Disappearing act
Saturday, 13 February 2010
Great fun to walk the neighborhood as the sun burns through the snowfall and the breezes knock clumps of white off branches and utility lines…. How much of the snow will have disappeared by nightfall?
Musings
Winter blooms*
Friday, 12 February 2010
By mid-afternoon, we could see the weather change, and the big fluffy flakes began to fall. The ground stayed warm enough that we made it to the Big Eighty-Four celebration, up in Buckhead. And home again, after. We played taxi, glad to have our 4×4, and especially glad that most people avoided driving.
* This is a peach tree, BTW….
Sparkling snow
Sunday, 31 January 2010
With our own eyeballs, we could check the aftermath of the snowstorm that came through Kentucky and Tennessee the other day/night. I guess the deepest snow was along this stretch. Thankfully (and as we’d hoped), the Interstate was clean, clear, and dry, although sometimes the side streets were white with compacted snow.
We left Richmond (Kentucky) at 8am, eyeing the snow-crystals glinting on the trees and shrubs. Of course, as the sun brightened and the temps rose, that decoration melted/evaporated.
This was the pretty kind of winter, which we especially enjoyed through our somewhat smeared windows at seventy-ish miles per, without cold penetrating hands, feet, or noses.
Two things we did en route: 1) listened to July Flame, Laura Veirs’s new album, and 2) JCB tutored me in why the TD (JCB says the initials I propose stand for “tablet device” not “that device”) is a breakthrough—it is more multipurpose than prior machines that kept the machine from being between you the user and accomplishing what you wanted (you don’t need to know crap about printer drivers any more, I’m lead to believe).* We both decided, however, that we really want to hold/use it, before making final judgment.
* Kirk says it better than I…. Even Nobelist Paul Krugman is thinking about how the TD fits into his personal techological pantheon….
Brrrrrrrrrr!
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Southern Michigan is being cold right now, but, thankfully, sunny—for now. Cold means a high of something like 20°F.
Almost summer (hah!)
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
D’s super salad—grapefruit and avocado over baby spinach, with a scrumptious dressing.
Second day in a row of lusciously warm weather, accompanied by the prediction that the rain is coming.
We got in some porch time with the neighbors this evening, enjoying the fading warmth.
Cold. Did I mention cold?
Friday, 8 January 2010
Early post today, and the topic must be the weather.
Cold. Sunny. Cold. Dusting of snow. Cold. Windy, too.
In some shady places, the snow was driven on when it was still slushy and has now become icy. Actually, some not-shady places, too.
As I strolled, my body immediately remembered the waddle-walk, with baby steps to keep your center of gravity over your feet.
The sun makes some places rather pretty, like this scenic neighborhood landscaping wall.
Football…to…complex systems
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Sunny. Cold. Still, we snuck out for a walk in the mid-day sunshine.
I couldn’t tell if this was intentional, in the sense of making a statement, or to merely keep the football from rolling away….
Perhaps the more important question is: does it make any difference?
Leaving that aside, this cold, because of the looping jet stream, gives just too much darned ammunition to the simplistic types: how can there be Global Warming when we’re having an extended cold snap?
The answer: “complex systems.” Systems in that changes in one part affect other parts. Always. And sometimes in ways that are difficult to predict using models that have a simplified variable list (the complex part).
But you know that!
Party stash?
Monday, 4 January 2010
We first spotted this critter starting to cross the path in front of us. S/he looked at our feet and apparently rethought that plan, and reversed to climb this not-particularly-large tree.
The exceptional element to this story is just to the left of the squirrel in this photo, and a bit down.
That funny beige thing is a crustless piece of bread that the squirrel had in his/her mouth from when we first spotted her/him, and decided to stash where you see it while s/he descended.
I guess s/he wasn’t worried about crows or other airborne marauders.
This was yesterday, I admit. I was overcome by laziness* today and stayed indoors where it is warm (awakened to 17.3°F temp outdoors)—brrr.
* There has been some discussion around here about whether this should be considered as true laziness. I say yes. Comment?
On ice…
Sunday, 3 January 2010
As near as I can tell, it is darned cold across most of eastern North America. Including good ol’ ATL.
18°F this morning when I got up (yeah, it was early, BUT). TV meteorologist said it’d been above freezing for one hour only since 10pm on Friday.
And mentioned the potential for a bit of white stuff later this week….
The picture? That’s a spent magnolia* bud. On ice**.
* Apparently, they’re named for the French botanist Pierre Magnol (June 8, 1638–May 21, 1715), who was first to publish the idea of plant families as we know them today. Says the Wikipee.
** As my SIL wrote from her perch in her San Diego backyard in shorts(!) regarding the weather situation: wrong wrong wrong!
Nodes and links
Thursday, 31 December 2009
Functional walk today, that is, to accomplish a couple of errands. We found it incredibly foggy, with buildings obscured only three blocks away.
Our circuitous route took us by the Clermont Motor Hotel, a legendary place on Ponce, the main US highway into downtown from the east, built in about 1924. The hotel part (originally apartments) is closing tonight (ordered to by the city because of mold and other health violations), but apparently the basement strip joint (Clermont Lounge) will remain in biz. Still, we caught guys with clipboards of papers posing for photos beneath the marquee, and even a Channel 5 van in the parking lot (covering the story rather than doing some entertainment research).
I took this photo near the odd post office that has no counter service, around the corner from the apartment building where rumor has it Jane Fonda lives (lived?; her daughter lives in ATL). The sky was super grey today, and I guess the pigeons are trying to get a disco nap in before the fireworks keep them up through the dark of the night.
Here’s looking back at the strange year of 2009, with some amazing highs and not-so-high interstices. Not as bad as it could be; I’m smiling!