Posts from — January 2014

Now we have the US Attorney and the Inspector General of Housing and Urban Development looking at the Christie administration. This isn’t going away.

The problem is that complaints that were being ignored by Federal officials about things that have been happening in New Jersey can no longer be ignored. Officials assumed that the complaints were politics during state elections and not serious enough to bother about, until the e-mails about the bridge came out.

Florida’s Fraudster-in-chief was counting on Christie to help him with fund-raising for his reelection bid, but those plans will probably change. As bad as things look for Christie, he is still more popular in Florida than our current governor, but then, so are the H1N1 flu virus and head lice.

There were a few things that really helped during the cold spell that others might like to have around.

LL Bean calls them fleece slipper socks, but they are based on a common form of Inuit mukluks (boot). The heavyweight fleece uppers have a leather sole attached, and my feet stayed warm in the house.

When I went outside I was wearing Duluth Trading’s fleece-lined jeans and their fleece vest. They both just work. They are not inexpensive, but if you have to be outside in cold weather, they are definitely worth the money. The stuff from Duluth tends to be bigger than normal, but they have decent customer service.

The other stuff I used is so old that you probably can’t buy it anymore.

That’s the title of an old TV show that satirized the news in olden times : That Was The Week That Was.

Bridgegate was the big story, because nothing else was happening that wasn’t weather-related.

Robert Gates came out with a book saying that Joe Biden is often wrong. If Joe is only ‘often wrong’ he has a better batting average than Robert Gates, who has been on the wrong side of history with every position he has taken going back to the 1980s. It is a major defect of the US systems that people who are proven wrong keep getting government jobs, and air time on television.

The banning of incandescent lights is causing a problem for people who work with animals. The defect of the bulbs, the ‘wasted heat’ they produce has been used for years to warm incubators and other devices for animal care facilities. I use them to heat a slab for the feral cats. We are now going to have to find new solutions.

All day yesterday we had drizzle – it was in the 50s, but constant light rain.

Today it has been fog and the temperature has been climbing – 52° at midnight last night was the low, and 64° at midnight tonight will be the high. That isn’t normal. The silence from the lack of heaters working is deafening after having them run constantly for so long.

I wonder if there is anywhere left where the weather works normally?

Shivering Burns Calories

Noms!

[Editor: Mini-Sox is only interested in food, and I needed the flash to get a picture.]

Friday Ark

I don’t believe it. After only a little over 20 years my microwave died today. No warning, the clock was blank and none of the buttons responded. I even washed the sucker occasionally, at least once a year, and it just quits without giving notice.

Now I have to find another one that will fit in the available space, and know that I will be lucky if the new one survives the warranty period. No popcorn until I get a new one, so I can’t really enjoy the Christie apology opera.

I was feeling so good because my pipes didn’t freeze, so I should have expected something.

Cat blogging should happen tomorrow, but no promises. It has been drizzling all day, so the cats have been in hiding.

Today Duncan had a number of posts about Chris Christie and “Trafficgate”, but this one instantly made me think of Richard Milhous “Tricky Dick” Nixon and the 1972 Presidential election.

Nixon didn’t need to do any of the things that resulted in his resignation, he was going to be re-elected, but his personality took him over the line. Christie is the same way, and you have to wonder if he does this sort of thing with the resources of the governor of New Jersey, what would he be capable of with the intel community, the IRS, DHS, etc. under his control? Is anyone interested in finding out?

The Arctic Vortex has gone home after an unwelcome visit to the US. If it doesn’t come back for another 20 years, it will be too soon.

People down here are dealing with frozen or busted pipes, but we have been spared so far from reports of house fires started by space heaters.

I saw a number of the feral cats today, so they had someplace to hang out. I’m planning some better solutions if they still have the big plastic storage boxes on sale.

We’re back to our normal sixties to forties winter weather.

The BBC is reporting that Antarctic ships escape from ice trap as weather changes. Both the Akademik Shokalskiy and the Snow Dragon are moving after a wind shift broke a channel in the ice. The Russian captain anticipates that the Chinese ship will catch up and pass his vessel and provide a clearer path to the open ocean.

Locally, it got above freezing for about an hour today at about 3PM. It didn’t get above the former record low temperature for this date until noon. The new record is 18°. Mobile, Alabama has a new record of 14°.

Inside an igloo it is 32°. A single candle will raise the temperature 8°. All of my heaters only manage to raise the temperature in my house by 30°. The windchill is in single digits [the middle one].

С Рождеством Христовым to my Orthodox friends who are still waiting to see how the calendar reform works out.

It’s tough typing in mittens, but the gloves aren’t warm enough. Fortunately I still have some winter gear, unlike many people in the area.

The temperature started dropping after midnight and leveled off at around 27°F at sunrise. It was above freezing in late morning and early afternoon, if you ignored the windchill, which you couldn’t. The air temperature dropped below freezing again around 6PM and is headed for 20° or lower by sunrise tomorrow.

I spent some of my time telling the people in the apartments my Mother manages to remember to leave the water dripping tonight so the pipes won’t freeze. Hopefully that will help, because plumbers are going to be busy tomorrow.

It looks like we will be in freeze conditions until Thursday, but the winds are forecast to taper off.

Today marks the Feast of the Epiphany, end of the twelve days of Christmas, and Día de los Reyes in Spanish-speaking countries.

This is the customary day for gift exchanges in many Christian cultures because it is the day that the Magi finally arrived in Bethlehem with their totally inappropriate gifts after putzing around for over a week because they didn’t want to ask for directions.

Current weather advisories for the Northern Gulf Coast:

… Wind Advisory in effect from 9 PM this evening to 6 PM CST Monday…
… Freeze warning in effect from 4 am to 10 am CST Monday…
… Hard freeze warning in effect from 9 PM Monday to 10 am CST Tuesday…
… Wind Chill Advisory in effect from 9 PM Monday to 9 am CST Tuesday…

Just grab your mukluks and parka and head on down to see the Gulf of Mexico through the frost-rimed windows of an inadequately heated condo. You need to find a way that doesn’t involve crossing a bridge or using an overpass, because they will be coated with ice and no one here knows how to drive on ice.

Tomorrow the temperature is supposed to reach the mid to upper 60s, which is helpful, because Monday night through Tuesday morning, the temperature is forecast to drop into the lower 20s.

So Sunday will be spent moving and covering plants, and installing the tent over the water garden which also provides a warmer place for the cats to hang out.

The camellia by my Mother’s front door is already putting out blooms, and they will be destroyed, as will many of the more tropical plants in the area. These swings are maddening. You can’t do any long term planning because you don’t know from day to day, much less week to week whether you will be sweating or freezing.

The crew on the Chinese icebreaker and Russian research ship have more reliable weather than the Northern Gulf Coast.