The hard rain started last night near the end of the All-Star Game, cutting off the DirecTV signal. It was about a minute later that I realized that I could actually stream the game on my phone using the DirecTV app. If I hadn't disconnected the Roku downstairs, I could have cast the screen to the TV. There was about a fifteen second delay relative to the broadcast, but since I wasn't getting the broadcast, that didn't seem to matter nearly so much as it might otherwise.

There was more hard rain early this morning. About 9 AM the message came in that we were most likely postponing the practice softball game today. I was horribly surprised. :)

And then there was some more hard rain while I was at breakfast. By the time I headed home, the right lane of northbound Elmhurst Rd. was not something you wanted to drive on.

It's stopped raining now. With any luck, we'll play that practice softball game tomorrow.

And try out the new gear Katie got yesterday. :)

The good news is that Katie's team won their next-to-last game of the regular softball season today by a final of 2-0. It was mightily hot when the game started; not a whole lot cooler when we finished, but the sun was down and there was a breeze.

The bad news is that the air conditioning at home failed today while I was at the softball game. We have a call in to our A/C guy; I hope we hear from him in the morning. I am sure that he has a million other calls right now.

*sigh*

It was Opening Day today at Wrigley Field, so it was time to raise the NL Pennant and the World Championship Banner. And unexpectedly for Opening Day, the weather was warm, in the upper 60s, although there was rain earlier in the afternoon. It was a beautiful day for a ballgame.

My buddy and I got down to Wrigley where it was beautiful outside the park. And then we went inside to our seats.

And froze solid.

No, seriously. The wind was blowing straight in off the lake and it was cold. Cold, cold, cold.

And then the banner raising festivities were postponed from their scheduled 6:15 start because of the threat of bad weather. About 7:15 or so, the bad weather finally showed up and rain poured from the sky in torrents. Happily, we were dry beneath the upper deck.

But it was cold.

A little before 8 PM, they put David Ross' performance from tonight's Dancing With the Stars live on the Jumbotron. That was amusing.

And then came the banner raising, starting at 8:10. Which was fun. And came with fireworks, which I'm assuming that Alderman Tunney approved at some point, somehow.

Did I mention that I wore my light jacket because it was warm outside?

Then there was messing around. I'm not sure why there was messing around until 9 PM, but there was no actual baseball being played.

After an inning, my buddy went downstairs to use the men's room. About 60 seconds later, I followed, because I desperately needed to get warm. We ran into each other on the way through and I told him, as I decamped under a monitor in the concourse, that I would be back up in a bit.

About an out later, I realized that he was still there. We compared notes and concluded that being warm in his car on the way home was better than trying to watch more of this particular baseball game at this hour of the night.

*sigh*

But I made it to Opening Day!

I looked at the snow from last night and decided that the snowblower was the appropriate tool. Given the mound that the plows had dropped at the end of the driveway, this was an excellent choice.

The snow has now been blown and, in a moment, I will go hit the showers so we can go get some lunch.

We got less snow tonight than I'd expected, given the forecast.

Tomorrow night, we will get more, and then the temperature will plunge overnight so that I get to pull out the snowblower Sunday morning in near-zero weather.

It could be worse. I could be playing for the Bears...

Really cold. According to Weather Bug, the wind chill at the girls' school is already at -16 degrees F.

I'm thinking that it's a coin flip at best as to whether we're going to wake up in the morning and find that classes have been canceled for the day.

I suppose we'll see in the morning.

You might think that. You would be wrong.

I got up on the ladder and put the ornaments around the top of the tree, moving the ladder so I could reach each side. Then I came down, moved the ladder out of the way, and put on the bubbler lights. It was now time to put on the rest of the ornaments.

No, it wasn't! It was time for little girls to go out and play in the thick, sticky snow that was falling onto the warm ground in 32 degree temperatures. It was the perfect packing snow.

So I headed off to Home Depot to look for outdoor-safe multi-taps (none to be found) and Command hooks (where I was more successful). Then I continued on to Mariano's to pick up deli meat so that Katie could have some of it for school lunches later in the week and we could have sandwiches for dinner at some point.

The net result of this -- and later excursions into the great frozen outdoors! -- was that no further ornaments were hung.

Maybe tomorrow.

(At least I got the glop shoveled off the driveway. It's supposed to be warm enough tomorrow that everything should melt, but if it melts and refreezes, I could be dealing with a sheet of ice on the driveway. I tried that ten years ago and got two new ligaments in my left knee as a result. Shoveling is an improvement.)

Meanwhile, the multi-taps have been ordered from Amazon and will be here on Tuesday.

The weather changed abruptly today as the temperature dropped and the wind grew strong. This helped complicate Uncle Jeff and Aunt Carol's flight into Chicago, but they made it to our house late this afternoon and had a fine time chatting, hugging little girls, and playing with Ruby the Dog.

Katie, a day after her birthday, was very happy to see them. (So was Julie, but Katie was especially pleased that they'd made it into town this close to her birthday. :) )

It was a beautiful sunny and warm fall day today.

I could use some more of these. :)

Post-Worldcon Windycon meeting tonight. Progress was made. :)

I got home and turned the A/C back on to try to drop the temperature and humidity in the house. We'll see how things go...

We had thought to go to the pool this afternoon after the Capricon meeting. The weather, which has been blisteringly hot and miserable for the last several days, had other ideas. The line of thunderstorms that came through was impressive.

Ah, well.

I have meetings in the Loop this week. Cleverly, I decided to walk across to the office from the train station. Since there was sun, heat, and humidity at annoyingly high levels, this was perhaps not my best choice.

Tomorrow will be cooler. I think I may ride the shuttle bus anyway. :)

Yesterday, it was hot and sticky and we went to the swimming pool.

Today, it was cloudy and cool and damp. Katie darn near froze at her softball game. (Ok, it was 65 degrees according to my phone, but it was a cold 65 degrees.)

I wonder what we'll get tomorrow.

Decide it is too hot in your office and pull out the new pair of shorts that you just bought and put them on.

Worked like a champ!

We have given up and turned on the air conditioning.

Man, was it hot up here!

We got up early today to get Katie and Julie to their softball games -- a single game for Katie, a doubleheader for Julie.

They've been canceled, because the fields are too wet to play on. It's also a windy 50 degrees (according to our backyard thermometer), so the wind chills would be entertaining at best.

So far this year, Julie has played one game -- that concluded early due to rain! -- while Katie has played two.

They're going to see if they can make up Julie's games tomorrow. We'll see how that goes...

Katie and Julie have three softball games scheduled between them tomorrow.

Naturally, it is raining tonight.

We'll see what shape the diamonds are in tomorrow morning.

Julie's softball game on Tuesday was canceled due to an excessively wet field and rain. Her softball game today was canceled due to a different excessively wet field. Now they're looking for a drier field for Saturday's doubleheader.

It's being awfully rainy around here.

Today's drizzle, which has resumed after a brief interlude of semi-dryness, now contains the occasional scattered snowflake.

I do not recall ordering this weather. I would try to return it, but there's is some danger they would ship us what our friends to the north are getting. Overall, I prefer the drizzle.

I have taken Ruby out in the yard to roam around and have discovered bright red buds on the maple tree that weren't there a few days ago.

This evening, after we got home from our miniature golf expedition with the Midkiffs and another of Katie's friends, the neighbor girls came over. This eventually resulted in them going sledding with Katie in the back yard on the crusty, icy mess of packed sleet masquerading as snow. And everything went fine until they hit the fence.

Happily, no one was hurt except for the fence, one section of which has now fallen into a neighbor's yard. I have not yet gone out to inspect the damage because it was:

dark

would have required walking across the crusty, icy mess of packed sleet masquerading as snow

Retrospectively, I am relieved that nothing worse happened than damage to the fence.

Contemporaneously, Katie got yelled at. A lot.

We're getting less accomplished around the house than we might hope, but progress is being made. Christmas decorations are going up all over, the major ones for today being the installation of inflatable Olaf and Minion Dave in the front yard along with a string of large decorative lawn stake bulbs to mark them off.

Katie's last dance class for the year was today. Had we known, we would have gone to watch, but we didn't. *sigh* She is probably going to drop the dance class in favor of being able to play spring softball, because the scheduling is completely incompatible.

While Katie was at dance class, I spent an hour out playing Ingress. I have closed to within 30K AP of level 10 and have 6000 MU of active fields which may make it to checkpoint. The latter is pretty much unheard of in this neighborhood -- I think that the high-level player on the other side is either out of town or taking time off. (I can't say that I'd blame him on the latter -- I think his phone was constantly on to ping him with attack alerts. That would make me insane in short order.)

The weather today was sunny and near 50 degrees, which is bonus material for December. We took advantage of it by grilling tonight which got some more stuff out of the freezer. :) Tomorrow, it's leftover pizza as we clear some more stuff out of the fridge; last night was turkey pot pie, which pretty much finished off the Thanksgiving turkey.

I have a goal of eating the contents of the freezer. We'll never quite achieve it, but maybe we can thin it out a bit...

I got up early this morning to take Katie off to the meeting point for the planned trip to the Museum of Science and Industry.

They didn't go, deciding that the six inches of slush on the roads already was a fine reason not to try to drive to the south side of Chicago. Instead, they spent half a day working on decorations for the troop's Christmas tree.

I headed off to pick up coffee and soda, making stops at several local parks, a church, and the local fire station as I knocked down and built a bunch of fields while Cargressing in the snow. When I got home, our neighbor was clearing the slush off the driveway and I decided it would probably be wise to do the same. It was a mess.

The trip having been canceled, we needed to pick up Katie at noon, which meant that we would have time for lunch before Julie went to a friend's birthday party. This was about the time that the snow picked up again, no longer slush, but a much finer yet still heavy powder. So we ended up getting lunch at "The Bacon Place", the nearby pancake house which the girls like a lot. Then we dropped Julie off at the party and I ran to Sam's Club where Gretchen filled up her tank and I picked up several things that we needed, including ground beef for meatloaf for dinner.

By about three o'clock, the snow had wound down to the point where I went out and shoveled another six inches of snow off the driveway and sidewalk, now regretting the fact that I hadn't bought fresh gas for the snowblower. I figured I'd shovel under the van when Gretchen went to pick up Julie, but by the time she did, the shoveled driveway was starting to get slick, so I decided that patch of snow could stay there for a while.

It's supposed to melt later this week anyway...

We had hot water this morning. It was a happy thing.

daisy_knotwise had a hair appointment this afternoon, so I picked up the girls from school. Report cards came today and the happy results should make for an easy meeting with the teachers on Monday. (There are a couple of things I want to ask about, but it mostly is my commentary on Katie's occasional anxiety attacks over homework. Either she isn't paying attention to the explanation of the assignment or she's not understanding it, so I want to see what's needed to fix it.)

When Gretchen got home, I ran over to the park and spent an hour playing Ingress, because I had so many weapons in inventory that it had become imperative to burn some off. I rolled up 143K AP in an hour, largely due to the 2x multiplier for experience that's in effect right now. So I'm over halfway to level 10, which won't improve my medal position, but is always nice. :)

I left the park just as the snow started to fall. And it fell. And it fell.

Katie and Julie have already built ginormous snowmen, with a little bit of lifting help from me. This is tremendous packing snow.

I am so not looking forward to (carefully) shoveling it tomorrow.

Sam, Bonnie, and Jerry came out to go to the pool with us today. Sadly, we got in, but didn't even get into the water before the lightning detector went off and they herded us all into the locker room. They probably could have reopened the pool after an hour or so, but ended up just closing down for the day.

Ah, well. We had a nice dinner.