Rottweilers Ate My Laptop

Rottweilers. Computers. Cameras. World Domination. Not necessarily in that order.

Rottweilers.
Computers. Cameras.
World Domination.
Not necessarily in that order.

24 degrees

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That’s the difference between the high temperature on December 26 and the high on December 31. I’m still not entirely convinced about global warming, but there have been a lot of strange things going on with the weather in recent years. We did have local warming in a big way last week, with a high of 55°F on December 31. That is pretty unnatural for the Chicago area.

Just a few days earlier on the day after Christmas, the high for the day was 31°F and a few inches of snow had fallen overnight. The dogs loved it because it was deep enough to wrestle in and roll around in. Please note that these are Rottweilers at play, not war. They may appear to be killing each other, but trust me. They tell me this is big Rottweiler fun.

Temperatures were warm enough on the 29th and 30th for the snow to start melting. The unseasonably warm temperatures on the 31st killed it off almost completely. I don’t have photos of the in-between swamplike stage featuring freezing cold mud, but here’s that same yard on New Year’s Eve day, after rain overnight and through the early morning.

We’re back to a more typical 20something°F today. No more local warming here.

On an unrelated note, I’m starting a Project 365 and attempting to take and post a photo every day this year. We’ll see how that goes. I’ll be adding a link to my photoblog in the right sidebar soon, but I’ll repost only the dog- and computer-related photos here. Like today’s:

Project 365/2:
DSCN0403c

Click photo to go to the blog post

Windy city

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The day started off with strong thunderstorms and continued on with high winds all day. But in my sector, the storm really didn’t live up to the claims of being the biggest storm to hit the area in more than 70 years. In other parts of the Chicago metro area, there were tornadoes, wind damage, power outages, and weather-related injuries. Here on the northwest side of the city, though, this rather lame video was the best I could get: lots of wind noise, more than the usual amount of tree movement, and our Rottweiler swirly wind spinner actually spinning in the wind.

(NaBloPoMo | October ’10: 26 of 31)

Couple of quick pics

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Does this one look familiar?

It should.

Yup, still there, going on at least three years now. I have mentioned it on a couple of occasions when I had to actually speak to a cashier there. Apparently, a display of stupidity in extremely large type not only fails to be a primary concern, it hasn’t even rotated up the list in all that time.

I didn’t know if this one was going to be usable until I got home.

On the drive home from work, I noticed black skies and a rainbow behind me in my side mirror.
Strangely enough (or perhaps not strange at all for summer in Chicago), the skies were only slightly cloudy ahead of me, and I was driving through a sunshower right at that moment.

I quickly shot a few pics with my BlackBerry and hoped that even without aiming or focusing, at least one of them would come out. We’ve had some extremely nice rainbows following some of the summer storms here, but in the city, the buildings and overhead lines always seem to get in the way of a good photo.

(NaBloPoMo | July ’10: 6 of 31)

Yes, it’s February in Chicago

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So I suppose I shouldn’t complain about snow and cold, because that is normal for this place at this time of year. And I suppose it looks even worse to complain about a mere foot of as-yet-unmaterialized snow after what the East Coast has been getting.

That doesn’t mean I won’t do it.

It’s almost midnight as I write this, and although the 10 o’clock news said something about snow being sighted in the far western suburbs, there is not a single flake to be seen yet here on the nort’west side. The dogs are not happy about this. Sadly, they will probably get their snow wishes granted. We’ll see!

(NaBloPoMo | February ’10: 8 of 28)