Monthly Archives: February 2011

weather

Of groundhogs and other weather musings

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When I was little, the idea that a groundhog could decide if we’d have an early spring or not made perfect sense. The whimsical nature of an animal seeing his shadow or not being a determining factor in the weather was fun, and most importantly, something to take very serious.

As I got older, I decided a groundhog in Pennsylvania could not in any way determine what the weather would do in Texas. So I’d look at the weather on Groundhog Day wherever I was and make my own decision. If I saw my own shadow it meant more winter. No shadow, early Spring. Who cared what PunxsutawneyPhil said, really?

Then I saw the movie Groundhog Day and, of course, the day was never the same again.

It’s been years since I really paid any attention to what the almighty rodent weatherman had to say. This year, though, I jokingly cared. Its been a brutal winter!  I’m ready for warmer temps (but not the tornadoes it’ll bring with it).

Let it be known, Texas cold is different from Tennessee cold. I’ve said it for awhile, but the last two days I was very much reminded of it. The cold snap to hit here as part of the big system that’s taken over much of the US just cuts right through you. I can take 15° in Nashville a lot faster than 30º in Texas. It’s just a DIFFERENT cold. It pierces even the walls of houses, making heaters fight to try to even remotely keep up. (Hence the rolling blackouts that are occurring across the state today!) The heaviest of sweaters that I brought really doesn’t keep me warm. I don’t even want to be outside a minute!

The fabulous Lotus made a blog post last month about how you shouldn’t judge what a person considers cold because its all individual. (I like how she puts it way better, so go read that first. I’ll wait.) I get so amused when someone tells me,  “Oh this is probably nothing to you these days” in regards to the cold. Well, I can definitely tell you that while I feel the heat down here in summer a lot more than I used to feel it, what winter there is in Texas STINKS. I can handle 40º+ better, but you dip any lower than that? NUH-UH!

I’ve not been up to the northern states in winter… okay I’ve not been to the northern states at all… so I can’t say what the cold and snow is like there. But I can say for certainty… I’ll take Nashville’s snow-crazed-stock-up-on-bread-and-milk-cancel-school winter over Texas’s damp, iced (albeit short) winter.

All that being said, I am very glad Punxsutawney Phil says early Spring this year. I think we all deserve some early warmth. Between record snowfalls and crazy temperature drops, I’m ready to be past winter. So thank you dear rodent, I’m going to hold you to your prediction.

random musings, twitter

Timed out discoveries

I am writing this blog post in Word, to later be copy/pasted into MW because our internet is down.

I’ve made a couple discoveries in these hours of internet-less-ness.

First, I rely heavily on Twitter to find out what is up.

I feel this is the beauty of Twitter. This is why I tell people that “Twitter is the awesome.” When something happens, I can usually find out information about whatever it is with a quick Twitter search.

For example, a week or so ago, the Nashville City Council were going to be voting about the fate of the Nashville Fairgrounds. My husband and I went out for the evening, and someone commented that they wondered what had happened with the vote. In less than 5 minutes, I found a reporter Twittering from the meeting, and I could give a play-by-play of the meeting from miles away. As I said, Twitter is the awesome.

Tonight, however, as the internet went down, I went in search of some sort of status update about my parent’s internet provider (using my handy smartphone). I discovered that their provider did not have a Twitter account. They didn’t even have a status blog to keep customers updated about any outages. A major business FAIL in my book.

Meanwhile, my blog went down at the same time. However, my host not only has a Twitter account, they also have a blog on which they post updates explaining what happened and when users could possibly expect their sites to be back up. WIN.

Anyone who thinks Twitter is all about posts like, “I am going to the bathroom now” need to give it a second look.

With that said, second, I rely a little too much on the internet.

No internet for the evening? No big deal! I have PLENTY of other projects to work on that don’t require internet.

Or wait. Those image files I need? I never downloaded them out of email to be able to build that banner for a friend.  I’ll play with my new camera! Maybe I can find some tutorials to follow on-l… oh wait. Can’t do that either.  At least I have Word to write my blog posts in to post later! Right?

I’ll be glad to have internet back. I’m building my career with the internet and no internet, no work. No work, no income. No income… STRESS!