Meaning, by Wednesday, we have water in the forecast, but what form it will come in—may change by the hour. It will hover just at freezing, then below freezing, so back and forth—rain, ice, snow.
Our city has a city-wide race—which is a race, for runners who come in from Kenya and London and wherever, and there are crowds along the route, and card tables set up with drink cups, etc, for the runners. But the bulk of the race particpants, who have paid to enter and who get a teeshirt and a time for finishing—are regular folk, some athletic, some, well, pushing prams or the like. [That sort is deadly, if they get behind you in a crowd.] The race is called Bloomsday, celebrating spring in the Lilac City…when flowers are blooming.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilac_Bloomsday_Run
I have ‘run’ Bloomsday several times…for the teeshirt. And the first time Jane and I ran it, we started in sun, ran into rain, then hail, then sleet, then snow, then rain, then sun again. You wear less than spiff clothes to run in, and start discarding them into trees along the route as you go and warm up: trucks gather them, people wash them, then give them to the needy.
The second time we visited Spokane, on the tail end of a con in California (open-jaw flight plan) we stayed in a motel and went apartment hunting. It rained. It snowed. It was icy. It changed its mind every few minutes. We were warned the weather was normal for Spokane.
Obviously we were not deterred. We rented an apartment in March and finally made the move in June—arriving in a torrential downpour as the movers tried to get our furniture in. Worst rain I’ve ever seen in Spokane.
So……..the weatherman is warning us again. Right now the sky is china blue and the pond is frozen so hard the ice looks like glass.
We’ll see what comes.
For some reason that post makes me hear Cat Stevens singing ‘Oh Very Young’.
😀 Heheheh….
(I’ll be 49 in a few months. If it’s like when I turned 30, or 40, then 49 will (might) bother me more than flipping over the digit to 50. Heh. Oddly, 30 bothered me more than 40. But 50 may bother me. I’m self-conscious about it. Silly, i know. I’m more conscious of not having someone special, if anything.)
Oddly, for me 45 was the most distressing.
The last time I ‘ran’ it, I bought tennies specially for the occasion, expensive ones. It’s been the bane of my life that I have such a high arch, with all the blood supply atop my foot, that I can’t wear tennies without having my feet go numb.
I figured expensive would be better. Wrong. I figured high exercise would help keep the blood flow. Wrong.
The race is some 7.5 miles long. At about 3, you go downhill, cross the Spokane River on a long bridge, then ascend Doomsday Hill, which traditionally has had a guy in a vulture suit waiting atop. It’s a nasty 3-city-block ascent to a ridge and road that overlooks the river. I thought I had a little blister before I got to the bridge.
By the time I got to the top of Doomsday Hill, a climb which will gut the out-of-shape walkers, I had blisters so bad I gave up trying to make a better time than last time, (every finisher is timed) and went aside to the first aid station to get bandaids.
Those didn’t last. Somewhat muted by the numbness the tennies had caused in my feet, I had nasty blisters, the Band-aids came off, and I tried adjusting the lacing. Another mile on, I was in sincere pain, raw sores at every step, and not even the laces numbing my feet was enough. I was about 2-3 miles from the finish line and wanted my damn teeshirt, Jane would be waiting at the restaurant, and the truck that would come by to pick up the wounded would be at least an hour, maybe more, in getting round to where I was. So I took a Roman solution and put my worst foot atop the shoe and used the shoelaces as sandal straps. On I limped. Squish-step. Squish-step.
Considerably later I did get to the Finish line, got the teeshirt, and repaired to the restaurant where I met Jane et al, where we’d agreed to meet, because Jane is much the faster (and younger by 10 years.)
The tennies were a total loss.
The following day, bandaged to the max, I laced down my skates, took to the ice, and, feeling really pretty good, decided to push the crossover as fast as I’ve ever gone.
Unfortunately overstressed muscles deplete faster—and they did. All of a sudden my brain was instructing my foot to reach far in the crossover, my foot was reporting it had done as asked, and the truth was—it hadn’t. It was my first experience with that bane of older years, the foot that is told to do one thing and reports it done when it didn’t.
Foot didn’t clear the other foot: those skates are heavy. And the skate blades locked in a way only figure-blades can really do. I was on a curve, going as fast as I could—and I went airborne sideways, crashed down sideways, thank goodness for crashpads (gel pads under the tights.)
I didn’t get up from that one real fast. And that’s where I acquired the sciatica that by two years ago became really nasty. I was lucky not to have broken the hip. The nice Vionic shoes have stopped the sciatica, cold. And ironically, coming full circle, Vionics makes the ONLY tennies I’ve been able to wear without my foot going numb.
I’ve been struck by how white our ice is not. It froze so hard so fast it’s actually nearly clear, and quite smooth. I’ve rarely in my life seen ice that wasn’t white…well, except when it was a new ice sheet on the rink, where every trace is on crystal.
unless there’s a lot of air trapped in the water when it freezes, the ice won’t be cloudy…it’s how they make ice for sculptures, de-aerate the water, I believe they stir it while it’s being chilled, but I really don’t remember how they told us it was done…..
Using boiled water helps. Boiling, severe heating 😉 , drives off the dissolved gasses.
It sounds like you got the fish ready for winter just in time!
I’ve seen ice that clear in Ohio, where the temperature often goes from 40 to near zero in a matter of hours, and then stayed there. The ice on the pond where I learned to skate (halfassedly) was clear enough once you swept away the snow to see the bottom, 6 feet down.
We’ve gotten about 2.5 inches of snow in the last 24 hours in my area….temperatures were near 30F today, but dropped off after noon, and right now, my home weather station reports 17F, wind chill of 5F.
My cats are all indoors, warm, dry, well-fed, and don’t go outside at all, even onto the deck.
Of course not! They send their staff out to do what’s necessary. 😉
Here in northwest Los Angeles, the barometer has dropped to 30.03 inches (it had been up to 30.12), the wind has dropped a little bit (it had been at ‘roaring’), and the indoor humidity is at 26%. It’s a month with an ‘r’ in its name, so this is not, in fact, a surprise, although it’s enough cooler than last week that I wore a jacket when I was out this morning.
Ahhhhh, the aging process! Not for the faint of heart! Shoes either make or break your well-being; nice that you found the right ones!
Last year, before it started snowing, we had ice on the pond that was so clear we could see the fish swimming. They kept trying to eat bits of leaf that fell through the net. As an exercise in frustration it was pretty funny.
Rain (always welcome) and in the fifties yesterday. Clear with wind in the low forties today. It’s going to be up and down for the next few weeks, but that’s just the way it is here!
The odd vagaries of spell checkers. — I’ve just discovered mine doesn’t like “greyer” or “greyest,” but is equally satisfied with “grey” versus “gray.” I lately switched to “grey,” though either spelling is about as valid and correct. German has “grau,” French has “gris.” English never entirely settled on gray versus grey, only on the pronunciation. Also, curiously, over the years, I’ve run into more than one spell checker and printed dictionary opinion on “bluegray” (or “bluegrey” or add a hyphen or put blue after grey/gray.) (Hmm, and further, the Mac wants to suggest blueberry or bluegrass…. LOL. As long as one doesn’t try to eat bluegrass with the blueberries, I suppose it’s all well and good….)
I see I’ll have to add greyer and greyest to the spell checker. Silly thing can’t figure common endings for parts of speech, I see.
It’s 2014. I’ve been using my own computer(s) since 1983. Why is it many of the tools I use are no better, and in some cases worse, than what I used back then, or at least in the 1990’s. Ppfftt. Ah, modern technology.
OK, it does beat using a manual typewriter. Or longhand. Or clay or wax tablets. So….
grey – greyer – greyest ; greyly ; to grey – grey – greying – greyed ; greyest – greyeth (if I were being completist / hypercorrect) ; a grey – some greys ;
When I was little in Rochester, New York, my parents would take us skating on the frozen Erie canal. For me, it was always a lousy experience. First, I chill easily and stay cold for a long time after I’m out of it. Then, I can only skate with 2 blades on the skates one on each side of each of my feet. Also, the doors in the canal were always half-open and so very big and I so very little it scared the beejeesus out of me. And then there was the ice thru which you could see fish and worms and all kind of stuff. But murky and kind of eerie and unsettling. My older by a year sister, though, LOVED it. I’ll bet my parents never knew that by delighting one daughter, they were traumatizing the other!
When I was in high school, my mom insisted that I learn how to type ‘just in case’. But I wasn’t on the ‘secretarial’ track so I couldn’t use the IBM selectric (which was, at the time, considered ‘cutting edge’) and had to learn on a manual one. But I found I LOVED it! It had a rhythm all its own and I found I was pretty darn fast and very accurate. And it was fun for me. We had one at home too because my Dad was a journalism professor and did free lance writing as well.
That class meant that by the time I figured out I was meant to be involved in the logic of computers, which took awhile considering I got my BS in Special Education, I could type rings around just about anybody out there! And I still think it’s fun.
Lol—they still have double-bladed skates for toddlers. Not too bad. What you want is to actually throw your whole weight onto whichever blade you’re using, which those teach. Dunno how many times I’d tell a beginner, “Stand on the skate you’re actively using…”
I used to maintain, as a joke, my early wordprocessing kit: the old Underwood manual I learned to type on, and an oil lamp, not the original that belonged to gran, but certainly like it. Used to do my homework by it. She had electricity, but not when it rained or the wind blew, and this was Oklahoma, where the wind comes rushing down the plain…
Re: Okie wind and snow.
DH has to use oxygen on a 24 hour basis now. We are currently installing a back-up generator to sit outside the garage. Plumbers here today, electricians tomorrow.
It will be lovely not having to worry. Our power goes out fairly regularly because the lines are still not underground.
Our lines are still above ground as well, which is a devil’s bargain (aboveground, where a hurricane can blow them galley-west, or belowground, where they can be flooded out?) The salt air, vog and dust make a coating on the lines. When we get rain, the first hours are always interesting, as the salty coating liquefies on the lines and connectors. I remember watching the transformers on the pole outside our first condo throwing substantial sparks during the first rain of the season.
Mmm. Good on that generator.
This Afternoon Mostly cloudy, with a high near 35. Light northeast wind.
Tonight Snow likely after 4am. Cloudy, with a low around 24. Light northeast wind. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.
Thursday Snow likely, mainly before 10am. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 35. South wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 70%. New snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.
Thursday Night A slight chance of rain, snow, and freezing drizzle after 10pm. Patchy fog after 10pm. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a low around 32. Light and variable wind. Chance of precipitation is 20%.
Friday A slight chance of rain or freezing drizzle before 10am, then rain likely. Patchy fog before 10am. Otherwise, cloudy, with a high near 39. South wind 3 to 5 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible.
Friday Night Rain. Low around 36. Chance of precipitation is 90%.
Saturday Rain likely, mainly before 10am. Cloudy, with a high near 40. Chance of precipitation is 60%.
Saturday Night A 30 percent chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a low around 32.
Sunday A chance of rain. Mostly cloudy, with a high near 37. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Sunday Night A chance of rain and snow. Cloudy, with a low around 30. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Monday A 40 percent chance of rain. Cloudy, with a high near 37.
Monday Night A chance of rain. Cloudy, with a low around 30. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
Tuesday A chance of rain and snow. Cloudy, with a high near 39. Chance of precipitation is 30%.
cold is easier to deal with than hopping back and forth between freezing and thawing.
Oy!