Bill Roper's Journal

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...

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...