Why, yes, I think it might sprinkle a bit. Why do you ask?
And later, it did.
Cloud 9 (in a series)
Hail with a side salad
Herself and I spent some quality time together this morning, cleaning up the wreckage from yesterday’s blitzkrieg hailstorm.
I had to get up on the roof to broom off some of the detached greenery (and clear the gutters while I was at it). And then we set about collecting the stuff on the ground. This was about the time I decided that owning two-fifths of the block was something of a giant pain in the ass, or more specifically, the lower back.
We filled one of those big rolling trash bins and another smaller can with salad and sticks before saying the hell with it and going back indoors for lunch, after which we lost interest more or less permanently, especially since it looks like another storm may be blowing in here directly.
In other news, poor Cuddles lost his pretty pink shirt in the Giro. He has one flat stage for liver-gnawing purposes, tomorrow, before the ground tilts upward and the shit gets serious. Should be fun to watch. Rigoberto Uran Ran Ran Ran Da Doo Ran Ran looked tougher ‘n’ whang leather out there today, and taking time back from him will be like trying to steal stupid from Louie Gohmert.
Hail, hail, the hail’s all here
Well, that was a spot of fun. A massive hailstorm just roared through and beat the mortal shit out of every tree in the ‘hood.
Our house looks like Odin was displeased with dinner and threw his salad at it. The House Back East™, likewise.
I’m no arborist, so I have no idea how well, or if, our silver maple will recover from the pounding it took. Damn, I love that tree, too.
True to form, the sun is now out and it’s sandals-and-shorts weather.
The ‘OS’ in ‘OS upgrade’ doesn’t mean ‘Oh, shit!’
A while back I mentioned that I was contemplating kicking the old iBox into the future with an OS upgrade to Mavericks. Being both a sluggard and a paranoid, I never quite got around to it, until last night.
It was the perfect time, really. Monday was a rest day in the Giro; I’d wrapped the most recent review and video for Adventure Cyclist; and I didn’t have a BRAIN deadline until Thursday.
There was one evil omen (there always is). The ‘puter’s optical drive went spastic on me, as they apparently do in the iMac. Mine will read and play audio CDs, but spits out movie and software discs like an infant who won’t eat his puréed spinach. So if something went sideways during the install I wouldn’t have access to my original system discs (I was still running Snow Leopard, or OS X 10.6.8).
True, I had a belt-and-suspenders HD-backup system — both Time Machine and SuperDuper! — but being familiar with Murphy’s Law through bitter, painful experience, I decided to score an external optical drive, just in case.
I went Apple, of course, which means expensive — and in this case, inoperative. Seems their $79 disc-spinner won’t work with a pre-2012 iMac, and mine is a 2009 (read those system requirements, kids, and don’t forget to say your prayers). SuperDrive, me arse.
So I barreled over to Best Buy and picked up an LG for less than half that and it worked like a top. Suck it, Cupertino.
Then I reminded myself the worst that could happen was I’d get a chance to swear a lot and buy a new computer, and pulled the trigger. Ka-pow! Three hours later the old iBeast had a new brain. It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s aaaalllliiiiiiiive!
R.I.P., Don Gale, 1959-2014
An old crony from Santa Fe went west on Saturday in Utah. Don Gale finally lost his long battle with colon cancer.
Don was a cyclist, a skier, and a snowboarder, one of several real-life wrenches whose character traits I shamelessly exploited when creating my cartoon character the Mud Stud. We hadn’t seen each other for years, and I feel badly about that now. But we exchanged notes on Facebook recently, and I was struck by how how courageously he was pushing on to the Big Finish Line. “Inspirational” is a term that has become cliché, but not in Don’s case. He made death seem a part of life, which of course it is.
Happily, like most of the 7.2 billion people on the planet, Don did not require my close attention; he was surrounded by family and friends at the end. My condolences to those who knew and loved him.
