Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

meanwhile...

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 22:46:58 GMT

We got a lot of snow in the Boston area, but people seem to be coping fairly well. The building management company have sent people over here to shovel the walks, several times, so I was able to take out the trash and recycling. The forecast for the next several days is for cold, very cold once you count the wind chill. It turns out that I can wear Adrian's old snow pants, which will do a lot to protect my legs from cold and wind. The remaining problem is boots: even with the 3/4 insoles Adrian lent me, they're too loose, including at the front, so I may try putting in a pair of full-length insoles and see if that helps. The other possibility is to go out looking for a pair of snow sneakers, or at least waterproof hiking shoes/boots (though the forecast is for the kind of weather where waiting for two trolleys, and walking from home to trolley to store, is daunting.

I've been looking at Bluesky again, in large part for news and commentary about what ICE is doing in Minnesota and elsewhere. When I've had enough for a while, I click on the "astronomy" feed I subscribed to months ago, so the first things I see are an astronomical pictures.

I did a lot of PT yesterday, and a few exercises today. It feels like I haven't gotten a lot done today, which I think is because I'd been hoping to make some phone calls (not all of them political), and assumed I wouldn't be able to take the trash out today. (The alternative to that walk along the side of the building is a spiral staircase, indoors, but spiral staircases aren't good for me, and this one is tight enough that my joints really don't like it. Cattitude can deal with it when necessary, but he's already going up and down that stair regularly to do the laundry.)

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shoveled

Tue, 02 Feb 2021 19:01:34 GMT

I just shoveled the sidewalk, and a path down the driveway to the back stairs. I was shoveling a mix of ice and slush, rather than snow. We didn't get anything like the foot of snow that was in some of the forecasts--it looks as though Route 128 really was the line between heavy snow and only a few inches.

That's not walking, but it is cardio exercise, and I am noting it down as such.

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it's New England

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 01:12:22 GMT

We (including Arlington, Somerville, Cambridge, and Belmont) had the season's first significant snowfall this afternoon.* It started to snow while I was in Arlington; by the time the 77 bus was in Cambridge, it was snowing steadily, large flakes. It was still snowing when the bus got to Harvard Square, so I decided I should stop at Lizzy's for ice cream.**

I got a "chocolate orgy" cone, and a quart of black raspberry ice cream to take home with me.

The snow didn't stick, but walking from the bus to my apartment I had a snowflake land in my mouth, and stood for a minute to watch the snow fall.

I complain about being cold, but that's at least as much about my wonky internal thermometer*** as about the outside temperature. I will get tired of snow by midwinter, but right now I'm saying "it's a nice day" about clouds, snow, and 34F, which cattitude finds absurd.

*I noticed a very few snowflakes in Belmont earlier this month.

**This is how my brain works; I realize this may be unusual.

***This has been going on for years and seems unrelated to menopause.

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Thinking about talking about the weather

Fri, 01 Feb 2019 02:39:27 GMT

I've been thinking about the extreme cold in much of the US and Canada, and about some of the discussion of that weather, and wind chill, and how best to report on this sort of extreme weather.

The thing about unusually cold weather is that people aren't used to it. We're used to whatever's normal for where we live; that includes the coldest weather of a typical winter, but not the coldest of a typical decade or more. I used to get a daily paper (Newsday) that ran feature articles every late fall or early winter on "what you need to know about a New York winter, in a page or less." Basic things like wearing gloves, keeping your feet dry, and how to shovel snow safely. The first year I saw that article it surprised me, and then I thought about it: those articles weren't (mostly) a reminder for natives, they were for people who had just moved there from warmer climates, who didn't know what questions to ask. "Where can I buy gloves?" assumes that the person knows they should.

And remembering that reminded me of a winter almost twenty years ago. I was visiting Jo in Swansea, as was fivemack. Jo's 11-year old son Sasha, fivemack, and I went for a walk along the beach, while Jo and rysmiel sat in a cafe. It was a cold day, but not bitterly cold, and I didn't worry about Sasha saying he was cold. Then he said he was too warm, and I said "we're going back now." Sasha and fivemack didn't argue, and we walked back into town. I led them into the first open shop, where we walked idly around, warming up, before going to the cafe where Jo and rysmiel were. Somewhere, I'd read about that feeling of being too hot as a warning sign of hypothermia, and knew what to do.

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Snow photos

Tue, 22 Feb 2011 01:41:29 GMT

ice on inlet
Originally uploaded by rosvicl

I took a bunch of photos in the park this morning. Here's one; the other eight are at my Flickr page (I'm rosvicl there; redbird was taken). Trees, snow, water, and fences, with a bit of playing with perspective and contrast.

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Workout, with thoughts on demographics

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:13:58 GMT

One of the smaller annoyances of February* is that the gym is still more crowded than usual. If it was this crowded year-round, I might look for a different gym, or at least a different branch; as is, I wait for some of the new year's resolvers to stop, and for some of the people who would really rather be running or cycling outdoors to decide it's warm enough. Also, in all that crowd, after doing a few things with weight machines, I walked out of the room I'd been working in (on my way to do some stuff on an exercise mat), glanced behind me, and thought "where are the women?" Glancing around, I'd seen 15 or so people, all male, and everyone I had talked to or noticed in that room had been male. Broadly, the answer seems to be "in the cardio room, and in classes," but while there are always more men than women working with weights, it's not always that extreme.

( details, largely numerical )

*Unpleasantly cold weather and icy sidewalks are significantly larger annoyances, even for me, and they affect far more people.

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