It's Nice Now

     At least, it's nice for January levels of "nice:" temperature above 50°F, only a little wet, breezy but not windy.  It's not going to stay that way.  The next twenty-four hours call for a drop of over thirty degrees and a change to rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow.

     So of course the tower crew calls and wants to meet ASAP.  These few hours are a window of opportunity.  Not much of a window, but it's what we've got.

Ice Fog Yesterday

     So there was no tower work yesterday.  Today, the chances are better, with ground temperatures well above freezing.

     I spent some time yesterday looking at pictures from a remote-controlled video camera well up on the tower, watching various-sized sections of ice break free and plummet down.  It was nothing you'd want to be beneath at ground level and there was no way anyone would have been able to work safely on the tower.

     Today may be better -- but even cold, wet surfaces are dangerously slippery. 

Fog And Chilly

     And I may be working with tower climbers today.  We'll see -- the weather is iffy and they may want to wait until tomorrow, when the high will be above 50.  On the other hand, there's a better chance of rain tomorrow.

Eggs Pomodoro Deluxe

     Last night, I wanted something warm and filling for dinner.  Even though the temperature was way up -- it passed the freezing mark in mid-afternoon and topped out around 35, which is really nice compared to -7 -- I was still feeling chilled.

     Something fairly simple, something I could make in one pot and be done with: Eggs Pomodoro.

     But not just any eggs-poached-in-tomato sauce.  Nope.  A half-pound each of ground sirloin and sweet Italian sausage, fresh mushroom, half an onion, a few cherry tomatoes and once that was all cooked, a bottle of "everything" spaghetti sauce.  The resulting mixture is thick and meaty, and once you've poached eggs in it -- I like them nearly hard-cooked, which is barbaric but freezes okay for the next day -- and served it with shredded Parmesan cheese, you have a meal that will warm you up and remind why it matters.

Weather: Don't Complain Or It Will Get Worse

     It's warming up and I should be happy.  But the next 24 hours are very likely to include freezing rain and that, for complicated reasons that I can't explain right now, has the potential to make my life very exciting.

     Oh, I sure hope not.

It's Three Above At 12:45 p.m.

    This weather is wretched.  I do not think I will leave the house today.

Turns Out I'm Old

     I must have strained my back lifting the old car battery out of the very restricted space it nearly filled.  It was certainly heavier than I would have liked and my lower back has been sore ever since.  The replacement has a handle, which was a considerable help.

     Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time in a room with no real heat -- it shares an air-handler loop with an electrical room, which  is in the return leg and can usually supply enough heat to keep the space at 65 F or warmer.  When the outside temperature is in the single digits or lower, that doesn't work.  I wore heavy motorcycle boots most of the day to keep the floor slab from stealing all the warmth from my feet, and that wasn't especially successful, either.  Now my ankles have become painful and uncertain.

* * *

     One way to fix the distinct lack of taste or mouthfeel of fat-free soup is to add some real meat.  A cased chorizo sausage, snipped into discs, browned in a little olive oil and well drained afterward works very nicely for this, especially when you warm the soup in the pan you browned the sausage in and deglaze it with the soup.  This is cheating, of course, but with age comes knowing when to do so.

  

Yeah, Well--

     I'm here.  I've got to go work at the North Campus, if they have plowed the lane, and that place has been a lot less nice since the Great Mouse-Ruining in 2017 and the woefully inadequate clean-up that followed.  I'm going to take the time (and spend the money, which I may or may not get back) to buy cleaning supplies, clean up the kitchenette and replace the microwave (yes, they got in it), because I have to work there and it has become painfully obvious that our (extremely understaffed) custodial department can't.

     What the heck, I already removed and disposed of all the kitchenette supplies and such when I originally found the problem, figuring I could help 'em out a little that way.  Fat lot of good it did -- they didn't even move out the fridge and clean under it until I moved it, saw untouched and very thick mouse-mess, and rang them up to very politely ask if they would not mind, perhaps, making a second try?  That was met with the kind of cheerful enthusiasm you might expect from a surly teen-ager told to clean his room.

     I suppose I'm just a fussy old lady, and everyone else is perfectly okay with a yellow-green stained floor under a dense collection of, ahem, "solid evidence" in their break room -- one wall of which is formed by the access doors of the cabinets of the equipment I'm going up there work on.

Battery In And Working, But--

     The new car battery can't possibly be the right physical size.  Got it clamped down and it wasn't, quite.  So much for fancy online find-the-right-battery software!  Connected the terminals and started the car anyway, then spent far too long improvising with some leftover oak trim to ensure the battery would stay put,* a loose lead-acid battery being something you never, ever want under the hood.  Electrical capacity is right and it's too darned cold to be fussy.  I'll do something better in the Spring.

     Clamping nuts on the terminals take a 10 mm wrench, the size 3/8" won't fit and 7/16" ruins, so I used a combination (box end/open end) 10 mm wrench like I was some kind of savage.  I have a set of standard and deep-well 1/4"-drive metric sockets on my Amazon wishlist now, waiting for the next time I am flush with an extra $32 American. --Not that Craftsman sockets are made here any more.
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* Growing up in a small town and keeping cheap cars running on a budget, I am no stranger to improvising mounts for a wrong-sized battery -- because that's all the auto-parts place had at a price I could afford.

Bitterly Battery

     I had feared it.  But I hadn't feared it enough: my battery was, indeed, just about dead yesterday.  Won't turn the engine over.

     Yesterday, I bought a battery online, and Tam and I picked it up when she drove me home from work.  It made for quite the trip: my briefcase fits in the Zed Drei's trunk, but that leaves me with a lunchbox and oversized purse in the cockpit.  Add an SUV-sized battery on the floorboards, and you'll be as happy as I was that it's only a couple miles from the auto-parts store to home.  Good thing we didn't encounter any turbulence! 

     There's a nice streetlight in the alley at our garage.  So nice that I pay for it; the city doesn't routinely light the alleys.  On the other hand, the cost is nominal and it was already in place when I moved in: six bucks a month for a lit-up parking spot?  Yes, please!  However, I had parked facing in, the light is behind my RX300, and even with light from the garage, between the dark and the cold, last night all I managed to do was get penetrating oil on the hardware holding the battery bracket and eventually get it loose and out.

     Discovery that A) the rear fastener is one of those @#$%^ J-hooks you have to fiddle with on reinstallation until it starts to get a grip, B) my eyeglasses were fogging up every time I looked down and C) there wasn't enough light to see to get a wrench on the battery-post clamps, let alone find the right socket, made me decide to wait for daylight -- because while those nuts ought to be 7/16" the way the gods intended, the RX300 tends to break out in metric given half a chance.  For example, the battery-bracket hardware is 10 mm.  I have nothing against this; the various cars and other vehicles I have owned through the years have used SAE, metric, BS, BSP and possibly Whitworth and I have a pretty good set of wrenches and sockets -- except for what I may need here, little 1/4"-drive metric sockets.  Worse, my smallest 3/8"-drive socket set is all 12-point, a nice way to round things over if you don't have the proper size.  But second chances are few when it comes to battery-clamp hardware and fighting in the extreme cold and moderate dark with fasteners of uncertain size struck me as a recipe for problems.  I gave up and went to bed.

     Sunrise is in just under an hour. Hoping to just do this, with a minimum of whateverthehellitisitis* and fuss.
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* Pronounced "whatever-the-hell-it-is-itis."

Okay, Great Joke, Now Stop With The Extreme Cold

     It's -11°F this morning. Nearly -24°C, if you prefer.  I'm not impressed.  Cold air pours out of the electrical socket where the fridge is plugged in, as though it had started to back up and send cold down the wires.

     Such is my dislike of the cold, my car has sat for two days and there's some question in my mind if it will start.

     So I'm going to try -- try! -- to get an early start myself.

     Later:  Nope.  Dead battery.  Messed with it for too long, then had to beg a ride to work from Tam.  Bought a replacement battery but cold and dark stymied me tonight after (eventually) getting the bracket out.  So, fun project tomorrow morning!  Oh, yay.

Cold Welcome

     Presently -- 11:35 a.m. EST, about 10:46 a.m. as the Sun flies* -- it's -4°F, down from three below when I hailed my lazy self out of bed at 9:00 a.m.  Today's predicted high is three above (three above!) and we might not actually get there.

     Welcome to 2018.  I'm not going outside unless I absolutely have to.
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* Thanks to the halfwits who think it is cool and exciting to be New York City time, ooooh.  So by the Sun, we're on Daylight Savings Time all Winter and double-Daylight all Summer.  I think Wednesday is triple-Daylight-coupon day but where would you turn them in?