• All that work you did to clean up the house on Saturday morning? You won’t be able to see the difference by bedtime on Sunday.
• That part you bought for your truck so it wouldn’t stall out every time you took your foot off the gas? It’s not the same as the one you pulled off the engine and a replacement won’t be in until Tuesday.
• Those metric wrenches you bought? No clue as to their whereabouts. Good luck using the crescent wrench on the bolts holding your throttle body on.
• Yes, you need a haircut. No your barber isn’t open on Sunday when it occurs to you that you should get one before work on Monday.
• That server you’re working on from the comfort of our living room? It’s going to lock up sometime during its boot process when you can’t SSH into it.
• The remote console to said server? Guess what doesn’t work tonight. Since you’re going on-site anyway, just work the next 4 hours in the computer room. Did you remember to set your DVR for that show you wanted to watch?

Last week, it was 1 degree on Wednesday when I took Girlie Bear to school. This morning it was 43.

All of the snow and ice in our yard is now mud, and the fish are swimming in the pond.

I smelled skunk at least 4 times this morning during the commute, so the critters are coming out of their holes.

I saw two flights of geese headed north this morning.

It’s early February.

This just isn’t right, and the sudden increase in temperature and humidity is wreaking havoc on my health.

I miss the Great White North and the Great Brown Southwest, where it may have sucked, but it sucked in a consistent way.

Just got back in from helping Irish Woman put Baby Bear in the car for the ride to day care. He’s bundled up in about 4 layers of clothes, coat, and blankets. All that I could see underneath his hat was his pacifier, his eyes and his nose. Looked like one of those Glowworm dolls from when we were kids.

Weathercritter says it’s 12 degrees downtown, which means it’s 10 here in the boonies. With the wind chill, it’s below zero. Even for someone who remembers going outside and playing at recess when it was 5 degrees below before the wind chill, that’s officially cold. There was about 3 inches of snow drifted up against the porch, and I went out with no socks under my Converse, so my feet are a bit nippy. Koshka certainly thought so when I tried to put them under her rump to warm them up.

The groundhog saw his shadow the other day, so we’ve got 6 more weeks of this stuff to go.

Bundle up campers, it’s cold outside.

Just saw this.

A big bore caliber like that in a pistol? It hurts just to think about it. Put this up on my list of wants when money is no object.

“It’s the .88 Magnum, it shoots through schools”

Iran has reported that it launched a satellite into Earth orbit over the weekend.

What’s worrisome is that if you can put a satellite into orbit, you can put a missile into a city.

Even if you don’t have a nuclear payload, just having the ability to put a high explosive warhead into a major American or European city would be enough to create panic.

Here’s a situation you should consider:

Assume that the guidance package on an Iranian ICBM would be about as good as a Soviet missile in the 1970’s or 1980’s. So it wouldn’t be able to target a particular building, or even a particular city block, but might have a circular area of error of between 1 and 2 kilometers.

Now let’s assume that you fire, oh, 25 or so of these things at Manhattan, London, Berlin, or Hong Kong.

Yes, you’re not going to hit anything important on purpose, but if you sprinkle high explosive bombs over a city like that, things are going to get pretty scary for those on the receiving end, even if their individual chances of being hurt are pretty minimal.

And it’s not too difficult to take a few years and improve both your payload and guidance enough that you have a really workable nuclear deterrent.

Let’s see how the new administration reacts when they wake up to realize that Iran not only hates our guts, but they have the tools to start World War III, and they don’t care if they all die in ball of fire. To them it would be a blaze of glory.

Well, the schools are finally open, the kids schlepped themselves off this morning, and I’m back in the office. Almost got killed on multiple occasions on my way to work due to the fluffy white stuff that was coming down causing seizures on the part of the other drivers.

Spent the day doing stuff that got put off last week due to noone being able to work at the office. Gotta love it.

From The Onion, one of my favorite publications:

Aquarius Jan 20 – Feb 18

Sure, a spoon full of sugar may make the medicine go down, but if it’s suppositories you’re struggling with, the spoon isn’t going to help.

Could be my new motto.

Well, the Steelers pulled it out at the last minute.

I was impressed by how well both teams performed, and the game actually went through, even with the extended half time before the middle of the night.

A couple of years ago, noone thought Kurt Warner should have still been playing. He played at least as well as he did in his last two Superbowl appearances, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t come back as a starter next year.

Congrats to the Steelers on a great game.

That has to have been the most enjoyable Super Bowl I’ve ever watched. I love a good close game.

Exactly when did some old geezer who can’t breathe all the way through his own signature anthem become million dollar entertainment?

And he must be paying off a bookie or something for the plug he gave Disney at the end.

The ice on our trees has all melted or fallen off. No major damage to our trees, but some of our neighbors lost big limbs or whole trees.

Little Bear came over yesterday, and he had a good time with the other cubs. All three of the older kids went out and played in the snow.

Louisville is slowly getting back to normal. I’ve been hunting for a replacement snow shovel, but no luck. Our snow shovel broke while Junior was out shoveling the driveway. A wood bee had tunneled down through the length of the handle, and it broke when he tried to pick up a load of snow. I’ve scoured the area, but no snow or grain shovels are available.

Not sure if the schools will be open tomorrow. I certainly hope so. Our bosses have been really cool about us working from home, but I don’t want to push it.
Here’s a pic from our back window. Really pretty, but you could hear the trees breaking from hundreds of yards away.

Update: School still out in Louisville, but they expect to hold classes on Tuesday.