Quit

The sun was out most of the day yesterday, and though clouds took over the sky about the time I went shopping the rain held off until midnight, so I didn't get wet. It's raining now, though not very hard. This storm is not expected to be very intense, and neither are most of those due next week. It now looks like Tuesday will be dry, so I'll be able to go to my appointment with the chiropractor without getting soaked, too. Wednesday is supposed to be the rainiest day of the week, and there's nothing I need to do that day so I'll be be able to stay in the house and watch the rain fall.

I did something awful at Safeway. They had a Friday sale on their Boston cream cakes, so I bought one. They are usually eleven bucks, and they were on sale for five, and the price just crushed my good sense. I'm going to get so sick from eating all that rich cake. Maybe I should freeze part of it so I can spread the sickness out over a couple of weeks. I don't know if Boston cream cakes freeze well, though. They've got three very different textures in them, and those would probably both freeze and thaw inconsistently. It might get weird.

The owl isn't out tonight, and I'm a bit disappointed. I miss its hooting. It would probably be unreasonable to expect an owl to hang around in foul weather, though. Foul weather is just not fowl weather. And a fowl pun is not a foul pun, so there's no call for any tongue clucking (see what I did there?)

Oh, that was surely not enough sleep I got yesterday. I'd better quit now.

No Sun At All

The pilot light in the heater in the back room has gone out again. It got a brand new thermocouple about a year ago, and it wasn't a cheap item, but either it was crap or the heater itself or the gas line to it is flawed in some way. Gadgets are so unreliable. I need the heater as a backup in case the power goes out and I can't use the central heating, but it's a huge pain to be relighting the pilot all the time— assuming it can be re-lit at all. The old one gave up on being re-lit, which is why it had to be replaced.

As expected, the current storm has not been very intense, but total precipitation for January is already about 40% above average for the date. Thanks to the rainy autumn the season is way ahead of normal, and it's going to be wet again next week, so if the pattern keeps up we could actually be looking at a record or near-record season. After the last couple of years being so dry this is like weather whiplash. I hope that the trees that were stressed by having too little water for so long don't now get stressed by having too much.

I didn't see a single ray of sunshine today. Tomorrow is supposed to make up for it by being mostly sunny. If it works out it will be the first mostly sunny day this year. Our local weather station has reported only a bit over three house of direct sunshine since January 1. I bet I sneeze when I first go out in it.

Tonight I get to watch English people murder one another on television. I'm going to go start fixing myself a snack now. Murder is always more fun with snacks.