Did I miss anything?…
!!! pic.twitter.com/D0c8u6Jfla
— Felix Salmon (@felixsalmon) February 16, 2015
There haven't been this many Americans not laughing at a live TV broadcast since Bush's declaration of war on Iraq.
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) February 16, 2015
Everything cool will one day be sad.
— Erin Gloria Ryan (@morninggloria) February 16, 2015
Dear Grampy Lorne:
You stopped being hip about ten years before I was born.
Love & kisses, Miley
***********
What’s on the agenda for another week of February?
Mustang Bobby
I get to spend the holiday cleaning house in anticipation of company coming this next weekend.
My Pontiac got a very nice mention in a column by the executive editor in the April 2015 Hemmings Classic Car magazine. That was a surprise and very cool.
Speaking of cool, I hear it’s cold up north. It’s 50 F here in Miami, which is chilly for this part of the world.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mustang Bobby: It’s 56 and “There’s a fog upon LA and my friends have lost their way…”.
OzarkHillbilly
@Mustang Bobby: Presently 16F and watching the snow fall. Yesterday morn they were calling for 6-12″, by the afternoon they had shaved it back to 5-9″, now they say 4-6″. At least it is snow, which will allow me the illusion of winter, as opposed to the utter devastation of winter that they are having in NE.
raven
@Mustang Bobby: The idiot governor shut state government down “out of an abundance of caution” even though it’s not even going to rain until afternoon.
Poopyman
It’s 4 above here in balmy Southern MD, and they’re suddenly calling for 6-10″ of snow this afternoon and overnight. Not New England level of winter, but we’ll finally be seeing some real snow.
Baud
@raven:
Out of an abundance of caution, he should keep it shut down indefinitely. :-P
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I think that’s the goal.
Botsplainer
The weather screamers are saying 8-12 inches in the People’s Democratic Socialist Republic of Louisville. Everything is gonna be closed.
Joel
-4 currently.
Steeplejack (phone)
Getting ready to go give the brother-in-law a ride to work. His car conked out yesterday. It’s 6° here in NoVA.
Will hit the grocery on the way home to get some things so I can hole up the next few days. Supposed to get some constantly changing but significant amount of snow tonight/tomorrow.
Just realized I might be on the hook to give the BIL a ride home this afternoon, potentially when the snow is starting. Oof. Ceiling cat preserve me from a snowy rush hour.
ThresherK
“Where you been all my life?”
She replied with a yawn,
“For most of it, honey,
I wasn’t even born.”
–K. Grocutt
PS I don’t even notice the cold anymore. Zero, twenty, it all feels the same to me by this point. I’ll be in the car and think “If I put my gloves on to go into the building I’ll only be taking them off in a hundred feet.”
Spousal Unit thinks I’m crazy and wonders how I can do it. I just remember all the polar explorers who’d consider today in CT a day at the beach.
satby
3 degrees here, wind chill makes it feel like -10. Taking my car in finally to get fixed (I hope) and thinking that if that’s affordable I’ll even splurge and get my furnace fixed. The space heaters are getting old.
satby
@ThresherK: I’ve always been like that, cold really doesn’t bother me. I will put on gloves and a hat for extended time outside in freezing cold, but short trips out I don’t bother. And most people think I keep my house too cold even when I do have a working furnace, so it’s not like I missed it.
MomSense
-2 but feels like -17
ThresherK
@satby: Now, what about your siblings or partner (if any of each)? People are surprised that I’m “the warm one” to look at me.
I’m mid-built, neither skinny like my runner friend who needs 4000 calories daily to keep from wasting away, or too heavy for my heart and knees like my brother.
And every fall I do need a little “tuning in” time. I feel the first few 30 degree days in October more than I do 10 degrees now.
Punchy
@Mustang Bobby: When I lived in SoFla years ago, they used to open up homeless shelters when the air temp dropped into the….wait for it…50’s. They would highlight wind chills on weather broadcasts if they dipped into the 50’s or 40’s. As a native Chicagoan, I found this hilarious.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK: Must be nice. 30+ years of working out in all kinds of weather has given me frostbit fingers, toes, and ears, and arthritic joints that creak in the cold.
You want to know the worse thing about working outside in winter? Taking a dump. Peeling off 17 layers so you can expose your nice toasty buns to the freezing cold plastic seat in the Johnny-on-the-Spot. Of course, you have to be sure to check on the levels inside cause it’s harder to get to some JotSs in the winter and if the level gets high enough and the temps get low enough, sometimes things freeze and then you have to worry about splash-back…
Oh wait a minute, I forgot about the joys of flattening one’s half frozen thumb with a 24 oz framing hammer. Now that is fun.
greennotGreen
Supposed to start driving to Florida tomorrow for a meeting, but I’m seriously considering skipping it. We already have a dusting of snow, are supposed to have a day of freezing rain and snow, then a low of -7 on Wednesday. If I’m gone there’s no one to deal with a power failure. I could lose my plants, my birds, and my tree frog. (I think the numerous mammals would survive.) So not worth the risk.
ThresherK
@OzarkHillbilly: Whoo, ya got me beat there. I never said I work out in the cold (any longer). And I’m grateful to never have had real honest-to-God frostbite–like they warn us about on The Weather Channel.
At least after sitting on my share of cold Porta-pottis, I am sometimes grateful for the cold’s effect on the aroma therien.
Yesterday I was getting soaked by melting snow and road schmutz, from both above (dripping off the car) and below (even through four plies of corrugated cardboard) while I was crawling around on the garage floor changing my oil.
The most annoying thing was getting that wet, then having to searching every box in my garage for the special wrench-off deelie to remove the oil filter. My dad brought me up in the church of Hand-Tighten. (First oil change in the new garage. Many tools not organized in the packing.)
Violet
@Steeplejack (phone): Have him see if a coworker can drive him at least part of the way.
Phylllis
Tax docs ready to go to the CPA today; plus taking the car in for servicing, and getting the laundry caught up. Fun day off.
31 here now, with a high of 53 forecast. They’ve backed off the freezing rain/snow mix for tomorrow morning, so we don’t have to worry about delaying the start of school.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK:
Teeheehee… Ah yes the joys of vehicular maintenance in the winter. And no, you can’t avoid the dripping slush. In fact, the need to remove a specific part is directly proportional to the amount of ice and snow encrusted around it and the depth of the puddle directly underneath it.
You have my… giggle… sympathies… giggle giggle.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: tmi
Mustang Bobby
@Punchy: Yeah, compared to the years I spent in northern Michigan and the Colorado Rockies, this is nothing. On the other side of it, my brother lives in Seattle and when it gets over 85 they start warning about heat stroke.
Mustang Bobby
@OzarkHillbilly: I once bruised a toe kicking the ice build-up off the wheel wells of the Pontiac when I lived in Michigan. My partner called them “snowboogers.”
Elmo
@Poopyman: THEY ARE?
I’m in Waldorf and lazing in bed- you just woke me up way more effectively than the pale sun streaming in my bedroom window.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: The gift that keeps on giving. ;-)
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I could tell you stories. . . .
JPL
Happy President’s Day! What has Obama done for you lately.
For those that do the NYTimes puzzle, there was a word search that was a tad more difficult than the puzzle. Well Monday puzzles aren’t difficult anyway.
It’s a cloudy day and I’m pleased that when the moisture arrives later in the day, it will be just a rain event.
Poopyman
@Elmo: Over here along the banks of the raging Patuxent they are.
HRA
It’s -9 here with a -23 wind chill in WNY near Buffalo, NY. Multiple accidents are everywhere on the Thruway.
We have high piles of snow everywhere that will remain until it can thaw. It’s impossible to walk anywhere here except in the plowed driveway. The access to it from the deck is thick ice and salt will not work in this minus temperature.
Poopyman
@Poopyman: Yeah, the same 6-10″ in Waldorf. The good news is that the low tonight will only drop to 15.
PurpleGirl
In NYC it’s 24F, no prediction for precipitation, sunny right now, wind speed is supposed to be down today… but I’m feeling colder now than yesterday and have put on a sweatshirt. I need to do some food shopping today. But I really don’t want to go out. Gotta make breakfast now.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: I’m sure you could! ;-)
Keith G
Now that the holiday season is officially in the bag, It’s time to resume a lapsed gym membership. Our “winter storm” will bring rain and temps in the upper 30s – weather that I actually like. Hopefully the doves and cardinals calling outside my window won’t mind a day or two of cold rain.
Why do weather people now name winter storms? I guess they mean well, but it just comes off sounding like they are trying too hard.
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly:
This isn’t devastation. That would involve ice.
The path from the bottom of my stairs (either front or driveway side) has walls on both sides taller than my first grader. In front, on the retaining wall side, it’s about 7 feet (30-inch retaining wall, then snowpack). The snow in the backyard is up to the bottom of my dining room window (~5 feet), and goes up from there to 8 feet at the end of the driveways (ours and our neighbors’ on the other side of our backyard).
But honestly, it’s all good. We can shovel this snow. It’s not ICE.
I grew up with ice in KC. I’ll take 7 feet of snow in Watertown any time.
dr. luba
-14 at my house this morning (Detroit area). I did a double take……can’t remember when I’ve seen the thermometer register so low. The car told me it was -18 on the drive in. My fingers (in gloves) froze on the 50 foot walk into the building from the parking lot.
Weather Underground tells me it is now a toasty -6 out.
Tenar Darell
Dark Skies says it’s 1′ and feels like -17 outside. I’m trying to decide if I should take this break between storms to buy tires and get an alignment. (The preventative ibuprofen helped, but I feel like I’m moving through molasses /sigh getting too old for this).
pluege
the coldest thing Sunday was the SNL anniversary show.
Steeplejack
Back home and feeling awesomely productive already this morning. Gave the brother-in-law a ride to work at 7:30 (his car conked out yesterday), then went to the grocery for a big but normal haul, which will allow me to hole up for whatever snow we get tomorrow. I do have to go back out at 4:00 to give the BIL a ride home and (possibly) from the garage, if he can drop his car off. That’s right when the first snow is supposed to start, but we should be okay. The roads were almost empty this morning, what with the federal holiday, school closings, etc. Still only 9° here, wind chill –3°. My friend in Fairbanks, Alaska, has 24° right now!
FlyingToaster
@pluege: We watched Colombo and Grantchester and Last Week Tonight instead of SNL40. We followed it on Twitter which was horrifying enough.
gene108
Single digits in Southern Jersey. Predicting 3-5 inches of snow tonight with about another inch tomorrow. Enough to be annoying, but not enough to shut anything down.
Hopefully March will heat up quickly, once it gets here in a couple of weeks.
I’m ready for Spring and Summer.
beltane
-16 and windy. At least the sun is shining.
Frankensteinbeck
@JPL:
I liked the change in stance towards Cuba, and I assume he had something to do with the change in broadband regulation.
OzarkHillbilly
@FlyingToaster: If you have to shovel snow off your roof… but yeah, ice storms, been thru some epic ones in Arkansas, but not so many in STL. Kinda surprises me about KC.
gelfling545
Just cancelled my am plans because, really, -9. My car looks like an igloo and when it warms up to, say, 0 I will try to excavate it. I’ll probably give the city another call today to try to get them to do something about the fact that piles of ice extend 2-3 feet into the street and with cars parked, as they need to as several houses are duplexes, there is a scant one lane passage down the street and has been for over a week. I actually may not be able to get out of my driveway at all because the angle I’d need to pull out, given the parked cars in front, will take me right into the snow bank across the street. The mayor was bragging about how all streets except the oldest, narrow ones are open. He has a different definition of “open” than I. Why, yes, I am cranky.
Mustang Bobby
Okay, the house is vacuumed and dusted and it’s barely past 9:00 a.m. ET; oh I feel so productive. Now I get to hose off the patio and catch up on TiVo.
Steeplejack
@Violet:
Good idea, but he just started there a month or so ago and doesn’t know his coworkers very well yet, who lives where, etc. As I said above, I think it’ll be all right. The snow is supposed to start slowly around 4:00 and not get awful until late in the evening. The current prediction is for 6-10", which is a substantial storm for these parts.
I have to think about my parking strategy. If I leave the car on the street outside my building, the street gets plowed fairly soon—one lane down the middle—but the car can get blocked in if the pile left by the plow is too high. And I’ve seen cars get dinged by some asshole rocking his car back and forth too enthusiastically trying to get out. (Hey, numbnuts, get a shovel and dig it out first!) If I park in the auxiliary lot behind the building down the street, there’s less chance of getting blocked in, but I don’t know whether that gets plowed at all. Hmm, decisions. I wonder if Jack London covered this scenario in one of his stories.
The best solution is probably not to go anywhere, which is what I will try to do once I get the BIL situated.
FlyingToaster
@OzarkHillbilly: Steep pitch means no shoveling. The north slope is almost bare; the south slope has about a foot remaining at the bottom.
This is the first year we’ve had ice dams since 2004 when we put on gutters. The sun is melting/sublimating the stuff off the south side; last week when it was about 10° the icicles were dripping, so it is coming off fairly quickly. HerrDoktor breaks off the bottoms when they get in reach, but all of the icicles are over vegetation rather than walkways.
KC in the ’60s/’70s would get this insane pattern of cold from Colorado and the edge of the moisture from the Gulf leading to freezing rain and a 1/8″ of ice then a deep freeze which shut all of the bridges over the various rivers (and therefore most of the city). Ice melt doesn’t work at -15°, especially if you’ve got a NW sustained wind at 20 mph. You weren’t gonna cross the Missouri or the Kaw or the Blue, and you’d be lucky to get across Brush Creek.
Once you got to Columbia and east, it would be all snow.
We moved out of Waldo and North of the River just so my dad could make it to work on ice days (TWA at KCI).
Steeplejack
@Mustang Bobby:
Rich Hall’s sniglet for that (remember sniglets?) was fenderberg.
My all-time favorite—still used a lot in my family—is for the smear that dogs’ noses leave on car windows: pupkiss.
Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey
Today’s going to be seasonal for us; high 30s/low 40s with some rain. It was sunny and in the high 70s Friday and Saturday, which was nice but wrong. If it’s hitting the 70s in February, I don’t want to think about what kind of hell Summer’s going to be.
Have the day off (the mothership took away several personal days and replaced them with bank holidays), so we’ll be running a full day’s worth of errands.
Steeplejack
@Keith G:
It’s a stupid plot by the Weather Channel. Really, really stupid.
peach flavored shampoo
Anyone else convinced this wont ever actually happen? You’ve essentially sentenced everyone to death, likely before they even hit Martian soil. I see someone completely losing it and trying to turn the whole thing around and chaos ensuing. Peeps bound to get crazy when the idea of actually dying finally hits home.
And the spector of people marching on the ship as if they’re marching into an electric chair….sickening. Who’d want to sponsor this? I bet this gets pulled before it happens.
Elizabelle
TV watch: tonight BET premieres its Canadian-made miniseries about slavery in the US: “The Book of Negroes.” Episodes 1 & 2 tonight starting at 8 Eastern; then repeat.
LATimes review:
The reviewer writes that George Washington comes off as an “officious boob.”
I’ve read some of those letters from elite Virginia planters whingeing about being “slaves” to British debt. No words.
OzarkHillbilly
@FlyingToaster:
For those who have them, but I keep reading of people shoveling their roofs (which is necessary at 4/12 and less). Another bonus is they last longer no matter what climate you have. My house has 2 different pitches (9/12 and 12/12) and the shingles are almost 40 years old. The only problem I have had is with the skylight.
I hate skylights. What idiot purposely puts a hole in their roof?
Kathleen
@Botsplainer: We’re supposed to get 6-8 in Cincinnati metro area. Fortunately, first day on new temp assignment in Highland Hts, KY, has been moved to tomorrow so I’m free to view weather porn on my local nooz. I’m very grateful to have a nice, warm place to stay and food to eat.
Schlemazel
@Elizabelle:
The best part about the debt was that it was run up fighting the French and Indian War. This was a war fought at the request of the colonist so that they could expand Westward. Then when the bills came due they were not willing to pay any part of it. The majority was still on England and all they wanted was for the colonists to pay a part. In many ways todays teabaggers are absolutly the descendants of those people.
Then there is the whole “All men are created equal” well, except for those who are only 3/5s of a man thing. The hypocrisy runs deep into the foundations.
My Truth Hurts
I thought the SNL special was hilarious. I don’t know what’s wrong with people. I guess I just love the show because I’ve grown up on it. It was always hit or miss there has never been a golden age of SNL. Dont believe me just watch every episode online and you will see, some classics, some duds for 40 seasons.
Of course Bill Murray singing Jaws was the highlight for me because he is light years beyond just about everyone else who have been on that show, Will Farrell and his Jeopardy sketch being a close second.
Some brilliant comedians have passed through that show, it’s not always great but it’s long term affect on comedy and culture has been.
Elizabelle
NYTimes today: George Washington, Slave Catcher by U Delaware professor Erica Armstrong Dunbar.
Until he died in December 1799, GW hoped to recapture Ona Judge, who fled the Washingtons’ ownership in May 1796. She’d been Martha’s personal attendant, but when Martha decided to give Ona to a granddaughter as a wedding present, Ona fled the Philadelphia home for Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
GWashington emancipated those slaves he owned upon his death in 1799. Ona, however, belonged to the missus. She might have been at legal risk her entire life. As were her children.
Also: while president (1789-1797), George and Martha were shuffling their personal slaves in and out of Pennsylvania every six months or so to evade that state’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780.
What’s a slave-owning First Family to do? And George was aware of how that looked,
But money is money, whether in the pocket or on two hard-working feet:
J R in WV
It’s 13 degrees here in SW West Virginia, and the first real snow of the einter is underway. We had a scant inch late yesterday, and now there’s at lw=east 4 inches. It is supposed to snow until at least midnight, with between 8 and 13 total inches.
Not so much yet, but then we are way up the one lane road at the head of the creek. Whatever falls needs much sun and warming to melt. I hate the thought of firing up the tractor and using the bucket to move snow, but I may have to if it gets really deep.
Our all wheel drive has about 8 inches of clearance, so if it gets much deeper than that tractoring will have to happen. Starting a cold diesel can also be a challenge!
Hope they don’t want to rechedule surgery!
Elizabelle
@Schlemazel: Yup. There’s the macro version.
In the letters I saw, the planters complained grievously of their personal debts to British bankers and funders. Cost a lot of money to live and dress and eat well, and crops could be unpredictable.
Even while these Virginia planters went with tobacco, the crack trade of colonial times. Big money, but required a lot of labor. And how much better the profit if one does not pay the labor.
Steeplejack
@peach flavored shampoo:
Robert Charles Wilson wrote a science fiction novel, Spin, with a tangentially related theme: We attempt to terraform and colonize Mars after the earth (in the present day) is suddenly wrapped in a “spin membrane” by unknown aliens (dubbed the “Hypotheticals”). In addition to other effects, the membrane causes a time dilation in which each year on earth equals 100 million years on the outside.
Meanwhile, 200 million years have passed on Mars. Shit gets real when a Martian “ambassador” from a now 100,000-year-old civilization shows up on Earth.
Spin is pretty good, if you’re into the whole sci-fi thing—it won the Hugo in 2006—and it’s the first volume of a trilogy (followed by Axis and Vortex). Lots more detail in the Wikipedia article(s), as usual. The Mars project in the book seems slightly better planned and only slightly less plausible than the one in the story you linked.
Hal
Not everyone is a fan of Jurassic Park.
http://m.mic.com/articles/110586/this-christian-parent-wants-to-make-dinosaurs-extinct-again
“Nothing about dinosaurs is suitable for children, from their total lack of family values through to their non-existence from any serious scientific point of view.”
That’s what a Christian mother wrote on a message board, in case you thought the Internet couldn’t become any weirder. The mother’s protest has gone viral, garnering the world’s collective side-eye with a bizarre rant about dinosaurs that’s so weird it sounds like a hoax.
The writer, who goes by the screen name CADministry (which stands for “Christians Against Dinosaurs Ministry,” and has a Facebook presence), said she’s concerned about the “pretty flimsy” science of the our extinct friends and is “getting sick and tired of dinosaurs being forced on our children
delk
Plans? Same as the last three weeks. Binging Netflex wearing my tlso brace waiting for my fractured spine to heal. Fun!
opiejeanne
@Mustang Bobby: When we lived near SF the emergency rooms filled up one summer with people with actual heat stroke, when the temp was in the high 60s. 67 or so. We were stunned, having just come from a place where it sometimes reached 115 in the summer.
Matt McIrvin
@peach flavored shampoo: I seriously doubt Mars One is ever going to get anywhere near an actual launch. The plan’s ability to actually get people to Mars and even start a viable colony has been deconstructed time and again.
kc
I love Twitter groupthink.
Howard Beale IV
DO my paperwork to send to my CPA< then get to swap out my old Vamaha RX-A1000 for a RX-A2040 (got a 20% discount of the 2040, and now Dolby Atmos support)