Tag: Weather

  • ODDS and ENDS: Baseball, Spring in NYC, and Walking the Dog

    (Insert Silly Comment Here)

    Baseball has started, and it’s early, but the Cubs have a losing record. They started off the season with a W, which was great, and then dropped three games. Eh… It’s the Cubs. Even when they do bad, they’re still fun to watch. That is, if you like punishing yourself. Right now, I’m just checking scores on my phone, and I follow the team on IG. I do have a far off cousin who is a Die Hard Cubbie, and she posts every day on Facebook with any developments on the team; good or bad, she reports it and has an opinion on it. That helps me stay apprised on the team. But… It is the Cubs. And even with the curse broken, they are still the Cubs. Well, here’s to hope, and hoping that it doesn’t kill me.

    I am always caught by surprise when Spring arrives in NYC. It seems like in the matter of one week, everything things blooms, buds, and pops up. There are daffodils everywhere, especially around the park entrances, and the handful of cherry trees we have in our neighborhood have exploded in flowers. And Spring always arrives right at that moment when I am fed up with winter and desperate for warmer weather. I know that this also signals that the “old man” version of me is beginning to emerge. Soon I will be comparing Springs, and making predictions of how hot Summer will be. And even if this is a cooler Summer, it still won’t be anything compared to that perfect Summer we had back in ’09. Yup, I’m becoming a very old man.

    I have to walk the dog. I like walking the dog, but it is still a chore. Also, my dog has a bad rep in the neighborhood. They call her “Murder Dog,” because she wants to murder every dog she sees. But my dog is great with people and kids. It’s just that she hates dogs.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Still Sick, No Snow, and BLT’s

    (You’re a blogger, Harry)

    This time last week, I told you that I had a stuffed-up nose. What I didn’t realize was that it was a cold. In fact, the wife and I have been suffering through a cold for two weeks now. TWO WEEKS! This isn’t like the worst cold I ever had. No, it’s just a cold that won’t go away. I don’t get it. I’m the guy who washes his hands, and puts the mask on, keeps my distance, and all of the actions have rewarded me with the fact that I never got sick with Covid. Even when the pandemic was at its height in NYC – I was the guy in my family that went out and ran all the errands and dealt with people, yet I never got sick. And somehow, I get this little measly cold. Which I gave to my wife. And now we can’t kick it. I don’t get what’s going on.

    There are a good number of reasons why I enjoying living in New York City. And there are almost as many reasons why I hate living in New York City. (It’s a weird balance that I find many New Yorkers living with.) But one of the major reasons why I like living here is that there are four clearly defined seasons that I get to experience over the course of a year. Fall is my favorite, followed by Spring. The one I hate the most is Summer, which keeps getting longer and more humid. And that leaves Winter, which I do enjoy, (There is always a moment in Winter when I can’t feel my face, which usually lets me know that I am ready for Spring to come around,) and that is due to snow. I grew up in Texas, so snow was rare, and also one of the most treasured of weather treats. The forbidden fruit for Southerners, so to speak. Anyway, there’s been no snow this year, and the way it’s looking, there might not be any snow. Which is such a weird feeling. I mean, thirty miles north of the City, there’s plenty of snow. But here, it feels like a wheel is missing on the car. It’s just not the same, and it makes me think it’s not running right.

    Is there a BLT restaurant out there? If not, that’s my million-dollar idea.

  • The Dance of the Air Conditioners

    When God? When Lord, will we be able to take our air conditioners out of our apartment?

    This is the prayer I say around this time of year. Fall is so tantalizingly close, but still we need our air conditioners. I just want these clunky, environment destroying, comfortability creating machines out of our home! They run up our electricity bill, make the apartment feel unnaturally cool, and block the use of widows.

    Like most people up here in the Northeast, we have a home that doesn’t contain central air conditioning. We have a window unit in the kid’s room, and a stand-alone unit that takes up an awkward position in the living room, like a house guest that won’t leave. Though our apartment is great in winter, as it retains heat very well, this place is an oven in the Summer. No matter how we try to vent and fan this place, the air in here remains warm, and never leaves. In fact, we have a dead zone at the dining table where it will continually stays two to five degrees warmer than the rest of the place.

    Usually around Memorial Day or the first week in June, we head out to storage and pick up our two a/c units. We play the game of, “Will Dad Throw Out His Back,” sometimes accompanied with the question, “Is That a Hernia?” The wife does help me as we do have to carry these units up two flights of stairs. It is a chore no one wants to do, but we know we have to do it to survive the Summer.

    In fact, the wife did her first Summer in the apartment with no a/c. This is before I showed up, so I didn’t experience it, but oh the stories that woman can tell of the heat. Never again will this apartment not have a/c in the Summer, she swore!

    Then around this time of year, mid to late September, after the weather has settled to an average daily high in the mid 70’s, we do the dance again, back to storage with the units. Going down the stairs with heavy objects is much easier and fun. It sort of is like the first activity of Fall for us; next comes apple picking and pumpkin carving.

    The lead up to removing the a/c’s this year has been rather excruciating. See, at the end of August, we took a vacation up to northern Maine, staying in a cabin on the side of a mountain. It was pretty there, as I am sure you can imagine, but what was the most thrilling for us old people was that we had the windows open, day and night, with the breeze coming in. You had to put a sweater on at night. That’s right! A sweater in August, which is a thrill for a guy who grew up in Texas, and the word August is synonymous with 100-degree heat. So, what I am looking forward to is opening up windows and putting on a sweater.

    As I sit here on my couch, with the a/c blowing, I am writing this post while waiting on a cool front to come through. Hopefully, by the end of today, we will have windows open. The sweater might still be a reach, but here’s to hoping.

    (Hey! I see you there. Look, I need a favor. I can’t pay off my bookies until this blog thing starts generating some cash for me. Okay, so what I need you to do is to like this post, or comment on it, or even share it with people you know. Anything to get that algorithm working in my favor. I can get you back on this. Promise.)

  • ODDS and ENDS: Moving, Weather, Tottenham, and Crappy Time Lords

    (Half days are killers)

    Last night, we brought up the idea of moving apartments to the kid. She did not like the idea, and I understand why. Her objection was that she didn’t want to leave her friends, and I knew that was coming. Having gone through the pandemic and not being able to see anyone, she now is living a rather normal childhood; school, parks, friends. (She’s just missing playdates, but I know that is coming.) For a seven-year-old, she’s living the dream. We mentioned to her that moving to a different neighborhood in the City would mean that we would have a bigger apartment to live in, and though she would be in a different school, we were still in the City and can come back and visit her friends. That didn’t sell her. To her, our little corner of Harlem is the best place in the world.

    I don’t like getting older sometimes. Lately, I keep thinking and talking about the weather, which clearly is a sign that I am getting older. Such as, it was 40 degrees this morning, and it’s the end of April. As we are about to hit May, it should be warmer. I say this because the month of May is one of the reasons I still live in New York City. It’s supposed to be not too hot and not too cold. It’s a Baby Bear month! I want to put on a lite coat and sunglasses and take a walk. It’s the little things in life that make it worth living, and I need my little things, damn it!

    Tottenham better beat Leicester, and West Ham needs to beat Arsenal. That’s my weekend.

    What if we are living in the “fixed” timeline? What if things got so bad that people in the future went back in time and “fixed” whatever made things so bad, and this is the “better” version of things?