Another of Scott's Homes on the Web

Those of you who are local or also read pegkerr's LJ have some idea what's coming.

iraunink and I went out for dinner and errands last night. It started raining while we were on our way from dinner to Menards. It got a lot worse on the way home - we saw at least a half-dozen trees pulled up by their roots - one of the trees was leaning on power wires that weren't quite down - and a lot of down branches, ranging from a few leaves to a third of a tree.

When we got home shortly after 8pm, the power was out. It came back on about 10:20am. From the clock on the thermostat, the power had gone out shortly before 8pm - about the time the rain really started coming down as we were on our way back from Menards.

I hadn't realized how much I depend on a fan to sleep in the summertime.

This was the longest power outage I've had since I bought the house. There was one that was about eight hours in ... 1990? The last time the ground was really wet, and we had a bad windstorm that tore trees up by the roots.

High in the mid-90's F, heat index predicted to be 117F. (Those are 35C & 47C for those who don't want to bother converting them.)

The A/C at work is almost keeping up. I hope it continues to do so for the next three hours. I don't know how the A/C is doing at home.

courtesy of fajrdrako

When someone sees a shark swimming down Main Street in Goodna.

Yes, I know they're having awful flooding there. But it's still amusing.

and there was a small problem.

For those of you who aren't local - Minneapolis has this set of parking restrictions calls "Snow Emergency". They declare it, from 9pm that night to 8am the next day is no parking on snow emergency routes. On day 2, from 8am-8pm, or the street is plowed to curb, whichever comes earlier, you cannot park on parkways or the even sides of residential streets. On day 3, from 8am-8pm, or the street is plowed to curb, whichever comes earlier, you cannot park on odd sides of residential streets. Odd and even is indicated by house number.

So, I went out about 9pm to move my car. And discovered that the plow had been down the center of 11th, but was nowhere near the curb. Right now, there's the odd side, where you can't park starting in just over another eight hours, a plowed lane down the center, and a snowbank left by the plow about five feet across where I should park. It is impossible to park without obstructing traffic.

I got the car out of where it was snowed in relatively easily - a neighbor had parked right behind me, and I only had to clear a little snow to be able to back into there and pull out. So I decided to drive around and see where everyone was parking - there were only two other cars on my block, the rest had to be somewhere! I found them all on 39th - it had two plowed lanes, so I could park and not block traffic.

I need to run to the post office tomorrow - I was planning on being there shortly after they opened. It will be interesting to see where I get to park when I come back.

... (about two hours later)

Oh, I see didn't post this. The plows just went by - looks like I'll get to park in front of my house in the morning.

There was maybe an inch of wet slushy snow on the roads when I was driving to work between 6:30 and 7:00 this morning. The lightly traveled roads. It was entirely too interesting a drive! It was slick under that snow everywhere except for three sets tire-tracks down I-35W, two sets on I-94, one set and I-394, and two sets on Highway 169. I had two different skid episodes - both when I was going 20-30mph on the side roads.

I'm hoping the trip home is better. I don't know if it will be - there's supposed to be the same wet, slushy snow coming down all day.

azurelunatic associates Bujold, the IT industry, dogs, family, and The Frozen North with me.

Bujold
Lois McMaster Bujold, most well-known for her Vorkosiverse books. I've been a fan of her's since Joel H. talked me into reading The Warrior's Apprentice within a couple of years of it coming out - I got to read it, Shards of Honor and Ethan of Athos very quickly. And I've been devouring anything new by her ever since. This one of my two on-line fandoms (the other is the Liaden Universe), and I've been hosting in-person get-togethers ever since norabombay came to Minneapolis to look into maybe coming up for school.

The IT industry
I've been doing computer support as my job since June 1990. I've done it for a professional engineering firm, an IT hardware company, the Federal Reserve, a manufacturing company, and a non-bank money services company. I try to keep track at least superficially of what's going on the industry as a whole. I've done a lot of stuff - maybe just about anything - that involves x86 hardware. I've been running a Debian/Linux system since January 2000 at home that serves the domains fireopal.org & ytilaer.com, with e-mail, web, ssh & mailing list services. I want to get into a server/network admin role - my next step on that goal is getting an RHCE certification.

Dogs
I'm a dog person. I grew up with chihuahuas. As much as I like chihuahuas, I won't buy one - they're too territorial for my life-style, we'd drive each other nuts. My first significant purchase after I bought my house was a dog - that was Ben, my first Shih Tzu. I've had three Shih Tzu's die on me - Ben had a car accident, Chela died of old age, and Gizmo's liver started eating his red blood cells. I've currently got Mac (Macguyver), a prize-winning former show dog, Josie, who is half-Shih Tzu/half unknown terrier, and Precious, a former puppy-mill mom who is all carbonel's fault.

Family
Wife, Mom, Dad, "The Evil Step-Mother", brother, sister-in-law, three nieces, three step-sisters, two step-brothers (TESM's kids - I've only seen two of the step-sisters and neither of the step-brothers in the last 10+ years), mother-in-law, two step-daughters, one step-son, two sons-in-law, three grand-kids, and a host of relatives of my wife. The step-kids each had one kid - the boy had a boy, the two girls had girls. My brother's in Iraq driving a semi for an obscene amount of money. Dad & TESM are currently living on the road. Mom lives in Duluth. The step-brothers/sisters live in Duluth, Duluth, North Carolina, Oregon & Missouri. Wife's brothers & sisters mostly live in the Twin Cities - the one exception is out on the Left Coast. We get together with my wife's family more frequently than mine.

Oh, yeah - the family fast track. I went from single with no prospects to being a grand-father in 729 days. My first date with iraunink was 5 April 2000. We got married on 5 October 2000. The first grand-kid was born on 4 April 2002. If someone had told me on Valentine's Day 2000 that I'd be celebrating Valentine's Day 2001 with my wife, I would have told them they were nuts!

The Frozen North
I live in Minneapolis, MN. I moved to Duluth, MN to start first grade. I went to college at MTU, in Houghton, MI. The first year I was there the previous snowfall records were broken, possibly shatterd, by 300" inches of snow. There was a spot 20-30 miles north of Houghton that got 360" of snow - yes, 10 yards. I like my snow and cold, and complain bitterly about the summer heat. For that matter, I've been known to complain that we only get a real winter here in Minneapolis once every four or five years! If I were to move away from Minneapolis/St. Paul, the only likely place would be the Pacific Northwest - I'll trade the lack of snow in winter for the low summer highs.

I'll give a try at if I know you, you've just to ask and I'll come up with five things I associate with you. If I don't know you, I may amuse myself by picking five arbitrary things (or not).

It's snowing! They're currently predicting 10+ inches!

It may make for a pain driving to work in the morning, but SNOW!!!!

The worst part of the storm for me here in Minneapolis, MN is the dogs - my three Shih Tzu's do not want to go out in that stuff! It's not the falling from the sky that really bothers them - it's trying to get through the snow that deeper than they're tall.

Other than that - I don't have to move my car until we go out to the Minnesota Orchestra concert Friday night. I'll have to print Einblatt either late Friday afternoon or before Noon on Saturday. We've got food - tonight's going to be wine, pizza and a movie. So, we're sitting back, relaxing, and watching the snow.