Category: Snow

There and back again

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 21 Comments
Hm. We’re gonna need a bigger coffee cup.

I don’t think we’ve had a snowfall of any consequence this winter. Of course, now that I’ve said that, we’ll get hammered, probably tonight. — Your Humble Narrator, yesterday

Ho, ho, etc. I’m rarely right, but when I’m right, I’m right. Right?

I tumbled out of bed at stupid-thirty this morning to see if I needed to clear our black-diamond driveway for Herself, and glad I was of it, too, because I had to clear the sonofabitch twice.

The first go-round I broomed about an inch and a half of not-insubstantial snow off our slippery slope. When I turned around at the bottom to inspect my work I could see that the rematch had already been scheduled.

So after coffee and toast I had another go at it. Call it three inches of snow all told, which ain’t too shabby for these parched parts.

Once I was finished the lab fired off a message saying nobody needed to come to work until 10. Because of course they did.

I guess it takes a while to fire up the orbital space lasers Sandia uses to clear The Duck! City’s streets, what with all the batteries being earmarked for electric Hummers and whatnot.

Either that or they’re all tasked with vaporizing Chinese spy balloons.

Say, maybe that’s not snow. Maybe it’s vaporized Chinese spy balloon. Does that crap melt or just hang around being a pain in the ass, like George Santos?

Fire and ice

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 17 Comments
Free water for the trees. ’Ray!

“It’s a winter wonderland out there!” Herself exclaimed last night.

“No way,” I replied. Last I’d looked, just minutes earlier, it was raining.

“Totally,” she said.

So I looked again, and as usual, she was right. Coming down like Chinese balloons it was.

The forecast has been something of a combo platter for the past few days, as the weather wizards try to cover all the bases (rain, snow, sleet, wind, plague of toads, bloody stones, UFOs, zombie apocalypse, etc.).

With this in mind I availed myself of a pleasant 90-minute ride on Stupor Sunday (48° and sunny). Then yesterday Herself and I enjoyed a short trail run (54° and sunny with a stiff wind out of the SSW).

That breeze — Yahweh’s postal service — was apparently what delivered three of the predictors’ prognostications more or less at once last evening: wind, rain, and snow.

I never know what’s going to be in these packages once I unwrap them — big box of nothin’ or visit to the chiropractor — so I got up way too early this morning and had another look-see.

Oh, goody. About an inch and a half of feathery fluff, but still some moisture to it. Good for the trees.

I broomed the driveway clear for Herself’s launch to the lab and skedaddled back indoors, where the coffee would be once I got around to making some. First things first, as the fella says. If I let any kind of snow sit on that north-facing black-diamond driveway of ours on Valentine’s Day it will stay there until St. Patrick’s Day. Maybe Easter.

And now, we get right back on that meteorological roller coaster (rain, snow, sleet, wind, plague of toads, bloody stones, UFOs, zombie apocalypse, etc.). Also, keep a weather eye out for smoke blowing up your ass.

Naw, it’s not another controlled burn gone sideways. Just Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign. I’m not hearing any fire alarms.

Retracing my steps

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 10 Comments
This is what a juniper dusted with snow looks like at 5:14 in the ayem.

I meant to post this pic the other day and completely spaced it whilst mumbling on and on about podcasting and whatnot.

We woke on Wednesday to a measurable amount of precip’, not enough to resolve the megadrought, but just enough to keep me off a bicycle. Instead I went for a short run once the temps rose a bit.

I have no idea what made these tracks in the backyard. Fox? Coyote? La Llorona of Hobbiton?

Ten years ago I would come to The Duck! City from Bibleburg in February to get away from winter.

I’d check into the Hampton at Carlisle and I-40 and ride the bike all the doo-dah day, and in shorts and short sleeves, too.

Hit the Mexican restaurants, or fetch a sack of tasty treats from the Wholeazon Amafoods across the interstate from the motel. Binge-watch HBO in the room come evening.

I had no idea that in a year we’d be living down here. Zee-ro. If you’da told me I’da laughed in your face.

“Herself is going to get a job at Sandia National Labs that pays more money in one year than I’ve made in my entire life? We’re moving to Albuquerque? Ho, ho. Pull the other leg so I’ll be even when I go out to run in the snow. Albuquerque. Hee, and also haw.”

Well, she did, and we did, and here I am, running in February on the New Mexican snow.

Just chillin’

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 24 Comments
Weather, outside, frightful, etc.

Sorel, God of Cold Feet, paid us a surprise visit last night.

Hard to believe the glider boyos were cruising the friendly skies just the other day.

The day before Halloween Herself and I saw three gliders working the thermals near the Menaul trailhead.

But Halloween has come and gone. We “fall back” on Sunday, and then slide at high speed into Thanksgiving, winter solstice, and Christmas. It ain’t always sandals-and-shorts weather, even in The Duck! City.

I’m not ready. I never am. I used to race in this shit? When? Was I still on drugs?

Herself is made of sterner stuff. She bundled up and sallied forth with a fellow Democrat to distribute campaign literature.

Comrade Eeyore is likewise on the hustings, telling The Guardian that Democrats “have not done a good enough job of reaching out to young people and working-class people and motivating them to come out and vote in this election.”

Hey, comrade, Herself is no passenger in this garbage scow. Ain’t her fault the officers are all rumdums.

Being of the Vanguard, I was needed here at Headquarters to propagandize over hot tea and a Taos Bakes bar. Arise, ye prisoners of starvation, and fetch me another mug of tea.

While I await the Revolution I’m also baking a loaf of bread so I don’t have to stand in line for it like the proles.

Here in a bit I’ll go for a run, if only because I never know when I might have to. It’s all this weather is good for. You can’t ski in it, or make snowballs with it, so you might as well pound ground, keep the muscle memory sharp.

The forecast for the day after Election Day is not encouraging. We may be feeling the heat, but not in a good way. I’m thinking of feet held to the fire.

Snow? No

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 20 Comments
It ain’t easy getting green.

We was robbed.

Just as well. The ladies have plans, and though they are Marylanders and used to snow, only Herself has enjoyed winter motoring in The Duck! City, whose drivers can’t keep the shiny side up on a sunny day.

Yesterday it was a Tesla and a pick-’em-up truck that ate shit at Comanche and Tramway, where the debris from old crashes piles up like the fast-food wrappers, liquor bottles, and dirty diapers drivers toss from their vehicles between texts as they breeze through the red five seconds late and 20 over the limit.

You want to keep your head on a swivel when your light turns green. Left, right, left again — count one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, etc. — then proceed as though you believe in an afterlife.

Never mind the asshole leaning on his horn behind you. Hell ain’t half full, as s/he will learn after finally honking at the wrong person, who then climbs out of the vehicle with something more authoritative than a middle digit extending from one white-knuckled fist.

The honkers are usually tailgaters too. Some of these yahoos will crowd you so closely you can smell the beer on their breath.

Doc Sarvis, the brains and bucks behind “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” had a solution to that sort of harassment. The Ukrainians are giving these ancient anticavalry weapons a go, and why not? I bet they work against horses and horses’ asses.