As I was finishing up on Saturday after that contest ended, I'd pulled my phone out of my purse, and I felt it go off. I'd gotten a band email, and it had another subject heading that made me pause. We've gotten so many bad news emails this season. And this one, while not entirely unexpected, still stung: Our beloved emcee, at 93, had passed away-- ( Read more... )

I'll be honest, I'm not sure what the official high temperature ended up being yesterday. I do know that when I left work to run an errand, it was in the mid-60s, and when I left band close to 9:30 last night, it was in the low 60s. In February ( Read more... )

Despite the snow we had Friday night, we're back to our warm temperatures. Saturday was just an anomaly in our anomalous February. We're supposed to have record highs today and tomorrow--channel 9 is saying 68F today and 72F tomorrow ( Read more... )

Today is Groundhog Day, and I just watched WGN showing Woodstock Willie's prognostication. He did not see his shadow. He did, however, see Tom Skilling, who is retiring at the end of the month. Marcus Leshock has been going out there for years and said it's the biggest crowd he's seen; he figured half of them were there just for Tom. I'd believe it ( Read more... )

We still have a fair amount of leftover ham in the house. I had some on Sunday and then a reprise on Monday for dinner, but otherwise I didn't have any; I was pretty inflamed earlier in the week and wasn't sure what caused it. Still, I'd had the thought to attempt something for lunch today to help use up the ham, so what the heck ( Read more... )

This was my first week off from Fancy Band, so I didn't feel pressured to have to write up what happened at Regular Band before yesterday. Good, because I've been exhausted this week ( Read more... )

The gremlins continue ( Read more... )

After questioning when things were really in bloom, nature went and showed me, oh, we're good now. On the way to work yesterday, I saw several trees and bushes, in a few different places, were starting to leaf out. Aha. Here we go. Our unusual warm weather--we're talking 60s and 70s--has kicked everything into gear. The red buds were awakened last ( Read more... )

We had a very, very cold Christmas this year. When I got up on Sunday, it was 0.5F outside. We were lucky and stayed warm, and now we've hit the time to thaw. I excitedly watched my car's temperature gauge on the way to work this morning. By 9:15, it was at 32F. We're at freezing! Hooray! And it kept climbing on my way to work, reaching 36F by the ( Read more... )

I have to say, these past few weekends have been really pleasant. While last weekend was unusually warm, being in the 70s, this weekend, while slightly cooler, was still lovely. I had a potential activity that panned out, but later than expected (reading is hard, heh), and while I waited for the go-ahead I ended up taking a walk to the post office ( Read more... )