Darkoshi

2am in Columbia, SC, and it is 82 degrees with 72% humidity outside ("feels like 88").

But what bugs me when I step outside now is the faint sensation of things touching my skin. Was that a bug? A grass stalk that I don't see when I look down? A flying insect? And the wasp buzzing near the door so that I have to find a good moment to open the door and dash inside without it following me in.

Looking at some weather maps, I see Baltimore has us potentially beat in this time zone, with 85, "feels like 90", albeit only 59% humidity.

Phoenix, AZ, where it is 11:10pm now, is at 100 degrees, "feels like 103" and 28% humidity.

It would be interesting to be able to step from one room to another and another, to compare the difference between those temps & humidity levels.

Only off and on rain, and a very few thunderings very far apart, not near.

It changed from shorts-and-sleeveless-shirt weather to sweater weather in a single hour.

The last few days it has been in the 80s and quite nicely warm. Almost too warm on Wednesday.

Today at 2:30pm, the hourly forecast page showed a current temp of 81 and rain imminent within two hours.
At 2:49pm, it showed a current temp of 70. A very chilly strong breeze was coming in through my house windows. I closed them.
Now at 3:37pm, it is down to 62 outside.

It's 4:45am and the outside temperature is still 78 degrees. In the month of May. Wow.

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There's no environmental benefit to having vitamins in glass bottles if the sellers wrap it in tons of bubble-wrap to keep the glass from breaking. It may as well have been in plastic bottles. I didn't realize these vitamins were in glass bottles when I was ordering them, but still. Not to mention the plastic sheaths the manufacturers envelop the glass bottles in.

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This is my new favorite yogurt: Cocojune Vanilla Chamomile

It's so light, fluffy, creamy. Mildly sweet and only slightly tangy.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: it is sold in paper cups, not plastic!
The foil seals on top are a bit hard to pull open but I realized today that if I tear the foil tab in half down the middle, and then pull each half separately, it comes off easy.

Yesterday was a very nice and breezy day. I sat on Qiao's back porch in the sun for quite a while, working on my laptop. Pollen cones kept falling on me and the laptop.

Later while I was working inside, I heard a loud sound through the open windows, like something metallic had fallen down. I thought the wind must have knocked something down. So I checked the front and back yards, and looked all around but didn't find anything. I finally decided that a falling pine cone must have hit the metal shroud over the chimney.

The rose bush is full of roses and looked beautiful in the late afternoon sunlight. I took photos.

Today when Qiao wanted to drive his car out of the garage, the garage door wasn't working. It would lift up a few inches, but that was all. We weren't able to manually lift it either. Then we noticed that one of the big springs had snapped apart, and that was why it wasn't working. We got a repair person to fix it.

So, that metallic sound I heard yesterday was actually the spring snapping apart! We have a cam in the garage which even caught it on video.

Now I'd like to include that video clip and a rose photo in this post, and also photos of purple pine pollen cones which I took last month (had never seen purple ones like those before!)
But it's too late. Maybe another time, maybe.

A layer of fog persisted here past noon today. It felt quiet and muted and calm, like after a snowfall.

An Austrian radio station mentioned a "Schneeflockdown". Schneeflocke is German for 'snowflake'. So Schneeflockdown is a cute bilingual way of saying "snowed in".

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While debugging, I came across this comment in angular.js:

// Insanity Warning: scope depth-first traversal
// yes, this code is a bit crazy, but it works and we have tests to prove it!

(I didn't write down what version of the file we are using, so am not able to find it online right now.)

This is the code that followed the comment. After that comment, I didn't bother trying to make sense of it. It wasn't related to what I was debugging anyway:

   if (!(next = ((current.$$watchersCount && current.$$childHead) ||
         (current !== target && current.$$nextSibling)))) {
       while (current !== target && !(next = current.$$nextSibling)) {
         current = current.$parent;
       }
     }
   } while ((current = next));

8:05pm The sun is setting and gray clouds are eating up my blue sky again :(

Later: a few breaks in the clouds; only 2 unidentified stars visible in that direction.

Toads galore. Every night on the back porch. It is the year of the toads.
In the beginning I took photos. Now I just shoo them away.

The Ursa Major stars don't look anything like a bear. For that matter, bears don't even have long tails! What is up with that? ... it says Zeus swung Ursa Major and Ursa Minor around by their tails, which caused their tails to get stretched out. Hmmm. Right. That's rather a stretch, innit?

Tomorrow is forecast to be partly sunny again in the day, and thunderstorms towards evening.
Not a single fully sunny day forecast in the next 2 weeks. But a mostly sunny day on Wednesday.

bah dah dee, bah dah doe. hey, it is Friday. already.

It's such a beautiful lovely wonderful first day* of Spring!

gentle warm air
bird twitter
open windows


All these corporate emails saying things like "we're here for you!".

You know what, I should take a break from working and go for a walk. Or maybe even drag my bicycle out of the garage..Huh.

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Update:
I rode my bike! I'm not sure how long ago I rode it last; I remember doing so at least one other time since I moved here in 2007.

The bike riding itself is nice. But I don't like seeing most of the neighborhood (nor smelling it, in the case of one property! Smelled like a bad sewer problem). One of the reasons I may not have ridden the bike more often is that when the dogs were staying at my house, I'd feel I should instead take them for a walk than go for a ride.

There were lots of cars in driveways today. I'm not sure if that was due to people not going to work, or because it was already 5:30pm.

Reminder to self: When wearing long pants on a bike, need to keep bottom of pants legs tight against legs. Using binder clips to fasten the loose parts is more comfortable than putting rubber bands around them.

I was able to ride my bike without a problem even after such a long time, because the tires have foam inner tubes which never go flat and never need to be pumped. I bought them a long time ago. Last year I tried to find some for my mom's bike, without luck.

Walmart lists this, but it was out of stock when I looked last, and still is today. It's the wrong size for my mom's tires anyway:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Bell-Sports-Cycle-Products-7015332-26-No-Mor-Flats-Bicycle-Inner-Tube/4805939

Tannus has some, but they are $80 each!
https://tannus.com/tires/

According to this page:
https://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/3890/whatever-happened-to-solid-bike-tubes
"Since a solid tube or solid manufactured tire can't by definition inflate against the bead, they were both abnormally hard to install, and prone to rolling off the wheel in use. So they were considered unsafe, and are no longer sold anywhere that I am aware of."

Mine were hard to install, but have never come off my wheels.
But that page also has a link which makes me think that searching on "solid tires" may give me better results than "foam inner tubes". The problem I had last time is that even the ones I found weren't the right size.

*Oh wait, the equinox isn't until tonight? I thought I'd read it was last night. It was still a lovely day.

But I just remembered, it's the winter solstice today... in 6 hours, tonight.

..

It's grey and cloudy out
Do you wanna shout or go about exclaiming,
it's the solstice day tonight.
Whoo rah, whoo rah.
The tree will come out, and the tree will go up,
on the solstice day, the solstice night.
Ding aling aling.

The last few days were muggy and damp. Today it cleared up somewhat and got windy, enough for the ghosties on the porch to sway and the pinwheel to twirly twirl twirl. I had created a new support for it to be able to hang it from a hook, and it worked even better than expected.

The little dog, Serena, pulled a trick overnight, tearing apart a trashbag I'd inadvisably left on the kitchen floor last night rather than taking it out to the bin right away. It was all caught on video. She started on it less than two minutes after I turned the lights off to go to bed.

Heavy thunderstorms are forecast for 6 to 8pm.

The candy is ready, come what may.

I'm trying to get my work hours in for the day, but having a slow time of it. Cleaning up trash. Distractions. Headache.

I wanted to post a Halloween song video, but the song I thought of (Mad World) ends up having nothing to do with Halloween. Too much headache to think of another right now. Took Tylenol 2 hours ago but it's not helping yet.

Had a strong temptation to give the dogs a bath, but can't take the time for that as I need to work. Finally convinced myself they don't need the bath today.

...
Edited to add (4:54pm):

Oh gosh, I should have raked the driveway and walkway. What if someone comes and slips on the pine needles? But no, I need to work. And anyway, it would feel embarrassing doing that now, making it look like I'm expecting trick-or-treaters when it's likely to storm. Even if anyone does come, they're more likely to cut straight across the grass than to go along the walkway.

If you have Halloween lights lit on your porch, do you still need to leave the porch light on to indicate you're giving out candy? Or do the Halloween lights suffice? (I'd have thought they would suffice, but Q always says the porch light should be on too. In which case I'd need to screw the bulb back in).

...
Edited to add (5:59pm):
Because of comments on this page, I screwed the porch light back in. It's a yellow bug light so at least it's sort of decorative looking.

Oh yay. Tornado Warning in this area now, per my cell phone. "Take shelter now." Oh yay yay. Earlier today it was only an alert, not a warning.

Hmm. If the power goes out, the Halloween lights will go out too.

I still have at least 3 hours of work to work. You can do it, you can do it!

My mom was supposed to take my niece and grandniece out somewhere for Halloween today. But I haven't heard from them yet.