They finally got the heat pump in my office ceiling replaced, and I was able to come back to work (not happily, I might add) on Tuesday. So it’s no longer hotter than hell in there. In fact it’s f*cking cold. Or it is whenever the thermostat – located in the conference room next door – calls for cooling. See, we have what I’m guessing is a 6″ (maybe 8″) supply duct for our office, and it really cranks out the cold air. I hate to complain, lest they roast me come summer (assuming we ever have a summer around here, which I’m starting to doubt). Why I can’t just work from home every day (barring having to attend some stupid meeting or other – which are much fewer and farther between than with my old job, and more often than not if I have to attend a meeting, I can just call in) is beyond me. But whatever.

The weather dork said the average temperature as of yesterday for this month has been 9.2°. Assuming we don’t get some kind of radical heat wave (which seems rather doubtful – it was 3° on the way in this morning and we’re supposed to have overnight lows well below zero for the rest of the month), we should beat the previous “coldest month ever” by over three degrees. So, whoopee for us.

I hate to spend so much time bitching about the weather – I realize it’s pretty much the entire east coast that’s suffering – but it’s getting to the point where it’s downright depressing. I mean, you kinda know going into winter around here it’s not exactly gonna be beach weather, but there’s kind of an expected time table as to the way things are supposed to unfold, climatically speaking, and right about now we’re supposed to be getting an occasional nice day to give up an indication that there’s some light at the end of the tunnel.

The weather fruit on the news this morning sad Saturday was going to a “beautiful” day because after a low of -8 or so, it’s going to be sunny with a high of 18. Yeah – that’s what constitutes a beautiful day theses days. And now they say we may get a shitload of wet heavy snow next week.

And now I have to come to work and freeze my fucking ass off.

Clearly, I picked a really bad month to quit drinking beer.

And so, another week begins. After a rather pleasant day yesterday (or what passes for a pleasant day this year – it was sunny off and on and it got all the way up to 25°) not only is it really f*cking cold this morning, but we hit our high temp for the day around midnight and it’s been getting gradually colder ever since. We’re down to five (above) right now and they say it’l get down to something like -12 overnight. We haven’t actually been above freezing since back in January. With an average temperature of less than 10° so far, this is not only the coldest February of all time, but with the forecast for the rest of this week, it appears this will be the coldest month since they started keeping records around here back in 1902. Not the snowiest February ever, though it looks like it’ll be in the top three at least. And no relief in sight.

I took the opportunity yesterday to move some snow around and widen up the driveway. It was getting a little narrow, and I spent over four hours (and 3/4 of a tank of diesel) moving snow around so I’ll have a place to push whatever comes next. I also had to ready the gas and electric meters, so I had to shovel a path to them (and shovel out the generator hookup area, just in case). The snow in my front yard is chest high at this point, and I’m trying not think about how much snow is on the roof, because if I try to shovel it off I’ll bury every entrance (and window) to my house and probably have a heart attack while doing it.

If I’m lucky, they’ll continue to not fix the heat pump in my office ceiling, and I can continue to work from home for the next 8 years, 2 months, and 7 days (and counting). Since, at the very least, they’re planning on moving us to an even shittier location by the end of this year, that seems pretty doubtful. But I can hope.

And, hey, if I’m standing in the wrong place when my roof collapses, I won’t have to worry about much of anything (except odds are I’ll survive and then it’ll get really cold in here and what the hell am I gonna do with three dogs and two cats while they fix my house?).

Oh well, time to “go to work.”

It’s supposed to get all the way up to 25° today! And as punishment, we’re also supposed to get another 6″ of snow. . Since being over three feet below average at the end of January, we have now gotten over four feet of snow in February and we’re now about two inches over our average for the season. And that’s in Syracuse – I have no way to tell what we’ve gotten here, except to say we’re feeling a little claustrophobic.

The dogs are getting pretty bored as well. The snow is well over their heads and they can’t really go anywhere I haven’t shoveled a path for them (which at least keeps them from hopping over the fence). I watched a herd of deer struggle to get through the snow earlier this morning (jumping like crazy just to move a foot or two). I don’t know what they’re finding to eat out there, and I feel terrible for them in all this cold. Them, and all the other critters out there that don’t have the sense to hibernate for the winter (something I truly wish I could do).

I’m trying to decide if I need to go to Costco this week, and I’m thinking that no, no I do not. I’d like to get some gas before it goes up any more (after an 18¢ per gallon jump last week, it’s only gone up another couple of cents this week, so I should probably go). I think I’m pretty much set for food, though, and I should probably quit spending money to save up to pay the heat bill (though to tell you the truth, it’s the damn electric bill that’s killing me).

I guess all the money I’m saving on beer (36 days w/o a beer, and 2,989 days until retirement – I put it in a spreadsheet) is going straight to NYS Gas and Electric. Well, and also to the dentist. Plus I got screwed on coffee mugs.

You’d think it would be fairly easy to find coffee mugs for sale. Specifically, I was looking for black mugs to fit my office decor (ideally either what I have come to find is called “funnel” shape – like my “Car Talk” mug, only black – or, failing that, “bistro” shape). This appears to be something impossible to find in stores. Or at least the stores I go to (which, come to think of it, is basically Costco with an occasional trip to the grocery store – which I frequent very rarely since what I don’t get from Costco I get from Amazon).

So I found something called Discount Mugs online. Let me say right off the bat that I do not recommend them (in fact, for the benefit of the search engines out there: “Discount Mugs Sucks” “don’t buy from discount mugs” “Discount Mugs Blows” “Fuck Discount Mugs” “Discount Mugs Ripoff” “discountmugs.com sucks”).

They had some mugs that looked like what I wanted, and they offered “free” samples (so that I could see if I should order 1,000 of them with my family crest on it for the big family reunion coming up). Free meant free, with $5 per each for shipping. So I ordered three blank sample mugs. I figured five bucks per mug wasn’t a great price, but not terrible either. So after a week or so, they arrived, and as soon as I picked up the box and heard the telltale sound of rattling ceramic, I knew something was wrong.

Yeah. Two out of three were broken (and while I like the way they look, they’re pretty goddamn thin – coffee poured in the one unbroken one cooled off in about ten seconds). So I went to their site where they have a claim form for broken shit that they send you, and I uploaded a photo (‘cuz god forbid they believe me) and they promptly responded with an offer of “store credit.” Well WTF am I gonna do with $10 store credit? I said, “hey, whattya say you send me two more unbroken mugs instead?” To which they responded offering store credit again. To which I responded, “no thanks – I’ll write it off as a bad investment.”

I mean, these things came so poorly packed that there’s no way I’d expect them to ever ship me an intact order. I’m surprised that one mug made it through, and if 67% of every order is going to come broken, there’s no way I’m ordering from them again. Hey, prove to me you can ship one intact order, and then maybe I’ll buy some shit from you. But to give me a credit of $10 that probably wouldn’t even cover the shipping on whatever broken crap you’re gonna send me next? I don’t think so.

Plus the mugs were made in China – probably by slave labor using some kind of lead/melamine poison glaze.

So “fuck you Discount Mugs”. Did I mention that “Discount Mugs Sucks” and that you should “never buy from discountmugs.com”?

Of course, my experience may not be typical (though based on subsequent reviews, they seem to be known for shipping broken shit).

Well, it’s getting late. I guess if I’m gonna make that Costco run, I’d better get going.

Have a good one.

Cold as it’s been around here, my office at work has been miserably hot. This isn’t something the powers that be would actually give a crap about, except that the heat pump that cools my office also cools the main conference room – and heaven forbid it should be hot in there. So the building management finally ordered a new one (heat pump that is) and they were scheduled to put it in yesterday. Since it happens to be located in the ceiling over my office, I was banished to work from home yesterday (broke my heart). The only problem with that is I had to go to the dentist who happens to be about a quarter of a mile from where I work, so I had to do the 40 mile round trip over there anyway. Still beats going to the office, though.

Sadly, the heat pump didn’t arrive in time to get the job started, so they rescheduled for today. So, yeah, I’m working from home once again today. If you asked yourself “if he can work from home for a couple of days for that, why can’t he work from home all the time?” then you’d be asking the same question I ask (other than I don’t refer to myself in the third person) pretty much every day. Especially when the weather really sucks.

As it happens, the weather really sucks (again) today. They were forecasting maybe 3-6″ of snow overnight, and I awoke this morning to what had to be at least a foot of new snow. With the extremely nasty wind, my driveway was filled with a good three feet of snow. So much, in fact, that it took me an hour and a half to plow, just to get my wife off to work this morning. Fortunately, they said the snow would stop this morning. Unfortunately, it’s been snowing all day long. And blowing. Plus, after an early morning high of 11 degrees, it’s now down to about 6 (and falling). And windy.

My four foot high dog containment fence has basically vanished, as have all the trails that the dogs have been using to find a place to take a dump. I was just out with them trying to shovel some new paths. Peggy lasted about 2 minutes out there, and the two boys made it for maybe another 5. And the forecast is for cold, snow, and wind turning colder, snowier, and windier.

I gotta say, I’ve just about had it here. I don’t need spring – I just need it to stay above 20° and quit fucking snowing for a couple of weeks.

It was one degree above zero earlier this morning. Unfortunately, that was our high temperature for the day. It’s all downhill from here down to two below at the moment. Plus, it’s really windy, so the windchill right now is about -27°. All the churches are even closing today. That’s gotta mean quite a loss of revenue what with Sunday being their big day. Pretty piss-poor planning on God’s part – not a very intelligent design.

We also got a shitload of snow overnight. I don’t know how much exactly – all I can tell you is that I had to go out and shovel the back yard so the dogs could get out and take a shit. I’d get the tractor out to plow it, but the gates are buried in snow and I can’t open them. Plus the post shifted on one gate and the with the ground frozen solid, the latch is jammed and I can’t open it. It’s not snowing at the moment but you’d never know it, ‘cuz the wind is blowing so hard it looks like a blizzard out there.

My sister lost power at her house for about 14 hours on Friday night into yesterday afternoon. The wind and snow took a tree down out in the middle of nowhere, and it took the power company about 12 hours to find it what with it being buried in the snow. Naturally my brother-in-law had a helluva time digging out a spot outside for the generator and then getting the damn thing started. Shit’s always a lot tougher in the middle of the night in the freezing cold.

It was good excuse to drag out the kerosene heaters, though.

They apparently don’t have the teevee, Internet, or pellet stoves hooked up to the generator circuits, though. Bit of an oversight. I have tv, Internet, pellet stoves, boiler, and pump all hooked up. Plus we have a couple kerosene heaters. Out here, you’re on your own so it pays to be prepared.

Of course, it dawned on me that I hadn’t run my generator in quite a while (not since last summer when some drunk chick took down a pole in the village and knocked out our power for 12 hours or so). I figured I’d better see if it still starts (and of course I had to shovel out a spot for it), and fortunately it fired up pretty easily (the battery’s been beat for a while, but four pulls got it going). Then I realized that I’d used up all my extra gasoline for the power washer over the summer, and the gennie was damn near empty. So it was off to the gas station to fill up the gas cans.

So now I’m prepared – which hopefully means there won’t be a need for it.

Back at the end of January, I think I mentioned that Syracuse had three fewer feet of snow than is normal for this time of year (38″ to be exact). Well, that’s changed. We’re now seven inches below average – in other words, in 10 days or so we’ve gotten 31″ of snow.

Or Syracuse has, anyway – out in God’s country where I live, I can’t even guess how much we’ve gotten. I know I’m having a hard time trying to find a place to push the snow, and the banks at the end of the driveway are up around eight feet or more.

Today, however, it’s only snowing a little bit. That’s pretty much the only break we get, and by the weekend they say we’ll be luck to get above zero with more snow on the way. I’m getting pretty tired of it.

It’s one thing when the season is front-loaded with snow. It’s early and it’s kind of pretty and you’re still full of energy. But even without the snow, it’s been cold all year (January was about 6° colder than normal), but February has been even colder and a lot snowier. This is when it gets pretty old.

Oh well, only five weeks ’til St. Patrick’s Day. Which would give me something to look forward to if I hadn’t quit drinking beer.

Well, this week is finally coming to an end. After getting through the first few months of winter relatively unscathed (though a bit cold), things have taken a turn for the worse around here. Especially at my house. I had to plow the driveway on Wednesday morning, again when I got home that night, once again yesterday morning (we had at least a foot of snow – maybe more) and damned if I didn’t have to do it again when I got home. Since last weekend, I would venture to guess we’ve gotten somewhere around three feet of snow. The snowbanks by the driveway are a lot taller than I am, and I was mid-thigh deep in it trying to walk around in the front yard last night (looking for Bud, who now finds it ridiculously easy to walk over the fence, the little bastard). Plus, other than one day of sunshine and 30’ish degrees, it’s been really fucking cold and windy, too.

For the weekend? More snow, more wind, more cold. In fact, it’s snowing out there right now. I’m going to have to plow the yard so the dogs can walk around – it’s damn near over their heads right now. And they say we’re due for another Monday morning commute nightmare, with a foot of snow predicted to fall between Sunday night and Monday morning. I’m really not looking forward to that.

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have heard that Syracuse “self-imposed” a post-season ban on the basketball team for as-yet unnamed NCAA violations. So, no March Madness for me. Normally this would be rather depressing (especially given the weather), but I’m finding it difficult to care. The older I get, the less I care about much of anything.

Oh well, time to get ready for my weekly trip to Costco.

It has been a tough couple of weeks for me, mainly because I haven’t had a beer in over two weeks (16 days to be exact – not that I’m counting). Last week was especially difficult because the little grocery store in the village had my brand on sale for $12.99 a 12-pack, which is a very good price. It was depressing to pass that up. In fact, this whole experience has been extremely depressing – not quite as bad as when your dog dies, but pretty close. I’d like to say that I’m doing this for health reasons (which for most people would probably be the prime motivator), but, frankly, it’s financial. I had a look at last years expenses vs. income, and my 2014 cashflow was most decidedly negative. A lot of that was automobile related – between the efforts to fix my aging Hyundai (I really regret fixing that exhaust leak) and then putting a fairly substantial down payment on my new car, I was in the hole.

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of areas where I can trim expenses. I’ve already scaled back my Satellite TV to (almost) as far as I can go, in anticipation of dropping it altogether when my 24-month commitment is up in November. Of course, you’ve gotta spend money to save money (or something like that), so I’ve invested some of those monthly savings into a few one-time expenses (basically, an OTA antenna, network DLNA tuner, a much needed upgrade to my router and network infrastructure – switches and cables – and I’ve built a couple of little media computers based on the Raspberry Pi – which if you’re not familiar with is a little thing that fits in the palm of your hand and sells for $30-35 plus $10-20 for a case).

Other than that, though, there’s not much else I can do. I can’t exactly stop paying the mortgage or the property taxes (or the car payments, gas, and insurance), and I have to keep feeding the dogs (they’re pretty much the only friends I have). I’m also kind of partial to heat and hot water (not that it’s exactly toasty around here most of the time). Basically, the only thing left to cut back on is beer, which has been very depressing for me, though I think I’m starting to get over it. In fact, yesterday, I packed away all the beer mugs I’ve been keeping in my freezer, and converted my office refrigerator into a food refrigerator (I took out the six-pack that’s been sitting idle in there, put the shelf back in, and filled it up with food).

Back when I quit smoking (not that I’m saying I’ve quit drinking – I know myself better than that), it was actually easier because I had, shall we say, other things to smoke to fill the empty spaces. Now, I don’t have that to fall back on (if anybody in Colorado or Washington State wants to send me a care package, let me know), so I’ve had no idea what the fuck to do with myself after work, and I feel as though there’s nothing to look forward to.

End of the work day? Big deal, go home and not drink beer. Friday? A whole weekend without beer. Whoopdie-freakin’-doo. It’s not so much missing being a little wasted (though there is that, I cannot lie), it’s not knowing what the fuck to do with myself. Hopefully in time I’ll direct that into doing something productive.

On the bright side, while the nights kinda suck, the mornings are a lot less painful. I don’t really sleep, but then I never really slept before. Curiously, I still have to get up to take a leak just as often I used to, so what’s up with that?

Fortunately, we’ve had enough snow the past few days to keep me busy, and it looks as though there’s more to come. They say a storm will settle in here late tonight dropping an inch an hour at its peak and continue through Monday morning – the absolute worst time for anybody who has to go to work. The plows really can’t keep up with that (hopefully the ones we sent downstate are back now). They’re talking about 10 inches or so in Syracuse, which generally means a lot more than that out here in God’s country.

I only hope that it’s either not as bad as they seem to be saying it’ll be, or that it’s so bad that nobody will expect me to go anywhere. Either way, I reckon I’ll be out on the tractor tomorrow morning.

I guess there’s a football game going on later today between the Seattle Seahawks, and the cheating Bastards from Boston. Not that I think the cheating part actually won the game for them, but, hey. It’s kinda like the steroid/HGH thing. I don’t actually give a shit if they do it, but if it’s against the rules, it’s cheating (I think that’s actually the definition of cheating), whether “everybody” does it or not. Try telling the IRS that “everybody” cheats on their taxes and see how far that gets you.

Speaking of taxes, I guess I should go and finish mine. I’m actually done, but I’m always afraid to pull the trigger on filing, lest I’ve made a mistake.

Oh well, if not taxes, I guess I should at least do some laundry, just in case we don’t get snowed in tomorrow.