Monday, 14 January 2008
If you don’t like the weather in [insert placename here], wait [insert duration here] minutes.
In this case, East Lansing’s afternoon rotated through overcast, almost sun, and snow flurries several times, while gusts sometimes unfurled the flag completely.
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Late afternoon, we saw a small flurry of big wet flakes. The Prius’s first snow!
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Hey, this is Florida. Well, the Maumee in flood in Florida. Confused? This is Florida, OHIO! From Thursday, when we took the back way from Lima (OHIO, again, and pronounced like lima bean not Lima Peru) to Jackson (Michigan).
Geographic context: simultaneous flooding in east central Midwest and drought in east central South (approximately).
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Temp was 21°F at dawn. Is this a frozen version of clay’s hydrostatic pressure?
North America’s non-organic maize crop has been fingered as causing the big dead zone along the northern Gulf of Mexico. The maize fields are fertilized with tons of nitrogen fertilizers, which wash out of the fields and down the Mississippi drainage.
If you exercise your green impulses, you avoid non-organic maize products (which also means avoiding many prepared foods, including fast foods), thereby contributing less to the dead zone—and other environmental nightmares.
So, I now await the widespread call for organic ethanol at the pump. Yes, I googled it and it’s available, but apparently for medicinal uses, not as biofuel.
Tuesday, 1 January 2008
Best wishes in the coming year*!
May all the distortions you experience be filled with sunshine!
Weather: sunny, breezy, cool (high around 50°F).
* Even though it’s an artificial, culturally determined construct—well, the year part, but maybe the wishes part, too!
Monday, 31 December 2007
This morning our backyard sentinels quietly stood watch in dense fog. Is this an omen for 2008?
Sunday, 30 December 2007
The camillias are thriving this winter so far….
It’s a good thing and a bad thing that today we got enough rain here in good ol’ ATL to beat the record driest year—but only just. So it’s a good thing for the environment and our reservoirs that we have more rainfall. It’s a bad thing in that since it’s no longer a record drought people may find it easier to disregard this issue. And that would be not-good.
Friday, 28 December 2007
The other day, the reflected sunlight dazzled the ceiling of the gazebo at Lake Clara Meer.
This morning was rainy, and it’s rainy again. Meteorological speculators suggested that over yesterday and into tomorrow, some areas upstream from us may get in excess of 1 1/2 inches of rain. Yippee!
For a brief period, we had sunshine, and wearing my black t-shirt while out for a walk, I actually sweated glowed in the high humidity.
Saturday, 15 December 2007
Okay, the warm summery days are gone gone gone, and the rains have arrived. Maybe we’ll have a fairly normal winter from here out—with a semi-rainy season. Last winter we never had the rains, which is part of why our drinking water supplies are so low.
I think people don’t take this water situation seriously. I’m not overhearing people talk about it while walking on the street or shopping in stores and the like, but maybe I’m too much of a hermit to have an accurate radar on this.
So, to avoid water consumption, I’ve been upping my beer consumption (serious duty, here!), and this is a lovely bottle we had from our good friend “Mugs,” who has an importing system for Western brews. I can’t give details here, because I don’t want to compromise it/him.
So, to make a long story short, via Mugs we acquired this fine bottle, and, yes, the name is Moose Drool Brown Ale. I found the beer’s flavor superior to what the name suggests (at least to me!).
Friday, 14 December 2007
According to the meteorologists, today we saw the last of these much-higher-than-average temperatures….