fleeting
Today, on the way back from a fun "open gym" event in Cary with 
helloheather and Nate, (which followed the procurement of several new pairs of khaki's for work), a peregrine falcon swooped down, crossing from left to right, in front of our car and then up again into the trees.
I've never seen a falcon before in the wild and have rarely seen any wild raptors this close. The bird was only a few feet from my door as it gained altitude to land in the trees.
Beautiful.
wherein I talk even more about the weather
This morning on the train platform it was 0F and the wind chill was -15F. During my lunch hour walk it warmed up to 16F with a wind chill of around 2F.
Tomorrow it's only supposed to get up to 11F but then a rather rapid warming trend. 36 for a high then 42 and then, if predictions hold, it'll be 45 deg or warmer on Saturday.
This does not bode well for people living in flood-prone areas. And, baring any February snow storms, we'll be looking at brown grass and dirt for the next month. Oh well.
In other news, after essentially 6 weeks of being sick I'm finally going to the doctor. I think the lingering cold has turned into a full-blown sinus infection.
unexpected
Tonight I stepped off the train at 5:45pm and saw the last bit of orange and red sliding from the western sky. It was a slim bit of hope that bolstered my spirits and filled me with warmth.
negative 10 deg F
I had two rolls of film developed recently. On one roll were my photos from January 15th and 16th. You may recall that those were the days when it was bitterly cold (-18 deg).
Well, around 4:30 pm, on January 15th it was a balmy -10 deg F. with a wind-chill of around -20. Walking from work to the train station I encountered the following scene:
I don't know why he was wearing only a thin sweatshirt, shorts, and below-ankle socks...but he was. A very dangerous thing to do...
unsure of how I did it, but I did
I did not have the car towed last night. The truck wasn't going to get there until 12:45 am and I wasn't going to go out in the cold and come back by 2:00 am only to get up again at 5:30. So I left the car in the parking lot over night and called a cab to drive me to the station in the morning.
It was -22 this morning. I don't know what the windchill was but it cut deep into my body. It was very cold. The trains were running late but no one knew that. So we all filed out of the station and stood on the platform only to have an express train whip by at 60 mph blowing snow and even more cold air (was it possible?) through our bones.
Through a complicated series of events that are needless to describe, Heather ended up at the train station with a tow truck tonight at 5:00 or so. On the off chance the car would start, she tried it. And lo and behold, the car (eventually) started. No jump, no chicken's blood, no nothing. The tow truck driver said it smelled like I had flooded the car. If I had, I have no idea how I did it. Maybe, because I was wearing boots (which I almost never drive in), when I sat down in the car last night I hit the accelerator pedal? I don't know....but leave it to me to screw up starting a car.
Anyway, Heather was nice enough to hang out while my car warmed up and Nate got to sit in the drivers seat of the tow truck. Hooray for nice tow truck drivers. 
After she was satisfied the car wasn't going to up and quit again, she left and my train pulled in 15 minutes later. I had a (relatively speaking) warmed up car to drive home. Thank you, dear.
Tomorrow it's going to be 21 or 22 deg. F above zero. A 40 degree temperature shift in one day. Amazing.
waiting for a call that will probably not come
My car failed to start for me after I got off the train this evening. It doesn't appear to be a battery issue and the tank was completely full of fuel so I have no clue what is the problem. It almost started but then died again.
I'm very grateful that I didn't have to sit in the cold car for more than 30 minutes or so before Heather's dad was able to come over and pick me up. (We tried jumping the car but that lead us to diagnose it as something other than the battery.)
We called AAA for a tow to our nearby mechanic, after a 20 minute wait on-hold they responded. This weather is hard on everyone. At 7pm they said it could be any time between then and 11pm before a truck would be able to get there. It's now 11:30 and I'm on hold again wondering if I should just call it off. I've already scheduled a cab for a pickup tomorrow. I really don't want to have Heather go over there with Nate and try and coordinate moving the car in the afternoon.... Frustrating.
Anyway, I'm sitting here dressed and ready to go, as I have been for 2 hours, waiting for a call that will probably not come
glad for the snow, not the cold
I've said it before, but I'll take gobs and gobs of snow over the cold any day. Tomorrow and Friday though, it appears the opposite will be occurring.
When I get on the train in the morning, I could be standing in temps of -16 deg F and wind chills of -35 deg F.
On Friday morning, if the forecast holds, the temps in the morning should be -19 deg F with wind chills of -40 deg F. I don't know what that will feel like, but I imagine it won't feel good. I wish I had purchased a winter face mask.
wasted effort
All of our wonderful snow was converted to a small (and now frozen) lake between our house and our neighbors to the north.
**sigh**
I guess we're really going to have to do something this spring about the drainage issues. I really don't want to have to cut through large tree roots...but it may be the only way.
work those cold fingers away
It may have "warmed up" to all of 5 deg F today, but I was plenty warm as I cleared the driveway of all the drifted snow. Once I really laid into that shovel, the coldness in my extremities vanished.
I think we have to throw away our finch feeder. We let it sit too long in the fall and rain clumped up the seeds left at the bottom of the feeder. It turned into a decaying mush that then turned into some sort of thistle seed cement. We tried cleaning it before but no go and I gave it a shot again today (using a long-shaft garden weeding tool) but I still couldn't reach far enough.
I did, however, lay some seed out in a planter base and put it near the front window. We did this last year with great results. Lots of sparrows visited and Nate got a great view of the birds hopping around and eating.
and he’s off…
Friday marked my last day of work until December 29th and I'm only working then and the 30th that week. It'll be nice to have those two stretches in a row off. But the rest of January and February (with limited holidays) will be rather difficult to get through.
The snow last week was great and we ended up adding around 10" on Friday. I feel bad for those to the south of us that got hit with ice instead. I'll gladly take a foot or two of snow over ice any day. Especially because we don't have a generator for the house...
The cold today, however, is brutal.
That's what it was like at 8 am with a windchill of somewhere between -20 and -30. As helloheather mentioned, we tried to head to Milton, WI but Route 14 was getting worse and worse the further north we went. I'm disappointed that we had to miss the baptism but I think we made the right decision.
Lastly, just a note: cetan.org will be down for the foreseeable future. I will still be uploading images to my flickr account if you're at all interested: http://www.flickr.com/photos/phule.
Oh and Happy Winter Solstice.
the long dark tea time of the soul
Because I've been making my lunch at work (having access to a full-size fridge on my floor is great for keeping a variety of food available) I've done almost no walking in the past month. When I have walked it's either been to the store or for short distances and never with a camera.
The situations has not helped by the fact that, we've been averaging 10 deg F below normal for this time of year.
I want to walk, but I also want to eat. And eating out all the time is not a trend one can maintain for very long, especially in this economy.
I need a good kick in the rear. I also need a camera that I can use while wearing gloves...or I need to come up with a better method to keep my hands warm than ski gloves. A post over on the Luminous Landscape website has give me something to chew on.
Also, I just have to make it through the next week and a half, then I'm off the entire week of Christmas, back for two days, and then off again from the 31st until the 5th. I can't wait.
The luxury of heat
I wrote this last week and never posted it...
Standing on a train platform when it's 3 deg F out and the windchill is somewhere around -7 deg F, makes for a chilly morning.
Stepping onto a heated train car and feeling the comfort of warm air surround me, reminded me of a photo essay by photographer Cosmin Bumbuţ in an issue of LensWork Magazine a few years back. The photographer had traveled Romania by rail, and photographed some of his fellow travelers. The cars are not heated and people bundle themselves as much as possible. Some warm themselves with fur, pelts, and that staple: vodka.
The photo essay is here: http://www.bumbutz.com/portfolio/transit/
And when I say it reminded me, I mean: I am extremely thankful for, and grateful to have, heated rail cars. It's a luxury not enjoyed by some when traveling.
Nate’s first train ride
On Thursday we joined other family members for a train ride. The rest of the family was heading downtown Chicago for shopping and museum going, while we were only traveling as far as Des Plaines.
It was Nate's first and he really enjoyed it. He kept asking "Where's Comductor?" (which was how he pronounced it) and would say hello whenever a conductor would walk by.
Stopping at Des Plaines turned out to be a pretty good decision because the 45 minute ride was about Nate's limit for being on the train. We exited and made our way to the public library for a little bit of reading before heading to The ChooChoo for an early lunch. We had hoped to get the 11:04 back home but missed it by a few minutes. So, we headed back to the library for some puzzles and watching fish in the big fish tank until we could catch the 12:04.
Thanks to fellow Metra travelers on the return leg (who's names we never got) for snapping this photo.
Warm Day Revelry
Sunday's unexpectedly warm temps moved us outside for some fun.
Nate seemed to enjoy himself quite a bit.
Winter 2007-2008
My recent reply to a friends LJ post about all our snow:
I love the snow. Even the horrible driving tonight and the fact that I almost got
The worst winters are the ones where all you see is brown grass and brown dirt.
This winter has been the winters of my childhood. I want more.