Hi friends! It’s almost Friday. We’re so close and yet so far to the weekend.
Like most of the country, we got a stupid frigid weekend coming AND we’re supposed to get more snow Sunday night with more frigid weather.
I went to Aldi to stock up on enough food to not have to grocery shop until at least Wednesday of next week. Also I picked up enough stuff to stock the free mini pantry, although it’s all dry goods since with single digit temps we can’t do canned or jarred goods. Things like instant potatoes, granola bars, and rice-a-roni, etc. Aldi had some seasonal instant noodles for Chinese New Year that are different things than I normally can find, so I bought a bunch of those so folks can have some variety.
I think in about 2 weeks it will be warm enough to have liquids again, so I might try to just load it up on tuna, peanut butter, and canned beans since it will have been a while since those sorts of things will have been available.
I don’t mind cold, I don’t mind snow, but this freezing rain shit is a major pain in the ass. I don’t know if the roads will be ok to drive on tomorrow or even safe for a dog walk. I need groceries. Dammit, February is pissing me off.
That’s one of the many, many, many things I despise about the South. Freezing rain and ice storms. Fuck that shit.
Freezing rain is the worst!!!
Yeah, it’s bad here in the mountains.
When T. S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month” in the “The Waste Land” he had clearly been hitting the absinthe again. There’s also a good riddle about February but I can’t remember it, it goes something like “What brings misery to so many and yet is the easiest to…leave behind? Something like that? It’s a play on how miserable February is (in the northern hemisphere) yet paradoxically it is the shortest month.
Um…do you live outside? Remodeling your kitchen so no refrigerator?
I’ve got a dentist appointment in the morning so I’m taking a half day off. Which means I’ll do my grocery shopping after the dentist, so I can sleep in on Saturday this week.
Chick Corea died.
Also, this is very cool. 117-year old nun has survived the 1918 flu pandemic, and this one. She even contracted covid and survived. 117 fucking years old.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/02/10/nun-117-survive-covid-france/?itid=sf_coronavirus
The free mini pantry is a cupboard at a nearby park. For folks in need to grab something from. With several days where the lows are single digits or close to it, canned and jarred goods aren’t feasible to stock it with.
That’s very cool. I’m guessing it’s getting a lot of use these days.
It was a little free library that the community decided to make a pantry instead last spring. It’s one of four community pantries we set up to try to make things easily available.
And in two sentences I have captured the reason I left generic white republican non-incorporated St. Louis county suburbia and bought a house in my suburb. I wanted to live somewhere that had a sense of community and wasn’t all fucking white republicans. (I could not find a single Trump sign in Oct/Nov in my suburb so if there are republicans, they either don’t like Trump or are afraid of displaying their racist opinions publicly)
I finally got my new bike I’ve been wait-listed on since October or something.
It’s going to be a little bit till I get used to it, it’s my first time using drop bars…
But I like it. Don’t have fenders yet, so I used my old clunky hybrid today (rain in the afternoon), and I miss it already. I think it’s supposed to clear up by tomorrow, but maybe I should wait, since the ground will probably still be wet.
Also started doing a full bike commute recently. I was going to wait till COVID cleared up/all my coworkers got vaccinated, because there is a shower available at work, but it’s in the only bathroom, and I don’t think it would be practical to wear a mask whilst showering, so I just figured I’d wait. Then I ended up working on my own one weekend, and gave the morning bike commute a try. I figured if I was sweaty and gross and stinky, there wouldn’t be anyone around to be bothered… But, it’s cold enough in the morning that if I don’t really push myself, I don’t think I get too sweaty? It also helps that the worst part of my ride, where I need to try and keep up with traffic, and frequent stop lights, is right near my house. So I get home in the afternoons/evenings exhausted, but I leave early enough in the morning there isn’t much traffic yet, and I can take it easy.
Plus, the morning commute along the water is kinda nice, lots of birds to see, and ocaisonaly other critters. Saw a late racoon sprint across 5 (empty) lanes and dive into a storm drain earlier this week, as well as some sort of pinniped (I call them all seals, but my coworker informed me it was probably a sea lion, I should figure out the difference one of these days…)
I just hope COVID clears up or something before it gets much warmer, I’m enjoying biking into work. It takes slightly longer than transit, but it’s more flexible (if I’m ~5 minutes late for my bike commute, I’m ~5 minutes late for work. If I’m ~5 minutes late for my partial public transit commute, I could be ontime, or I could be over 30 minutes late, depending on how the trains are running), it saves me a couple bucks, and I could use the increased activity.
That’s awesome! Congrats on getting your bike!
Honestly, when people are sweaty, normally it just smells like sweat for a bit until they dry off. I’ve worked with plenty of people who routinely stepped out to workout during a work break and didn’t have a shower option, as well as doing that myself for walks in the work parking lot (I liked to walk to the levee and look for ducks and herons, because it was better than seeing the landfill all the time), and it was never bad. I just kept spare deodorant at my desk and freshened up in the bathroom when I got back.
thanks!
yeah, and where I work, things are pretty spread out, and I’m often working alone outside, so hopefully even if I am not-quite-shower-fresh, it won’t be too much of an issue…
I just tend to be a bit cautious/concerned, at least in part since I have almost no sense of smell…
Congrats on the new bike! You can buy body wipes at most drugstores to toss in your pack for days when you might get a little sweaty. There are eco friendly brands. I used to keep them in my yoga bag for days when I had shopping or a therapy appointment after an intense class. It made me feel better interacting with people.
thanks!
Yeah, some time ago, I had a stash of baby wipes at work (different job) for when I couldn’t shower, so I’ll probably pick up a few mini packs or something next time I go grocery shopping.
Surly FTW! I have a 20-plus year old Cross Check that is still my primary ride. Once you get everything dialed in (including fenders, the are worth it), you will love that bike.
Nice! -that’s great to hear!
I already really like it, it’s just a lot of “new” for me, so I’m in the learning/adaptation process. I’m expecting to really love it once I get more familiar with it.
I think you will. It’s a great looking ride, and I’m jealous of some of those newer components.
I’m really fighting off some strong urges to uglify it… it’s probably a good thing I don’t have a spare rattle can of autoprimer just lying around.
I’m trying to ease my neuroticisms by rationalizing that I’m not going to leave this locked up in public anywhere, and just leave it in my apartment and at work…
We haven’t really had snow yet this winter so today we got dandruff kind of flakes but the south of state is getting hit. Supposed to be a bunch over weekend but I never believe our weather people. We live on some steep hills so we are trapped if it is heavy but all the neighbors come out to sled & snowboard down steep hills & I am stocked up on Kahlua for hot coco. Sorry if it continues east yo you lovely people.
shes not bringing me vodka this weekend…. im on one of me wierd hey lets try this sobriety thing benders again….for the moment anyways…the weekends are always the biggest stumbling block
anyways as we are hitting -15 this weekend….im probably going to try to cycle across the lake this weekend…take some pictures…hopefully not underwater
seems after the weekend the cold is going to be done again as quickly as it started….course…over here if the wind decides its actually just gonna stay coming from the east that whole prediction goes out the window and itll just get colder
Also because I wanted to share.
I had a harrowing 20 minutes of thinking I busted my laptop because the touchpad wasn’t working. And there’s no easy touchpad on/off by tapping the corner of the touchpad with this dinosaur. Googling what to do wasn’t working because this thing’s so old I don’t even know the model and with no way to move the pointer I was unsure what to do to navigate through the start menu to get to the system details.
And then!!!
I realized one of the function keys probably controlled it. SWEET VICTORY!!!!
Alright, after that momentary panic, I am going to bed.
glad you found the problem.
Fears of something like this are why I keep my previous laptop (er, make that two laptops…), as well as a USB mouse and keyboard that I don’t ever use…
I live just north-west of Toronto and it’s apparently February – according to you guys -but I am still waiting for winter to start in a way that justifies whining about it.
I have only had to brush my car off twice this “winter” and winter is almost over. There was a thin layer of frost on my windshield the other day (nothing that warming the car up couldn’t handle) and when I got in it to pull out of my driveway I swear I heard it say “Scout Finch.”
I didn’t see any birds mocking me nor do I travel Finch Ave very often so I was left to assume that my car was using that first bit of snow as a euphemism for how it has matured from a little girl into a young woman. The dirt it kicked up, to my surprise, had become the foundation of a snowman by the time I got home. It was almost as though she wanted to remind me who really did all the work. Not only who really built the snowman, but how privileged I am to admire it without having to put any thought into the work behind it or the workers who created it.
Needless to say that it surely has been a month of history…
and this w(h)ine is VERY strong.
That’s good wine, then!