The dread Crusty County Snow Spiral of Doom. Photo by Hal Walter
A wind-driven rain blew us right out of bed last night about three hours after lights out.
I say “last night” because it was still dark. But it was just after midnight. And it sounded as though Poseidon was power-washing the house, or maybe shot-peening it, which probably doesn’t do much to harden stucco against the elements.
As I will never be smart, this was about the time it occurred to me that I probably should’ve taken down the various bird feeders hanging around and about El Rancho Pendejo, maybe cinched down the cover over the gas grill, etc., et al., and so on and so forth.
But this morning, all the feeders and the grill cover remained in place. The only damage was to the plastic footlocker we use to store the cushions for our patio furniture; that sucker got blown over and one of the gas struts FUBARed.
The cushions, as you might deduce, got wet.
I estimate that we got a foot or two of rain, but since it was coming in sideways at warp 5 it only amounted to a quarter inch or so. We can expect more of the same later today, it seems. And with the weather widget showing 43° at 8:48 in the ayem it’s about as warm as it’s going to get.
About 12,000 Burqueños lost power last night, and the problem persists this morning. Khal S. reports that he and a few thousand of his fellow Santa Feos were back to kerosene lanterns, wood heat, and carrier pigeons too. Up north my man Hal Walter was likewise back to a traditional mountain lifestyle (freezing to death in the dark), and woke up to snow; the icing on the cake, as it were.
All in all, it seems a good day to stay indoors and listen to Miles Davis. Even if it’s not ’round about midnight.
Tags: ’Round About Midnight, Hal Walter, Miles Davis, rain, Weirdcliffe
Mad Blog Media 
September 9, 2020 at 10:02 am |
Grump. The UPS beeping woke me up at quarter past three when the power died. I tossed and turned and finally fell back to sleep at about six and then woke up when the power came back on.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
September 9, 2020 at 10:58 am |
What, no Wes Montgomery? We are breezy here, and most of the smoke has departed. So, the snot locker is happier today. Rain? None yet, maybe a little later. 50/50 chance.
September 9, 2020 at 12:05 pm |
2” of snow, an inch of rain, and still smoke rising from the Poudre Valley. Mother Nature has clearly had enough of our shit.
I called the kids in sick from home school and we built a snowman that was 90% snow, 10% grass from the crappy job I did mulching and raking last week.
Feeling Kind of Blue, would like to be flying a few Miles in the Sky, or at least Walkin’, or Cookin’, or Relaxin’, anything but Workin’, that’s for sure.
September 9, 2020 at 4:49 pm |
Cameron Peak Fire receives up to 14 inches of snow; crews to receive more resources
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2020/09/09/cameron-peak-fire-updates-up-14-inches-snow-but-blaze-still-active/5756938002/
September 9, 2020 at 1:11 pm |
Over on the other side of the mountain from Hal, I woke up to about 7″ of snow and no internet. It turned out my modem died. It was leased from the phone company (I have old fashioned DSL), so a service call got me a new modem installed. Paying way too much for leased hardware does have its advantages. Living out here in the middle of nowhere, I can’t just pop down to Best Buy for a new modem. And it’s kind of hard to order online when you’re offline!
September 9, 2020 at 1:28 pm |
That’s the Catch-22 about everything being online these days when the online goes offline.
September 9, 2020 at 2:23 pm |
We have DSL here too, Debby. CenturyLink, same as in Bibleburg, only much, much, slower. But I don’t notice the speed issue until I’m uploading a video to the Adventurous Cyclists in Missoula.
I bought our present modem/router, a CenturyLink-labeled ActionTec C1000A, about six years ago and it’s been pretty reliable. I have to reboot it about every 10 days or so but that’s it.
Hal’s on some weirdo homegrown satellite service that beams the Internets around from a hilltop nearby. He used his burros to deliver some of the gear.
September 9, 2020 at 2:41 pm |
DSL only in a town like Albuquerque still makes me scratch my head in wonder. When you have an Air Force base and national lab in town, you would think the cable TV company would be selling internet service.
September 9, 2020 at 3:00 pm |
O, they do, they do. But the cable company is Xfinity (Comcast), and they are evildoers, even worser than CenturyLink. Plus we don’t have cable. I unplugged that shit when Landis tripped the Dope-O-Meter™ at Le Tour.
The DSL is actually quite robust. We use it to stream TV, music, and movies (Apple TV and Mac Mini), and do Skype, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams sessions. My AT&T iPhone has to use a Cisco MicroCell hooked to the ’net to make/take calls. And we have a couple-three MacBooks and iPads plus a printer all linked to it too.
I’m surprised I only have to reboot the modem every 10 days or so. It should catch fire more or less daily.
September 9, 2020 at 3:14 pm |
We have Xfinity high speed cable up here. Seemed to be the lesser of the various evils when we researched it. Someone has the wireless repeater system up here but we looked into it and our house is in a hollow and not in line of sight to the transmitter-reciever.
Up in Los Alamos, the best DSL we seemed to be able to get on North Mesa was two tin cans with a string in between. Service was atrocious, as one company owned the wires and they figured they were good enough. I hear someone introduced that satellite Internet to give people a choice.
September 9, 2020 at 6:48 pm |
We have Cox down here. Monopolies for sure, but it’s a regulated monopoly, yea right. Point is we only receive internet service from them, nothing else. And their reliability and tech support, when we need it, is very good. Buy a new modem every 3 years or so, and we use an AirPort Extreme for the router with an Airport Express In the living room to feed the Apple TV box. Download speed average 160mbps, upload of 11.
September 9, 2020 at 6:17 pm |
Don’t tell but a couple of years back I dug a tunnel under the fence of our area mega server farm and hard wired into their main trunk line. Holy googlecrap do I get speed. I went to Speakeasy Speed Test soon after I tied in and blew the needle off of the speed test gauge. It was so fast that I had to buffer the signal so I connected in an old truck bumper between my computer and the “Hot” line. I still get speeds in the low terrabytes. And the best part is that it didn’t cost me anything. I ran into a couple of disgruntled server farm employees with slavic accents and they offered to help me dig the tunnel for free. They wanted a back door connection anyway so that they could feed election data back into the Cloud. Well, it did cost me a few ice cold Stoliys.
September 10, 2020 at 6:54 am |
When we lived on that windswept rockpile outside Weirdcliffe the Innertubes were so slow you could see each individual bit as it trudged through the pipe like a hobo hunting a place to jungle up. Looked like a Cormac McCarthy novel unfolding in real time. Why, sending a cartoon to VeloNews took so long that when it finally arrived in Boulder, it was time for me to start drawing for the next issue.
September 10, 2020 at 7:32 am |
Beauty, heh?
September 10, 2020 at 10:38 am |
Louis DeJoy must be involved. Our data packets arrive later than Priority Mail.