You think this is cold? This is nothing! Why, when we were kids, the world iced over for months at a time even in summer. And if you couldn’t see your breath INSIDE, my father thought the heat was set too high. This is nothing!
5.
Comrade Mary
Officially tired of having to bang on my doors to unstick them to go outside.
Piker. I went out the back door to the garage this morning, then tried to come back in the same way, but the push-button handle on my back door was stuck and would not let me back in. I had to circle the house and come in the front door. Given the trifid that was sold to me as a raspberry plant, the raccoons as big as Buicks who leave their menacing tracks on my garage roof as a warning, and the poltergeisty abilities of the screen door, my back yard is obviously a no go zone until spring.
6.
dmsilev
Relax. According to noted climatologist Rush Limbaugh, the ‘polar vortex’ is just a liberal media hoax.
7.
gelfling545
After 60+ years in the WNY area I have dealt with snow & cold temperatures. We’ve often had more snow than we’ve had so far this year & frequently, even usually, got a streak of single digit temps in Jan. or Feb. What is new is the dizzying changes – below 0 to 40’s & back over in days or even hours over multiple weeks is something new. It’s going to be death for shrubs & perennials since the low temps set in just after all the snow cover has been melted away & the higher temps signal “start growing” to the plants. It’s also keeping me pretty miserable because the fluctuations are making the fibromylagia kick up something awful.
8.
KG
@Anoniminous: speaking of, every three days or so, i search the net to see if there is a release date for The Winds of Winter. I’m actually at the point where I’m considering rereading the series…
ETA: in southern California the high today was something in the mid-70s. not bragging or anything, our fire season is going to be a bitch this year (our seasons are: rainy, fire, summer)
9.
Culture of Truth
@Sourmash: Exactly. Look on the bright side, everyone. You’ll have great stories to tell the kids for decades to come about the winter of 2014.
10.
Culture of Truth
Having said that, I was just out for about 5 minutes and almost got frostbite. It really is cold out there. Who knew?
-11 here in Mich this morning, -25 with wind chill. I know someone from Alaska will tell me I am a wimp, but W.V. Ain’t got nothing.
14.
Elizabelle
Cool PBS show on the beginnings of forensic science in early 20th century. American Experience episode on NY’s Dr. Charles Norris.
The Poisoner’s Bible. On PBS now eastern time, Frontline to follow at 10.
Poisoning was a leading cause of death in early 1900s.
15.
gogol's wife
I have an anxiety list a mile long of what happens in the winter, but having the doors to my house freeze shut isn’t one of them. How does this even happen?
The wind is what’s making me nuts. If it keeps up like this I might wear ear plugs tonight.
21.
jl
I thought Cole banged on stuff around the house anyway as standard operating procedure, when material objects of the world did not bend to his will and obey (and the disobedience of random stuff was frequent).
But, I also though Cole had goats and generators too, and things like the power grid going down wouldn’t be a problem. And looks like I was wrong on that.
Anyway, hope the cold goes away soon and Cole can stay inside until it does.
@Aji: Well, Cole talked about getting goats and generators awhile ago. I thought it was an official plan of his.
24.
Fuzzy
@KG: Northern California has had less rain than down south this year so our fire season is flaring up around hear but in contrast to Cole’s WV our 63 today was great. Send rain.
I not only went out, but also got a haircut. Very cute but had to wear a hat, so got hat hair.
27.
Comrade Mary
Hey, how come nobody showed me this before Christmas?
28.
NotMax
Back during the few years I was living in Minnesota, there was one January when the high for the entire month was zero.
Used to have to wake up every few hours overnight to trudge out to wherever on the street the car had been parked, start it up and let it run for a bit. Often had to tighten up the clamps on the battery posts, as they would tend to loosen in the cold, so kept a wrench handy inside the car.
One time (and one time only), while poking around under the hood, for some reason needed both hands (forget why, maybe dropped the flashlight) and without thinking put the wrench into my mouth to free up the second hand.
Ouch.
29.
Schlemizel
OK, old guy war stories. in 1963 I was in middle school, we walked 13 blocks (and, no, it was not up hill both ways). There were 3 days in a row when it was colder than -30 when we set out for school in the morning. Nobody even suggested that schools be closed, you bundled up against the cold & soldiered on. I remember 1963 very clearly as the coldest I ever was going to school.
When contacted by the Associated Press, [George R. R.] Martin had no comment except to say “The Giants have not kept their focus. When winter is coming I expect my heroes to be much better at managing the pigskin.”
Given Martin has yet to hit a deadline so I wouldn’t count on it.
32.
Talentless Hack
@gelfling545: Fortunately, it’s too early for anything to start growing. You also need a certain amount of sun every day, and we’re nowhere near that yet.
Not only that, but the cold snaps are bound to kill the skeeters, which is a good thing.
Not at all joking when I say that friends of ours got divorced over the weather. She was a native Southern Californian; he was originally from central Illinois. After both her parents died, she agreed to move back to Illinois with him, but they (stupidly) did it in October for one of the worst winters in a couple of decades. Plus her nursing license hadn’t transferred over yet, so she couldn’t work, and all she could do all day was stare at the frozen wasteland outside or visit with his family (since she hadn’t had time to make any friends before the freeze set in). She moved back to California and they ended up getting divorced because they couldn’t work it out.
You’ll have great stories to tell the kids for decades to come about the winter of 2014.
I’m not done telling stories about the winter of 1996 in the Twin Cities. I distinctly remember -20 feeling much much warmer than -35 (not wind chill) while walking the five blocks from the parking lot to the office in the morning. That was a horrid week.
Of course I’m much older now and a weather wuss. I stayed home from work yesterday.
@efgoldman: Do you still have indentations on your fingers from writing all that prose? Did you use steel wool pads to rid your hands of the ink stains? If you answer no to these questions, your story doesn’t ring true.
Look on the bright side, Cole – it means you have really tight/weatherproof doors. Spousal unit was sticking newspaper around the front door yesterday and we’ve got a storm door. Started vehicle (an Outback!) to take daughter unit to work today at noon and the car’s digital readout for outside temperature said 17 degrees in the garage, 15 out in the driveway, 10 when we got out of the neighborhood and 6 when we got to her place of employment, which is about a half mile away. Awful.
41.
lamh36
No snow here in Louisina, but it is still pretty darn cold here for the area
Well, of course it is! All that moving around of the Jet Stream is just an illusion. Pay no attention to the temperature outside your kitchen window, it’s a liberal lie!
@Villago Delenda Est: Thermometers are just another set of instruments of the liberal conspiracy. When the temperature is unskewed, you’ll see that it’s perfectly comfortable out.
@Mnemosyne: Have you read the books yet? it’s actually easier if you have. The books spread it out much more, and you have the added advantage of knowing when HBO is going to distort something especially graphically.
Slightly O/T, I recently finished what his wife calls his best book, or at least her favorite, completely unrelated to the ASoIaF series. It was both good and . . . hmm . . . let’s say that I could see foreshadowing of some of the current series, even though neither has anything to do with the other. I think it’s a combination of writing style and the insistence on warts-and-all characters, among other factors.
Thermometers are just another set of instruments of the liberal conspiracy.
Rectal thermometers especially. It’s how liberals make babies gay.
56.
lectric lady
@NotMax: @Schlemizel: @efgoldman:
Anyone else remember back in the 50’s and early 60’s when girls were required to wear skirts to school, no matter what the temp? In Southwestern Wyoming we were occasionally permitted to wear “slacks” if the temp was lower than -10. And we all walked to school. Not Kidding!
57.
raven
@lectric lady: And kneel and if they didn’t touch the floor they were too short!
58.
scav
@scav: I can’t decide if the °F0renikators or the °€ommunist conversion programmes are the tripping point!
ETA it ate my comment retroactively! more evidence of the cunning plot!
He slams Congress for its grandstanding and gridlock. “I would listen with growing outrage,” he writes, “as hypocritical and obtuse American senators made all these demands of Iraqi legislators and yet themselves could not even pass budgets.” He describes members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee as “rude, nasty and stupid.”
eta ““As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Mr. Gates wrote. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”
Haven’t read the books, but it was the siccing rats on people to eat them from the inside that did it. I made it through the rest of the season, but I didn’t have the stomach (no pun intended) for more torture after that.
if you tell me that this kind of cold in January keeps the skeeters down
I suspect that it will re-set the northern survival limit of many species — gardners will lose beloved ornamentals, but some nasty neo-tropical diseases will get pushed back a zone or two, at least for a while.
67.
raven
@joel hanes: I don’t buy that bullshit about cold weather killing skeeters. Sure as hell didn’t impact them in Korea.
And here on the Left Coast, we had a comfortable high of 70°F and a low of 49°F. But we could definitely do with a lot more moisture than we’ve had.
Your part of the LC, maybe. It’s been chilly in the Seattle area. (But not nasty-cold.) We have had less rain than usual; the ski resorts have been hurting, evidently. Today was the first steady drenching we’ve had in a while.
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): That’s what I mean. I knew it was coming, so I could sort of watch/not watch. Certain times are good for, you know, going into the kitchen to check on dinner, etc.
Although Season 3 will have a scene that probably makes that one pale in comparison, although it doesn’t show the actual incident – and doesn’t track the book, frankly. I’ve noticed that HBO ramps up the sex-and-torture routine (separately and in combination) in sensationalistic ways that the books don’t. Benioff and Weiss have clearly not learned what the best filmmakers of the Golden Age knew so well: that you can generate either lust or terror much more effectively with understatement than you can by rubbing people’s noses in it until they throw up.
70.
jo6pac
@KG: Yep, I’m in the central valley we won’t be grow much food=d here this yr. Sad
The more I read about the book, the more I wish Obama’s ostensible allies in Congress could come up with the same “criticism.” Oh noes, he thinks Afghanistan is unwinnable and wants to leave! That monster!
@Yatsuno: They are, frankly, better than the series. Although admittedly loooooong. :-D
And my guess is that to the extent that anyone is protected as a character, Arya is one. BTW, next week, Maisie Williams, the young actor who plays Arya, will be in Santa Fe at the GoT screening at the Cocteau (a fabulous art-house theatre that closed a few years back, and which the Martins bought last year and have re-opened). If we could get away, I’d love to go down for the screening, but it’s too long a drive back that late at night, particularly when we have animals needing to be fed on a schedule, etc.
@WereBear: Yeah, if I had walked into the TV series at a bad moment, I probably wouldn’t want anything to do with it. But I’d already read all the books, and I’ve met the author and his wife is a friend, so for us it was a given that we’d watch. And not so difficult when, as I said, you know when to leave the room. :-)
@Aji: Yeah. Unless you have a horsesitter getting away from the ranch can be a difficult proposition. My mom has several people she can call to take care of that (one is an old fucktoy but that’s another tale for another time) so their excuse to not go to Europe is dwindling fast. It would be cool if you could arrange for someone to mind things while you go out there, I’d bend over backwards to meet Maisie. And that ain’t exactly easy in my condition. :)
@Yatsuno: LMAO – no, I suppose not. But you really do need to tell that story – you know, “fucktoy.” :-D
Part of our problem is that so many of ours are special-needs types. Between the two of us, it takes enough to keep straight what has to happen with everyone. Finding someone reliable and trustworthy who can also keep all that straight is . . . iffy, to say the least. And now that we have yet another stray who’s decided to move in, but is spooked as hell by everyone and everything, I wouldn’t have much confidence in finding him here safe and sound when we got back, y’know?
79.
some guy
The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his
how very very very sad. Sounds like Gates slowly discovered the Obama the rest of the country voted for was, in fact, the Obama who employed him.
Mr. Gates writes that Mr. Obama’s approval for the Navy SEAL mission, despite strong doubts that Bin Laden was even there, was “one of the most courageous decisions I had ever witnessed in the White House.”
In his final chapter, Mr. Gates makes clear his verdict on the president’s overall Afghan strategy: “I believe Obama was right in each of these decisions.”
@Pogonip: Hell yes it is. We used to say it was the only place on earth you could stand up to your knees in mud and have dust blowing in your face. And the winters, sheeeeeet.
86.
Pogonip
@Anoniminous: St Pat’s Day is a fitting release date, seeing as how ’twill be a miracle if Martin makes the deadline.
California income tax collections came in $1.6 billion, or 20 percent, above projections in December, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said Tuesday, just days before the Brown administration releases its annual spending plan.
Suck it GOP. California isn’t broken – we just needed to clear the GOP out of the way.
88.
GregB
I’m pretty outraged to hear that Obama harbors doubts about his decisions.
He’s supposed to be The Decider who makes us feel safe and warm.
89.
trollhattan
Sweet Jebuz, somebody tell Betty there’s a new ride in which to teach her kid driving. I’d say “only in Florida” if it weren’t for the existence of Texas.
@? Martin: Jerry might be running out of excuses here. Might be time to get that single payer bill re-proposed.
94.
trollhattan
@scav:
Yup. IIUC some can hibernate in brush, treebark, culverts, etc., freeze, then fly away, hungry, when it thaws. Bastards.
95.
Botsplainer
Looks like my Louisville Cardinals are getting that douchebag Bobby Petrino back.
They’ll have to stick a 15-20 million dollar buyout in the contract to keep the fucker from job shopping several times each year just to drive mid-contract renegotiations. It was constant with him.
California income tax collections came in $1.6 billion, or 20 percent, above projections in December, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said Tuesday, just days before the Brown administration releases its annual spending plan.
Sounds like the makers are being overtaxed, if revenues are rolling in ahead to the point where bills are paid and there might be enough money to put aside for a rainy day.
Time for a tax cut.
97.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Smart girl.
A divorce under those conditions makes perfect sense. Tim Minchins
Hold on, gentlepersons. Rapid and large increases in income tax revenues in CA expected whenever economy starts growing. To be followed by rapid and large decreases with economic downturns. This has been attributed to CA’s over reliance on income tax as revenue source.
Fixing CA’s roller coaster tax system should be a high priority now that the awful CA GOP is out of the way.
I’ve read polls that say public may be, possibly, getting ready to commence to prepare to consider changing parts of Prop 13 that produce corporate tax give-aways. Not sure I believe it, but I hope so.
In mean time, Jerry probably, sadly, right to be a little restrained in spending the increased revenues, since will need fiscal cushion during next downturn. Which of course, was Ahnohld the Gubernator’s first order of business when he first took office, to destroy any fiscal cushion for an economic downturn so he could starve the CA gummint beast. (Edit: or, alternatively, Ahnohld didn’t know what he was doing, though the two choices are not mutually exclusive)
@efgoldman: Nah, only one “a.” “Martins,” not “Martians.” Although as I recall, they did screen War of the Worlds a couple of months back. The real one, that is. 1953 version.
100.
tybee
cold weather seems to stimulate the sand gnat (wing-ed teeth) population during the following spring.
anecdotes =/= data but i’ve been chewed by the little bastids enough to keep track.
@Yatsuno: He’ll have plenty of excuses. The state owes education about $5B in funding guarantees that they ‘borrowed’. We also owe the feds $9.7B in unemployment benefits. And he’s still got to release or relocate about 10,000 prisoners. We should be able to start making real headway against these things, but Brown has never liked being in debt. He’s long been the champion of the rainy-day fund.
I think the biggest problem with a move to single payer is going to be how to cover the cost of expanding the number of doctors and hospitals. There’s only 11 medical schools here, and the state runs 6 of them. UC Riverside just opened up a new one, and UC Merced is starting to build theirs so we’ll be running 7 out of 12. UC Irvine built a new hospital – $600M there. There’s going to be a lot of hidden costs to get to single payer, but we’ll see how it goes. We’re definitely on the right track though.
I think the biggest problem with a move to single payer is going to be how to cover the cost of expanding the number of doctors and hospitals.
This is pretty much true anywhere. Every country and state has a doctor shortage because the AMA specifically keep the supply low. I’m amazed they allowed a new medical school honestly. The thing is, it’s a fixable problem. Teaching hospitals can expand their student capacity and certainly getting more medical schools is always possible especially on the state level.
I think getting the ball rolling now for a projected start date in the future like Vermont is doing is the way to go. Then you can set aside parts of the surpluses to cover the expenses that will incur as things get set up. I’m not expecting it by tomorrow, but if they aim for 2018 that might be the best way to go at this point. Get some time to get the funding and taxes organised and go from there.
107.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t such a prick.
Something about “Texas football not being all that.”
108.
StringOnAStick
@trollhattan: One of the main refuges of mosquitoes in the winter is storm drains; much more moderate temperatures in deep, long runs of buried pipe.
As far as this cycling of extreme cold with warmer weather, yeah that can be hell on landscape plants. This is when you find out about the microclimates in your yard, like that wall that protects on one side and freezes/kills on the other due to wind, sun, or whatever. Some plants are triggered to come out of dormancy by temperature and some by the length of the day, so some things will be confused and pay the price for that. On the positive side, this does tend to kill plant pests that are usually kept in control by harsh winter temperatures but haven’t been as typical annual lows have crept higher recently, like the spruce beetle that has ravaged so many forests from Canada to AZ. These kinds of cold snaps tend to kill a lot of boring tree pests.
I converted to xeriscaping decades ago because of a landscaper I worked for when geology was a starving career choice; it’s dry here in CO so it makes sense. Our yard is exposed to harsh winds (last night was an ‘ear plug & shaking bed’ night) and the native plants and shrubs survive the dry, the cold, and the burning sun in all seasons; the more delicate English garden type plants, not so much. The elk that march through here in the winter love those delicacies as well, so you might as well go native and save on your water bills and nursery bills.
@Botsplainer: I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t such a prick.
Something about “Texas football not being all that.”
Parity is what creates games like we saw last night.
110.
joel hanes
and it would be real nice if the weather set back the advance of the fire ants
111.
James E. Powell
Every time the country gets a winter storm or prolonged cold spell, my facebook newsfeed is filled with hate-posts aimed at Al Gore. He is not only fat, but the world’s biggest idiot. Or, a demon who is determined to destroy America because . . . no one ever says.
Apparently, none of them saw the film so they believe that Al Gore said there would never be winter again.
It would be funny, except they all vote.
112.
Sourmash
I went to catholic school in the 70s and it was a point of pride among the nuns that our school never closed, no matter the weather. The nuns lived next door and could walk over and an old guy slept in an apartment above the landscape shed so he could just get out of bed and drive a front end loader right out of the garage and clear the path to their door. All that to prove we were better than the “public kids” who closed school if it got below 10. I think those experiences really did toughen us up. I’ve lived im the shadow of a ski mountain with only a wood stove for heat, wood stove not pellets, and I had no real issues with it but it was really hell when i was in school. The nuns are all gone to their eternal reward and the school now follows whatever the public schools do. A loss and a gain, I guess. Here’s to sister Helen Denise and sister Mary Charles who put the fear of god and the terror of the spilt infinitive into me!
113.
FlyingToaster
@Sourmash: I send WarriorGirl to private school and they explicitly don’t follow the local public school’s schedule. If they can get the driveway and entrance ramp shoveled, and the heat will stay on, school is open. And if the kids won’t irretrievably sink into the mud, they play outside at recess.
Now, her current school did shut down for the Snowpocalypse 2013 (AKA Blizzard Nemo), because the Governor asked everyone to. But they were open the following Monday, unlike our old preschool (also private, but hosted in a town-owned building).
We don’t have any Catholic schools left in our town, so I don’t have a clear picture on what they do hereabouts; but usually those in neighboring towns seem to stay open more than the public schools.
@Anoniminous: Publishing schedules are usually set a year or more after the manuscript has been handed in to allow for editing, corrections, re-editing, fist fights over word counts, copy editing, death threats over word choices, alcoholic benders when the author’s football team is losing, galley proofs, shipping to the printers, marketing, twisting arms of chainstore buyers etc. Usually books escape into the wild a few days before the official publishing date but not mch earlier. It’s pretty rare for them to be significantly late, at least in the fiction world. They wouldn’t have publicly announced a date without at least having a manuscript in hand (so-called Delivered and Accepted, D&A which triggers a payment to the author under most publishing contracts).
Corner Stone
It’s a scary place out there, Cole.
BOO!
EriktheRed
Don’t quite the message conveyed in the pic. I know it’s Ned Stark, but did he tell us so or was he told so?
Anoniminous
@EriktheRed:
Stark family motto: Winter is coming.
Sourmash
You think this is cold? This is nothing! Why, when we were kids, the world iced over for months at a time even in summer. And if you couldn’t see your breath INSIDE, my father thought the heat was set too high. This is nothing!
Comrade Mary
Piker. I went out the back door to the garage this morning, then tried to come back in the same way, but the push-button handle on my back door was stuck and would not let me back in. I had to circle the house and come in the front door. Given the trifid that was sold to me as a raspberry plant, the raccoons as big as Buicks who leave their menacing tracks on my garage roof as a warning, and the poltergeisty abilities of the screen door, my back yard is obviously a no go zone until spring.
dmsilev
Relax. According to noted climatologist Rush Limbaugh, the ‘polar vortex’ is just a liberal media hoax.
gelfling545
After 60+ years in the WNY area I have dealt with snow & cold temperatures. We’ve often had more snow than we’ve had so far this year & frequently, even usually, got a streak of single digit temps in Jan. or Feb. What is new is the dizzying changes – below 0 to 40’s & back over in days or even hours over multiple weeks is something new. It’s going to be death for shrubs & perennials since the low temps set in just after all the snow cover has been melted away & the higher temps signal “start growing” to the plants. It’s also keeping me pretty miserable because the fluctuations are making the fibromylagia kick up something awful.
KG
@Anoniminous: speaking of, every three days or so, i search the net to see if there is a release date for The Winds of Winter. I’m actually at the point where I’m considering rereading the series…
ETA: in southern California the high today was something in the mid-70s. not bragging or anything, our fire season is going to be a bitch this year (our seasons are: rainy, fire, summer)
Culture of Truth
@Sourmash: Exactly. Look on the bright side, everyone. You’ll have great stories to tell the kids for decades to come about the winter of 2014.
Culture of Truth
Having said that, I was just out for about 5 minutes and almost got frostbite. It really is cold out there. Who knew?
Citizen_X
@gelfling545:
That’s passing out of the polar vortex that Rush Limbaugh says doesn’t exist.
Did ya get your power back on Cole?
Aji
@KG: Stop looking. You know the joke: Every time someone asks how long until TWOW, he kills a Stark.
And there aren’t that many Starks left.
The Other Bob
-11 here in Mich this morning, -25 with wind chill. I know someone from Alaska will tell me I am a wimp, but W.V. Ain’t got nothing.
Elizabelle
Cool PBS show on the beginnings of forensic science in early 20th century. American Experience episode on NY’s Dr. Charles Norris.
The Poisoner’s Bible. On PBS now eastern time, Frontline to follow at 10.
Poisoning was a leading cause of death in early 1900s.
gogol's wife
I have an anxiety list a mile long of what happens in the winter, but having the doors to my house freeze shut isn’t one of them. How does this even happen?
Roger Moore
And here on the Left Coast, we had a comfortable high of 70°F and a low of 49°F. But we could definitely do with a lot more moisture than we’ve had.
Comrade Mary
@gogol’s wife: The mustard gods hold grudges. Very, very, very long grudges.
Baud
Better your door than your sister. #FuckingLannisters
Aji
@Baud: I see what you did there.
beltane
The wind is what’s making me nuts. If it keeps up like this I might wear ear plugs tonight.
jl
I thought Cole banged on stuff around the house anyway as standard operating procedure, when material objects of the world did not bend to his will and obey (and the disobedience of random stuff was frequent).
But, I also though Cole had goats and generators too, and things like the power grid going down wouldn’t be a problem. And looks like I was wrong on that.
Anyway, hope the cold goes away soon and Cole can stay inside until it does.
Aji
@jl: Wait, goats?
#nevermindbetteroffnotknowing
jl
@Aji: Well, Cole talked about getting goats and generators awhile ago. I thought it was an official plan of his.
Fuzzy
@KG: Northern California has had less rain than down south this year so our fire season is flaring up around hear but in contrast to Cole’s WV our 63 today was great. Send rain.
Aji
@jl: Ah, gotcha. Musta missed that. So the generator makes sense, but the goats – what? So he doesn’t have to mow the lawn?
schrodinger's cat
I not only went out, but also got a haircut. Very cute but had to wear a hat, so got hat hair.
Comrade Mary
Hey, how come nobody showed me this before Christmas?
NotMax
Back during the few years I was living in Minnesota, there was one January when the high for the entire month was zero.
Used to have to wake up every few hours overnight to trudge out to wherever on the street the car had been parked, start it up and let it run for a bit. Often had to tighten up the clamps on the battery posts, as they would tend to loosen in the cold, so kept a wrench handy inside the car.
One time (and one time only), while poking around under the hood, for some reason needed both hands (forget why, maybe dropped the flashlight) and without thinking put the wrench into my mouth to free up the second hand.
Ouch.
Schlemizel
OK, old guy war stories. in 1963 I was in middle school, we walked 13 blocks (and, no, it was not up hill both ways). There were 3 days in a row when it was colder than -30 when we set out for school in the morning. Nobody even suggested that schools be closed, you bundled up against the cold & soldiered on. I remember 1963 very clearly as the coldest I ever was going to school.
Talentless Hack
@Sourmash: ..and we LIKED it!
Anoniminous
@KG:
I too am waiting.
According to this release date is March 17, 2014.
Given Martin has yet to hit a deadline so I wouldn’t count on it.
Talentless Hack
@gelfling545: Fortunately, it’s too early for anything to start growing. You also need a certain amount of sun every day, and we’re nowhere near that yet.
Not only that, but the cold snaps are bound to kill the skeeters, which is a good thing.
Mnemosyne
Not at all joking when I say that friends of ours got divorced over the weather. She was a native Southern Californian; he was originally from central Illinois. After both her parents died, she agreed to move back to Illinois with him, but they (stupidly) did it in October for one of the worst winters in a couple of decades. Plus her nursing license hadn’t transferred over yet, so she couldn’t work, and all she could do all day was stare at the frozen wasteland outside or visit with his family (since she hadn’t had time to make any friends before the freeze set in). She moved back to California and they ended up getting divorced because they couldn’t work it out.
Snow was the co-respondent.
Litlebritdiftrnt
We have hit record lows here in Eastern NC, 18 last night, but go figure it is going to be in the high 60s this weekend.
Comrade Mary
@Anoniminous: Did you read the SPOILERS within? Looks like weak satire.
gbear
@Culture of Truth:
I’m not done telling stories about the winter of 1996 in the Twin Cities. I distinctly remember -20 feeling much much warmer than -35 (not wind chill) while walking the five blocks from the parking lot to the office in the morning. That was a horrid week.
Of course I’m much older now and a weather wuss. I stayed home from work yesterday.
Comrade Mary
@Mnemosyne:
Well, he did invent cunnilingus. Talented boy.
JPL
@efgoldman: Do you still have indentations on your fingers from writing all that prose? Did you use steel wool pads to rid your hands of the ink stains? If you answer no to these questions, your story doesn’t ring true.
NotMax
@efgoldman
Ah, yes. The good old days. But…
Shoes? You had shoes?
You lucky devil, you.
danielx
Look on the bright side, Cole – it means you have really tight/weatherproof doors. Spousal unit was sticking newspaper around the front door yesterday and we’ve got a storm door. Started vehicle (an Outback!) to take daughter unit to work today at noon and the car’s digital readout for outside temperature said 17 degrees in the garage, 15 out in the driveway, 10 when we got out of the neighborhood and 6 when we got to her place of employment, which is about a half mile away. Awful.
lamh36
No snow here in Louisina, but it is still pretty darn cold here for the area
Anoniminous
@Comrade Mary:
Note I wrote “According to this.”
:-)
Aji
@Comrade Mary: [Snorfle]
Cheeseman
Bet you’d have gotten the door open for this, eh?
lamh36
Jay Carney waaaayyy better than Robert Gibbs, right?
Jay Carney Refutes CNN Reporter With CNN’s Reporting
by Tommy Christopher
Tim F.
@KG: Looks like this year you only get two.
Comrade Mary
@Anoniminous: Ah. Poe’s Law strikes again (kind of). My apologies.
2liberal
i just went on a 10 mile bike ride in a short sleeve shirt. #phxburbs
Mnemosyne
@Comrade Mary:
I have a feeling I missed many events when I missed Season 3, but the nonstop torture in Season 2 turned me chicken.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
Well, of course it is! All that moving around of the Jet Stream is just an illusion. Pay no attention to the temperature outside your kitchen window, it’s a liberal lie!
Anoniminous
@Comrade Mary:
De nada. (as we say ’round here.)
MikeBoyScout
DAMN YOU AL GORE!
dmsilev
@Villago Delenda Est: Thermometers are just another set of instruments of the liberal conspiracy. When the temperature is unskewed, you’ll see that it’s perfectly comfortable out.
Aji
@Mnemosyne: Have you read the books yet? it’s actually easier if you have. The books spread it out much more, and you have the added advantage of knowing when HBO is going to distort something especially graphically.
Slightly O/T, I recently finished what his wife calls his best book, or at least her favorite, completely unrelated to the ASoIaF series. It was both good and . . . hmm . . . let’s say that I could see foreshadowing of some of the current series, even though neither has anything to do with the other. I think it’s a combination of writing style and the insistence on warts-and-all characters, among other factors.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Rectal thermometers especially. It’s how liberals make babies gay.
lectric lady
@NotMax: @Schlemizel: @efgoldman:
Anyone else remember back in the 50’s and early 60’s when girls were required to wear skirts to school, no matter what the temp? In Southwestern Wyoming we were occasionally permitted to wear “slacks” if the temp was lower than -10. And we all walked to school. Not Kidding!
raven
@lectric lady: And kneel and if they didn’t touch the floor they were too short!
scav
@scav: I can’t decide if the °F0renikators or the °€ommunist conversion programmes are the tripping point!
ETA it ate my comment retroactively! more evidence of the cunning plot!
WereBear
I hear ya. Have you been tested for MTFHR mutations?
If so, there’s a treatment.
schrodinger's cat
@lectric lady: That’s just cruel.
raven
eta ““As I sat there, I thought: The president doesn’t trust his commander, can’t stand Karzai, doesn’t believe in his own strategy and doesn’t consider the war to be his,” Mr. Gates wrote. “For him, it’s all about getting out.”
EriktheRed
@Anoniminous:
Aaaaah.
Sorry, I’m a fan, but not up on the lore.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Aji:
Haven’t read the books, but it was the siccing rats on people to eat them from the inside that did it. I made it through the rest of the season, but I didn’t have the stomach (no pun intended) for more torture after that.
Baud
@raven:
Apparently in the Village, that’s damning criticism of the President.
raven
@Baud: No shit, this book is supposed to be “slamming” Obama, doesn’t look that way to me.
joel hanes
@efgoldman:
if you tell me that this kind of cold in January keeps the skeeters down
I suspect that it will re-set the northern survival limit of many species — gardners will lose beloved ornamentals, but some nasty neo-tropical diseases will get pushed back a zone or two, at least for a while.
raven
@joel hanes: I don’t buy that bullshit about cold weather killing skeeters. Sure as hell didn’t impact them in Korea.
Geoduck
Your part of the LC, maybe. It’s been chilly in the Seattle area. (But not nasty-cold.) We have had less rain than usual; the ski resorts have been hurting, evidently. Today was the first steady drenching we’ve had in a while.
Aji
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): That’s what I mean. I knew it was coming, so I could sort of watch/not watch. Certain times are good for, you know, going into the kitchen to check on dinner, etc.
Although Season 3 will have a scene that probably makes that one pale in comparison, although it doesn’t show the actual incident – and doesn’t track the book, frankly. I’ve noticed that HBO ramps up the sex-and-torture routine (separately and in combination) in sensationalistic ways that the books don’t. Benioff and Weiss have clearly not learned what the best filmmakers of the Golden Age knew so well: that you can generate either lust or terror much more effectively with understatement than you can by rubbing people’s noses in it until they throw up.
jo6pac
@KG: Yep, I’m in the central valley we won’t be grow much food=d here this yr. Sad
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@raven:
The more I read about the book, the more I wish Obama’s ostensible allies in Congress could come up with the same “criticism.” Oh noes, he thinks Afghanistan is unwinnable and wants to leave! That monster!
Yatsuno
@Aji: If he kills off Arya I’m done with the whole damn thing.
Haven’t read the books yet. But I’ve got nothing but time right now.
raven
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): I can’t wait to see Pat Lang spin it into “Obama sucks”.
Aji
@Yatsuno: They are, frankly, better than the series. Although admittedly loooooong. :-D
And my guess is that to the extent that anyone is protected as a character, Arya is one. BTW, next week, Maisie Williams, the young actor who plays Arya, will be in Santa Fe at the GoT screening at the Cocteau (a fabulous art-house theatre that closed a few years back, and which the Martins bought last year and have re-opened). If we could get away, I’d love to go down for the screening, but it’s too long a drive back that late at night, particularly when we have animals needing to be fed on a schedule, etc.
WereBear
@Aji: While Mr WereBear is a big fan, I first encountered them during a very rough scene, at least for me, and couldn’t climb on board.
Mind you, I can watch gangsters do terrible things to each other and it doesn’t bother me, because everyone more or less signed up for it.
Aji
@WereBear: Yeah, if I had walked into the TV series at a bad moment, I probably wouldn’t want anything to do with it. But I’d already read all the books, and I’ve met the author and his wife is a friend, so for us it was a given that we’d watch. And not so difficult when, as I said, you know when to leave the room. :-)
Yatsuno
@Aji: Yeah. Unless you have a horsesitter getting away from the ranch can be a difficult proposition. My mom has several people she can call to take care of that (one is an old fucktoy but that’s another tale for another time) so their excuse to not go to Europe is dwindling fast. It would be cool if you could arrange for someone to mind things while you go out there, I’d bend over backwards to meet Maisie. And that ain’t exactly easy in my condition. :)
Aji
@Yatsuno: LMAO – no, I suppose not. But you really do need to tell that story – you know, “fucktoy.” :-D
Part of our problem is that so many of ours are special-needs types. Between the two of us, it takes enough to keep straight what has to happen with everyone. Finding someone reliable and trustworthy who can also keep all that straight is . . . iffy, to say the least. And now that we have yet another stray who’s decided to move in, but is spooked as hell by everyone and everything, I wouldn’t have much confidence in finding him here safe and sound when we got back, y’know?
some guy
how very very very sad. Sounds like Gates slowly discovered the Obama the rest of the country voted for was, in fact, the Obama who employed him.
raven
@some guy:
Tim F.
Too bad you’re not in Nome, Alaska, where they are suffering a low of 27 tonight with 30% chance of wet snow or rain.
A local FOX affiliate says it best.
Alaska Warmer Than Alabama As Arctic Air Plunges South
Pogonip
@raven: My dad has said the same thing! In almost those words. Apparently their weather is 90% miserable.
some guy
@raven:
campaign promises kept. truly, a President who does what he said he was going to do is History’s Greatest Monster.
The Very Revered Crimson Fire of Compassion
@some guy: amen.
raven
@Pogonip: Hell yes it is. We used to say it was the only place on earth you could stand up to your knees in mud and have dust blowing in your face. And the winters, sheeeeeet.
Pogonip
@Anoniminous: St Pat’s Day is a fitting release date, seeing as how ’twill be a miracle if Martin makes the deadline.
? Martin
Suck it GOP. California isn’t broken – we just needed to clear the GOP out of the way.
GregB
I’m pretty outraged to hear that Obama harbors doubts about his decisions.
He’s supposed to be The Decider who makes us feel safe and warm.
trollhattan
Sweet Jebuz, somebody tell Betty there’s a new ride in which to teach her kid driving. I’d say “only in Florida” if it weren’t for the existence of Texas.
http://sarasota.craigslist.org/cto/4209550651.html
This appears not to be a prank.
Baud
@? Martin:
A lesson for the nation.
@raven:
I’d be interested in some BJ’ers take on the book. I have lost all trust of the media, at least in their reporting of any Democrat.
Cheeseman
This was supposed to be way up there in #46.
http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/local_news/fans-weather-cold-for-best-game-of-thrones-seats/article_5f743d9e-52c4-597a-ad87-1cc38350ae52.html
scav
@raven: skeeters come with different tolerances, rather clever of them, all in all.
Yatsuno
@? Martin: Jerry might be running out of excuses here. Might be time to get that single payer bill re-proposed.
trollhattan
@scav:
Yup. IIUC some can hibernate in brush, treebark, culverts, etc., freeze, then fly away, hungry, when it thaws. Bastards.
Botsplainer
Looks like my Louisville Cardinals are getting that douchebag Bobby Petrino back.
They’ll have to stick a 15-20 million dollar buyout in the contract to keep the fucker from job shopping several times each year just to drive mid-contract renegotiations. It was constant with him.
Botsplainer
@? Martin:
Sounds like the makers are being overtaxed, if revenues are rolling in ahead to the point where bills are paid and there might be enough money to put aside for a rainy day.
Time for a tax cut.
Ruckus
@Mnemosyne:
Smart girl.
A divorce under those conditions makes perfect sense. Tim Minchins
jl
@? Martin:
@Botsplainer:
Hold on, gentlepersons. Rapid and large increases in income tax revenues in CA expected whenever economy starts growing. To be followed by rapid and large decreases with economic downturns. This has been attributed to CA’s over reliance on income tax as revenue source.
Fixing CA’s roller coaster tax system should be a high priority now that the awful CA GOP is out of the way.
I’ve read polls that say public may be, possibly, getting ready to commence to prepare to consider changing parts of Prop 13 that produce corporate tax give-aways. Not sure I believe it, but I hope so.
In mean time, Jerry probably, sadly, right to be a little restrained in spending the increased revenues, since will need fiscal cushion during next downturn. Which of course, was Ahnohld the Gubernator’s first order of business when he first took office, to destroy any fiscal cushion for an economic downturn so he could starve the CA gummint beast. (Edit: or, alternatively, Ahnohld didn’t know what he was doing, though the two choices are not mutually exclusive)
Aji
@efgoldman: Nah, only one “a.” “Martins,” not “Martians.” Although as I recall, they did screen War of the Worlds a couple of months back. The real one, that is. 1953 version.
tybee
cold weather seems to stimulate the sand gnat (wing-ed teeth) population during the following spring.
anecdotes =/= data but i’ve been chewed by the little bastids enough to keep track.
pat
@lectric lady:
jesus, I think I walked 12 blocks in flats. (cheaper version of Caprezios, or whatever the rich kids were wearing. )
NO ONE would wear slacks under the requisite skirts. Ew.
Amazing that the frozen bodies of teenagers don’t appear from the snowdrifts in the spring.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: What do you mean? Where’s Charlie Strong?
? Martin
@Yatsuno: He’ll have plenty of excuses. The state owes education about $5B in funding guarantees that they ‘borrowed’. We also owe the feds $9.7B in unemployment benefits. And he’s still got to release or relocate about 10,000 prisoners. We should be able to start making real headway against these things, but Brown has never liked being in debt. He’s long been the champion of the rainy-day fund.
I think the biggest problem with a move to single payer is going to be how to cover the cost of expanding the number of doctors and hospitals. There’s only 11 medical schools here, and the state runs 6 of them. UC Riverside just opened up a new one, and UC Merced is starting to build theirs so we’ll be running 7 out of 12. UC Irvine built a new hospital – $600M there. There’s going to be a lot of hidden costs to get to single payer, but we’ll see how it goes. We’re definitely on the right track though.
joel hanes
@raven:
I don’t buy that bullshit about cold weather killing skeeters.
It’s not the bites — it’s the diseases.
And there are mosquitoes and then there are mosquitoes.
I will be happy if the the yellow fever mosquito and/or tiger mosquito suffers a big die-off on the northern edge of its range.
Or, for that matter, the black-legged tick.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Gotta rub it in, don’t you?
Yatsuno
@? Martin:
This is pretty much true anywhere. Every country and state has a doctor shortage because the AMA specifically keep the supply low. I’m amazed they allowed a new medical school honestly. The thing is, it’s a fixable problem. Teaching hospitals can expand their student capacity and certainly getting more medical schools is always possible especially on the state level.
I think getting the ball rolling now for a projected start date in the future like Vermont is doing is the way to go. Then you can set aside parts of the surpluses to cover the expenses that will incur as things get set up. I’m not expecting it by tomorrow, but if they aim for 2018 that might be the best way to go at this point. Get some time to get the funding and taxes organised and go from there.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer: I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t such a prick.
Something about “Texas football not being all that.”
StringOnAStick
@trollhattan: One of the main refuges of mosquitoes in the winter is storm drains; much more moderate temperatures in deep, long runs of buried pipe.
As far as this cycling of extreme cold with warmer weather, yeah that can be hell on landscape plants. This is when you find out about the microclimates in your yard, like that wall that protects on one side and freezes/kills on the other due to wind, sun, or whatever. Some plants are triggered to come out of dormancy by temperature and some by the length of the day, so some things will be confused and pay the price for that. On the positive side, this does tend to kill plant pests that are usually kept in control by harsh winter temperatures but haven’t been as typical annual lows have crept higher recently, like the spruce beetle that has ravaged so many forests from Canada to AZ. These kinds of cold snaps tend to kill a lot of boring tree pests.
I converted to xeriscaping decades ago because of a landscaper I worked for when geology was a starving career choice; it’s dry here in CO so it makes sense. Our yard is exposed to harsh winds (last night was an ‘ear plug & shaking bed’ night) and the native plants and shrubs survive the dry, the cold, and the burning sun in all seasons; the more delicate English garden type plants, not so much. The elk that march through here in the winter love those delicacies as well, so you might as well go native and save on your water bills and nursery bills.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
Parity is what creates games like we saw last night.
joel hanes
and it would be real nice if the weather set back the advance of the fire ants
James E. Powell
Every time the country gets a winter storm or prolonged cold spell, my facebook newsfeed is filled with hate-posts aimed at Al Gore. He is not only fat, but the world’s biggest idiot. Or, a demon who is determined to destroy America because . . . no one ever says.
Apparently, none of them saw the film so they believe that Al Gore said there would never be winter again.
It would be funny, except they all vote.
Sourmash
I went to catholic school in the 70s and it was a point of pride among the nuns that our school never closed, no matter the weather. The nuns lived next door and could walk over and an old guy slept in an apartment above the landscape shed so he could just get out of bed and drive a front end loader right out of the garage and clear the path to their door. All that to prove we were better than the “public kids” who closed school if it got below 10. I think those experiences really did toughen us up. I’ve lived im the shadow of a ski mountain with only a wood stove for heat, wood stove not pellets, and I had no real issues with it but it was really hell when i was in school. The nuns are all gone to their eternal reward and the school now follows whatever the public schools do. A loss and a gain, I guess. Here’s to sister Helen Denise and sister Mary Charles who put the fear of god and the terror of the spilt infinitive into me!
FlyingToaster
@Sourmash: I send WarriorGirl to private school and they explicitly don’t follow the local public school’s schedule. If they can get the driveway and entrance ramp shoveled, and the heat will stay on, school is open. And if the kids won’t irretrievably sink into the mud, they play outside at recess.
Now, her current school did shut down for the Snowpocalypse 2013 (AKA Blizzard Nemo), because the Governor asked everyone to. But they were open the following Monday, unlike our old preschool (also private, but hosted in a town-owned building).
We don’t have any Catholic schools left in our town, so I don’t have a clear picture on what they do hereabouts; but usually those in neighboring towns seem to stay open more than the public schools.
Cervantes
@Comrade Mary: Wait — what?
Robert Sneddon
@Anoniminous: Publishing schedules are usually set a year or more after the manuscript has been handed in to allow for editing, corrections, re-editing, fist fights over word counts, copy editing, death threats over word choices, alcoholic benders when the author’s football team is losing, galley proofs, shipping to the printers, marketing, twisting arms of chainstore buyers etc. Usually books escape into the wild a few days before the official publishing date but not mch earlier. It’s pretty rare for them to be significantly late, at least in the fiction world. They wouldn’t have publicly announced a date without at least having a manuscript in hand (so-called Delivered and Accepted, D&A which triggers a payment to the author under most publishing contracts).
geg6
@lamh36:
He’s my favorite press secretary EVAR.
WaterGirl
@raven: Apparently Gates followed the Michael Moore school of writing tips. ACA sucks. And it’s a godsend.