Weekend!
So, this weekend is the proverbial pre-show to the proverbial big game. Have you done your various holiday shopping? (Do you need a Holiday Gift Guide?)
Well, I have done approximately *ZERO* of my holiday shopping. Thank goodness for gift cards! I imagine that I will be handing out “I thought of you just enough to get you this when I was at Safeway” cards to people who deserve me spending approximately 2-3 hours each shopping for them in order to get the *PERFECT* pair of “Bear Feet” slippers.
Of course, I *DID* do research for my bosses’ gifts. But that’s different. It feels different, anyway. Well, I had Maribou do research for them.
It’s been a rough year.
Luckily, the new year will kick off right! I’m going back to Doha soon and this weekend is probably the least insane of the next three to do the stuff that I’m going to need to do to prep up for yet another two weeks in a foreign country. Which means that I’m going to need to visit the Pets Mart for litter and cat food and maybe a little sweet leaf for the babies, visit the Whole Foods for the fixings for 4-5 liters of my spaghetti sauce, and a trip to Costco to make sure that we have enough bottled water, peanut butter, and pens to make it.
Oh, and Safeway for gift cards. Classy ones with decorative art.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Image is “Play” by Clare Briggs. Used with permission of the Briggs estate.)
I’m in Singapore until the 26th and jet lag is keeping me wide awake. I arrived on December 16th and slept from 3 AM to 7:30 AM and then from 2 PM to 6 PM. Should try and get some rest soon.
Probably doing the Botanical Gardens on Sunday.Report
Last weekend was busy, so I’m going to take it low and just do some last minute Holiday shopping.Report
Portland has stopped due to two inches of snow. Wednesday evening lasted forever. Kids weren’t getting home from school on buses until 7:00 or 8:00 pm. Adults commuting home took anywhere from two to five hours to complete the drive, and that was if you weren’t involved in one of the five car pile ups or completely closed interstates or highways. No one went anywhere or did anything on Thursday as a results of Wednesday’s nightmare traffic. Everyone is venturing out again today, but this city does not handle snow well. And we are expecting more tomorrow! All school activities were canceled for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, so Junior is missing out on wrestling practice and a tournament. I was going to complete holiday shopping and gift wrapping this weekend, but now I’m just figuring out how to get gas and milk before people freak out and make it impossible to drive again.Report
A few years ago I had to fly to Portland to do a case in the Portland immigration court. There was what would be mild rain by New York standards on the day of the hearing, not nice to be outside but not something that would interfere with your daily activities either. During the middle of cross examination, the clerk of the Court came in and told the IJ that the building was shutting down because of the inclement weather that really seemed to be nothing to this New Yorker. It wasn’t a pleasant day but it wasn’t anything close to shut everything down.
Westerners always liked to portray themselves as tougher and rougher than Easterners but they seem to freak out about what would be not that bad weather by Eastern standards more.Report
DC shuts down after half an inch of snow. So does anyplace south of there.
“Westerners” are Coloradans or Montanans… or maybe texans.Report
I suspect most parts of Texas would not handle an inch of snow very well, FWIW.Report
dragonfrog,
Truth. Sandstorms, yes, scorpions, fine, snow? nah.Report
The panhandle is no picnic. It’s hard to explain it, unless you’ve been there a couple of hard winters.Report
DC is south of the line that can handle snow well, but it’s north of the line that doesn’t get snowed on regularly.Report
DC simply says “Let congress pay for it.”
That’s institutional policy.Report
DC’s budget is set by whom, exactly?Report
The Mayor, and the taxes that they levy.
But DC’s license plate says “no taxation without representation” for a reason.
If they don’t even get a vote in congress, I can’t begrudge them for being a bit upset about not getting proper highway funding.Report
No politics, @Kim. (And @francis.)Report
That’s only part of the problem. The city is also populated by (a) transplanted northerners who think they’ll be fine going 75 mph, and (b) transplanted southerners afraid to go faster than 20 mph, on the same partially-plowed roads.Report
I’m not much farther north than DC in Pittsburgh, and we ARE fine at 60mph in snow, with enough salt that is. PA Turnpike stays open even during the worst storms.Report
Ooh that sounds like an exciting combination…
And I’m guessing there’s not enough snow to justify snow tires?Report
Due to some peculiarities in geography and wind patterns, at certain times of the year Portland is subject to freezing rain where the drops are super-cooled at altitude — but still liquid — and then freeze on impact, even when the air temperature at ground level is above freezing. The set-up conditions that make freezing rain likely are fairly well understood. If those conditions are in the forecast, best to close early and get home before the roads ice up.
Lots of places in the West have peculiar local weather. Denver International Airport is built in a localized thunderstorm “alley” — they had more tornado sightings at DIA in its first couple of years than Stapleton had in 65. I live about 12 miles in a straight line from Boulder, CO at just about the same elevation. Boulder gets significantly more precipitation each year than we do because of micro climate effects.Report
Pittsburgh’s got peculiar local weather too. Our airport doesn’t do tornadoes — it does worse. Wind that goes straight down, and can take planes right out of the sky — or level amusement park rides.Report
We had freezing rain last week. I expected that to be the worst. I was shocked that we didn’t handle the snow as well as the freezing rain. Maybe we just don’t know what to do with snow, since we’re used to freezing rain???Report
We have an interesting even to attend on Sunday…
After at least 20 years of public bickering, Kentucky and Indiana agreed to build 2 bridges over the Ohio River to augment the transit options in the Louisville area. The Downtown Crossing opened last December to great fanfare. Thousands upon thousands marched across it to celebrate and it was a pretty cool event…and we were in North Carolina that weekend.
So, I promised the wife we would attend the opening of the Eat End Crossing this weekend. So we’re one of 500 cars that will be in the opening caravan (they aren’t allowing walkers on this bridge). It should be cool. I’m going to rig up video on the dashboard for the obligatory social media stuff. And we all get cool medallions for participating.
And that is enough for me for the weekend.Report
I’ve got an “adult board game night” (which means no kids, for anyone dirty minded out there) tomorrow which sounds fun.
I think everyone is bringing games for 4 to 8 people (there will be 7 to 8 there) so we have a choice between large games, multiple small games, etc and people can basically try games out.
I’m bringing Love Letter, Bang! and Masquerade. Sadly my copy of Werewolf hasn’t come in yet. (Also, there is a game called “Secret Hitler” that I am now dying to own.)Report
Yay! I just found out that the thing we’re doing at 10AM on Monday morning is not stuff that needs me to come in for 4 hours on Saturday!
I can just do the Saturday stuff all leisurely come Monday morning.Report
Well, if the snow continues to come down like it is right now, something other than was planned. “Two to four inches,” they said. We’ve already got that and it’s still snowing hard. The city must have believed them. Just got back in from retrieving my wife and the plows and sand trucks aren’t out, so it’s packing down and getting slick.Report
Where we happen to live got maybe an inch, maybe. It went from the “oooh, pretty” snow to “ugh, little tiny ice spears flying at 20 miles per hour!” pretty quickly, though.
Good luck. Stay inside!Report
Yesterday when I woke up it was 50 °F and clear. Today when I woke up it was -5 °F with six inches of powder on the ground. I’ll wait a while but sometime this morning I have to shovel and see about retrieving my wife’s car.Report
I stand corrected — having shoveled, it was about twelve inches.Report
We went out to run some errands… go to the bank, visit the little local hipster barber so Maribou could get her head shaved and I could get my beard craziness trimmed back to a ‘7’, then I was going to drop her off back at the house and hit the donut place, stop by work and deliver the donuts to my co-workers who are putting together some overtime today, hit Costco, Pets Mart, Whole Foods, and King Soopers…
And we made it to the bank then decided that the roads were so atrocious that we’ll do that stuff tomorrow.
So I’m in my fuzzies in the basement.Report
Sun comes out at 3, so the gnomes in the computer tell me.
We’ll see what happens.Report
Whee! We went from “-40” if you believe in windchill (it was -26 C and windy, anyway) last night, to forecast of 0 C tomorrow.Report
Went from 87F on saturday, to 40 something on sunday.Report
We’ll also get the reverse sort of situation multiple times this winter. Always interesting to wake up in January or February when the Chinook has started overnight, and it’s already 60 or 65 °F. A few years ago the Chinook blew in on Christmas Eve — I spent Christmas afternoon bicycling in shorts and t-shirt.Report
Didn’t have to wait long for the Chinook — woke up in the middle of the night with the wind howling and the temp up to 51 °F. Calmed down for now, but the forecast says the wind will pick back up this afternoon and the high will be 60.Report