and humid. Actually, I guess you could say it wasn't all that different - it had all the aspects of Barfalo weather, except with everything remotely enjoyable removed. It was the most miserable, dreary, godawful weather I had ever experienced. It still may be, though the weather in Connecticut has been impressively awful whenever we've visited The Mrs.'s The Brother.

Besides the unbearable terribility, I remember three weather experiences most vividly. The first was The Great Ice Storm.

Ice storms really suck. If you're living in the middle of the old part of a city that has nothing but above-ground electric wires with 80-year-old trees surrounding them, ice storms really, really suck.

We were living on a little street called Hobart St. that was in a slum. It's all a poor graduate student could afford on his $1200/mo fellowship. We were in an apartment that had been fashioned out of the second floor and attic of a house build around 1912. Back in 1912, they didn't put insulation in walls. Landlords in slums generally do not retrofit insulation into the walls, either.

Then the ice storm hit. It took down the electric for most of the city and surrounding suburbs. We lost power. I remember quite distinctly explaining to the lady that lived in the first floor apartment how, even though we had gas heat, the furnace wouldn't run without electricity. She was surprised by that.

12 days we went without electricity or heat in the dead of winter. Twelve very long days. No hotel rooms could be had for 50 miles, and we couldn't have afforded one anyways. We tried hanging out there the first few nights, but it just ended up too cold. So we commuted to my parents' house in Barfalo a few nights, but it was too much of a pain. So, we got our tent and sleeping bags and camped out in the center of my lab at the university. Nobody cared. It was warm.

Ice storms really, really suck. Unless you're just watching them happen to someone else on TV. Then, they are cool as hell. The resulting coating of ice on everything is remarkably beautiful and makes for great photographs.

So I guess I really love ice storms.

I dunno.

A Strange Change

Two days ago, it was 70 degrees. Today, it is 45. What's up with that?

Duh, or No Duh?

After the little incident I talked about here, this little conversation occurred:

GreggyM: "Why did you do that?"

CherkyB: "You told me to punch it."

GreggyM: "I'm drunk. You're not supposed to listen to me!"

Duh.

Slippin'n'Slidin' Weather

Back in college, I used to go bowling a lot. I know, I know. This is something that probably surprises the hell out of you. How could it be that such a wonderful, intelligent, and remarkably good-looking CherkyB would spend his time at a bowling alley? Mostly because I was dating a nice lady who you may now today know as The Mrs., but she was going to school in Sillydelphia. That left me with a lot of free time on my hands, being as the classes weren't all that hard at UB and I was, even back then, a sooper-genius, and if you can't chase after college coeds, the only two other things there were to do in Barfalo were drink and bowl.

Or both.

There was a great old bowling alley not too far from campus that gave student discounts after midnight. $0.90/game. Imagine. And you got to bowl on their old real-wood lanes, as they saved the fancy new laminate lanes for the paying customers. Modern bowlers are too foofy to bowl on real wood lanes. They need the boringly smooth and predictable laminate that has a photograph of real wood glued to it and then 50 coats of urethane over the top of that.

Pussies.

We became purists for real wood lanes.

Another thing they had was a "college league" that was non-sanctioned (since college students couldn't afford the annual ABC (now called the USBC) membership fee of about $45 required to bowl in sanctioned leagues). I and a bunch of the doods from my dorm got a team together and joined the league. It was a great excuse to have to go "practice" all the time. It's also when I learned all about the "lubrication" requirements a man has in order to bowl properly. But I was yet to turn 21, so GreggyM had to buy all the beer (and for that service, he rewarded us by drinking most of it, too). He was our captain, and also our big beer-bellied dood that every successful bowling team in Barfalo requires.

So anyways, one night GreggyM had had about two pitchers of Bud during the course of the match, and he was feeling a bit too lit up to drive back. He had driven two of us there, though (we lived next door to one another in the dorms). So he tossed me the keys and said, "CherkyB, congratulations. You drank the least of us, so you get to drive the IROC back."

I know, you're shocked. If you're one of my parents, you're shocked because I said a bit back that I wasn't 21, and here GreggyM is saying I "drank the least of us." If you're anyone else, you're shocked because you can't imagine anyone ever saying such a thing to the old CherkyB.

It was, however, true. I was actually trying to concentrate on my game that evening, so I'd had maybe a total of 16oz of beer throughout the whole three games.

So we hopped in the IROC-Z and headed back to campus. It was raining. A fairly light, though steady drizzle. Standard Autumn weather in Barfalo. Now, I had never before driven a big-engined rear-wheel-drive muscle car with Goodyear Z-speed-rated Gatorbacks before. I had ridden in this particular one at 132mph once, but never driven it. My family owned nothing but front-wheel drive family sedans.

We got to a little intersection on campus where I had to turn left. I had been trying to drive carefully, given the rain and all. GreggyM is sitting next to me, all drunk and happy, and he says, "Why are you babying it? Punch it and see how she corners!"

OK.

Weeee!!!! We're spinning! I ended up doing only a 270, and happily got it stopped about three inches from the big, cut-stone curbs that graced the campus roadways because of some payola deal between the stonecutters union and the state (SUNY campuses were not allowed to have concrete curbs back then, believe it or not).

Sometimes, the weather provides unexpected fun.

And terror.

Weather, the College Years

Ahhhh, college. I grew up in Barfalo, NY, which was a great place to grow up if you liked weather. We had all kinds of weather. We had clouds, rain, wind, heat, cold, humidity, sleet, and of course snow. Lots of snow.

We didn't have this thing called "sunny and warm." No, it wasn't until much later that I discovered the joy of "sunny and warm". But that's for a different story.

I decided to go to the local state university, UB, mainly because it was cheap, and I had no real desire to go out and explore the world for exotic colleges in faraway lands with their funny, native names like Ithaca or Syracuse or Binghamton. Gosh. Every time I say "Binghamton" I think of dental work. Do you, too? "Oh, there's some troubling Binghamton in the upper left quadrant. We're going to need to keep an eye on that."

And it's not just because I went to the dentist this morning.

Syracuse, on the other hand, makes me think of steaks. There used to be a "Syracuse Restaurant" in Barfalo that my parents used to go to whenever they got a babysitter. I got to go there once or twice, but I think I had the chicken.

What do you think of when you hear "Syracuse"?

I spent four wonderful years at UB. The first three, I lived on campus in the dorms, and the fourth off-campus at an apartment not too far away. Most of my excellent weather experiences occurred during the times I lived in the dorms, as I was under 21 at the time, and thus drinking had not yet replaced my love for the weather.

Both make unpredictable mistresses, I might add.

The UB campus at which most classes were held was a big, sprawling mess of a place that was apparently designed by hiring a different architect for every single building, and then laying all the building out in a big, long row that was called "The Spine." This was in great contrast to all your older, more famous universities that are laid out as a rectangle with the space in the middle usually being referred to as "the quad". UB's campus was designed around the time all those wacky leftist hippies were always having riots at universities because they somehow though that (a) professors had some kind of great political power and (b) people other than those affiliated with the school gave any kind of a rat's ass about what hippie college students thought. So, the campus was specifically designed not to have any place that could naturally serve as a congregating point.

All that is well and good. Until the winter. Then you realize that the spine is a mile long and in the middle of a wind swept tundra with nothing but acres and acres of parked cars to block the weather as students attempt to get back and forth from one building to the other for classes. Even for someone who liked the weather, like me, walking back and forth for a total of like 5 miles every day right in the middle of it in the dead of winter wasn't as fun as it might sound.

So the brilliant architects decided to connect all the second floors of the buildings together with "tunnels" that were actually glass-enclosed bridges, which, though designed with heaters, were never heated because it was a state school, and Mario Cuomo was always too busy handing out welfare checks to crack addicts in Brooklyn to think about spending money on heat.

A second floor, unheated glass tunnel turns out to not be a bad place to observe the weather from. So, after my first couple treks across campus to experience the weather each day, I resorted to the tunnel system for the rest of the day. I could keep an eye on the weather from there without my tongue freezing to the roof of my mouth.

My First Weather Experience

I think it all goes back to when I was a small child, when I was a little older than one and had learned to walk. I went to the side door, pointed, and grunted at my mother. She looked at me and said, "You want to go out to play?"

"Ungh!" I replied, as I didn't know how to talk yet.

"Well, I'm sorry honey, but you can't. It's raining."

WTF?

Then, my mother opened the door and showed me. It was my first realization that there was more to weather than watching it be forecast on TV at precisely 6:18pm every night on the local news. The weather could actually affect me, affect my happiness, prevent me from doing whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it.

This was too much for me. I sat down in the corner behind the big yellow chair and thought. I thought big thoughts. Hot thoughts. Stinking thoughts. When I was done thinking, I emerged from the sanctuary behind the big yellow chair, feeling that exciting, tingling sensation of elation that follows a big load of thought.

My mother saw me, wrinkled her nose, scooped me up, and said, "We better change that before it dries."

Ever since then, I have had an interest in the weather. I've followed it closely at times, less closely at others. I have traveled about seeking different varieties of weather. Even now, as an adult who works in what my loving daughter calls "a box" that is a long way from the windows, I use the internet to follow the weather. I even keep a weather map and current conditions link on my blog.

Over at my other blog, I mostly post updates about the family and life with a keen eye on the humor value of ordinary events. This blog I am using to talk about my ongoing love affair with weather.

Is this CherkyB's Super-Secret Blog?

Nope.

Your momma

Fatter than she wants to be.