We didn't so much get snow here last night as guck. In this case, the guck manifested as what is euphemistically called "wintry mix", an interesting concoction of snow, rain, freezing rain, and sleet. I got up this morning and went out to start the snowblower to clear the driveway, but when I opened the garage, I took one look and concluded that the snowblower would hate this stuff.

The pusher shovel, on the other hand, was the perfect tool. I put on the strap-on cleats that Jeff and Carol gave me for Christmas a few years ago -- because they won't stop you from slipping on a patch of ice, but they improve your chances greatly -- and spent about half an hour removing the inch of guck. I had to make sure to take care of it right then, because the temperature is supposed to drop down to near zero tonight, which would result in an inch of hard-frozen guck on the driveway.

And I really don't need my driveway to double as an ice rink. Been there, done that, got the scars to show for it.

That's what we derisively refer to the threat of snow as around here, following a snowstorm some years ago that stubbornly failed to materialize despite the most determined predictions from our local forecasters, TV news guys with parkas standing on barren street corners looking for a flake (other than themselves), and a general air of manufactured "Oh, My God, It's Going To Snow A Whole Lot!"

The current massive low that's about to pass over our area has tracked to the south, which means that we're in pretty good shape. The folks in Iowa to the west and Wisconsin to the north and west, not so much. Enough of our precipitation came down as rain on warm ground that we've only got a couple of inches so far. We may get a couple more tomorrow. For a storm that's producing three and four foot drifts over in Iowa, that makes me pretty happy.

On the other hand, it's about to get really cold here for December. And that forecast, I believe to be quite accurate. :)

We were about due for a beautiful spring day and one decided to show up today. daisy_knotwise took the girls to the park, I had a pleasant walk to lunch, and it was just good to be outdoors.

I believe tomorrow's supposed to be quite nice too. :)

We spent most of the night on the warm side of the rain / snow line, with the result that we only got about an inch of snow. I scraped the top section of the driveway after lunch. The rest of it is completely melted now.

The taxes are progressing and if I can just figure out what I shipped to everybody last year, I should be able to clean up the Dodeka taxes. Then there's a bit of touch up work on our tax organizer for the accountant, plus pulling together the tax info for my dad's trust so I can send that along to the accountant too. But I see an end to this.

Meanwhile, it appears that one of the reasons that Julie has been a little grumpy is that she's started to cut bicuspids. That'll improve the chewing situation.

Right now, the weather outside is cold, but fairly decent. However, the latest forecast calls for five or more inches of snow tonight into tomorrow morning. This makes me rather happy that I decided that it wasn't nearly time to decommission the snow blower in preparation for spring.

The forsythia still thinks it's about to be spring, but is in for a rude awakening.

In the meantime, we went by the Jewel and collected dinner makings for tonight and tomorrow, so we won't have to spend a lot of time dealing with the snow.

Save for blowing it off the driveway, of course.

Well, we were going to try to take Katie out with her uncle jeff_duntemann today to go fly a kite. But Jeff correctly figured we needed a different kite than he'd used last weekend given the light wind we've got today. So we went looking for one.

And didn't find one at Hobby Lobby or K-Mart. *sigh*

I finally did find one at Sam's Club when I went to stock up on meat, but Jeff had to leave before I got back.

So maybe we'll fly the very pretty Kimono Butterfly kite tomorrow. :)

You know it's been really cold when you're quickly scanning a friend's LJ post, read about "insulated boobs", and think that sounds vaguely reasonable.

The word was "boots". I need to read a bit more slowly.

We got about an inch of well-blown snow last night, so when I got up this morning, I got dressed and went straight out to hit the driveway and sidewalks with the snowblower again. This turns out to have been a really good idea. The ice dam is uncovered and -- if it gets a bit warmer in the next few days -- last night's work may be enough to thaw it out. We'll see.

We took the girls out to lunch and then to Sam's Club. We had thought of doing more shopping, but the wind is picking up and it's getting effectively colder as the day goes on. I went out to the Jewel by myself to pick up groceries and nearly froze to death while trying to get the groceries into the trunk.

The current temperature is minus three Fahrenheit. The wind chill is minus 28, given the 24 MPH steady wind and the 32 MPH gusts.

Oh, wait! Winnipeg is calling. They want their weather back.

Probably because it's even colder there now.

Update: Yes, it's colder in Winnipeg, but not by much. -8 degrees Fahrenheit there. Brr.

That's because a ten foot pole wouldn't have been nearly long enough to do the job of clearing some of the snow off of our roof where we appear to have an ice dam. I'd made an assault on it using a push broom from the bedroom window earlier, but I really didn't have enough reach. So after dinner, we went off to Home Depot to look for a roof rake or something of that sort.

I didn't find a roof rake. What I did find was a sixteen foot long telescoping aluminum pole designed for removing cobwebs and washing windows. I bought the accessories for doing both, as we've been in this house for twelve years and there are a few windows that just need to be cleaned and can't possibly be reached. I also bought what was intended as a flow-through deck brush that I determined weighed a fair amount and could be screwed into the end of the pole.

I have now removed a good bit of snow from the front edge of the roof. This may be enough to allow the sun to take care of the problem. We'll see.

They call what's currently falling from the sky "wintry mix". This means it includes snow, rain, freezing rain, sleet. It might be simpler just to call it guck. At least it's better than oobleck.

But not a whole lot better.

Since we didn't get out early enough this morning to beat the arrival of the guck, we haven't yet obtained this year's Christmas tree. We'll get one later in the week when things have dried out a bit.

Carol, Barisha, John, and Richard came down today for a scheduled session of training and pickup of the portable recording gear. I'd called yesterday to warn them about the flooding down here, but they decided they could manage the trip as long as they avoided streets that were particularly flooded. When they arrived, we headed out to lunch at Sweet Baby Ray's. This turned out to be their monthly brunch buffet which everyone enjoyed and which was a lot of food. Then we came back to the house and had a seminar of moderate length on the gear.

While that was going on, Bob came by to pick up baseball tickets for later this week. I asked him if he was going to Milwaukee to watch the Cubs/Astros game that had been moved there tonight because of Hurricane Ike. He said he wasn't, as he was going to the games later this week and up to Milwaukee for the season finale there. This turned out to be a mistake, because Carlos Zambrano pitched a no-hitter for the Cubs tonight. Ok, now who could have predicted that?

The flooding in central Des Plaines is pretty bad, because that's where the river is and it's way over flood stage. Fortunately, we're about as far from the river as you can get and still be in Des Plaines, so it's dry here, save for the field behind the house. All of the schools in the area are closed tomorrow, which isn't a great surprise.

And the rain finally stopped in the middle of the afternoon, so with any luck, the water will start going down soon.

Today's SpaceTime Theater rehearsal was called on account of rain. samwinolj, Bonnie, Steve, and Jerry did manage to get here before the streets surrounding us were flooded, but daddy_guido and dek9 were coming from the south and found that they couldn't get across Oakton St. without a canoe. daisy_knotwise took most of the cast to the basement to sort out props while Sam and I kept the kids entertained and watched the water rise in the field behind our house.

After we called rehearsal, we tried going north to Photo's for lunch, since Sam had decided that the best way for them to get back home was to go south on the Tri-State, given the reports from Greg and Dawn. Unfortunately, the parking lot there was flooded and the restaurant closed, so they all just gave up and went home. Gretchen, Katie, Julie, and I proceeded east to Randhurst, grabbed lunch at Steak & Shake, and then I ran into the Home Depot to pick up the lithium grease to lubricate our shower door when I repair it later this afternoon.

In the meantime, I just replaced the keyboard on my HP laptop in about half an hour, which was substantially better than I'd feared. (I'm typing on it now.)

And now to make sure Katie never gets to touch this keyboard again. :)

Ok, we're not getting anything like what the poor folks down in Texas are getting tonight. But we appear to be under a flood watch. A big flood watch.

See, the ground is already saturated from the recent rain. The humidity is ludicrously high. And a warm front is coming through tonight, so it's going to rain a few inches.

The cold front comes through tomorrow. Then it's supposed to rain a few more inches.

Then the remnants of Ike are supposed to arrive on Sunday and drop more rain on us.

I'm glad that I don't live near a river.

I was supposed to go down to the Loop today and tomorrow for a series of important meetings with the VP in charge of our group. Unfortunately, the VP was kept in California for some yet more important meetings there, so I'm out in Westchester today. Tomorrow, I'll head into the Loop for the previously scheduled group lunch and to explain to the folks there what the new data structure that I'm building will do for them -- and how it's not there to do to them. :)

The Buona Beef where I usually eat lunch was still closed as a result of Monday night's storms and the resulting power outage. Having eaten at Arby's yesterday, I decided to strike out to somewhere different and walked about a mile south to 31st St where I found a strip mall hot dog stand with a decent BBQ beef sandwich. The walk was probably better for me than the sandwich.

The good news about the cancelled meeting is that it means that I don't have to hassle in trying to get out to Bensenville to meet daisy_knotwise for tonight's Association concert. They're one of Gretchen's favorite bands and I'm certainly fond of them too. We are curious about who's still Associating after all these years, but I'm sure we'll find out tonight. And since Gretchen knows the names of all of the original members, she'll be able to keep me well informed.

I'm sitting here at work, getting some things done while waiting for fleetfootmike's plane to arrive at O'Hare. The big question is whether the plane or the predicted line of severe thunderstorms will arrive first.

So far, so good.

daisy_knotwise, Katie, Julie, and I headed down to Champaign today to drop off a surplus dresser and several other small items with catalana. We got there around 3 PM and left around 9 PM, having a fine dinner of Papa Del's pizza, and a lot of good conversation.

Sitting around and taking our time turned out to be a very good thing, because while we were doing that, the tornadoes were busily trashing the south suburbs of Chicago, including overturning semis on I-57, our route there and back. It actually wasn't that close a thing, as we missed the storms by about three hours on the way down and five hours on the way back, but I'm delighted to have missed them that completely. Gretchen, the meteorologist, maybe not so much...

They were still trying to clear the road at Monee when we got there at 10 PM. We were diverted off onto the local roads where all of the power was off and the police were directing traffic. Eventually, we made our way north on Crawford and Cicero and back to the Tri-State and home.

Those were a few sections of Chicagoland I've never seen before -- and that I probably won't see again for a long time, I hope!

Yesterday, the temperature headed up into the 80s with humidity high enough that I flipped on the air conditioning for the first time this year so the house would be vaguely comfortable.

Today, the announcers on the radio are talking about a wind chill reading of 38 degrees. Ack! And all I brought to work was my windbreaker which I discovered wasn't breaking nearly enough wind on my way into the office.

I walked to lunch anyway.

It's supposed to be summer.

More or less.

The forecast for today is that we're going to get three to six inches of spring snow. It's stopped right now, but during the hour that the car was parked outside for lunch, two inches of snow landed on it. Whee!

Hope the weather's better where you are!

In case you missed it while at Duckon, the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season has officially begun.