Category: weather

Monday’s Theme Music

Chilly and cloudy, Monday touched down. The 7:30 sunrise glowed over a damp land. Clouds dropped their bottoms, hiding the ridges so I don’t know if snow is up there. It’s 36 F now. The weather systems and complications of axis tilt and our position in respect to the sun has 40 F as the day’s high before we spin away from the sun again at 4:39 PM. Then our temperature will drop to minus 2 C. Despite the cloud blockade, they say it won’t rain or snow.

This is 12/12/2022. We’re approaching December’s midpoint. And we’re hurtling toward winter solstice again. Also coming into view is a bevy of holidays with all the traditions, partying, celebrating, and observances which accompanies the holidays like a rock star’s entourage.

I don’t know what The Neurons are thinking today. After I finished with my dream journal and then posted one dream recollection (a drecollect) online, The Neurons put “Elvira” as covered by the Oak Ridge Boys (1981) in the morning mental music stream. Why the heck was Elvira selected? Don’t know. I know the song and several more by them as they were on the radio, and we lived with the radio on in the car and at home during that period, first in Texas, and then on Okinawa. Also, we met up with my SIL during leave when we moved from Texas to overseas. She was a huge ORB fan at the time. Like her and many others, I enjoy Richard’s deep solo. (Yeah, I needed to look up his name.)

Sunshine is blasting through the southern windows. I think coffee will go swell with that. Stay pos, test neg. Here’s the boys with their tune. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Sunday slipped into space with the weariness of an old ship being brought into port the final time. Rain and cold air heralded his arrival. Lackluster sunrise contributed its presence at 7:29 AM, or as the house floofs term it, midday. They’ve been up a few hours, pranking one another, running around, and asking me to play with them. “In a little while,” I slur with sleep-induced laziness.

Welcome to December 11, 2022.

The floofs have eaten and are now asleep. It’s 2 degrees C out but don’t worry, it’ll spunk up to 44 F before the sun slinks away at 4:39 PM. It’ll get down to 34 F tonight and up to 46 tomorrow before dropping to 25 tomorrow night. We’re expecting snow showers sometime during this up and down cycle.

I have “She’s Not There” in my morning mental music stream. It’s the Santana version. Yeah, a repeat, delivered by Les Neurons after I answered a survey about my recent replacement part shopping experience. I detailed it more in the post, “Replacement Part”. Anyway, I commented to the company that they’re not there on the weekends. Les Neurons shuffled from ‘you’ to ‘she’ faster than a floof can eat a treat. The Zombies did a great job with the Argent written song in 1964. I know it well and admired it. But Les Neurons keep playing Carlos Santana’s guitar from his group’s cover of it in 1977. Who am I to argue with my neurons? Might as well argue with the floofs or muses. Those are all arguments I will lose, along with any engaged with my spouse.

Stay positive, test negative, and if you fail, try again, right? I need some coffee. Here’s Santana and the song. Have a better one. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Do your Saturday dance if you got one. Because, yes, it is Saturday.

It’s also December 10, 2022. If it’s your birthday or anniversary, happiest of them to you. Do your celebration dance. And if you’re having donuts or a special breakfast, do your celebration dance for that. I’m doing my celebration dance in honor of coffee. I got it, I’m drinking it, I’m dancing.

The windstorm ended shortly after dawn at 7:28 this morning. Rain stopped a little before, leaving large puddles across the back patio which greatly displeased Papi, the ginger floof prince. Clouds broke their clinch. Sunshine and blue sky are squinting out, asking, “Is it over?” Snow still dusts and crusts many ridges, tree lines, and peaks above our elevation. No snow down here toward the valley floor, though. We’re happy for the snow where it added to the pack or entertains others. Looking out, the windstorm didn’t take over any trees, fences, houses, roofs, etc. It was a lot of noise and a jolt of tension but it’s done. 37 F outside right now. 48 F is the anticipated high temperature. Sunset comes at 4:39 PM.

Without irony nor surprise, I can tell you that The Neurons picked up on the wind theme for the morning music. I heard them talking in my head, remembering wind songs. There is a chunk of them from the rock era. Some surprise was found when they pulled up Santana and “Song of the Wind”. Released on an album in 1972, I listened to the album pretty extensively. It has more of a jazz infusion that the harder rock or progressive rock that The Neurons usually cheer on, but back when I was sixteen and drawing and painting, I found this comfortable music as accompaniment. Later on, when I was living in the Philippines, I would listen to it and sip wine while I drew or read. So good memories come with this album. There is beautiful guitar work on it, of course, cuz it’s Carlos, but there are also impressive musicans who gravitated to him, and the interesting percussion work often featured in his songs.

Stay positive, test negative, and celebrate what you can. I’m celebrating more coffee. Here’s the song. Hope it helps move your day in the right ways. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

My fellow Earthers. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. It’s also Friday, December 9, 2022.

I’ve been following a local online debate. A newly elected city councilor wants to change the time when the meeting begins, move it up an hour. He argues that will allow more people to attend. Well, let the debate begin.

  1. Moving the meeting an hour forward will allow more people to attend, those in favor say. Some moms have said, “Yes, I can attend at four, but I can’t attend at five.” The meeting goes for three hours.
  2. No, others say. “I’m still at work at four, or I’m driving home. I can attend at five but not at four.”

So each side uses the same argument. There were no complaints or calls for the meeting start time to change before the new councilor brought it up. Also, each side points out, the meetings are televised, streamed, and recorded. It feels like another variation of the daylight savings time argument, which can be reduced to, which is better for me? By extension, if it’s better for me, it’s better for all.

It’s foggy outside, Alexa tells me, and 34 F. She’s staked today’s high at 46 F. Says, expect rain. Except there’s no fog outside my windows. I can see distant mountains where snow is sprinkled across the green pine ridge. The winds are picking up. A drizzle has begun. The house floofs are not happy. They’re clambering for reparations because the sun isn’t giving them the shine they like. All reparations have been rejected — kibble, canned food, treats, and catnip. Attention is okay, they admit. They will take some scratching and stroking, but when I stop, they shout, more, more, more, like Billy Idol in fur, with less piercings.

As for the sun, it curved over the earth’s shape and into our valley at 7:28 this morning but remains sequestered behind sturdy clouds. Departure time for sunshine is 4:39 PM.

You can probably guess the song will be Billy Idol with “Rebel Yell” from 1983. Soon as that comparison went through my gray matter, The Neurons exclaimed, “Ooh, ‘Rebel Yell’, Billy Idol, yeah,” and began playing the song. Bourbon called Rebel Yell inspired the tune. I guess that’s a kind of scratching that satisfies some itches.

Speaking of scratches and itches, I’ll need some coffee. This is the first day of the rest of my life, you know. Stay positive and test negative. Here’s Billy with the music. I must admit that the video, with the musicians sneering, smirking, and posturing, gave me a laugh. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Howdy, peeps, and merry Thursday. Have we got a Thursday in store for you. Sunshine and — well, not yet. No clear sunshine, not yet. Not with that plate of clouds guarding the valley sky. Which also means, um, no blue skies, either, not yet. Maybe later. Although today’s winter weather advisory has some skin in that outcome.

But it is 44 F under all that wintry sky. No signs of incipient precipitation, other than, you know, clouds. And today’s high will be 45 F, so we have that going for us.

Not bad, no. Others are enduring worse, yeah. We await the outcome of the weather advisory and hope for more snow up on the mountain’s packs. The sun stepped up at 7:27 this morning and will retire from valley duties at 4:38 PM. This is Thursday, December 8, 2022.

I enjoy posting the day’s sunrise and sunset every day. Tracking how those times change for my valley through the year’s action helps me solidly envision planet Earth’s tilt and rotation as it speeds around Sol. Sometimes I try looking closer to see myself, peering down at the racing planet surface as it flashes by about 1,000 miles an hour. But I’m usually in the house or in a car or the coffee shop, only emerging to check mail, do some work, or take walks. A small percentage of day is actually spent ‘outside’. When I am outside, I’ll often look up and wave, thinking that either ET civilizations or government satellites will spot me. Just being friendly, you know?

Canned Heat and their 1970 song, “Let’s Work Together” came up in the morning mental music stream. The Neurons heard me pleading with the muses yesterday while I was walking and glancing up for spy satellites and aliens, “Can’t you guys get organized and work together?” The muses seem to like rushing the writing room en masse and then throwing things at me from different angles to see what sticks. I type like mad, write notes, and make plans, but it’s all ugly intense. Hearing my plea caused The Neurons to dig into the music memory box and tug this song out. I used it as theme music back in 2018 but it feels like it’s time to use it again.

It’s also a good song for dealing with some issues of the day, like divided politics and climate change. Just saying.

Stay positive and test negative. I’m getting The Neurons a cuppa coffee. I’ll probably have one, too, and grab some for the muses as well.

Here we go. Enjoy the music. Merry Thursday. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

White frost rules the shadows. As sunshine finds it, steam rises. The temperature is balking from going up, hanging on to that overnight low of 26 F (-3 C). Steam rises as sunshine finds the frost and melts it away. A hazy blue sky and low gray clouds on the western horizon tells us little about what the weather has in store for us today. 46 F is the expected high.

It’s 12/7/2022, Wednesday. December 7 remains vivid in US history as the day Japanese naval air forces attacked Pearl Harbor. Despite that history, the sun rose and it will set, with respective times of 7:26 AM and 4:39 PM.

AC/DC rules the morning mental music stream. The Neurons heard “Shoot to Thrill” (1980) on the radio yesterday and decided they remembered that they liked it. The down under band always knows how to rock it, though they’ve felt the effects of life forces as death took the older of the rock guitarist brothers who founded the band. That was a few years ago. They still thrill us via technology.

The song has a lot of sexual overtones to it. But it’s all about a drug scene, inspired by tales of dealers providing housewives with drugs. It’s hard rock of the finest kind, part of the album, “Back in Black”, released after their lead singer died. The album lifted AC/DC to new commercial success.

Stay positive and test negative. Stay warm if you inhabit cold climes, and stay cool if you in the hot zones. Enjoy an inspired Wednesday. Speaking of inspired, where is my coffee?

Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Dawn broke, and now we could see why it was so dark. Last night’s sky was clear. Enriched by unblemished moonshine, spectacular starry mountain vistas were on offer.

Today, clouds have gone come down and fog hugs the ground. Grey is the color of the sky, and sunlight evades our searching eyes.

It’s Tuesday, December 6, 2022. Hear the tick tick of the digital clocks emulating the grandfather clock’s countdown? That’s the sound of the year leaving. Or maybe it’s the sound of the next year hurrying to us. The sun showed up on our spinning planet’s piece called southern Oregon at 7:25 this morning and will toss goodbye over its sunny shoulders at 4:39 PM. It’s 0 C but we’re hopeful of reaching 44 F today. Rain? No, they say. They’re telling us that despite the overcast sky and fog I’m seeing, it’s actually mostly sunny in Ashland. Most be another part of town.

What I notice of my morning rituals is that the summer sun comes in through the large east-facing living room window. By this time of the year, the sun shyly looks in through the southern window around the corner from the living room window and twenty-three feet further up the side of the house. They have come to be known as the summer window and winter window for me.

I awoke with a Led Zeppelin favorite in mind. Coming out in 1971, when I became fifteen years old, Led Zepp’s fourth album had a song on it called “When the Levee Breaks”. Now, I enjoyed that entire album but that song was the one which usually haunted me later. Later reading revealed that it was an old country song, which added a layer of thinking that stimulated greater introspection. Its worrying lyrics and downcast beat seemed firmly rooted in someone’s existence.

Later, I found its beat and tone conducive to walking and thinking. I was then and have always been a person who enjoys walking distances. I’m one to take the long way home when I’m on my feet, climbing up hills to gain a broader perspective. So it was that I was out yesterday, climbing the hills and thinking about my writing in progress when The Neurons rummaged through my youthful memories and began playing it. It stayed in my morning mental music stream today.

When I went off looking for a version to play today, I stumbled upon this version by the Playing for Change project. Incorporating a huge variety of sounds and talented individuals, it’s even more powerful and haunting than the version Zepp gave us. John Paul Jones of Zepp is included among the musicians. Derek Trucks is one of the folks on slide guitar. I hope you listen to the song and that it stirs you as it does me.

Off for coffee. Stay pos and test negative. Here’s the video. Cheers

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Moanday’s Theme Music

Moanday is upon us again. That is Moanday as in, “Dear Lord, it’s Monday again.” I understand some people like Mondays. Come back to me and ask after I’ve had coffee.

It’s December 5, 2022. That happens to be my little sister’s birthday. She’s beautiful, intelligent, successful, and highly capable. Things every person should be. Generates suspicions in me about whether I’m related to her, though I was there when Mom brought her home and admired her as she slept. I know her husband, children, grandchildren, sisters, and Mom will all properly fete her.

Don’t you think that should be an expression? “Well, fete me, if I didn’t forget to buy that card while I was out.”

Sorry, lack of coffee is making The Neurons are little freakie deakie this Moanday.

36 F is what my weather station claims it to be. It’s a wet, foggy, gloomy Moanday, something appropriate for the moors. Our high will be 46. The end pieces of sunrise and sun drop are 7:24 and 4:39, AM and PM respectively. All but small, distant football fields of snow are gone from the mountains from what I saw yesterday. Rain is coming, they say. Probably snow a bit in the upper reaches.

Spent some time from being human and reading news to watching the volcano eruption in Hawaii. Being human is a minor theme this AM. Started with the cats. Restless due to weather, they intensely shadowed me this morning, vocally challenging me at every turn. Chatting with them, my refrain became, “Guys, look, I already fed you. I don’t understand what you want. I’m only human. I don’t understand your floofish.”

Paying scant attention, my neural Alexa told The Neurons, “Play Human by The Human League.” The 1986 soft ballad is classic techno pop. Get in a car, close your eyes, and you can be transported to the Reagan years. Of course, I sang the floof version for the cats’ amusement. First, there was, “You’re only human, a pathetic little man.” That’s how they seem to feel about me at times. Later’s version was, “I’m just a kitty, fur and claws, a cat.”

The Neurons are gasping for coffee. I need to end their pain. Here’s the music. Go ahead, drift back in time, if but a few seconds. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s an auspicious Sunday morning. Fox Sports viewers are still reeling from an extreme closeup of Michigan’s Coach, Jim Harbaugh, delivered by a ref cam on television yesterday. Oh, the humanity!

December 4th has its hands around us. Mild weather in our valley is putting on airs. 40 F now, we anticipate a high that exceeds (or not) 49 F. Mostly cloudy, with the sun playing peek-a-boo with us, the ground is wet from nocturnal rain, and those clouds are saying, “Seriously, we might let loose with some water again. Don’t laugh. We mean it.”

DIY plans have gone awry. The microwave went out again last week. New parts were ordered. They arrived yesterday. Soon as I picked up that box, I knew the right parts weren’t within. The box weighed about eight pounds, which seems heavy for a door microswitch and a plastic switch holder. Emails were sent. Replies are awaited. The cats are watching the skies for carrier pigeons from customer service.

Other DIY plans are going well as new interior seals are put on the windows. Tiny measures like that make a huge difference. The house feels so much snugger and cozier. Yes, I did procrastinate on getting that done. It was overdue. I blame the cats for that.

With a weather break and the winds dissipated, both cats are out on sentry, one each covering the front and back approaches. News of a local cougar killing a pet cat has us on edge. Previous reports were out but this time, cyclists witnessed the cougar with the cat in mouth. That seems pretty accurate.

The Neurons have “Let It Roll” by Little Feat (1988) pumping through the morning mental music stream. It’s funny that this is the song that ended up there. Yes, funny, ha, ha. I was thinking of my novel in progress, pondering where the muses were going to take me. I feel like I have a blindfold on. They’re standing around me, giggling and smothering their laugher, telling me what to do. My response is, yeah, let it roll. Let’s see how it rolls out. But a number of artists come to mind when the song lyrics ‘let it roll’ go by. Foremost is usually BTO — yeah, Bachman Turner Overdrive for the uninitiated — urging, “Let it roll! Down the highway. Roll. Roll.” I speculate that the weather has The Neurons in a Germany state of mind. I was stationed in Germany for a few years in the late eighties. Weather there was often overcast. Seeing this weather reminded me of those German days. That’s when this Little Feat song came out.

Coffee time! Stay positive and test negative. Mask up as needed. Be smart about it. I know most are beyond weary. I understand. The vulnerable remain vulnerable, though. Sure, that’s their problem, right? Uh, huh. Sure.

Wait, the cats are clamoring for re-entry. Yep, the clouds came through. Light rain falls.

Here’s the tune. Enjoy. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Yippee. December’s first Saturday has arrived. Per family tradition, I get to eat like a kid all day, play games, and goof off. Not much different from most of my days.

Only four Saturdays remain of 2022. It’s so exciting to watch each Saturday overtake us and unfold like a rare flower. Today is already December 3. The heat is running, the sun is shining, but a cold northy wind is beating us like a drum. It’s 46 F and it feels like 36. Today’s high will be a rousing 51. The winds are expected to dip and the sun has issued promises that sunshine is here for the day. Speaking of the sun, its rise was 7:22 AM. Only a few weeks until the sun’s arrival starts moving back the other day, spreading daylight longer through the day. The sun’s endpoint will be at 4:39 PM. Daylight will fade shortly after.

I was singing to one of my floofmates last night. Papi, the ginger wonder, had an attitude going on. Just like sitting back, surveying the scene, a disdainful observer too cool to be involved. The way he reclined and surveyed prompted both a laugh from me and a proclamation that he was a soul cat. I then improvised lyrics to the song “Soul Man” for his listening delight. He deigned to be delighted.

Taking notice of all this, The Neurons delivered “Soul Man” to the morning mental music stream. The song, written by Isaac Hayes and Dave Porter, was a hit by Sam and Dave in 1967. That’s the song I knew and grew up with. But I must admit, The Blues Brothers version delighted me because of the characters Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi brought to stage in 1978. I’m going with the latter for today’s theme music.

Stay positive and test negative. Enjoy December’s First Friday. I’m gonna start with a hot cup of the black brew known as coffee. Here’s the music. Hope you like it more than Papi. Of course, that may have been my mocking or singing putting the cat off.

Cheers

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