What happened to winter? It is 69 in Centreville, VA. It is 75 in my apartment. I have windows and doors open in my apartment and my place is not cooling down. I am wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Is it really February?
Category: Commentary
Quiet Walk in the Park? Not!
I headed out today for a walk on the Occoquan Trail which runs 17 miles from Bull Run Regional Park to Fountainhead Regional Park along Bull Run Creek. The trail meanders along the creek and up into the hills and creek overlooks. I figured it would be messy since we had a six inch dump of wet snow a couple of weeks ago and temps today were in the low fifties. I didn’t expect to see much in the way of critters.
It was muddy as hell in many spots making for slippery, sloppy conditions. But I had the good fortune to meet a couple at the top of a hill, as I was breathing heavily from the ascend, who had just seen a hawk, Bluebirds, a Downy woodpecker and, they said, a Red Headed woodpecker. I stopped to pull out my binos and caught all the aforementioned birds less the hawk.
I pondered the likelihood of seeing a Red Headed woodpecker at the time and a bit later after checking my bird book realized that the woodpecker was really a Red-breasted which are much more common in my area. The Bluebirds were brilliant. I have seen them before later on in the season when their colors are not so vibrant. I followed a flock of them for awhile and everyone I saw had very pronounced blue on the back and wings as well as pronounced orange on the breast. Beautiful birds! I also saw a Tufted Titmouse. To cap it off, I heard either one rapidly moving Bard owl or two of them calling out to each other.
There was a downside to the whole venture unfortunately. As soon as I got on the trail I heard and saw 4-wheelers on the other side of the creek. One was stuck revving its annoying engine trying to get out while a mud-splattered friend was trying to push. Never in the three or four years I have been hiking on this trail have I encountered 4-wheelers. They were not on my side of the creek in the park but they were certainly annoying. I saw at least four 4-wheelers and one dirt bike and heard them and smelled the exhaust for most of the six mile hike I took.
I could see the trails they had blazed including areas where they went in and out of the creek to the islands and up and down the embankments. The noise and smell was annoying enough but when I think about the potential erosion and degradation of the flood plain and all the crap that will flow down the creek to the reservoir and eventually to the Chesapeake Bay I just cringe. I also have two friends who live on that side of the creek who must hate the noise of these off road vehicles.
It is a shame that the northern side, the Fairfax County side, is protected as parkland but the Prince William County side to the south is wide open to such abuse and devastation.
Can’t Get Enough Air
Yesterday I woke in the wee hours just baking in bed. I threw my comforter off and managed to get back to sleep. It was still warm when I got up. Thermostat read 72.5 degrees. Now, please understand that I set my thermostat at 63 degrees most of the time during the winter months. I don’t mind the cold, save some money, and save the environment. It was going to be a warm day for February so I opened up the sliding glass doors in my bedroom and dining area. Nonetheless the temperature stayed at 72 degrees.
Since I have moved into my new smaller apartment, I have found that the doing laundry, particularly the drying aspect, raises the temperature in my apartment 3 to 4 degrees. So I do laundry on weekend mornings to warm up my apartment rather than turn the heat up to 68 degrees, which is my weekend norm if I plan to be in house most of the day. I had to do some laundry so the temperature crept up to about 75. I was schvitzing.
The temperature had started to go back down a bit, not lower than 72 degrees though, by the time I headed out with my brother to get some growlers and spring rolls as our contribution toward the Super Bowl (can I say that? Please don’t sue me) festivities. I closed the apartment up at that time, eight hours after I had opened up the doors.
I watched the first half of the game at my sister’s house and then came home to watch the second half. By then the temperature had gone back up a couple of degrees. I send off a scathing rant to maintenance and left another on the apartment manager’s voice mail After the game I was pretty tired so I hit the fartsac without paying too much attention to the temperature. However, I woke up once again schvitzing in my flannel sheets. When I got up, the temperature was at a steamy 76 degrees.
While I was working today, I thought that I must have sounded odd to the apartment maintenance staff and office personnel but when I got home, the temperature in my apartment was 80 degrees! I immediately headed off to the rental office. I figured, since I could actually feel the warmth in spots on my tile floors in the bathroom and kitchen, that the maintenance office, which is below me and is a story for another time, had the heat maxxed out and suggested that to the manager. They said they would check into but didn’t really seem to understand how screwed up the situation was.
Help me, I’m melting!
Trying to Get Air…and I Am Not Skiing
Looking at my left front tire after coming out of the grocery store today, I thought it was looking pretty low on air. I figured I had better get some air in it before I went home. I stopped at this one place I go to where you dial up the tire pressure on the pump, add air to your tire, and it beeps when your desired pressure has been reached.
There were two idiots in front of me trying to get air. The first car took one kid with pants falling off his ass and an aging dude in white hair six minutes to fill up one tire on a Subaru wagon. Considering it was a Subaru and all that I am glad they didn’t use a person powered bike pump to fill up the tire. Good for the environment and all that…
The next airhead was in a van, skinny and older, wearing odd shoes and pants rolled up at the ankles. He seemed to have some issues bending down to remove the caps from the tire valve. He only did the left front and right rear tires for some odd reason and used a tire pressure gauge, despite the pressure reading functionality built into the pump, for the front tire but not the rear. It took him about five minutes to accomplish this.
When it was at last my turn to get air, I topped off all four of my tires in less than two minutes. Thankfully, the tire that I thought was inordinately low, was only down a pound or so. In the meantime, two cars had backed up behind me. I have never seen lines to get air except at ski areas. Bottom line though, how hard is it to put air in your tires?
Idoly Paddling With Myself, Uh Oh!
I had another great paddle in my kayak on the Potomac River yesterday. I launched at Algonkian Regional Park, one of my favorite local places to put in. There was minimal wind, the water was crystal clear, and the air was crisp. I saw about six or eight other people out paddling…making the most of the good weather before the winter settles in.
I did not see much in the way of wildlife just one Great Blue heron and a Bald eagle…both a a distance. The park itself was still doing quite a business with a number of people out fishing and barbecuing. I got out there on the water a little after two and after being on the water for about two hours, the light had already diminished considerably. I think I might be able to get a couple of more paddles in before I bring the kayak in for the winter.
Here are a few pictures from the venture:
Lost Emails
Last night before going to work I noticed that I hadn’t got any email since about 1500. Not that I get that much email but it seemed a bit odd. This morning after work and early this afternoon when I got up, I still had no new mail. I checked my quota on my mail hosting service and had used less than half of my quota. I saw from my Gmail account that forwards mail to my hosting service that my forwards were getting rejected due to a full mail box.
Well that was puzzling. After contacting tech support, I found that I had not used up the physical capacity of my mail box but had reached the limit of the number of messages I could have in my mailbox, which was 3000. The tech kindly upped my quota to 6000.
I asked him what good the record of physical usage was if the quota was based both on that and the number of messages. He said that I had to monitor the number of messages in my account via webmail. I asked if there was any kind of alerting to let users know when they were nearing either quota and was told that there was not.
Thankfully, I am not trying to run a business using this email because the lost emails could cost me money. I think I would have to change hosting services were I to have a business dependent on email. I think that my hosting service needs to reconsider its approach.
Anyhow, I did not get email for about 24 hours starting yesterday at 1500 so I you sent me an email between then and now, please resend it.
Veterans Working on Veterans’ Day
I guess I will say this every year. What good is Veterans’ Day if veterans have to work? As a veteran of 10 years in the Navy, 7 of which I spent overseas, other than a slight preference in government hiring, I get nothing but pride. Wouldn’t it be a great thing if every veteran got Veterans’ Day off with pay? May we could all do volunteer work, give back to the community, or work with disabled veterans.
Enough said about that. Thanks to all those who served, fought, sacrificed, and died. You will always be remembered, valued and respect by me!
Snotty Tears Run Down My Face
I am not quite sure why I rented “Marley and Me” through Netflix but it was not the best movie to watch less than three weeks after I put my my cat and friend of 19.5 years, Hamlet, to sleep. While it was a movie, and the circumstances were not exactly the same, there were many similarities in the downfall of Marley and of Hamlet. The loss of energy, the deterioration of vital organs, the look on their faces….
I felt a horrible deja vu as Owen Wilson said his goodbyes to Marley who laid helplessly on a table in the vet’s examining room. He made a decision, as did I, that it was better to put the dog down. I will wonder forever,why I thought I had the power. He held Marley close as I did Hamlet, thanked him for all the love and joy he had brought him and his family and wished him well in in the afterlife. He stayed close, as did I, as the doctor injected the death potion into the IV.
He caressed Marley…as I did Hamlet, as within less than twenty seconds, his eyes closed, the doctor checked for a heartbeat, and declared his friend of so many years dead. Except Hamlet’s eyes never closed and he twitched and occasionally expelled air from his lungs for five or six minutes after he was declared dead. If there is a kitty heaven, Hamlet deserves to be there.
I lingered for some time with him until I wondered what else I was supposed to do. What could I do? It was over. I still hope that I did the right thing. Sure it was only a movie, but as I think about Marley, helplessly lying in the cold and compare him to Hamlet helpless convulsing in a diabetic seizure, I think I did the right thing. Even so, I am not sure I will sleep too well tonight.
Just Another Web Scam…Read the Fine Print
Watch out for these guys. I am not sure how they got me but they have been getting me for quite a while. I am likely to flush $350 down the toilet because I wasn’t watching a credit card I almost never use. I take the blame for that definitely but I still want my money back from these assholes:
Here is their “claim to fame,” “raison d’existence,” or really their “how can we screw you now without you knowing it until we have sucked some bucks out of you” statement:
“24 Protect Plus members can enjoy greater peace of mind through a variety of benefits designed to provide greater security and protection for their homes, family members, finances, pets, cars and more. As a 24Protect Plus member, you can protect your family budget as well, thanks to more than $1,500 in savings each membership year.”
What the hell does that mean? I obviously missed a check box somewhere and/or did not read the fine print and, as I well admit, didn’t look at my credit card statement carefully enough. Nonetheless, I cannot see how any responsible enforcer of business law could find a reason why anyone would sign up for this “service.” Look at the web site…what services are they providing that one would pay a monthly fee for?
I tried to get some money back from these assholes but will be lucky if I get 20% out of it. I will be taking this one further because there are certainly others out there that have been sucked in to the same scam. And I don’t like taking it without lube…
WTF UPS?
As you may or may not know, I order green coffee beans online and roast them myself at home weekly. I have been ordering from the same company for months since I started home roasting. I have never had any issues with the deliveries from UPS until now. According to the UPS website, they tried to deliver the package to me three times unsuccessfully, then they decided to hold it for pickup, then the address was wrong and they corrected it, and then it was scanned for delivery at 4:03 this morning. It is now 8:30 in the evening, I have been in my apartment all day, and I am not seeing any packages, eh?
Here is what I have seen from those “InfoNotices” they put on your door. On 9/27, “Your written signature is required to leave package(s). I signed the back of the notice and left it on my door when I went out midday on 9/28. Unfortunately, I did not do so when I headed out about 5:15 PM later that day so I missed another deliver attempt. Another InfoNotice dated 9/28 was left on my door stating that the package had been left in the “office.” This is normal but when I went to pick it up yesterday, 9/29, the package was not there. I went out later on in the day, 9/29, and left the signed release form on my door but when I got home sometime around 6:30 PM I had another InfoNotice on the door, right next to the signed release form, stating that “The sender required a signature at the time of delivery.”
I confirmed with the sender that all they required was a signature, it did not have to be in person, and the package could be left in the management office, as has happened numerous times before. I have talked to UPS twice. They wanted to send the package back which was unacceptable. They wanted me to come pick up the package which was again unacceptable. Then they wanted to charge me to redeliver which was of course totally unacceptable. Get some customer service eh? And were are my effing coffee beans?