Bill Roper's Journal

The weather today is *much* *much* better than it was with respect to air quality than it was yesterday. It may (or may not) be better than that tomorrow, but the Bristol Renaissance Faire has decided to err on the side of caution and is staying closed for the day.

We may (or may not) reschedule this expedition for a future date, depending on schedules. In the meantime, a lot of fun was had today and more fun should follow tomorrow.

After last night's thunderstorms and thunderstorms that rolled through the area earlier today, a lot of local fireworks displays were canceled -- except for the freelancers who have been firing things off for much of the evening.

We had originally planned to grill sausages with Jeff and Carol, who are in town for a visit. The weather made that look problematic, so we cooked them on the stove instead, which was *just* fine. A lot of good conversation was had.

After Jeff and Carol headed back to their hotel room, Gretchen said that she wanted to watch the taped "A Capitol Fourth", which seemed fair, but the Cardinals / Cubs game tonight was on Fox and had finally started after a one-hour rain delay. I got to my chair first and switched on the game before Gretchen got there. The game got to the end of the third inning and so did Gretchen, at which point I offered to put on "A Capitol Fourth". She initially declined, I argued, and we fired up the recording.

While that was going on, I was following the game on my phone and noticed that there was a new "weather delay". Huh? I checked and found that the game was being delayed by *fog*. That's pretty unusual, so I asked permission to interrupt the recording and go check out this mess, which Gretchen agreed was interesting.

After about 18 minutes, the game resumed, and Gretchen fell asleep. I took advantage of this to watch the rest of the game, after which we watched the remaining half-hour of "A Capitol Fourth", and all was right with the world.

Except the dogs *hate* the fireworks. Or else want to go out and bark at them and invite them in to play.

I'm not sure.

It was over sixty degrees this morning, so you'd think it would be a lovely time for Opening Day at Wrigley Field.

You would think that incorrectly.

Gretchen was good enough to drop me at the Skokie Swift after we got some breakfast and the temperature was dropping rapidly. It was below fifty degrees at game time, which would *still* have been ok.

That is, it would have been ok except for the high wind blowing directly in from the north, right at the first base side of the park, which was where I was sitting. Five innings of that was enough.

The fact that the Cubs were trailing substantially didn't help, but the Cubs could have been *leading* substantially and it would not have kept me in those seats today.

Maybe if it were game seven of the World Series.

Of course, if it were October, I would have worn my parka.

There is a substantial temperature gradient across the Chicago area tonight, which means that there are thunderstorms. We are happily on the cold side of this development which means that we are not getting the tornados that are blowing through the Kankakee area to our south. But there has been a lot of weather tonight and that has resulted in a lot of our favorites TV programs being preempted for storm coverage. This is understandable, but annoying.

Tomorrow, we will be watching a bunch of Hulu.

*sigh*

We apparently got around four inches of snow, which Julie has shoveled off the driveway. The cold means that the salt that is hitting the roads is not nearly as effective as you might hope, so things are very slick around here. This was slightly important when I ran out for lunch, but got to be a whole lot more important later in the day.

Julie noticed that her computer was misbehaving again and asked if I could blow the dust out of it. Since Gretchen gifted me with a fine blower fan for just this purpose, I said I'd be happy to if she brought it upstairs, but then it decided to shut down from overheating before then.

Ok. There was some initial confusion about what fan was having the problem before Julie made it clear that the CPU's heatsink fan had given up the ghost. Oh. I had replacement case fans that I'd picked up at an earlier date, but I don't have a replacement for a CPU heatsink. If we were having good weather, I'd have just shot down to Micro Center to pick up a replacement, but I was positively not making this trip on these roads. And unfortunately, the replacement I ordered from Amazon won't be here until Tuesday, assuming that there are no weather delays.

But we have a computer in the dining room too and everything Julie wanted to be doing was on line, so we were able to get her set up on that machine and she is happily tapping away. Well, except for the fact that there's a noticeable hum when her headphones are plugged into the speakers, because she's listening at a very low volume. There's nothing trivial to be done about that, so here we are. (I checked obvious things with no luck.)

Calvin the Dog picked today to have two separate "accidents" in the house; one of each kind. This was especially annoying, because accident number two (of number two) was right after we had let him back in. *grumble*

On the better news front, the Seahawks beat the Rams. :)

Ruby continues to bully Calvin. This has Calvin spooked to the point where he does not want to come in when the two dogs should be coming in from the back yard. Ruby trots in. Calvin sits outside on the porch.

If the weather were better, this would not be so much of a problem. I can usually get Calvin to come in, although there have been cases where I have had to pick him up by his harness like he is a four-legged suitcase and lift him over the threshold. This is not infrequently followed by Ruby coming over to bark at him as Calvin assumes a submissive position.

The weather is *not* better. It was close to freezing today, but tomorrow night, it is supposed to get down to -12 degrees around here, then rise to a balmy -6 degrees on Friday. This makes standing there with the back door hanging open, well, suboptimal.

The dogs and I are going to have a discussion about this.

There are just limits to what you can get done in a weekend, especially when you have two dogs who are anxious to compete for your time. I appear to be Calvin's "safe person" and when he is threatened by Ruby, he will hop up on top of me in my chair looking for protection. This annoys Ruby, because Calvin is now hogging her person. (This is not to say that the dogs do not love the other people in the house -- I just appear to be the household alpha.)

The Christmas tree did not get straightened up in its stand today, because that's a three person job really and I was not going to get that level of cooperation. But one of the tubs of Christmas decorations has gone back to the basement and most of the decorations are actually up which is a good thing.

The driveway was also shoveled by Julie and me in various shifts. Julie does not quite realize that the apron is part of the driveway, but I have explained this to her and hope to have better luck next time. Gretchen suggested that I should fire up the snowblower, which probably would have been the best idea if I already had gas and was sure that I had the appropriate snowblower oil *and* had an empty gasoline container. Maybe before the *next* major snow. Today's was about five inches, which is definitely a depth where the snowblower becomes worthwhile.

I bought more plugins and software upgrades while they are on sale. Now I just need to *do* something with them...

And I cleaned off the top of the bookcase in my bedroom, putting the stuff that had accumulated there away for its safety. I'll need to remember where I put it when I need it. That's the tricky part. :)

Tomorrow, it's back to work and I have a *lot* of things to do. Happily, I updated the password that was going to expire today when I logged in *yesterday*...

And here I am, back to work, trying to solve problems. With luck, I'll get some of them to fall by tomorrow.

I checked tonight, but no obvious aurorae visible here. On the other hand, the sky is very bright in the Chicago area, so the chances are always low that we'll see anything.

It's cooled off a lot outside, but it has been bright and sunny. We have turned off the air conditioning, but the house doesn't circulate air particularly well without it, so the weather outside is lovely, but the weather inside is not so much.

I have turned on the window fan in the bedroom as of several hours ago and we will shortly see how sleeping conditions are in the bedroom. If they aren't good, I can always turn the air conditioning back on.

In other news, I bought a refurb monitor for K for college and then bought another one for me to use in the studio, because the price was attractive. But they came without stands, so I purchased the add-on stand that they were selling, thinking that it was the same one that I'd gotten before. It wasn't. It is a substantially different design that won't work in the studio and is unlikely to work in K's dorm room. And trying to return them is probably more trouble than it's worth.

So I have now purchased a dual monitor stand that *should* work in the studio and will attach the two new/old monitors to it, while K can have the monitor that I've been using in the studio for her desk. With luck, this will all work out. :)

The alarm tone went off on my phone about half an hour ago. Apparently, we are now under warning for a dust storm.

Well, my car looked like it earlier today...