random pictures of the moment: impending doom and gloom

M&i went into boston yesterday so i could get a haircut and afterwards headed over from chinatown to quincy market. unfortunately, beard papa is no longer there (replaced by some place that sells mac and cheese, sample was nothing special) and the shoes she was looking for didn't appear to be available, so we had a late lunch/early dinner before heading back to the car. after we started back, it started to rumble a bit (yay thunderstorm) and as we left the quincy market/fanueil hall area, i happened to look up and see these. much to M's frustration, i turned into immediate tourist and pulled my phone out to take pictures, but i couldn't help myself. the 4th shot i took didn't come out as well (camera focused on the nearby sign rather than down the street) so i don't include it, but had i been on my own, i would have taken a whole bunch more. we managed to get 1/3 of the way back before i had to pull the umbrella out, but that didn't stop us from getting somewhat wet anyways. did see a few good flashes nail a tall building a few times. but i had fun all the same.

august 2, 2008 @ 401p

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random pictures of the moment: the daily display (v06.24.08.pm)

round 2 of the storms this afternoon.








later this evening (crappy cellphone camera)

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2nd storm vid

here's the 2nd brief vid i shot this afternoon. shows just how much rain there was and it was like that for a good 15-20 minutes straight.


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bitchin' stormy afternoon

stopped by market basket to pick up some frozen lunches and just before i got there, the heavens opened up and visibility went from clear and visible to i could barely see in front of me with my wipers on high. a few minutes later, i pulled into the partially flooded parking lot at market basket and spent the next 20 or so mins sitting in my car enjoying the passing thunderstorm. just missed by about 2 seconds a picture of a nice lightning bolt. and a few minutes after parking, i heard a pop which turned out to be the building losing partial power. when the rain stopped enough, i headed in and while waiting in line with my frozen lunches, the building lost all power except for the generator powering the registers and the emergency lights.

the first picture was shot facing south, the second is a picture of the building sign on the fritz, and my first ever youtube vid (it's not very exciting) of the sign behaving all glitchy. (it was off when i left the store.)

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it's picture time!

unfortunately, they were all taken with crappy cellphone camera. maybe i will upgrade this weekend...ponder ponder ponder...

june 17, 2008
348p

i received a brief email from M that simply stated "sideways rain!". we didn't have the sideways rain, but it was POURING. (yes, that is a touch of blue sky over the roof of a doomed building)



june 19, 2008
817a

taken during my daily display of human idiocy(tm). i recognized it as a front loader, but wondered why it had a large fluid filled tank on the back. then i got around it and realized that it was probably the hydraulic fluid that drove this beast.



june 20, 2008
512p

stopped by chez target on the way home tonight. when i went in, it was sunny and clear, like the right side of the first picture (shot looking west). when i came out 15 minutes later, i saw dark clouds on the left (west/southwest). and it started to rain. i'm pleased (and surprised) that the crappy camera was able to catch the light streaming.

the second shot is looking southwest as i was starting to feel the rain fall. wasn't heavy or last long, but it was enough to deter me from enjoying a nice ice coffee that i would have obtained at the said starbucks in the picture. (it does have a drive-thru but i wanted to walk over.)

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and for you pollen lovers...

here are a few shots from the other day. during the hazy, hot and humid stretch we had the other day, the trees decided that it was time to get sexy. so out of pretty much nowhere, everything was covered in pollen and gave everything a wonderful yellow tint.

when the weather finally broke, we had a string of thunderstorms that brought beautiful weather we are currently enjoying.

the other night, i took a picture of the driveway (you can see my footprints) and again the following morning (12 hours apart) and you can see how much of it was washed away. i had to laugh as the moment after i took the first picture (720pm), a wind gust blew all of the pollen and it looked like a little pollen-dust devil. the final picture is the end of the gutter next to my walk.

june 10, 720pm



june 11, 730am

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this should be a quick one as i need to get back to the laundromat to pull my laundry.

we are in the start of the earliest heat wave that i can remember (that's 3 consecutive days of 90+ degree (>32 C) weather for those who care). yesterday wasn't too bad, but it certainly wasn't pleasant. the new car handled the a/c use quite well, and i'm still pretty pleased with the fuel economy, even tho sitting in traffic doesn't help.

i told M yesterday that i had to laugh at the irony friday night - my feet were cold enough that i needed my slipper socks (if my feet are cold, then i'm cold) knowing that yesterday was going to be the start of the oppressive heatwave.

well, i need to get back. told you this was going to be short.

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this was a bitch of a weekend.

both good and bad. the bad is i'm on call, and there were some dial-up issues that had a ton of people paging me. and paging me. and paging me. it SUCKED.

fortunately, there wasn't much i had to to fix it (was entirely out of my hands), but it kept the stupid pager going off. and then this morning, i noticed (no one else seemed to) that exchange decided it didn't want to work. a quick reboot resolved the issue, but i know that people show up at work around 6am, and i noticed it at 815. the good thing was i didn't get paged, but that was also a bad thing - i should have been paged.

but with the bad was a few good things. the weather was nice, esp when M&i headed a bit more inland. i picked up my registration and my car was inspected (finally). while we were waiting for my car to be inspected, several calls back and forth and when the car was finished, the issue was resolved and M&i were free to do as we pleased. so we went looking for a liquor store i wanted to visit. we've been looking for that yummy beer we had in cologne last fall, but they didn't have it. they DID have Killepitsch which M picked up on a trip to Düsseldorf and i discovered was mighty tasty. (review here) the comparison to Jägermeister is somewhat accurate, only Killepitsch is better. it's a smoother herbal, but far less available. damn rationing.

i nearly forgot about it, but as we were walking out i remembered to look and there it was. it made me so happy. i've been looking for it for more than a year (did see it in cologne, but we weren't sure it would survive the trip home to where i could enjoy it). and i now have a source for this wonderous herbal liquor. guess it means more shopping trips to wrentham for M.

today thankfully the pager was dead quiet and after a more enjoyable lunch than we had dinner last night, M&i headed out and wound our way to portsmouth, NH. a little breezy, but otherwise quite pleasant and after wandering around, we found a pet related store (more dog than cat) that had the oval dog sticker i wanted for my car (see previous entry). they had two, so i bought both (i might need a spare) which pleased me to no end. i guess for all the shit i had to deal with yesterday, the finding of 2 things i've been looking for did make up for some of the pain and frustration i had to deal with.

not much else going on. work continues to be busy. still liking the new car. time to get ready for bed.

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jebus xmas. 2 1/2 hrs to get home. fucking snow storm came in early and everyone bolted early and the snow plows had no chance to clear the roads.

at least i'm home now.

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random bits

well, the move is complete. that's not to say that everything is as it should be in the new office, but for the moment at least things are quiet. i considered going to the new office today, but opted out which was a mixed blessing. i hate being dragged into other projects that have the cart being drawn before the horse. what a fucking mess that is turning into.

finally got around to seeing Saw IV in the theater last night. i thought it was ok, nothing great or special, just ok. i didn't think that it was bad, but i liked how the first 3 played out and this one had the feeling of trying to fit into them, but didn't quite make it. it certainly had a few moments, but all in all it was just ok. i've always been a fan of the series, but now i'm wondering if there wasn't a bit of shark jumping with this one.

M stopped by last night and startled me a little - i was debating what i wanted to watch on dvd tonight and she opened my door. it didn't help that i was listening to music and completely missed her call so it wasn't until i saw my door opening out of the corner of my eye that i realized what was going on. i rather enjoy being lost in my world of music, and i suppose that's my achilles heel - once i tune in, i tune out the world around me.

while she was here it dawned on my that as of 11/8/07, i am by definition debt free. there will always be bills, but i no longer have any loans hanging over my head as my final student loan payment has come and gone. it was so very nice to see this when i logged in to check on it:

Loan Balances
You do not currently have any active or fully disbursed loans on our system.

it took a few moments for that to sink in, but it's really nice to think that the chunk of change i've been sinking into paying that off now sinks into my bank account. i'll try and enjoy this while i can, but at the same time i also know that i have a new car coming in the coming months (i'm finally fed up with my explorer - i don't want it anymore but will suffer thru the winter to save down payment money to help minimize that loan) and of course once the house hunting starts up again, that's going to put me in debt for pretty much the rest of my life. so i'll have to enjoy it while i can.

weather has turned brisk around here which i suppose is expected for this time of the year. and it looks like the trees around the house which had their leaves up until very recently have finally dropped most of them. it's been odd to see just how many leaves haven't fallen yet, of course they are shades of brown, so it's not as nice as leaf peepers would like. tho i do have to chuckle at a sermon the assistant priest in high school gave about how he enjoyed fall and the fall colors, but how one year in school it was explained why the leaves change color - the are dying and when dying they go from green to the bright vivid colors, etc. anyways, he had a hard time dealing with that as he couldn't figure out why if they were dying were they so vividly colored. eventually it clicked that it wasn't a bad thing as in the spring there was a rebirth and life would return, etc.

i always found it amusing as i guess i never looked at leaves that way. sure i knew why they changed colors, but i never gave it much thought other than to wonder why they'd change to the color they did (yellow, orange, red, etc). he certainly got over it, but it was some time before he shook that memory, eventually relating it to whatever bible story was the subject of that sunday sermon (most likely rebirth or something along those lines). but i guess it's since stuck with me - i still smile a bit when i think about it. anyways, moving on.

Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet is a current front runner for the Molius Album of the Year award (sounds fancy). if you haven't heard it, it's well worth plunking your hard earned money down for.

and on that note, i'll wrap this up.

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fall is officially here

nearly a month after the official start of fall, i now decree that it really is here. not so much because the leaves have changed color (for the most part, they haven't) but for me, i use the need to turn on the heat in my apartment as my gauge of fall.

for the years of apartment living i've done, i've been very conscious about not cranking the heat when it's cold out. (much to the chagrin of M i'm sure.) i realize that heating is expensive, so i'll start to layer rather than turn up the thermostat. but when i've layered and i'm still feeling a little chilly, that's when it's time to nudge the heat. and this morning, i nudged the heat. i prolly won't keep it up, but i've used the action of turning it up as my personal indicator that it really is starting to cool off. maybe i'll pick up another sweatshirt. tho i don't think i can match M's target discount find.

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holy shit that was fucked up

we had a series of bitching thunderstorms (my first real one of the season - i keep missing out) that pleased me, but just as they started to fire off, M&i were leaving B&N. and after a fairly uneventful ride up 128, i head north on 93 and that's where things went from bad to fucking nuts.

i'm in the right lane, rolling along, but not going crazy. rain is falling pretty hard when under the ramp that hooks over to target M sees 2 cars crunch. all i see is the first one head perpendicular to the road and go slamming into the guard rail, car parts flying everywhere, bouncing off and spinning 180 degrees. at the same time, i see the other car flat spinning into the guard rail 100 yards down or so, facing south. i hit the brakes pretty hard as M start praying i stop in time. and thankfully, ABS brakes work. i came to a stop and was able to pull off into the breakdown lane. flip my hazards on, gather myself for a moment and get out to see if the driver was ok. M calls 911.

fortunately, he was fine, a little rattled, but he's in fatigues, so i figure his military training helped keep him keep his cool. we both survey the scene, as another car pulled in behind me and she offers to call 911. meanwhile, as we try to figure out what happened - he tells me that out of nowhere, the other car just slammed into him, and he can't seem to find his hat (military berret). we can see another car with the other car involved and it looks like people are ok - someone comes over to check on us and ask if we've called 911. (he has found the berret at this point) we then push his car out of the lane and manage to get it most of the way out (and me in flip flops!). i head back to my car to hear M saying we were on 128 (i correct her and she relays the correct road to 911).

i head back out (it's pouring and i'm soaked) by which point the couple in the other car have come over and they are both ok. we then find out that she had hydroplaned and the next thing she knew, she was slamming into the other car only moments later to slam into the guard rail. at this point, M has given info to 911, and i get ready to make my way off. we thought about staying, but decided that as long as everyone was ok, and a tow truck was nearly there, we would head home rather than hang around.

one of those random thoughts i had was i wish i had a camera. i didn't think about it, but M mentioned that i prolly did think that. she was right. it was more subconcious on my part, but when she mentioned it to me, i remember thinking to myself that i wish i did have my camera.

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i wonder...

someone has a rather hacky sense of humor over at Channel 7 for monday nights forecast. i was curious what the weather was going to be like (because i barely watch the news anymore these days) and this is what they had posted:

Forecast (Sunday, 8/19/07, as of 1130am)

Pollen Count: Pollen, High; Mold, Moderate

Today
Not as windy but a lot of clouds around. Highs in the lower 70s. NW 5-10 mph.

Tonight
Mostly cloudy skies tonight. Lows in the 50s.

Monday
More clouds than sunshine---plan on mostly cloudy skies Buzzard's Bay/Cape/Islands. Highs in the lower 70s.

Monday Night
Clouds thin out (like a night club crowd at 2am). Lows in the lower 50s.

Tuesday
Sunny skies. Highs in the upper 70s.

Wednesday
Sunny to start with clouds arriving by late afternoon. Highs in the upper 70s.

har har har.

(screen cappy goodness)

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hey buster...

it's hot hot hot out there.

it's pretty sad when they tell you that the night time temp is expected to be 80 and humid. yuck. long live my a/c and 3 cheers for it being COLD and DEHUMIDIFYING.

and today wasn't the worst of it, the worst is yet to come. my little forecastfox buddy is telling me that it will be 101 tomorrow. and humid. so the heat index will be pushing 109/110. it's gonna suck. yay uncle dunkie (secure site???). it sucked when i left work and the confines of climate control. i opened the door to outside and it was like hitting a brick wall. a sensation i was able to feel again when i left the supermarket.

i thought i might try seeing if i could put together some sort of duct system to move some of the cold air from my a/c into the living room, but after giving it a little thought, i thought better of the idea. it might help a little, but it wouldn't work as well as i'd like, and by the time i got it working the way i'd like, i could buy a 2nd small a/c. so here i sit with a fan blowing on me which is helping. i may move into my bedroom which would make things nicer. at least it's looking like this weekend will be nice.

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