Speaking of the Weather

I am still quite a bit under it. I am improving in that my throat doesn't hurt anymore, and my eye isn't totally red and goopy anymore, but my sinuses are killing me today. I had to take real Sudafed today. The kind that requires a photo ID and that you can only by 3.5 grams of per day and 9 grams of per 30-day period. Not that crappy Sudafed PE placebo crap.

Odd

Nobody can remember what an "erg" is.

Brrrrrrr........

It's cold today. You could see the steam shooting out from the joint at the center of the hot tub cover.

I got to use my beloved snowblower today. Now that I have at long last gotten the tire chains adjusted properly, they didn't fall off at all, and the ride was much more pleasant. This is the second time I've gotten to run the blower this December. An omen of things to come.

Deluxe Mixed Nuts

My way of contribution to global warming.

Mild, with a chill wind in the air

Tonight would be a just perfect night for sitting in the hot tub with a cigar and a very large woman gin'n'tonic. I've been feeling a bit arthritic, and the cool night air coupled with swirling hot water would do me a world of good.

It might even help my attitude.

Hmmm

It's kinda warm for late November. Did somebody fart?

Unseasonably Warm

Boy, I sure hope that O-bamer feller does something about carbon dioxide soon. In particular, that which is always flying out of my wife's mouth.

Wow

It's not snowing, but on Saturday I found two Karcher gas-powered pressure washers at Sam's Club. The one that had the pump on the side and not underneath (like Paula's husband said to look for) was also Honda-powered, and it cost $799.

I don't need a pressure washer that badly.

Gray and drizzle

It has been rainy and gray since I got here. Depressing as hell. No wonder everybody either kills themselves or moves away.

First it's cold

Then it's hot,
Then it's cold again.

WTF?

A Dark and Stormy Night

Rain.


But Hope looms on the horizon. And, to use a phrase you hear altogether to often in these latter days of the campaigning, even false hope is better than no hope at all. The wind isn't coming from that direction.

A very Soulful Night

By that, I mean it's dark.

Gone Daddy Gone

The love is gone.

The Angry Thespian turns out to be kind of a one-trick pony. She and I have parted ways, and you're going to have to put up with just me blogging about the weather. I wish her well in her quest to change the world through theater and dance.

Well, OK, not really. I'm pretty sure socialism isn't the way to go. But one needs to have dreams, even if they are false dreams.

It was nice today. I still had to run the A/C in the truck, though, cuz my truck blows hot air out the vents if it is above 50 degrees outside. Not sure why. It has done that since it was new.

I hear our killing frost of next week has been delayed.

BTW, if you're a failed blogger and would like to contribute to talking about the weather, let me know. We have an unexpected opening.

You weasly punks

I'm gonna spice things up at this sorry-ass blog. It has what, like four readers? Well that's four more than your blog has!!! Haa haa haa!!!

I think it might rain tomorrow.

Not normal people, no.

People don't just barf all the time.

BTW, The Mrs.'s mother is visiting this Christmas.

Tonight

Seems to be dark.

Snow?

Or just frost?

We shall see next week.

Jazzing it up

This morning, I considered making this blog a group blog where any number of failed bloggers could come together to post crap. That way, you'd have a continuous stream of crap, which I know is what keeps the fans of this particular site running.

However then I thought to myself, "Self, the reason these bloggers failed is because they stopped writing crap, not because they ran out of crap to write. So really, it'd be a blog with five contributors who don't actually ever write anything, and that would be as worthless as it already is. You'd be better off creating a second blogger account for yourself under a different name and then posting fake arguments with your alter-ego. You could create an identity called 'The Mrs.' and really go to town, and no one would ever know, dullard that they are."

But it's a major pain-in-the-ass to create another blogger account. Plus, The Mrs. is not known for her sense of humor. I'd probably have to call it "Angry Thespian."

The road to $1000

I've decided to follow the lead of Cavitation and keep track of how long it takes me to save $1000 by "not pissing it away".

So, let's see. Today I had just one beer at happy hour (where I was to drown my sorrows as opposed to being happy). Savings: $5 (with tip).

I got the medium combo meal at GoodTimes instead of the large. Savings: $1.

Oh, and I did not place my order for this, and then I did not upgrade the engine, seats, electronics, steering, instrument panel, deck, or the trailer. Savings: $43,115.

OK, I'm done.

We take shelter

I think we're in for a thunderstorm.

Is it warm out tonight

Or did I just break my foot?

If you can't make fun of yourself

...who can you make fun of?

How about people on the blogroll? This being a slow news day, rather than develop my own material, I've decided to go back to the roots of this particular blog and parody other bloggers' posts. For those of you who don't remember (which, I will assume is all of you, dullards that you are), the first real, substantive posts at this site (starting here) were parodies of GenX Finance.

Today's victim is Ellie. She made the mistake of YMing me today that her latest post was a masterpiece. I am, of course, the type of person who cannot let such a challenge go unanswered. So here it is: the unauthorized rewrite of "Silly."

Silly, Shmilly

Silly has been the theme for the past 24 hours, and no, it’s not because Obama has changed his slogan from “Change We Can Believe In,” to “Change We Need.” "Change we need." "Change we need." I can't for the life of me say that without thinking of a urine-soaked, panhandling Yoda sitting in a shopping cart in SOMA. “Change we need. For food we will work.”

No. It wasn’t that. Rather, last night we went to Swiss Chalet to meet up with Reba, who I haven't seen since 1997. In fact, the last time I saw her was a very dark period of my life, and now I am quite happy. As a bizarre coincidence, roughly 35 years ago, Reba’s older sister was slated to marry CherkyB, but he eventually (eventually, as in 21 years later) ended up marrying my older sister instead. So Reba and I are like almost sisters-in-law, though we never speak of this.

Oh wait, that wasn't Reba. That was my other friend who lived down the street from her. Nevermind.

In any event, Reba and I were best of friends in 7th grade, and also best of enemies. Like mean girls, though with perhaps slightly more nudity and quite a bit more cough syrup. Last night was a delight. It was a total throw-back to 7th grade. I'm sure we bored everyone around us with our stories to one another. I found myself laughing about something I did that was mean, and then felt bad, but then found myself laughing out loud to myself in the middle of the night. It turns out I'm actually kind of a prick. Poor D_. He probably spent the whole night wondering if Reba and I would kiss and, if not, would we at least shut the hell up long enough for him to catch the score of the late game.

Sorry D_. No such luck. And don't think I didn't see you checking out her boobs.

This morning was yet again filled with more silliness. First, I had a meeting at 9 at Starbucks. It was closed. I mean, what the heck is with that? What kind of an asshat is running the place? “Lookit me, I’m a big important Starbucks manager. I think I’ll close the store at 9am on a Monday because what kind of weirdo wants to buy coffee on a Monday morning?” Which kinda sucks cuz I really, really love Starbucks, but now I have to boycott the place cuz the manager called me a weirdo.

So the four of us just decided to meet in cars. It was actually quite productive, but odd nonetheless. It was made all the odder because two of the people I was meeting with had just seen the remade Death Race, which they both agreed sucked even more than the original, and they wanted to go all mayhem on us.

BTW, when did they start making bumpers out of plastic? What kind of crap is this? You wanna talk about change I need? I need some steel bumpers, you morons.

Also, D_ and I had this really nice trip to the sculpture park last week and received a very nice gift. I want to send a thank you card, but came to the conclusion that none of the cards I have lying around are worthy. I stopped at the card store and found nothing. I looked at Wegman's, which has a great selection; again nothing appealed to me. In addition, I heard somewhere that it is inappropriate (i.e. classless) to send a card that actually has the words, "Thank you" on the cover. (Where did I learn this, I wondered later today, and was it true? I asked my delightful co-worker M, who would know a fact like this. She assured me that it was in fact true.) Fully aware that I am now belated with this thank you, I feel even more urgency and stress. I stopped at Everything Elmwood and found an acceptable, attractive set of cards that are also my favorite color (brown – I’ve kinda got a bit of a poo obsession, if you must know). So all is well there. Now I just need to not mess up the writing. Once in a while I still obsess about things like this, especially around purchases, and often it does have to do with gifts. Plus, I plan to learn at some point how to properly break up my thoughts into paragraphs so that my loyal readers don’t have to wade through a mess like this one all that often.

The rest of the day went without incident. I was excited about my trip to Rite Aid after work. I had to pick up a prescription. I read in the ad that a 20 lb bag of bird seed was only $5.99. Also, zone bars are buy 1, get 1 50% off and I just ordered a lot of coupons from eBay for $1 off per bar. Very exciting stuff. At least compared to the normal highlight of the day, which tend to revolve around how fast I ran up a hill and back down again. Woo-f-ing-Hoo!

So I get to Rite Aid and I go in the pet food aisle, but no bird seed. I go back and ask the girl at the counter, who asks the manager. He says, "We don't sell bird seed." Then, "Well, maybe other Rite Aids do." Then I got my prescription. The pharmacist was talking to a customer about being understaffed. He said, "We had some good quality applicants, but 4 of them didn't pass the drug screen." To which I chimed in, "Well, at least they are resourceful."

Sometimes I should just keep my thoughts to myself. Now I have to boycott Rite Aid, too. Humorless bunch, those pharmacists. Nothing like proctologists.

Anyway, I picked up my prescription then checked out with my mega deal on the Zone bars. I asked to see the ad and looked through it. No bird seed! Did I dream it? I don't know. That would be a dream come true. Now I must go through the recycle bin to find the ad.

How silly!

Sweatshirt

I had to wear a sweatshirt this morning. But then I started doing hard labor, and I had to remove it.

It got chilly

Brrr...

It's like fall

Cold. A bit rainy. The Mrs. is very excited.

Update

It is no longer hailing in Buffalo.

Breaking Report

Sources tell us that it is hailing in Buffalo. We will keep you updated on this breaking story.

The Sky is Falling

It rained again today for like 20 minutes. Wowzo!

You know what chafes my bunions? JB Weld & JB Kwik. I mean, they seem like they should be such useful products. And JB Weld has certainly been around enough, end even entered the lexicon as a verb, that if it was total snake-oil, you'd think it would have disappeared by now. But I just can't for the life of me get this stuff to actually work. I can get it to come real close to working, but not to actually work.

I did manage to get one JB Weld repair to last about six months after two tries of it, but I expect anything that dries as hard as steel ought to be able to hold a porch light fixture together for a lot longer than that.

And my JB Kwik experience yesterday told me that as long as I didn't not expect the bond to actually be able to take any kind of torque, maybe it would hold. But as soon as any torque was applied, it'll just pop apart as if held together white the really yummy white paste from lemelentary school.

See, I was trying to fix a table. I dunno why I bother fixing this table anymore. It's a cheapy table that came from some cheapy store. It is made of a ~2' diameter circle of particle board with three legs attached to it. It would be OK if it weren't for the existence of various childrens who like to climb on it and/or wakeboard on it.

First, one by one, the screws that held in the leg mounts tore out. It's just particle board, after all. I repositioned all of them threatened The Childrens with severe beatings if the surfed on the table anymore.

Then, of course, they all tore out again. It's still, after all, only particle board. I threatened to sell The Childrens to gypsies, but I didn't have to beat them as MaxieC managed to get hurt when the table collapsed underneath him, and I got to do a whole bunch of I-told-you-so's and See-that's-what-you-get's, which are the bread-and-butter of good parenting.

So I fixed that by cutting up some scrap plywood left over from the trampoline project, gluing these to the bottom of the table with Liquid Nails construction adhesive, and then using some proper, coarse threaded wood screws to affix the leg mounts to the plywood.

That held for quite a number of days. Alas, with the joint between leg mount and wood fixed, we exposed the next design weakness: the joint between the leg and the mount.

The leg mounts are little stamped pieces of steel that have a hole in the center into which screws a bolt that is embedded in the end of the leg. The little stamped piece of steel has a bit of a flange stamped in it around the screw hole, and this makes the sides of the hole tall enough to have a whole three thread turns on them. But this flange is just part of the stamping, so it is inherently under stress and a bit thin walled, and it turns out that doing belly flops onto the table is enough to separate the flange from the mount, thus leaving only one turn of threads behind which immediately strips out, cuz what kind of weight can a single thread turn in crap Chinese steel hold?

Now CherkyB is not one to give up quickly, so I devised a plan. I would go buy a nut at Ace Hardware that fit the threads of the leg bolt, and then I would JB Weld this guy onto the back of the mount where the flange used to be and thus end up with a much stronger solution that would still allow me to remove the legs. At Ace, I chose the $0.30 square nut over the $0.06 hex nut because it had a lot more surface are for the JB Weld.

Then, when I got home, I looked at how JB Weld takes 24 hours to cure, and you gotta clamp it for god knows how long, so I switched to the JB Kwik that I had purchased for a project I haven't gotten to yet and thus had never opened. JB Kwik dries in 4 minutes and requires no clamping.

The long and the short of it was that I let it cure for an hour, then I screwed the leg in, and it popped apart after the first half turn. Sheesh. So I got out the old standby Quick Steel epoxy clay, used a little of that (which requires no clamping but takes 15 minutes to cure), and it worked like a charm.

I only, however, fixed the broken leg. The other two will likely rip out shortly, and I will have to repeat the process. But not until I get in a couple let-that-be-a-lesson-to-you's.

Wow

It poured today for like 20 minutes. We're getting an afternoon thunderstorm almost every day now. The grass is starting to green up a bit.

Fishus Interruptus

I was going to take HannahC fishing yesterday, just the two of us. But then The Mrs. decided the playroom needed painting, so I ended up with both childrens. It's tough taking both childrens fishing because, if they're both fishing, they each catch a fish about every 3 minutes. Thus, I end up running back and forth between the two of them to unhook fish.

They can't fish next to each other because they fight.

After catching a couple fish, MaxieC gets bored. Then, he starts to do things that are annoying. Like screaming. Or "playing with the worms", which involves dumping all the bait out and then squealing how they're getting away then putting them back. Or throwing rocks into the water where HannahC is fishing. Or whining about how bored he is.

Usually, he does all that stuff in rapid succession.

Anyways, we finally, finally got to the pond after all the sunscreen smearing and finding of shoes and packing of drinks and wipees. It takes, I estimate, 5x as long to take The Childrens anywhere if'n The Mrs. knows they're going than if she doesn't. I often pack up the kids and then just yell into the house that we're leaving and skeedattle before she catches on.

HannahC noted, as we were pulling into the lot, that she was sorry for losing her hook last time we went, which reminded me that I never re-rigged her line with a swivel. OK. I have extra swivels in the tackle box.

I dug around to find the swivels, locating one at the bottom in the back corner, and tied it onto the line. Then, as I'm digging around for a hook, I accidentally bump the tackle box with my toe, and the whole thing dumps into the weeds. So I spent the next 5 minutes rooting around in the weeds to try to find all my tackle, most of which I recovered successfully. Probably lost a couple sinkers, but I found all the lures.

I open up the worm carton, and there are no worms in it.

"What happened to to worms?" We had about 15 when we started fishing on Thursday.

Silence.

"Did we use up all the worms last time?"

A meek response, "Yes, Daddy."

"So we used up all the worms, carried the worm box home, put it in the refrigerator, then carried it all the way back out here? Why didn't you say that we were out of worms?"

"I forgot cuz I got my hook caught in the weeds and lost it."

Oh well. What is done is done. Pack everything back up and back to the truck, off to Jax to get worms.

Get back to the pond and get the gear out again about 40 minutes later. We start fishing.

MaxieC catches two fish very quickly. HannahC is jealous, so she comes to stand where MaxieC is fishing. MaxieC gets bored, so he tells me to hang on to his pole because he's not done fishing, but he needs a little break.

He proceeds to play with the worms.

I catch two more fish with MaxieC's pole. HannahC still hasn't caught anything because she loses her mind if someone else catches more than she does, and she keeps taking her hook out of the water.

MaxieC is really done now, so I pack away his stuff and decide to bass fish in the little corner where I know there are bass.

I got out a floating Rapala of the type the bass in that corner like, and cast it out there. I see about five bass come out from under the logs and follow it.

Big thunder clap.

"Hey kids, we're going to have to pack up soon. There's a storm moving in, and I don't want to get hit by lightning."

Cast again at the bass. Little nibble, but I set the hook too soon and lost it.

Cast again, get stuck on the logs.

Bigger thunder clap.

Lightning in the sky to the west.

"Hey kids, we gotta go now!"

Or, just as soon as I can untangle myself. Which I managed to do and not lose my lure.

I packed everything up, and we started heading for the truck. HannahC and MaxieC got into a panic because of the thunder and started running. MaxieC fell down and skinned his knee and decided it would be best to stay put and just cry.

HannahC picked him up and carried him.

About 6 feet.

I had all the fishing gear, plus all the ridiculous stuff The Mrs. packed for us, so I couldn't carry him. I told him to man up and get to the truck.

He did.

It started to rain about 2 minutes later.

What a bust.

Is there anything they can't do?

It's nicer now

Not as hot at night.

Heating and Cooling

I have learned that on these 90+ degree days, you need to take the cover off the hot tub a bit more than an hour before you want to use it if'n you want it to be a livable temperature. Solar heating - not just for dirty hippies.

It was hot today

In the upper 90's. So hot that the hot tub got up to 109 degrees. I mostly hung out in the basement, where the A/C maintains a happy 70ish. If I were to have taken a nap, I would have needed a blanket.

I watched a lot of The Deadliest Catch on TV. It's a good show - never saw it before.

The grass grows quickly

I will have to mow twice a week.

Such nice weather

It is raining

Maybe someday I'll install a rain sensor on my sprinklers. But first, I'd have to upgrade to a single controller from the 4 I have now.

Tornado!

A tornado just ripped through the town I live next to (Windsor, CO) an hour or so ago. The Cherky family is OK, but we have not yet assessed if there is any damage to the homestead. I'm going to try to get back there from work soon, but all the power is out everywhere, so traffic will be messy, and I don't know how long it will take.

We still have power here at work, so I'm watching the live coverage on the TV in the cafeteria and following the story on the internet as best as I can. It appears the storm has now moved about 30 miles northwest of our position.

It's warm

But not so warm that the whole-house fan isn't a great benefit.

Rain Rain Go Away

In Barfalo, it's only sunny when you're indoors. I had forgotten that.

And we're off

Forced to change routes to go more southerly through Colorado rather than through Wyoming because of very high winds (up to 60mph) and some snow and ice in Wyoming.

I am so sleepy

I should go to sleep, but that's a sign of weakness.

I wonder why

I ever thought it would be a good idea to drive 1500 miles with my loving Fambly. I hope we have good weather on the trip.

My ear itches

It got sunburned while working on the rock garden this weekend.

Fluffy and white

If the weather were a dog, FreddyC would be humping the hell out of it this morning.

The warm weather

has combined with the chili cheese coney with onions to stimulate unprecedented methane production.

Boy howdy

I'll tell ya, as much as people yap about how great a hot tub is in the snow, standing around all soaking wet while digging for the shock to throw in after you get out is a hell of a lot more pleasant when it's 50.

It snowed last night

It's trying to keep me from being able to sand the play structure.

It might rain Thursday

I can't remember the last time it rained.

Oh dear God

The Mrs. has declared that we will be making a road trip to Barfalo sometime this spring. 22 hours. And we actually debated whether we should stop and spend the night somewhere along the way.

Today's weather

Wind.

I had a buffalo burger for lunch. I'll be spending a lot of time out of the teepee tonight.

Obama

Rhymes with "your momma."

I almost went to the carwash

But then, when I was pumping gas, I noticed how windy it was. I hate going to the carwash when it's windy.

Heat and Snow

Yesterday, it got up to 74 degrees here. We spent a lot of the day doing yard work. There's a lot of cleanup that needs to be done each spring, trimming back all the dead stems and getting the remaining fall leaves out of the flower beds. I got out the leaf vacuum and sucked up a whole mess of leaves while The Mrs. trimmed the plants, but we filled up all the garbage before even doing 20% of the yard.

Our HOA has very picky rules about composts, so I haven't been allowed to replicate the grand composter I built at the previous house. I'll eventually do something, but for now, I am required to either throw my yard waste out with the trash or pay (pay!) a local dirt place to take them, turn them into compost, and then sell them to other people. I choose to landfill most of the yard waste in order to do my part for global warming.

My one exception is garden waste. I turn that back into the garden. I got out my piece of crap chipper/shredder and went to work on the garden. You have to feed the yard waste in very, very slowly or it jams. I jammed it 6 times in the hour and a half I used it before it got dark. Got through about 1/4 of the garden. Dried corn stalks were the most fun. The tomato plants were the least.

When I was at Sears, they had a gas-powered one on sale for about $700. I keep looking for one on Craigslist, but I never see a good deal. They're also pretty big, so I don't know where I'd keep it.

Today, it snowed.

Today was quite warm

Sunny, too. I kept saying, "Wow. This weather makes me want to go gun shopping," and people kept replying, "Don't you mean you want to go gun shooting?"

Most of my friends are idiots.

Wind

Something I ate has given me a lot of it.

It was a beautiful day

Except for all the martyrdom.

It was warm

But now, it is cooler. I managed to run both vehicles through the car wash today. Gotta do that when it's above freezing so the doors don't freeze shut.

At least, I think that's still a problem. Honestly, I don't know anyone who has had a car door freeze shut (or even a lock freeze) since I was a kid. But then again, I've spent a lot of time in California.

We barbecued yesterday. Ahi tuna appetizer, then pork chops. I was yummy. Tonight is rib eyes.

I did zero minutes on Carl today, keeping my streak alive.

The sad truth

I enjoy comment blogging under a different name more than I enjoy actually blogging these days.

Ice Krispies

Last night, they were forecasting that today would have a high of 8 degrees, so I decided I better have one last soak in the hot tub before that happened. After The Childrens and The Mrs. were settled in for the night, I headed out to the tub with a cigar and a gin rickey.

When I finished the cigar about 45 minutes later, my bathing suit had frozen solid.

It's snowing again

Not very much, but there it is.

Warmth for the Soul

The soul of a man can be warmed in many ways, if one is to trust the great wordsmiths throughout the ages. The conquering of the sea, the embrace of a harlot, mug upon mug of ale at a warm inn on a cold night, the thrill of the hunt, the sin of Onan, a snowblower of 40 inches, seeing ones last daughter be married off to become some other man's problem. This list goes on.

However, some days, it takes no more than to be outside in the warm winter sun doing hot tub and pond maintenance whilst enjoying an ice cold Budweiser and a hand-rolled bundle of burning leaves called Partagas Black. And the knowledge that inside, the womenfolk are all filled with self-righteous indignation that a man would dare to smoke in his own back yard and thusly deprive them of their habitual "gracing of the presence" and the incessant instruction that comes with it, and hence the man is surely missing out on the best part of the day.

Today, Sun

I should have gone out back to add water to the hot tub and the pond, as they both need a bit of a topping off. But I didn't. Instead, I sat inside all day and watched TV (Scooby Doo) and DVDs. I should add water tomorrow, as it'll still be above freezing. I like to add water when it's above freezing.

The Devil and her Wind

Yesterday it warmed up. Got up close to 50 in the middle of the day. After dinner, it was around 40, and the heat had melted the ice covering the path to the hot tub, so we decided to go in. We're not real big on walking through snow and ice in 5 degree weather to sit in the hot tub.

I imagine this is because most of our hot tub experience is from California.

Anyways, the wind started blowing like crazy in between when I went out the to open up the tub and when the whole fambly showed up to go in it. It was a driving, steady, hard wind that made your face freeze and drove water droplets into your eyes. Not pleasant at all.

After a few minutes, MaxieC decided to act up, so The Mrs. took him back in the house. Within one minute of them going inside, the wind stopped completely.

Coincidence?