Category Archives: weather

als, weather

Maudlin Thoughts

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It was 82 degrees in the shade Saturday. Sunday it snowed. Welcome to spring on the high plains. Molly spend much of Sunday cowering at my feet as the thunder accompanying the snow bothered her sensitive constitution. {*grin*}

While it was snowing, L went to visit her friend and former business partner who lives on a farm/ranch about 20 miles from here. L’s friend was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) a while ago. When L is down from the mountains she goes to visit (when her friend is able) and bring food to put in the freezer. Her friend has faced the invariably fatal disease with amazing heart and grace. It is hard to imagine just how hard it must be for her.

L’s friend is now at the point where she has a feeding tube and is on a respirator and depends on an eye-tracking and blink computer to do much.  Yet she still keeps on. She wants so much to see her kids grow up (she has a boy aged ~15 and twin girls aged ~13), but knows that it is a wish that will not be fulfilled. For me it is even harder to see how it has impacted her husband as he tries to farm and run the ranch and spend as much time as possible with her and help the kids deal with it. He was always a happy go lucky guy, but now the smile and spirit slips when he thinks no one is looking. I sometimes see him at the grocery store and it looks like the weight of the world is on his shoulders. I am not sure that I could handle it anywhere near as well as he has.

Rather than think sad thoughts about the impending end, I prefer to remember the miracle that is their marriage. She was an international business lawyer who happened to be in the area on a shotgun hunting trip. The trip was on what was to become her future husband’s land. They met, courted and fell in love in their late 30s/early 40s. She changed her practice to move out here and they had kids. The fairy tale they neither one thought they would have became their reality.

I remember one evening when we were out at their place for a dinner party. To say that L’s friend was often a bit disorganized about social occasions would be an understatement. Thus I can remember treading my way in the dark to the grill to cook, all the while being rubbed and attacked by the herd of pygmy goats running wild in the yard, while the others were getting everything else in the house ready hours after the planned time. There is nothing quite like standing in the dark, lit only by the grill, and feeling the fur and tongues of little goats on your legs and wondering if they were really goats or were they skunks? Yet the food was superb, the conversation better and the evening memorable. What more could one ask for?

sleep, tv, weather

Euphoria!

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Last night was one of those nights when the phase of moon and the barometric pressure and … all came together to make sleeping an euphoric experience. I can’t tell you how rare it is any more when the sinuses are clear and the aches and pains are gone and laying down is so pleasant. It was great.

Of course, I have been paying for the glorious night of sleep with an itchy nose all day. That might be because of the combined thunder and snow and rain storm that has dropped in today. It has gone from sunny and clear to thundering and raining to snow flurries and back to thunder and rain and then sunny again in the space of a couple of hours. Spring must really and truly be afoot.

The weather, especially the thunder, means that Molly the wonder dog has been Molly the trembling ball of nerves, trying to crawl into my lap all day. Once the thunder fully recedes into the distance, she’ll collapse on the floor of my office and sleep for a few hours. (In fact, she is asleep now.) So maybe she’ll have a euphoric sleep as well.

On a completely unrelated note and somewhat related to J. Cosmo’s cryptic comments about J.R. (from Dallas), what is the show or shows that you actually watch as scheduled? Note that tivo or DVR or online viewing via hulu or netflix doesn’t count. I want to know if there is a show or shows you actually watch as and when scheduled by the networks and cable companies. (None is an acceptable answer as well.) I have a deep suspicion that there are very few people who follow program provider’s scheduling whims anymore. but I want to see if I am wrong.

march madness, weather

Full Circle

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Remember how I said that the weather went from snow and cold last Monday to the 70s by Thursday followed by wind, etc.?

This is the view this morning from the front door:

Yup, it is snowing to commemorate the joy of springing forward for daylight savings time. Nothing like cyclic weather to proclaim late winter.

Gives a whole new meaning to the term March Madness, doesn’t it?

late winter, rice, weather, wind

The Joy of Coming Spring and Other Oddities

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This has been a typical late winter week of weather here on the high plains. Monday and Tuesday it was cold and it snowed. Wednesday was undecided. Thursday it was warm, close to 70. Today it is warm but the wind is howling at a sustained 40 mph with gusts up to 55 mph. What will tomorrow bring? Who knows?

Enough about the weather. Let’s get on with another topic of late winter – dieting. It seems that the impending arrival of spring has a certain group of people diving head first into the idea of getting rid of the “winter excess”. Some have resorted to the more mechanistic approaches:

Others have been a bit more organic in their approach:

In any case, it can suck the fun right out of luncheon meetings when the diet monster is in full rage. Especially if you are the only one not eating a salad. {*grin*}

That brings my meandering mind to the topic of brown rice. The other night L was bemoaning (on the phone to me) the amount of time it takes to fix brown rice up in the mountains because of the altitude. The boiling point of water is so reduced at the close to 2 mile altitude that it takes forever (and at least twice as much water) to prepare brown rice there. Given that it is a 40 minute task down here at just less than one mile of elevation, you can imagine how long and frustrating it is up in the mountains. In any case, I could tell that L was frustrated. (After all, why call me to kill the time while the rice quasi-boiled away. Watching brown rice boil is not noted to be a source of high entertainment value. I can’t picture that talking to me while I fixed my supper and watching her rice bubble away has a much higher rating.)


More later …

birthday, joke, twitter, weather

Wild and Howling

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No, not my birthday celebration. The wind. What did you think I was talking about?

So yesterday I turned another year older (all of 57 years and the gray hairs were all earned). Four days from now L will have her birthday and join me in being older. (Notice that I did not say how old she was? A gentleman never discloses a ladies age. Just kidding.) The upshot of all that is that our real birthday quasi-celebration will be tomorrow night with our moms. Sort of splitting the difference if you will. 

It is funny to grow older. My friends and I were all convinced we’d never make it to age thirty in those halcyon years when we were sure we knew everything. Now we all laugh about it and remember those that are not still with us. One friend thinks that the fact we are all still alive is proof that we weren’t living life to the limits. Of course he then has to back down a bit when we point out that he is still with us and hasn’t led an exactly sedate life. {*grin*}

On a more serious note, you might have noted that Twitter shut down Twitdroyd and UberTwitter access today while at the same time pushing a commercial tweet for their new Twitter Mobile. Sounds like idiocy on the part of Twitter to me. I always figured people should be able to chose their own favorite method of using any service. A few more stupid moves and Twitter will be removed from my universe forever. (Facebook and MySpace already shot their own toes off and are long gone from my universe.)


Finally, I read a good joke today and thought I’d share it and leave you smiling.

B and T worked together in a factory and were both were laid off at the same time.   So they went to the unemployment office together.

Asked his occupation, B said, ‘Panty stitcher. I sew da elastic onto da ladies cotton panties.’ 

The clerk looked up panty stitcher. Finding it classified as unskilled labor, she gave B $300 a week in unemployment compensation.

T, when asked his occupation replied, ‘Diesel fitter.’

The clerk looked up diesel fitter and it was classified as a skilled job. So, the clerk gave T $600 a week in unemployment compensation. 

Later, when B found out, he was furious! He stormed back into the office to find out why his friend and co-worker was collecting double his benefits.

The clerk explained, ‘Panty stitchers are unskilled labor and diesel fitters are skilled labor.’ 

‘Wut skill?’ yelled B. ‘I sew da elastic on da panties. T puts dem over his head and says, ‘Yeah. DIESEL FITTER’.