Tag: weather

Fall

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Californians always get attitude when someone tells them they could never live here because they’d miss the seasons.

Well.  We’ve had a heatwave these past few months, and let me tell you a secret: Angelenos were missing fall.  It’s hard to pull off the scarf and boots and the extra foam, non-fat pumpkin spiced latte when it’s 90 degrees (though I’m pretty sure when mid-January rolls around and the rest of the country is dealing with this, it might seem like a fair trade.)

Last week the heat wave officially broke.  The evening air started to smell like holiday smoke (different than the fire-season smoke), and on Saturday in the early morning I actually saw my breath.

Time to bust out the close-toed shoes and get season appropriate decorations for the front porch: fall has arrived…

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…even if water temps are still in the low 70s.

Summertiiiiiiiime

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pb-130321-lima-beach-jsw-01.photoblog900auga de dulce beach, lima, peru. pic via photoblog

This goes under what is not happening here today.  Although, to be fair, the sun is out.  It’s just 35 degrees and windy.

Speaking of beaches, tomorrow is Match Day.  Paul finds out what residency program he matched with and where we’ll be going.  All of them are in California, so regardless of which program it is we’ll be leaving Kentucky and heading back west sooon….

Happy Spring Equinox!

EEEEEEEE!!

~ meh ~ Leave a comment

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Finally.

Everything is better in the spring.  Feeding the chickens, walking the dog, going for a run…even waking up at 4:45 to go coach is less painful when you don’t have 4 inches of ice to scrape off the car.  We have the windows open.  It’s supposed to be 79 tomorrow.

Paul attempted a greenhouse this weekend, using scrap wood and an old, moldy shower curtain (yum).  But the shower curtain didn’t quite fit, and after about 20 minutes the whole thing blew into the garage and broke.  We’ll fix that this week.

HORRRRAAAYYYYY

Winter Woes

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I have spent this past week daydreaming about the day that the outdoor pools open.  I can’t help it.

We actually had some warm weather this week.  70 degrees on Tuesday…70!…which meant a nice after work run with Paul in SHORT SLEEVES…followed by this:

Weather Channel

Of course.  Complete with tornado warnings and severe weather sirens.  Thursday was back in the single digits, and Friday we woke up to a light dusting of snow, and 8 degrees outside with a wind chill at -4.  Hurrah.

Saturday morning we woke up to some pow-pow.  First real snow of the season.  Some were HAAAAPPPYYYYYYYYY.IMG_20130203_210644

Others were not.IMG_20130203_205800Did not want to come out of the coop…and pretty much didn’t all weekend.  (I didn’t know this, but in the winter time a lot of chickens can actually get cabin fever from never wanting to come out of the coop.  They do not like snow.)

I was scheduled to do my long(er) run of the week Saturday morning.  Woke up to way too much snow and ice on the sidewalks.  Which meant this.

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9 miles on the treadmill at the Y.  Baaaaaaaaaaarf.

I usually limit my runs on the treadmill to an hour/7ish miles.  Max.

But with snow predicted all weekend and limited options, I sucked it up and JMFDIGDI.  Broke the run up into:  2 mile warm up, followed by 2 x 3-mile efforts at a faster pace with a half mile jog in between the efforts and again at the end as a sort of warm down.   So much easier to digest mentally.

And 1.5 episodes of Real Housewives of Atlanta later, I was done.

The rest of the weekend was hijacked by Gone Girl, which I started reading on Thursday and just finished this afternoon.  So now I have my life back.

I won’t lie, I’m not too sad to see January gone.  If it hasn’t been obvious, things here have been very slow.  And cold.  I’m ready for sun and gardens and thunderstorms and spring.  One step closer.

Hot Hot Heat

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Yes, that’s right.  Hotness to the max.

Weather forecast for today…and yesterday, and the day before that, and tomorrow: too hot to move with lots of humidity.

The good news about the heat is that it’s PERFECT weather to go enjoy a swim outside now that the public pools are open.  And considering I’m registered for the Big Shoulders 5K open water swim in Chicago in September and have swam exactly twice in the past 5 weeks, this pool motivation is a good thing.  Got a long swim workout with Allison on the calendar tomorrow morning to get the ball rolling.

Time to get back in the water.   Aw hecks yeah.

The secret to these pools is to get there early, before the hairballs and bandaids take over.

Speaking of sporting events, BIG FAT SHOUT OUT to everyone who is racing the 70.3 in Munice, IN tomorrow.  Please don’t melt.  Remember, ice is your friend.

I’ll leave you with A Midsummer Evening’s Walk With Spike: In Pictures.

We got about a block before he plopped down and wouldn’t move.  So he got carried home.  Fortunately his baby pool was waiting for him there.

And yes, for reals.  Dog ice cream.  WTF Marsha.

Enjoy the weekend, stay cool.

South-facing window

~ meh ~ 2 Comments

We’ve been talking for a while about trying to get a jump start on spring planting.  Considering how erratic the weather has been, an indoor approach seemed like the best way to go.

Basic steps for starting seeds indoors are: plan which seeds you want, get seeds, plant seeds in little pots, and put them in a south-facing window.

Unfortunately, our only south-facing window is already dominated by another force.

We talked about hanging something from the window frame, moving the couch over to the right and trying to squeeze some plants on the table, even investing in a heat lamp and starter kit…but all of these ideas were shot down and the conversation kept veering back in the direction of a greenhouse.

You might remember the multiple greenhouse battles we lost last spring that resulted in our not knowing where anything was planted.

For me, that was enough.  I had written off homemade greenhouses in the spring in Kentucky.

Paul, however, is not as easily deterred.  He also still refuses to spend money on these things (see: birdfeeder), is home more than I am, and tends to take on projects like this with gusto.

And so, meet south-facing greenhouse 3.0:

Apparently, with a few bricks holding it down this one is INDESTRUCTIBLE.  We already have some herb and tomato seeds in there.

Considering we’ve only had 38 tornadoes touch down in the state this spring…I’m sure it’ll be fine.

What in the what…

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It is January 17.  2 days ago there was snow and ice covering the ground.  Today there is a tornado warning.  And it’s 54 degrees.

Below is a video I took from our lunch table, where we were sitting when the storm rolled in (which sucked, because we had to walk back to the office.)  The owner came around and told all of us that if things got worse, we going to have to move to the corridor in the middle of the building.

It doesn’t look that bad on the video through the window, but the winds were up at 50 mph and those chairs sitting on the sidewalk in the bottom right hand corner would have been flying if they weren’t chained down (I actually am posting this more so I can see if it works, this is the first home video I’ve embedded in a post WHAT UP).

In Louisville an EF1 touched down and destroyed some property.  And because I’m from southern California and am terrified of any weather more severe than heavy rain, of course I immediately started reading up on the Fujita scale, CAPE values, the biggest tornados and tornado outbreaks (including the Super Outbreak last spring), tornado myths, and watching tornado videos on You Tube.  This usually doesn’t start until March.

But by mid afternoon:

La la.  NBD.  Just another mid-January day.

There is no such things as bad weather.  Just soft people.

~Bill Bowerman