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 snow.
October 28, 2024… the worst day of the year.
Why?
I had to go out this morning to run a couple of errands. I needed to go to the supermarket to grab something I can cook for dinner tonight. As I was putting on my coat I asked Siri to tell me how the current weather looked. She answered on our bedroom Homepod and said it was snowing.
Bullshit. I looked out the window. Everything was wet, as if we had a little rain not long ago, but there was no snow falling. I felt better about the state of the world in that exact moment, but the seed had been planted. The signs pointed to today being a serious downer.
When I got to the supermarket and got out of my car it happened. I saw the first snowflake of the year. It was followed by a second and a third and maybe a few more, but that was it. In the time it took me to walk from my car to the building it had started and stopped. When I left a few minutes later it had not started again, and it continued to not snow all the way home.
It doesn’t matter though. The first snow flakes have fallen. Winter has truly arrived. It is all down hill from here, folks. It’s all over.
I am working from home this morning, but my wife Jen is not. She left the house at about 8:00am. I walked her to the door and watched her go. When we first looked outside we saw it.
There was ice on the car.
October 15, 2024… the first instance of winter frost.
Damn it.
I hate winter.
I woke up early having every intention of driving in to the office today. I’m supposed to work in the office twice a week (on average) and I’ve only been in once this week. I can’t go tomorrow because I am only working half a day tomorrow and they only want us coming in on full days. So today is my last chance, mathematically speaking.
I got up early, like I said, and looked out the window.
Snow.
A lot of it.
Not like mountains, but enough to convince me to not want to drive 44 miles to the office. I guess I will work three days in the office next week.
Ugh, crud.
I made a pun in the title of this post. Did you like it? It takes the phrase “whether or not” and replaces whether with it’s homonym, weather because the post is going to be about the weather. Get it? I feel so friggin’ clever I could spontaneously combust*!
We’re supposed to get a nor’easter this week. The forecast yesterday said 3-6 inches of snow on Wednesday into Thursday. I just checked the accuweather website and it’s still calling for some snow on Wednesday but no real accumulation. Then Thursday into Friday we’re still looking at 3-6 inches.
I am taking my father to a doctors appointment on Wednesday and I am working in the office on Thursday. Wednesday is looking good but Thursday might be in trouble. We’ll have to see.
The long range forecast includes something I am looking forward to. When the temperature outside hits 60 degrees I like to open the windows. If the forecast is correct, next week I’ll be opening the windows. It stands as more evidence that I am now officially a really old fart, but stuff like that pleases me immensely. Come on, weather. Let’s let me open the windows. Just stop snowing first, m’kay?
*That’s sarcasm. I am not clever at all. Not even a little bit.
If you live in New England like I do, you may want to not look at the weather forecast.
Wendesday… snow.
Thursday… snow.
We’re going to get a Nor’easter… in April.
Damn it, Mother Nature. Why must you be such an insufferable asshole? Really. What a jerk!
It’s still a couple of days away at least, so maybe the forecast will change or turn out to be completely wrong. Maybe we won’t get snow after all. I’m not betting on it. If winter is going to give spring one last kick in the nards, it’ll be like this.
Good thing I didn’t already plant my peanuts!*
*I haven’t written a post about it for months, but I am still planning on trying to grow some peanuts this year. I am an idiot and this is the proof.
I posted yesterday about how happy I was that Spring officially started last night at 11:06pm my time.
I woke up this morning all pleased that it was officially Spring at last, even though the temperature was still low and I knew it wouldn’t make any real difference to anything at all.
Then, while driving to work, mother nature did what she often does. She kicked me in the nuts.
It started to snow.
Well, of course it did!
Happy “Spring” everyone.
Inside the Red Head's Head 