So, after a rather underwhelming winter of cold, grey, bland days, we finally get a proper winter storm. A blizzard, as they’re calling it. Up to almost a foot of snow, a heavy layer of ice, some amount of sleet, and heavy winds. A recipe for a nasty bit of weather that I’m kind of excited for and kind of dreading. It’ll be cold enough after the storm that everything is going to freeze up and anyone caught out in it will be in danger. Given that the winter has so far been mild enough to still see people panhandling, I really hope they all have some place warm, safe and sheltered to hide during this. At the same time, I’m kind of excited at the idea of being able to work from home because of the weather. After how crazy busy and exhausting this week has been, I could really use a bit of quiet and peace while I work. I’ve got my first session of my new campaign tonight (the night I’m writing this–this is also why I’ve got no “dev log” for this week, since nothing has happened yet and I haven’t done any further prep) and I’m so tired I’m considering cancelling it (I won’t) just to get a bit of rest. And work on editing this past week’s wrestling event. Wednesday shows really throw me off. All of which is to say that I feel more than a little conflicted and guilty about this upcoming storm because I definitely want it to happen but it runs a real risk of killing power in the area and whoever is forced to go out in that weather is running quite a risk to themselves.
Continue readingSpring
Daylight Saving Time Strikes Again
Once again, time has shifted. All the clocks I’ve been ignoring for months are correct once again (or just a couple minutes off instead of an hour and a couple minutes off). The sun rises later, it sets later, and everyone is struggling to adjust our perceived notions of time to fit the new path the sun is charting through the various hours of our days. It is not a pleasant experience. It is even less pleasant of an experience when you are awake for it as I was this weekend. Turns out that having a lot going on does not mix well with the bevy of negative feelings I’ve been struggling with lately and it creates a degree of dissastifaction that makes it difficult to fall asleep. So I did not get a lot of sleep that night (nor did I get much sleep last night as my soul casts about for something to feel about anything other than the constant grinding negativity in all its various little flavors) and now I’m struggling to deal with waking up “earlier” than usual even as I struggle to fall asleep at a currently reasonable hour much less one that used to be earlier than it currently is. My entire sleep schedule and sense of time is already messed up from months of not sleeping well, so throwing an hour shift into the mix is just making it work. I really hope I can get this sorted out sooner rather than later since I’m not sure how much more of this I can take…
Continue readingSpring Is Here To Stay And Other Weather Musings
After a bunch of temperatures bouncing between the sixties and freezing, the forecast has finally shifted into some proper spring weather. Some looming storms, days rising into the sixties and then falling into the forties overnight, an occasional day or two in the seventies, and some nice windy days. I’m looking forward to the weather continuing to improve, even if I can’t go on my walks at noon anymore because I get sunburn far too easily thanks to one of the medications I’m on (and will hopefully be off in another month or so). It’s nice to not have to run my heat or AC, to be able to leave my windows open all day long, and to be able to go to work in shorts and a t-shirt. And sometimes a zip-up hoodie. But mostly the shorts and t-shirt. Throw in how nice it is to leave work at half past seven in the evening while still having enough sunlight that I don’t need to turn on my headlights during my drive home and I’m honestly pretty happy with the weather. Which, you know, won’t cure my depression or anything, but it’s still nice to have and definitely won’t hurt it. Its a nice little thing to have at the end of what have become incredibly long and exhausting days at work. Turns out that things haven’t really slowed down since a couple weeks ago and while I’m less emotionally and mentally stressed because the sheer volume of Things To Do is lower than it was back then, the physical stress of the labor required to test the project I’m mostly working on has picked up the slack. I wish I got to do this work while getting fresh air and not wearing a mask to protect myself from what one of my coworkers insists is “just some Spring sniffles,” but I’ve found other ways to extract some fun from the work I’m doing.
Continue readingSpring Weather In Winter And Winter Weather In Spring
I spent my most recent Friday (two Fridays ago from when this gets posted) spring-cleaning my apartment. Which feels a little funny to write today, given the blizzard conditions I drove in last night and the multiple inches of slowly-melting slush that still coat the ground today. A lot of which is only just thawing out from last night’s freeze. We’re solidly in April now and still getting wintery weather, despite much of our actual winter being much closer to what I’d expect of spring around this point in the year. It’s not unheard of for us to get a few late snows (as late as May, sometimes) as spring temperatures fluctuate, but we rarely get snow after we’ve had a day that has broke past seventy degrees Fahrenheit. Yesterday, two days of rain turned into about thirty-six hours of snow and while it only just barely froze while it was falling yesterday, that little bit of ice and tons of slush turned my evening commute from its comfortable fifteen minutes into an hour-long affair. It was horrendous and coming home to a still-clean apartment was only mildly comforting. After all, I had to turn my heat up again and figure out what I was going to do the next day if the roads proved too treacherous to risk (as it turns out, the roads were fine, but getting to them was nearly impossible because my landlord never plowed my parking lot and being in an underground parking garage means contending with a slippery, uphill drive that proved impossible on mornings like today’s). Which wasn’t a huge issue, but it’s still incredibly off-putting to have spent a solid ten hours with my windows open as I cleaned my apartment more thoroughly than I have since before I moved into it and then, just over three days later, see snow blowing in my still-open bedroom window.
Continue readingMaudeline Weather Musings
Winter seems to have passed. The snow will stick around for a while since it is close enough to freezing that the almost two feet of snow will take some time to melt (though most of it might be gone by the time you’re reading this since, at the time I’m writing this, there’s going to be rain between those two moments). The icy roads have turned to slush, the constant chill has been replaced by a heavy blanket of damp, and there’s fog almost every single morning and night (and even during the days sometimes, too, thanks to the heavy cloud cover). It’s officially spring weather and it’s still January. The long range forecast says that we might have a few more days that peak below freezing, but we’ll have even more days in the forties over the same span of time. It was pretty intense, getting all of winter crammed into a two and a half week period of time, but we sure got it all. Icy roads that the city doesn’t clear enough for anything but slow, cautious driving, multiple blizzards, multiple snowstorms that snow just enough to make driving difficult but not enough that the plows come out to clear it up, a plunge into the negatives where it is actually dangerous to be outside for more than a few minutes, and a whole heap of grey, cloudy days that don’t let one iota of sunlight through. All in a two-week period. What a winter this has been, even when it’s barely a month old.
Continue readingSunshine Feels Nice And Warm Winds Lift My Spirits
I lack the words to describe how nice it was that the weather had been in the 60s, that there’d been a decent amount of sunlight, and that I’d been able to comfortably wear shorts. Nevertheless, that’s what the rest of this blog post will be about. It just felt so nice, you know? I wanted to exult in it for a while, enjoy the end of my seasonal depression and bask in the gloriously chilly but still comfy weather we had for the few days it was here.
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