Bill Roper's Journal

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...

The forecast for around here was for around four inches of snow. This seems to have prompted all of the school districts in the area to close for the day *except* for ours. The kids were not extremely pleased by this. They *did* cancel after-school activities, which seemed wise as the chances of entertainment in evening rush hour were probably highest for the day.

But I went out at lunch and the only problem on the well-plowed roads that I was driving on were folks who wanted to go about 10 miles per hour. Reasonable caution seemed sufficient -- that and making sure not to make any sudden moves!

The kids have shoveled the driveway once and are likely to get to shovel it a few more times before this is all over.

In the meantime, Ruby the Dog is very happy with all of the snow. And it is *much* easier to spot a black dog in the snow-covered back yard than it is to find her without snow...

Thanks to everyone for all the lovely anniversary wishes!

I went to pick up K after auditions today and she wanted food from Cane's, so we drove up to the new one. Unfortunately, they had lost power shortly before and were still trying to get the deep fryers up and running again, so food wasn't happening there. I suggested that I could grab something for her from Rand Red Hots and she thought that was a good idea. And I decided it was a good idea too, so I planned to pick up something for myself.

As we pulled out of the Cane's lot, it started to rain.

And then the deluge hit.

This was as much rain as I'd seen in a long time. It wasn't a surprise -- we'd had some major wind just before I left home and the clouds had been extremely threatening. But it was a *lot* of rain.

We managed to get there and get the order placed without getting too wet. (You have to roll down the window at the drive-through, you know...) The rain eased up for a bit as we arrived home, so we hurried in.

And K looked out the back door. A post had given way to the wind and two sections of fence were completely down.

And then the *second* deluge hit. With hail. And two (mercifully brief) power outages.

It's annoying. Just when I thought I had things under control, something else broke.

I have a bunch of references to call for fence repair, but I need to fix this section of fence *now*. I went on Amazon and bought some fence post repair stakes which are supposed to arrive tomorrow. (I would have bought them at Home Depot, but they have to be shipped in there and I want them sooner rather than later.) If the stakes show up, I will recruit children and we will bodge together another fence repair.

And then I will get someone to fix the fence.

At least this section of fence died *before* I got someone to fix the other sections...

This being the third consecutive day of thunder and lightning late at night, Ruby the Dog is thoroughly tired of it. We're not all that thrilled by it either.

When the emergency alert came on the TV screen (in the middle of the Home Run Derby), I didn't think much of it, because it was announced for communities that were substantially south of us. I thought of tuning to channel 7 for some local weather, but -- of course! -- I couldn't tune with the set, because it was busy broadcasting emergency alert after emergency alert.

Technology to the rescue! I pulled out my cellphone, went to the Comcast Stream app, and was able to stream the channel 7 coverage of the storm. The forecasters were very excited, because there was a *lot* of storm.

Meanwhile, the tornado siren started going off. But I was watching the coverage and it still seemed like there was nothing near us other than a lot of rain.

Well, that was until they announced a sighting of a tornado at O'Hare, just a few miles south of us. Maybe. Hard to say.

At this point, we sent K to the basement with Ruby the Dog (Julie was already in the basement gaming). Gretchen and I continued to watch the coverage and the Home Run Derby until it was clear that the worst of the storm had passed south of us, at which point we summoned K back from the basement.

(I figured I could be in the stairwell on the way to the basement in seconds. Gretchen would take longer, but I was fairly convinced that, in the case of a tornado, she would be more likely to be standing on the front porch looking for the incoming funnel cloud. This is a hazard of living with a trained meteorologist.)

In any case, we're fine here. I am hoping the fence is no less fine than it was yesterday, which is not very fine, but still sufficient to keep Ruby the Dog in the yard.

We'll see in the morning, because it is still raining and I surely can't see tonight without getting very wet.

ETA: Gretchen, meanwhile, would *still* like to know where Helen Hunt got all of those clean white tank tops.

I ran out and grabbed some lunch today, picking up lunch for K on the circuit. When I got home, Gretchen took Julie out for a drive, so I figured this was a good time to run down to the basement, download the Luna for Windows Beta, and take a good look at it.

Well, I downloaded it. And I took a look at it. But it rapidly became clear that something that I ate yesterday was disagreeing with me, as I made three trips upstairs while trying to investigate the program. I finally decided that the better part of valor was to *stay* upstairs.

But I went out on the patio on what was an absolutely *beautiful* spring day and threw the ball, and the rope, and the squid for Ruby the Dog, which made *her* very happy. At least until I got the squid stuck in the maple tree and had to get a stick to get it down with...

All things considered, I didn't really need to learn a lot about Luna, since I'm pretty firmly committed to Cubase and should do some work there.

When I came back in, I pulled out the GS Mini and spent some time noodling on it. This was also good.

And then we all went out to meet Aunt Carol for dinner, which was *also* good.

Then we came home, where I caught the end of tonight's Cubs / Cards game, where the Cardinals scored a bunch of late runs and ended up winning 7-6. Which was yet *again* good.

So, you know.

It was a *really* good day. :)

My strategy for dealing with the snow and rain worked out as I had hoped. I went out early this morning while the temperature was still in the mid-20s and the snowblower made short work of clearing the driveway. I had to clear off my car (still parked in the driveway -- maybe next winter I will get it back in the garage) and move it into the street to expedite the process, but once that was done, things proceeded well. This is good, because it is a *whole* lot colder now.

In activities later in the day, Bill Sutton was good enough to send me the raw tracks from the recording he made of my Chambanacon concert and I did a quick mixdown this afternoon. As a high quality MP3 file, this ended up being 111 MB, which is a lot. :) But it was good to sit down and listen to it with Gretchen before I went to rescue K from the apparently very cold bus that they came back from Theaterfest in Bloomington on this evening.

Theaterfest was apparently a lot of fun. I'm glad.

I shouldn't complain. I managed to get through all of last winter without having to fire up my snowblower.

Tomorrow, however, the forecast is for five to twelve inches of snow here, with the localized forecast for O'Hare Airport (just south of us) showing 10+ inches. There is going to be shoveling -- or preferably, snowblowing.

But due to an excess of work today, I have not yet bought gas for the snowblower. I'm pretty sure there's a bottle of 40:1 oil in the garage, but I am going to need gas to mix it in. This means that I am going to take a car out -- and Gretchen has said to take the van, which is not going to start out in the morning already snowed under -- and buy a gallon of gas after the first wave of the storm passes.

Meanwhile, the high school has already thrown in the towel and declared a virtual learning day for tomorrow. K thinks this is very unfair, because she is already down in Bloomington for the Theaterfest weekend.

On the other hand, this is going to get her out of shoveling. :)