Tag: Weather

Storm’s a Comin’

Is everyone ready? New England is going to get meteorologically bitch slapped tomorrow. Well, starting sometime tonight, I think. The National Weather Service is saying my area is going to get 18-24″ of snow. WCVB TV (our local ABC affiliate) says we’re in for 24″+. I don’t like the sound of either of those. Also, the words “bomb cyclone” have been written. I don’t know what that means, but it doesn’t sound good, right?

It’s supposed to start overnight tonight and carry through until Sunday morning. Here’s hoping we can book a plow to come and at least slice off the snow bank at the end of the driveway. Now I know I have been working out for four whole days and should be able to easily move a mountain of snow (#sarcasm) but I just don’t want to. Fingers crossed on the plow. We won’t be able to book anything until tomorrow, but we’re hoping to get one for Sunday morning sometime.

In New England it is common for citizens to make a run on the grocery stores in the day prior to a forecast storm. Unfortunately for us, today is the day that we would be getting groceries even without the storm, so we’re likely going to get shut out. We’re still in Covid mode as far as shopping is concerned and we’ve been using instacart, but they aren’t guaranteeing delivery times for today. Oh well. We’ll survive.

The planned rewiring of the dining room light switches might be paused until the driveway is clear. Just in case, you know? The Paramedics are going to have enough trouble hauling my electrocuted ass out that we shouldn’t make it worse for them by asking them to carry me through snow too.

Duck and cover, boys and girls. The Bomb Cyclone is a comin’.

It’s Bloody Cold Out!

I did it. I got up early and showered and got dressed and was all ready to grab my lappytop and jump into the car and do some effin’ car music!

“Hey Siri, how’s the weather?” he asked.

“The current temperature is seven degrees. The high today will be 19 degrees and the low will be seven degrees,” Siri replied.

Well screw that! It’s bloody cold out there! I wonder how the forecast for tomorrow morning is looking. I just looked… it’s pretty much the same as today. Crap.

On a not quite related note, the RPM Challenge website used to have a blog section and a forum and it was all replaced by a Discord channel. Discord makes me feel old. You know the stereotype about the old people who are unable or unwilling to embrace new technology? It’s not that I don’t get it, it’s just that I don’t want to. I used to use those ICR boards back in the stone age, and I used the AOL chatrooms before that. Discord feels exactly like them. So it’s not a matter of failing to embrace a new technology, it’s more a matter of not having any interest in re-embracing an ancient one. I guess. I’m trying though.

On a totally unrelated note, Rest in Peace Meat Loaf. My sister had Bat Out of Hell when it was actually current, if you can imagine a world that far in the past. I would occasionally take it for a spin when she wasn’t around.

Edits to the To-Do List

I didn’t go out for car music today. Nope. I was going to. I woke up at 6:45am (on a Saturday, you savage!) and my watch told me it was 2 degrees out. Yikes. Well… we’ll see how things look after my shower and stuff. When I was all dressed and ready to go my watch told me it was 1 degree out. Welp, maybe next time.

That’s one thing dropped from the to-do list. We are hoping to add one thing too. There will, hopefully, be a FaceTime call with Bellana today! All the way from The Netherlands where she is quarantining and probably super bored. I still haven’t decided if I want to share their YouTube video or not. I’m hoping they post things regularly so we can feel like we’re a distant part of their adventure. Fingers crossed. I probably won’t post the videos here. I don’t know. Maybe, but probably not.

In closing, yesterday I listened to a podcast that broke down the Grace Under Pressure Tour video that Rush released in 1984 or so. It brought this little masterpiece back to the front of my brain and it doesn’t show any signs of leaving any time soon.

Fear. A sort of suite. Sort of. In 1984 when Rush released the Grace Under Pressure album, the song The Enemy Within was subtitled Part One of Fear. Well what the hell did that mean? They eventually explained it to us. One of my friends in Junior High said he had figured it out, but I don’t believe him.

Fear is a three song suite-ish that includes one song each from three albums… in reverse.

Part One is The Enemy Within from Grace Under Pressure, released in 1984.
Part Two is The Weapon from Signals, released in 1982.
Part Three is Witch Hunt from Moving Pictures, released in 1981.

Simple, right? If I remember correctly, Neil said he numbered them in order of the hardest to write to the easiest… or was it the other way around. Damn it. I don’t remember for sure. It doesn’t matter, they were numbered based on the writing process, that’s all you need to know. I don’t recall if The Weapon and Witch Hunt were ever officially given a Fear subtitle on any subsequent release, but they might have. There was also a fourth song, Freeze from Vapor Trails, released in 2002, but they never played all four of them together. In fact, they never played Freeze live at all. They were never supposed to play Witch Hunt either. That was written and recorded as a studio only thing as there were little things that couldn’t be pulled off live with just three people at the time. As a result, this arrangement is a little different than the Moving Pictures album and that was something that Rush just didn’t do, making this version extra special. Years later, as sampling and triggering technology caught up with the band, they did do Witch Hunt as it was originally arranged. I really like this one though. It lacks the cowbell in the beginning, well most of it at least, but it adds that killer guitar solo at the end. Awesome.

Gee, I hope these videos actually play though… seems like a lot of people have posted this with the sharing options off. Yikes.

Whatever.

We’re going to hear from Bellana today. Happy.

Cold

I just stepped outside for two seconds. I wanted to bring in the mail.

It’s so cold out, how cold is it? It’s so cold out that I instantly froze solid from head to toe. Imagine if the Greek myth of Medusa was real but instead of her glance turning you to stone it turned you to ice. That’s what it’s like outside right now. It’s like locking eyes with Medusa.

Luckily I got better.

I just thought you should know.

Signs Point to a Rough Day

Last night, just before I was about to turn in for the night, I had a muscle spasm, or a cramp, or something in my gut that hurt like it hurts when a meteor crashes into your face. Oh my goodness, did that little sucker (whatever it was) hurt like 10 shades of hellish suck.

I’ve had this happen 2-3 times over the past 10-15 years and each time it is about 5-10 minutes of nightmare*. I don’t know what to do to relieve the pain so I get up and try to walk it off. That doesn’t help at all, but at least I am doing something. After a few minutes the pain calms down but whatever muscle is being the asshole is still twitching. Just as I start thinking I might be okay it fires up again and the whole thing starts over. After that it’s done. Last night the whole thing lasted less than 10 minutes and then I was able to lie down and sleep.

So that’s the first sign that today might suck. Here’s the second.

Last night I wrote a post saying that it was going to be horribly cold out this morning. The forecast was right. It is currently six degrees out. I should be happy that I put the barrels out last night and don’t need to go outside today, right?

We got a dusting of snow overnight. We have a grocery delivery coming this morning. I need to put ice melt down so the instacart person doesn’t slip. After all that shit last night, I still have to go outside this morning.

Here’s hoping that’s the last bad thing and that the rest of the day goes smoothly. Pretty please with sugar on top.

*That sentence is my attempt to use the most “-” characters in a single sentence ever. Did I set a new world record? Do we need to call the Guinness folks?

I Don’t Like Winter

It’s cold out tonight. I need to take the trash barrels out to the street for pick up tomorrow. I can do it tonight before bed, or I can get up a few minutes early tomorrow and do it then. I looked at the weather complication on my watch and it told me it was 24 degrees out. Damn, that’s cold. I hate cold. I looked up the forecast for the morning and… took the barrels out tonight.

It’s going down to single digits tonight. The forecast is calling for seven degrees at 8:00am tomorrow.

Hot damn, that’s cold.

Snows-a-Comin’

The forecast is calling for about six inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. I hate snow. I may have mentioned that before. I really hate snow.

There are shovels on the steps under the overhang. The trash has been taken out. The cars have been arranged in the driveway. Bellana has an appointment in the morning and she’s going to borrow a car and we have the car with the best snow safety record on the outside.

Did I mention I hate snow?

What Will Go Wrong?

The kids are coming over today.
There’s a new Star Wars show premiering today, The Book of Boba Fett.
We are going to have the Christmas dinner we were supposed to have on Christmas but didn’t.
It’s not too cold out (forecast calls for mid to high 30s).
I got a pretty good night’s sleep last night.
I put down all of the midi tracks for two songs this morning before work.

That’s a lot of good stuff for a Wednesday, don’t you think?

I wonder what’s going to come along and blow the happy vibes?

Hang in there, kids. Only two more work days until New Years Eve.

Chef Lardo

The chicken is in the oven, the veggies are all prepped. I have about 7.5 minutes before I have to start prepping the quinoa, and I typo’d the word “the” twice in the first sentence.

Yup, it’s time for bed.

It’s December 6th today and the weather is weird. It was raining and blah all day, but it was also warm. The temps were in the high 50’s. I actually thought about opening up some windows, and I had my little desktop fan on for a while. How crazy is that?

Today at lunch I read about a mini-galaxy with a black hole at the center that is almost as big as ours. That does not compute, but it is also awesomely cool. There was a lot of online buzz about the two Walking Dead shows from last night. Well… not Fear, that show was atrocious and pretty much everyone agrees. No, the item of interest happened a couple hours after the episode aired when they announced the original lead character, who was supposed to have been killed off three years ago, is coming back. Oh good. I sure the writing they use to pull that off will be stellar. Yes.

Also, lots of buzz about the end of World Beyond. Specifically the post credit scene where we visit another country for the first time, and a tie in to the original show’s season one finale. It’s interesting and all, but it seems odd to give us a cliff hanger at the end of a show that literally no longer exists. I mean, it would have worked better if they told us where we could expect the pay off to come from. As it is we know there’s a road trip spin off from the main show coming, an anthology show which seems like a convenient excuse to bring back dead characters without retconning the way the morons at Fear are about to, and a set of hypothetical, near mythical movies. Safe to assume any payoff would be in the theaters, but who the hell knows. Whatever, the end of World Beyond was pretty satisfying and on the whole the two seasons ended in a way that makes me happy I stuck with it.

Okay. Time to prep the quinoa. Enough of this TV recap bullshit. It’s time for Chef Lard Ass to get-a-cookin’!