Man! It's cold!!

It is beyond bizzare here in Florida. We should be no warmer than 40 or 50 degrees, but it's nearly eighty outside. Even with the overcast and a little rain, we have windows and doors open. Truly strange, if a bit worrysome. It makes me wonder what spring and summer will bring. I sure as hell hope we do not have a repeat of last year's heat wave, because it decimated our garden.

"It's all George Bush's fault."

Really. Ask Obama and Al Gore.

Tee shirt weather in the mountains of VA today, but I'm a wimp and kept my flannel shirt on. That's not super far off normal for us to have a few such days between the rain and mud around now - but it usually evens itself up. Looks like sun all weekend and into next week, so I can do some extra joyriding in the electric car for free...

There you go. YES, go out and enjoy yourself in the nice weather!

My weekend outlook? Tomorrow run a bunch of errands with the missus after Italian class. Probably review Barron's at my blog.

Sunday: fold laundry... And practice Tai Chi! Sunday night brings me back to the computer...

Routines are OK with me!

*****

MAYBE watch part of the Super Bowl (although both teams suck).

Know what I used to like about the Super Bowl the best (although they did not do it last year)? Right before the game, they would announce the name of EACH player as he ran onto the field. You could feel that each one was living at perhaps the highest point a man could reach: that he was playing for THE CHAMPIONSHIP and that the WHOLE COUNTRY, however briefly, had its eyes on each man. Every set of eyes in the stadium. It almost made me fuckin' cry (hey, I am a sensitive sort)...

The dream of every athlete. I have two nephews who have played college ball, one was not quite good enough to stay on the team, the other one just got himself banged-up, had shoulder surgery (at 20...) and was OUT for the season. I dunno, Jimbo, maybe you ought to think this football thing through...

Here's something that's cold:

http://newsminer.com/view/full_stor...lights?inpmstance=home_news_window_left_top_1

OK, I'll donate this one so you can all feel lucky/superior. You'll just have to return the favor when you're getting whacked by a hurricane and we're out grilling up some fine Texas steaks.

I stuck my tiny (95cc) portable generator under those solar panels leaning on the wall - 45 min later they are cleared off...nice use of a tiny amount of gasoline - I had the shaft power charging my batteries, and the waste heat "shoveling snow" for me so I got near 100% efficiency out of that little trick.

Good thing you're not down here, DCFusor!

Miami hit a record (for the date) of 87 degrees yesterday.

But, the cold front came through, and we're back down to a brisk 75...

I'm grabbing a sweatshirt if it gets 70f in the house. Give me tropic heat every day please.

Oh, we get 105f in the dog days (usually much lower humidity than DC - this ain't a swamp)...just wider swings here, away from the oceans.

I like living halfway up the mountain - hurricane winds go above me, floods below, we just laugh, mostly. Weather's more fun when it's close to, but not IN, your face. In summer I can retreat down into the low, cool, hollow and hang out in the ferns, and listen to the babbling brook. Could be worse.

When it dips below 65, I am wearing long johns. My blood is so thin I could probably never live up north in the winter again.

I'm wearing long johns, do all winter, even on balmy days like today where it's almost 55 out. Snow going fast and the car accepting solar charge at max rate right now...I hate cold, but then again, I love wood heat and indoors in inclement weather.

Since I'm chronically underweight, I just think of the thermals as falsies for the male body. They make me look almost normal bulk.

I remember DC - and I'd bet DoChen will back me up on this. Less than a week's worth of truly nice days to be outside all year - either too hot, too cold, too rainy, too humid. Only a few crystal clear nice days to put the top down on the convertible.

We used to call it "the land of indoors" as you never went outside except between inside the building and inside the car, or sometimes to mow the lawn if you couldn't get someone else to do it. They really did build that place on a swamp. I see the current occupants are at least maintaining a moral swamp these days.

DCFusor is quite correct re the weather in Washington, DC. I had never thought about it in that way though: very few really nice days in a year.

All of September (which for temperature reasons one would THINK would be nice) was out because I had (not here in Florida) "hay fever", an allergy to Ragweed. Yuck.

October - May is Winter to one degree or another. Skinny DoChen also was a big believer that long underwear was further proof that "God loves us and wants us to be happy." (line stolen from Ben Franklin and modified a wee bit). I have a set of long underwear in Peru (Lima has MONTHS of cool drizzly foggy weather, 55 - 65 degrees and humid)! Winter featured snowfalls of 10" (at once) or more about every other year. One year we got 29" at our house (I measured it)! It took them DAYS to plow all that away. Oh, and my favorite: freezing rain.

Sometimes Memorial Day Weekend was nice. Then Summer. Hot, but nice to be outside at night. In those days I still had my lil ol export company, and I would have to run off to FedEx or the Post Office in the evenings... I would often take along our daughter (because we would stop at 7-11 for a snack), and we would enjoy the drive over with the windows down.

So, Summer nights were nice, the rest of the year, not so much.