It is pouring rain out this morning so I must have needed to drive to the office. Yesterday I drove to my in-laws and back in the thickest fog ever. I could barely see the road. Today I drove to the office in a huge downpour and could barely see the road.
Coincidence?
Yes, of course it is.
Another freezing cold day here in Massachusetts. New England is in a deep freeze right now. At this moment I am sitting at my desk in the cellar with a heavy sweatshirt on, a space heater running, and an electric blanket draped over me.
Yeah, it’s cold.
I just want the air to be warm enough to let us go outside without it being painful. Is that too much to ask?
I checked the weather when I woke up. It was about 6:30am. The outside temperature was a whopping nine degrees Fahrenheit. Lovely.
I went down cellar to start my day with a bottle of water and some morning exercise and the little room thermometer I keep down here said it was 58.7 degrees. Lovely.
Winter sucks. Winter blows.
Well… it’s winter again. Again. Literally winter, as opposed to the last three plus months which was figuratively winter. Literal winter runs from December to March. Here in New England, figurative winter runs from September 1st through sometime in late June. The upside of the first day of winter is that from now on the days start getting longer. The downside is that it’s going to get colder and more awful with each passing day, and it’s going to take so long for the days to get longer enough that it matters that it won’t make any real difference for months.
I hate winter.
December 21st puts us in the home stretch for xmas. I am still waiting for the amazonians to deliver a couple of things so the wrapping is still not complete. I have to go out and pick up a few things today as well. That includes some food supplies for xmas eve, xmas dinner, and our slightly delayed annual xmas eve party which happens on the Sunday after xmas this year. I also need to bring my work-holiday gift to my sister’s today so we can have it with xmas dinner.
I need to play guitar but there probably won’t be time for it. I need to go out and take pictures of stuff but the weather likely won’t let me. Ugh.
Lots to do, but I can’t do anything until I clean the tiny amount of snow we got yesterday off of the cars and the driveway. Ugh.
I hate winter. Remember that time a few years ago when we went to Florida in January and the weather was warm? Can we maybe do that again?
It’s going to snow tonight. Crap. I was going to see if Jen and Harry wanted to go for a drive to look at xmas lights, but now I just want to pull a blanket over my head and hide until the weather clears. I mean, winter officially starts at like 4:00am tomorrow morning. It’s bound to snow eventually. That doesn’t mean I have to like it.
I did a couple of goofy things with this little bloggie today. This post will serve as a bit of a test for one of them. I added a couple of new share buttons. Bluesky and Threads (and Mastodon? Did I add that one too?) are new, and Tumblr was re-added after being removed at least once. I removed twitter/x as well because fuck that musk prick. Fuck him right in his fucking eye. I tested the Bluesky and Threads buttons and they work. I also set new posts to automatically post to Bluesky. When I publish this literary tome I will see if it worked.
Another change, which is internal and should only be viewable by me, is that I think I hooked up to Google Analytics. I’ve had that option for ages now but I never did it. I am at heart a stats geek, so why didn’t I? It seems like I am too late as my engagement stats (the ones built into wordpress.com) are down something like 70% since they peaked back in February. Allow me to make the same caveat I make every time I mention this page’s stats… I really don’t care about the stats, I am just a numbers nerd and like to mess around with them. Also, and definitely most importantly, being down 70% from a very small, some might say microscopic, number is just another small, microscopic, number, dig it? This is not one of those blogs that sees a gajillion hits an hour. I consider myself lucky when I average one hit an hour and in my experience that would be a lot. In other words, I am in no way interested in drumming up business with insipid brain droppings, dig? Like I said twice before in this post, I just like playing with numbers. I have a Computer Science degree for cripes sake. Numbers are fun. Whatever, I am curious if linking up to Google Analytics a) worked, and b) will show me anything fun. I’ll probably write 100000 posts about it over the next few days (assuming it worked, of course).
All of these changes are internal but they might be a hint that a bloggie shake up is coming, and you know what that means… that means I am probably going to start messing with the theme and the layout. Sometimes Robert just cannot stop himself, you know?
What the hell was I talking about? I can’t remember. Oh yeah, it’s going to snow tonight. Doesn’t that suck? I think that sucks.
Oh well. I am going to click Publish now. Here’s hoping we cross post over to the ol’ Bluesky Social. Wish the bloggie luck……….
I hate to keep harping on something as inane as the weather but…
Sum up the first half of my work day:
Walk from the building to the car. Drenched.
Walk from the car to the building. Drenched.
Walk from the building to the car. Drenched.
Walk from the car to the building. Drenched.
There you go. That’s the first half of my work day.
Can’t we just go back to working from home again?
So rain is still a thing. I mean this from a work point of view.
When Covid hit and we all started working from home full time, I learned to stop really worrying about rain. I didn’t have a commute anymore so I didn’t need to drive to and from work in the rain. I didn’t need to walk out to a parking lot in the rain. I didn’t even need to walk to the driveway. From the perspective of getting to and from work rain (and snow) stopped being a concern at all.
Now that we’re back in the office at least some of the time it’s a thing again and it sucks.
It is pouring rain today. I’m looking out the window and the parking lot looks like a small lake. I have to drive to a different building soon and that means I have to go out in this suck-fest of a rain storm and get drenched so that I can make the next meeting.
Working at home is so much better than working in the office. So much better.
Thus concludes this morning’s rant about rain. Thank you for your time and patience.
Here’s an example of why traffic in greater Boston is funny. I don’t mean funny as in hahaha, I mean funny as in I am so mad I want to claw my eyes out.
I drove about 70 miles to get to work today. It was pouring rain the whole way. It was also seriously foggy out. The fog plus the rain plus the spray coming off of everyone’s tires meant that visibility was only slightly better than zero. For almost the entire drive I was up around 70-75 miles per hour. I made excellent time.
Yesterday it was gloomy out but other than a little drizzle at the tail end of the drive it was dry. No precipitation, no fog to speak of, no road spray. It had rained the day before though. How did I do for time? There were pockets of gridlock everywhere. The drive took 30 minutes longer than it took today.
Rain today = no traffic jams.
No rain today but rain yesterday = huge traffic jams.
See what I mean about “funny”?
Anyway, here’s a picture of a guitar to try to guilt myself into playing before work tomorrow, when I will thankfully be working from home again.
I hate snow.
It is snowing today. The forecast called for 1-3 inches but we barely got anything. It stuck, but it wasn’t enough to cover the grass. I hate snow, but I can live with it today. Assuming, of course, that the “storm” didn’t just get delayed and we’re going to get the 1-3 inches later today. That would blow.
Hey, dig it, the Bruins won again. Nice. Granted they beat Chicago and Chicago isn’t what we’d call… good. I’ll take it though.
Today is Thursday. I have 90 minutes to go before I punch into work. I could be doing something creative or productive. Nope. I’m watching Better Call Saul. Season five, episode two. Half off for non-violent felonies.
Okay then, Robert. Let’s start this crappy day. Bring it on. Say no to snow.
Inside the Red Head's Head 