Today's weather: Crudular. It started out okay, with yesterday's drizzle changing over to wet snow in the morning, but the temperature rose up to around 34F by noon, at which point it was still snowing, but the snow was very wet, and eventually mixing with rain, enough to mess up my glasses. Normally I don't think "umbrella" with "snow" (not around here, anyway, most snow is cold enough and dry enough that it just blows by) but today I ought to have. Plus, the sidewalks had slush on them, that kind of clear but bumpy, wet slush, where you step in it and it splashes up real good to soak your other pant leg. Yay. Anyways, tomorrow should have a high of 38F and be sunny. Nice nice.
I got a lot of work done today, which is always a good start to a weekend. The new Illinois Compass portal is all up and functional, complete with splash and various error pages. Those are not so great looking (hey, I'm technically only responsible for the programming and back end admin stuff) but the Real Webmaster(tm) will pretty them up soon enough. Now I get to start grabbing student rosters out of the data warehouse and IMSing it up. Woo.
As I write this it is precisely 5:00 PM which means that Spanish Flea is booming out of Mark C's speakers. Yes, that's right Illini Fans, workdays at 5, just like on "Laugh In," everyone gets up and dances around to the Spanish Flea before sitting down and resuming work...
The starlings have apparently decided that the oak-lined sidewalk that leads diagonally into the Armory from the corner of Sixth and Armory (the sidewalk leading into the picture on the Verk Page) is The Place To Be this season. Starlings like to swarm right around sunset, where they'll fly in packs and chirp so loudly that all of them together almost sound like a car alarm. They swoop from tree to tree and every few minutes all sit in the tree, making the top part of it almost black with birds, just chirping and squawking and... pooping it up. So now that sidewalk is Guano Central. It's gross. Huge globs of white, with the other stuff in the middle, and it's almost covering the sidewalk, and it is even worse when it rains just a BIT (or snows just a bit, for that matter) so it's all wet and moist and stinking. Yeeeccccchhhhhh.
Today's weather: Bright sunny and cold. The high today is only 32F, and so far it's been in the twenties, bright blue sky with those little tiny wispy white white overlay of clouds in places. A good day for walking around, looking up at bare grey trees and light poles and red brick buildings against the sky, things just seem so clean.
Actually weather like this also reminds me of going to Korea in 1991 and walking around, not really having anywhere to go, in particular, and also back in Japan riding the train up to a crappy job I had in Omiya and hearing the metallic sounds of the train electic contact thingy on the top of the train passing over the places where there are poles and what not, crossing the river bank with all the baseball fields and stuff where you can see for far far. Similar to that is riding the orange line "L" out to Midway to meet up with my sister for the big Xmas party at the Wardrip's house in the south burbs. It's high up and you can see just how fast all those condos are going up on the south side.
Today's weather: snow. Snow, yes, some snow. And snow.
Today's weather: Bright sunny with snow on the ground. The high today is around 27F. Actually it snowed all day yesterday but it was the fluffy stuff mostly, so there's like 2 inches or so on the ground, and it snowed like crazy this morning (while I walking to work, naturally enough) but now the sun is out. I think snowy on the ground with bright blue sky is my favorite weather. My recycling bins are all full of snow now so I left them on the porch.
It is most definitely no longer biking weather.