Saturday Briefs

Here are some briefs that I decided to put into one post instead of several separate ones.

One
Last Tuesday, I noticed for the first time that the grass was beginning to turn a brighter green as a sign that spring was here.

But Friday, a typical spring bad weather loop was thrown. I was out early, and the sky was overcast from rains that had fallen since Thursday night. The temperatures were in the high 30s. The forecast high was 51 and the forecast low was 37. As for today, the high is forecast to be 53 and the low tonight is forecast to be 36.

Two
I was out at the grocery store and, as I was buying my provisions, I saw a couple books in the calling/greeting card section. One was a book of sports statistics. The other was a book of short inspirational sports stories.

They were published by Hallmark Cards and ESPN.

I thought they were books that a grandmother or aunt would give a grandson or nephew ages 5-15 for his birthday or Chrstimas if the laidies didn't know what he exactly wanted.

Those books were nice gifts, and women of that age (40 or older, at least semi-retired) of the upper-middle to upper class like their things to be nice and their colors to be pastel.

Three
Sitting on a small plate in my kitchen is a wishbone from a broasted chicken I had deboned and deskinned. I had come across it by accident and not on purpose.

I'd like to keep it but it's fragile -- it could snap very easily -- and I don't know where I could store it at my place.

Four
Come Jan. 20, 2017, the end of Barack Obama's second term as president, I predict these group of people will be so happy that they'll pop the champaign and toast:

A. The racists who never wanted to see a black man as president or even in the Oval Office unless he was a janitor;

B. The active agents of the U.S. Secret Service, because the job of guarding the president will become much less stressful and dangerous.

Goddamm This Fucking Weather...

The weather during the last three-four weeks has been terrible. It either has been overcast, damp and wet from rain or snow, and very windy. Many days, at least two of three. And on the rare day, all three.

That seemed to be the dominant weather pattern since winter started. I finally got so fucking sick and fucking tired of it that I'll mention it here. Maybe that will purge my disgust with the weather and cause me not to be so gloomy.

While today is sunny, at least, the temperature as I write this is in the high 20s -- just above freezing. And while it's the second day of spring, snow has been forecast -- just forecast, mind you -- for this coming Sunday and Monday.

But during much of next week, highs are forecast to be from the high 30s to low 50s, lows in the high 20s to low 30s, and only a 10 percent chance of precipitation, mostly rain.

ADDENUM, MARCH 22: To add to the misery, I found a chart in the local newspaper comparing temperatures of a year ago. Highs from March 19-22, 2012, were in the 80s; highs for the same days this year are in the 30s. 

Nocember And The Cold Season

We are now in the middle of the time I call Nocember -- where November and December tend to combine because of the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, which can seem to run together if you let them.

Also, the days get colder and the daylight grows shorter. You'll see the first snow of the late fall/early winter season. 

(No snow has fallen as of today, but the first frost of the season fell during the night of Sunday, Oct. 7. )

It's also the start of what I call The Cold Season. It lasts from late October to sometimes between St. Patrick's Day or April 1 at the latest. Not only does the weather get colder, but chances of catching a cold or coming down with a light case of  the flu or the 24-hour bug increase.

To fight that, I take a 500-milligram pill of Vitamin C every day, starting from Halloween to Tax Day. From April 16 to late October, I take the same dose every other day.

I've been doing this for the last few years. Sometimes I think it's been five years. sometimes I think it's seven. But I know this. I haven't come down with a cold or the flu since I've started, and I recommend that everybody I know do the same thing.

The Line To The Super Bowl...

The line of appearances, that is.

Sometime between 6 and 6:30 tonight, the Super Bowl will kick off. About four hours later, there will be a National Football League champion.

Representing the National Football Conference is the Green Bay Packers. Representing the American Football Conference is the Pittsburgh Steelers.

As for news and comments about the Super Bowl, please look for it elsewhere. There's a lot of it on the Internet.

Instead, I want to iemphasize this fact: The AFC has been represented in three teams for eight straight years and nine of the last ten. Besides the Steelers, the others are the Indianapolis Colts, my home team, and the New England Patriots.

This is no coincidence. They are among the bestrun franchises in the league because the owners -- the Rooney family of the Steelers, Jim Irsay of the Colts, and Robert Kraft of the Patriots -- hire the best people they can for personnel and coaching.

AND THEN STAY THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY.

That's worth repeating.

AND THEY STAY THE HELL OUT OF THEIR WAY.

This is opposed to two types of owners of NFL franchises:

• Those who interfere to the point of micromanagement. Among them are Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys, Al Davis of the Oakland Raiders and Dan Snyder of the Washington Redskins.
• Those who don't seem to care. Those include the Bidwell family of the Arizona Cardinals and the Brown family of the Cincinnati Bengals.

The Steelers have been among the premier franchises since Dan Rooney took over the franchise in the 1970s and moved it out of the Cardinals/Bengals situation. During that decade, they won four Super Bowls.

This is relatively new territory for the Indianapolis and New England but their glory days started when Kraft bought the Patriots in 1994 and Irsay took over the Colts from his father in 1997.

As for which team I favor, I won't mind if either of them wins. A sentimental favorite among many seems to be the Packers.

However, I'll be listening to the game on the radio. My television set went on the fritz and I can't get it fixed until later this week.

I had planned to rent a room in a nearby motel and watch the game there, but bad weather has come across central Indiana during the last week. Heavy snows and freezing rain have fallen, and they have made traveling a little too tricky for me.

I remember that the Super Bowl is only a game. That's why I'm not going to a motel to watch it. If I fall asleep during it and miss a great deal of it, I can find out the results by going on the internet.

I hope you remember that it's only a game, too.

Fall Was Passing

With one month down and two more to go for the fall season, I present this to you. It's an excerpt of a novel I wrote 15-20 years ago. Most of its pages have been recycled, but this one I kept.

"He" is the protagonist of the novel. It was based somewhat on my life:

Fall was passing through time and was about to leave. The leaves turned brown, orange, red, or any combination of those colors before they fell. The cornstalks turned bone white before the farmers plowed them back into the ground. Coolness came with the evening and stayed until the morning, often leaving a dust of frost for the sunlight to brush away.

Some days, the sun shone brilliantly in a cloudless sky, illuminating everything without the harshness and heat of the summer. 'Then, usually between 5:30 and 6 p.m., it was gone.

As the weather got colder, the world prepared for winter's rest. Drowsiness came with Thanksgiving and sleep came with the first snow that stuck to the ground more than two days.

Although it already was November, he wasn't ready to admit until then, when he thought of it, that fall's reign was over and it was near the start of winter's reign, which wouldn't be dethroned until St. Patrick's Day at the earliest.

He sighed when he remembered that he always hated to remind himself of that.

The Heat ... The Humidity ...

As I write this, the sky is overcast. The ground is damp from rain that fell overnight. A light breeze blows from the west. The temperature is 75 degrees.

This a much, much better situation than much of the weather during the last two months: The most prominent event so far of this summer.

As I review notes that I took during the last two months, the temperature got up to 95 on July 7th, July 15th, and July 24th. The humidity was at 6o percent, which made it feel like it was 105 degrees outside.

105 degrees.

More of the same happened during the rest of July and August.; I heard on the radio on Aug. 5 that the temperature was 81 degrees. However, this was at 6:40 a.m.

6:40 a.m.

One morning, I was out doing errands. About 10 a.m., I left an air-conditioned drugstore. Just as I walked through its doors to the outside, I could feel the humidity. Now if walking through air has a density of 0 and waking through water has a density of 100, the density of that atmosphere was, by my guess, 20 to 25.

Central Indiana got a break from the bad weather on Aug. 7 and 8. But from Aug. 9 to Aug. 15 -- seven straight days -- the temperatures were above 95 and the heat index made it feel like it was 105. During those days, few to no clouds hung in the sky to block the heat of the sun's rays.

I took the precautions advised by the National Weather Service. I stayed out of the sun, especially during the afternoon and early evening. I stayed in an air-conditioned room. But my air conditioner wasn't strong enough to cool my apartment thoroughly; I might get a new one for next summer. And I drank plenty of fluids, especially water.

It didn't help that, during the days of heat advisories, no clouds were in the sky. Sunlight fell directly on the ground, and that helped make it worse.

I write just about the lowlights -- because there are no highlights -- of this heat wave because I don't want to think about it any damn more.

The forecast for the next few days has highs in the middle 80s and lows in the middle 60s to high 50s. It'll be tolerable. But the chances of strong heat and high humidity often last until late September.

ADDENUM, AUG. 22: Predictions for this week have highs in the middle to low 80s and lows in the low 60s to high 50s. But the heat is forecast to rise next weekend.

Raining Like A Bitch

P.D. thought:

It's raining like a BITCH, man. It's falling hard, like little sharp rocks from the sky. I can't put their sounds into something somewhat pronounceable as the drops hit the window, the roof, and the parking lot. PING is not even close. It's more like pon, puh puh pong as it falls, especially on the gutter.

He tried to tell if there was a pattern in the falling rain by listening, but he found none. The rain would fall heavy, then not at all, then heavy and light again.

And the temperature was cold, too.

He thought, I'm glad it's a Saturday. This rain and cold makes it a good day to sleep.

A Dance Of Celebration

It isn't just a day late and a dollar short; it's a day and a month late and $32 short.

Spring started March 20. I didn't note it then. I wish I had, because I had gone through a bad time. These are the two mail reasons:

• The death of my parents late last year.
  
• The weather during January and February was terrible.

I wanted to post this picture to celebrate the start of spring, but I hadn't until now. But better late than never -- in fact, much, much better.

I know the women are naked, but the picture is more or less art, and not even cheesecake, let alone erotica or pornography.

The Weather, Always Changing

For the last week and a half, we've had great weather in central Indiana. No precipitation -- neither rain nor, thank the fates and the weather patterns -- snow -- had fallen. The sun was shining.

Yesterday, however, it was rainy and overcast with temperatures in the 40s. As of now, it's overcast with rain clouds and temperatures are in the high 30s.

That's an example of the fickle weather in this part of the country. Here's another one:

On March 25, 2007, I saw that the grass on the lawns in my neighborhood was that emerald-green tint that shows that it had started to grow after cold weather had left.
And if I remember correctly, the high one day that month was 75 degrees.

But on April 12, 2007, snow fell.

The Weather Lately

I'm hoping with all my hopes that the weather has finally turned.

About one and one-half inch of snow, which covered the ground, fell sometime between nightfall last Friday and sunrise last Saturday. By Sunday, however, it was gone because it was light and powdery.

The snowfall was frustrating. Before it happened, I could see clear patches of ground where the earlier snow had melted. A lot of the remaining snow was in large drifts or in mostly-shaded places.

By Monday, however, the scene looked as it did before the snowfall.

With highs this week forecast from the mid 30s to the mid 40s, most of the snow should be gone by next Sunday.

As for last month, weather people say 17.5 inches of snow had fallen in the Indianapolis area. The average snowfall is 6.1 inches.

The record snowfall during February in the Indianapolis area was 21.7 inches in 2003. (By the way, and for your information, 18.2 inches fell in February 2007.)

The Weather, About One Year Ago

I had complained about the weather often in this blog. If you want specific examples, click on any post that's labeled 'weather.'

As I was going to hrough my journal, I found these citations of the weather. I post them here for your enlightenment -- and mind.

All dates occured during the year 2009.

Jan. 27 -- About six to eight, possibly nine, inches of snow fell. Near Indianapolis International Airport, which is on the west side of the city, about 12 inches fell.

Jan. 29 -- The temperatures were in the single digits. Around 5 a.m., it was five degrees above zero.

Feb. 4 -- The temperatures again were in the single digits. The wind chill made it feel as if it was below zero.

Feb. 8 -- The high temperatures were in the middle 40s.

Feb. 9 -- The high temperatures were in the low 60s.

Damn Weather Again ...

As of this afternoon, the National Weather Service is forecasting another heavy blizzard. It is predicted to be much like the one last week. You can read the details about that storm here.

The latest snow will start falling about midnight tonight and continue through Wednesday afternoon. The amount to fall is forecast to be between five to eight inches.

Roads will be bad because winds will blow and cause drifting.

Last week's snowfall didn't hit central Indianapolis as hard as Washington and other places on the East Coast, but still ... I'M GETTING GODDAMN TIRED OF IT!

This will be the last posting for a while. I'll be away from my computer and at a place where I can't post because it has no computer connection.

Goodbye for now. And watch this space. More posting to come.

Damn Weather ...

Damn!

The National Weather Service is forecasting, as of this morning, a severe weather advisory. It will start late tonight/early Friday morning and will continue through Saturday morning.

Between four to eight inches of snow is supposed to fall. About a tenth of an inch of ice will fall before that.

Travelling will be hazardous Friday morning because of ice on the roads and streets. It also will be hazardous in Friday afternoon and evening because blowing and drifting snow will cover the roads and visibility will be bad.

Weather like this is why I despise January and February.

I fear ice-covered streets and roads. In fact, I won't go onto the interstates if it's in the forecast because I'm afraid of sliding off and being ignored by semi drivers. I'll travel city streets if I must, even if it'll take longer.

Also, during several days in January, the temperature didn't get above 20 degrees. The lows were in the single digits, and wind chills made it seem a lot colder.

I can't wait until spring weather comes! I'm sick and tired of the cold, the lousy precipitation, and the overcast days. It sure doesn't help my temperment, which hasn't been the best because of recent developments (click here to see what they were).

ADDENUM: I would've started this post with the word cazart, which I though was a synonym for damn. But according to urbandictionary.com, cazart means "Holy shit! I should've known!"

It was either invented or popularized by Hunter Thompson.

spring arrives

to mark the start of spring, which starts today, i post the dance, a painting by the french artist henri matisse, on display at the museum of modern art, new york.

it's a compositional study of a similiar painting, which is on display at the hermitage in st. petersburg, russia.

and this, according to wikianswers.com, is why spring is starting today:

Spring comes in between the 19th to the 23rd of March and at different times. It changes on a yearly basis because the first official day of spring is ... when the sun is directly above the equator. It rises due east and sets due west and does not do so on the exact same day every year since the calendar is not exactly 365 precise days every single year. In 2009 ... the sun will be above the equator and crossing to the northern hemisphere around 11:45 p.m.

it's early, true. but better early than late and better late than never.

and as i post this, the temperature is in the low 30s -- definitely not most people imagine spring at all.

the weather now ... and then

as i write this, the skies are cloudy and the wind blows fiercely. the temperature is in the high 20s with a high forecast to be in the middle 30s.

more of the same will happen on sunday and monday before the temperatures rise.

compare that to the weather 17 years ago. the following entries came from a journal i kept that year and recently reviewed:

2-23-92
Saturday was glorious. The high was about 65 or 66. I opened the windows of the apartyment from 1-7 p.m. to let the air in.

3-3-92
Snow fell last night. Again.

3-4-92
I've left the windows opened and turned off the heat. Tho temps were in lower 40s supposedly last nite, it doesn't fell chilly. it's 330am as I write this.

3-10-92
snow forecast for today. I closed my windows and turned the heat back on. Low forecast for 16 tonite. Cazart! But that's spring weather for ya.

3-11-92
Freezing rain and rain fell yesterday. Snow fell last nite.

snow, snow, get out of here ...

between one to two inches of snow was forecast to fall last night. none did.

however, as i write this, snow is falling and accumulating on the cars in the parking lot of my apartment complex and in the corners of the lot.

the forecast for today says a light mix of wintry precipitation will fall during the day, while snow flurries or snow showers will fall during the night. accumulation is expected to be one inch.

i don't know what "mix of wintry precipitation" is supposed to mean, but there was no forecast for freezing rain -- thank the fates!

most of the heavy snows from a few weeks ago had evaporated by early this week. even thought the forecast for today is tolerable ...

i'm just goddamn tired of all this goddamn snow and cold weather!

i wrote a couplet about it:

snow, snow, get out of here!
come again another year!

let it snow? oh hell no!

more snow fell this morning. the amount was between 2 to 4 inches.

add to that, strong winds this morning caused drifting and made travel hard. it probably will be the same during the commuter drive tonight.

and more snow is forecast to fall tonight and wednesday.

today's snow is atop the 12.5 inches that fell last week. but in no way has it been as bad as it has been in kentucky. please click here to read the latest story.

despite all this snow, and it is a pain, this thought came to me:

you have bare trees and dead grass during the winter. at the least the snow makes things look a lot better.

weather update

about 12.5 inches of snow fell between monday and this morning. according to the folks on tv, it was the most snow that fell since 1996.

it fell so fast that the snow removal people couldn't keep up with it. folks on tv and on the radio suggested that people should travel -- that is, drive -- only if necessary. i had no necessary places to travel, so i stayed inside and rescheduled some appointments i had until next week.

the sun came out about 10:30 this morning. with little cloud cover, temperatures tonight will be in the teens

damn.

that reminded me of a poem i wrote. its title is the chill.

she talked of the chill
that comes from the winter --
how it gets in the spaces
between muscles and bones,
and makes you shake.

"that's one sign of
a typical
midwestern
winter," she said.
"i hate that --
and the gloominess,"
too. Gray skies every day --
how can you stand it?"

"it's here, and i'm here," i said.
"that's all i can say.
that's all i will say."

odds and ends about today

one
the temperature, as i write this, is in the middle 60s. that's way above the average high for this time of year. temperatures are forecast to be in the middle 40s to the high teens for the next few days.

but the winds are heavy. i was out doing some errands this morning and it took some effort to keep my car from drifting, ever so slightly, when i was driving in the country.

however, it's overcast, as it has been for at least the last two weeks. the sun came out a few times this morning, but they were short.

on christmas day, however, the sunlight shone bright and pure. only a few clouds were in the sky.

we had no snow on the ground in central indiana, so even if we didn't have a white christmas, at least it wasn't a gray one. and no snow is forecast to fall until the new year.

two
early in november, i had posted about gasoline prices. if you want to read what i wrote, click here.

while i was out this morning, i saw that gas was $1.539 per gallon at a station about five miles from where i live.

winterlike weather for now

snow fell late sunday night/early monday morning. it also fell late last night/early this morning.

not enough snow fell to cover the ground -- i don't expect that much to fall until december -- but it covered the tops of cars and buildings.

the temperatures aren't forecast to rise above 40 degrees this week. if i remember rightly, it's in the mid20s as i write this.

thanksgiving is a week and two days away. and christmas is exactly four weeks from thanksgiving.

folks, bundle up when you go outside. and get out the heavy blankets; i have.

addenum, november 19: thinking about the weather, for some reason, reminds me of what friedrich nietzsche said: "what does not destroy me makes me stronger."