Category: weather

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Hello, all you sentient beings. Welcome to November 2, 2021. It’s officially a Tuesday for everyone scoring at home.

It’s another dullish, fallish day in the southern Oregon valley where I reside. Rain dribbled throughout the night in sufficient quantities to wet the land and irk the cats. The sun made a feeble entrance at 7:45 AM and will slip away at 6:03 PM. Despite heavy clouds, wet clouds, and Winter’s determined effort to take over, the temperature is 52 degrees F and a high of 61 F is hoped for. Tomorrow is expected to be warmer, 67 degrees, with light rain, so that’s something to look forward to.

You’d think that with all this rain, rain songs would be in heavy rotation in my morning mental music stream. I mean, outside of love, there seems to be a gajillion songs about rain. Most of the rain songs deal with depression, heartbreak, and insanity. Perhaps my enjoyment of this rain is holding such songs out of my mental Alexa’s playlist. I’m instead preoccupied with a 1968 song by Blood, Sweat, & Tears called “Spinning Wheel”. It’s one line of lyrics playing foremost within me:

Talkin' 'bout your troubles and you, you never learn
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel turn

h/t to Lyrics.com

See, what I was thinking about was the inability for many to learn. We’re still neck deep with COVID-19 deniers and anti-vaxxers here in the U.S. People who don’t trust the medical community, then rush to them when COVID-19 strikes them down, and then demands that the medical community treat them using treatments that they’ve read about on the net, instead of the medical professions’ proven protocols and procedures for the best outcome. It’s crazy how it spreads over the net — this was on a nurses’ forum — that patients are telling one another that when nurses remove you from ventilation is when they kill you. It’s all a great big conspiracy of crazy.

So, they never learn. They jump on that painted pony. Then the fates spin the result.

Not saying that following everything — vax, social distancing, masks, and the medical procedures for COVID-19 — is a perfect cure-all. No. It’s not. Underlying conditions and health issues will exacerbate treatment and recovery, as will age, race, and sex, given the collected data. Sadly, these deniers are not capable of learning this. Not a question of intelligence; it seems to be more about indoctrination. Frustrating for the rest of us, but it’s not new. Nor is it unusual.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, socially distance, and get the vax and boosters when you can, if you can. Coffee time again. Here’s the music. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Yep, turn the page. Start a new leaf. Begin anew, again. November is upon us, a continuation of the autumn months for those of us above the equator. We’re like a ship sailing toward winter. Clouds grow darker and heavier. Sunshine thins and fades, surrendering us to increasingly cold air. We hover around warm spots, watching the horizons for signs of snow, awaiting the next phase.

Or we shrug and press on. Or gather winter sports equipment, put on warmer coats, and head for the hills. Who cares what season it is? Well, we care, but each season brings it personality in. We can usually find things to love and admire in each season. The cats, though, are definitive summer folk. They’re already going out only to dart back in with complaints. “Where is the sun? Turn off the wind. Make it warmer.” So they go until they find a faintly suitable place and curl up, gradually replacing their mutterings with snores.

Today is Monday, November 1, 2021, the first Monday in November. So, we’ll have five Mondays in this month, along with five Tuesdays. The sunshine shifted into the valley with meager offerings at 7:44 AM. The sun will fade away at 6:05 PM. Temperatures will stay chilly with rainfall and winds contributing, giving us a high of 56 degrees F. But the air is clear and absent any signs of wildfire smoke.

For reasons that aren’t in focus for me, a 1973 Marvin Gaye song is playing in the morning mental music stream. Yes, Marvin is singing, “Let’s Get It On”, a smooth, lovely song, evocative of hopeful young love and sex. Hearing the song conjures scenes of dark houses with slow dancing, making out on furniture, quiet pairings of couples who sneak away for some privacy. All this goes with the Halloween period because growing up in the western Pennsylvania area as a teen, that early darkness in alignment with parents’ work hours afforded some unique opportunities to visit with friends in their houses. We were usually outside in the summer and spring, see, while winter brought freezing air and heavy snow that made such visiting difficult. Also, reaching into November, you were a month, almost two, into the new school year. Got to reacquaint yourself you hadn’t seen for a while, rekindling affection and interest. I guess I untied the knot about why the song is hovering around my mind this morning.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the music, there’s my coffee, and here we go, galloping on into November. Onward, he cried from the rear. Let’s go. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

The deciduous trees were so lovely recently in golds and yellows, scarlets and reds, oranges, yellow-green, russet and brown. A few windy days and the leaves lay heavy on the ground as naked skeletal branches wave toward the sky. Blue sky holds today, a few clouds trickling in, high and away, as if they’re spying on us from lofty perches. They might be winter’s advance guard. I think I hear them whispering, “Winter is coming.” Whether they’ll bring the ice king, we’ll see.

Today is October’s last day, the 31st. We’re galloping through 2021’s final quarter, racing toward Thanksgiving in the U.S., and dashing toward the December holiday season. Sunrise cameth at 7:42 AM. So late, right? But next Sunday, Nov. 7, DST ends and we turn the clocks back. By then, the sunrise will be about 8 AM, so we’ll roll it back to 7 AM. But we’ll suffer on the day’s posterior end. Sunset today comes at 6:10 PM. That’ll dial back to before six next week, so we’ll be looking at sunsets before 5 PM after next Sunday. And we’ll still be moving toward the longest night in December.

Today, though, it’s 51 degrees F. High today will only be 61 degrees but right now, it’s a soft, gorgeous day. The cats and I went out together. I paused for a deep inhale. Was so clear and invigorating, I hung around and repeated deep breaths for several minutes. Stress, frustrations, anxieties all washed out. Into the morning mental music stream came The Hollies’s 1974 cover of “The Air That I Breathe”. Works for me on October’s final day.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters as needed. Speaking of needs, I’m heading into the kitchen for some coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sunrise crept in like a drunk husband trying not to awaken his wife at 7:41 AM this morning. Barely lifted the gloom it seems. Shortly before sunrise, rumbling like metal wheels across broken cement awoke me. As I puzzled through the loud sound, it came again, confirming for my surprised being, why, that’s thunder. Thunder just rolled around the valley again like a marble in a roulette wheel, and rain is drumming its fingers over the rough. We call it stormy Saturday, October 30, 2021.

The rain and clouds are gonna keep it cool, you bet. The current temperature is 54 degrees F. Some say that it will reach 56 F today; others are claiming 61. We’ll see how warm it gets before the sun takes its contribution from us at 6:07 PM.

Feeding the cats inspired the occupant of my morning mental music stream today. The song is by Kiss, “I Was Made for Lovin’ You”, from 1979. Only, me being sleepy because it was half past dark still and the little flooftators were acting hangry, stumbled out of bed and told them, “Yes, please let me feed you. I was made for feeding you kitties. That’s all I live for.” That’s certainly what it felt like at that moment when my crankmeter was up high because I wanted sleep. Anyway, the song remained in my head after I flushed my dreams and made breakfast, so, lucky you! Here you go. My choice for Saturday’s theme music. It’s a bit o’rock and disco with a large dollop of glam. Like those shoes. Oh, those shoes.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed by the situation, and get the vax and booster when you can. Let’s be careful out there. On to coffee. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

A bitter chill haunts the morning air. Sunlight blighted by gray clouds wearies its way through the windows, casting dull shadows from the partially nude trees. Welcome to Friday, October 29, 2021.

The temperature hovers around 61 degrees F right now but my skin whispers, it’s not that warm. The high today between sunrise at 7:40 AM and sunset at 6:09 PM is just forecast for three degrees more. Like the sun is saying, “It’s Friday, and I don’t feel like giving as much today.” Beautiful colors that burst into the leaves are all acting spent, fading by the hour, dropping from the trees, filling streets and lawns, turning to brown and crumbling.

Today’s theme music was inspired by food. Truthfully, it was a food pick-up. Called in an order to a local establishment, then ‘ran out’ to get it by getting into the car and driving over there. But my wife said, “Why don’t you run out and get it,” and I totally understood it would involve the car.

So I was taking food on the go, which my brain shifted to say, on the run, and voilà, I was thinking that I’d take food on the run, which led to REO Speedwagon’s 1981 song, “Take It on the Run”, to slip into the mental music stream, where it still resided this morning. I like the song’s rising guitar sound and embellishments as the tempo increases before it crashes back down to a soft note, and a final outro, “Heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another, you been messin’ around.”

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster when you can. I’m gonna listen to the song again and sip my coffee. Here’s to ya. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I stepped onto the chilly back patio with the cats this morning. They looked around for intruders or prey, and I looked up. Sunshine was outlining our trees’ gold and red leaves against a blue sky that didn’t have a hair of a cloud showing.

Today is Thursday, October 28, 2021. Sunrise came at 7:39AM and sunset is due at 6:10 PM. Clear skies will have an impact as we’ll hope from our current 53 degrees F all the way up to 74. No wind is blowing. All this is a brief respite from more rain expected. We’ll take the rain, although it does slam places that suffered wildfire damage, often causing heavy erosion and landslides.

I was reading about the Netherlands today in an article titled, “When will the Netherlands disappear?”. While many right wing political parties around the world, including the GOP in the U.S., the Dutch are undertaking serious measures to mitigate the rising seas and the loss of land. The sad assessment explains the many ways that the world is changing from a warming atmosphere to melting ice caps to encroaching seas and, with the lowlands of the Netherlands, the disappearance of a land and nation. But let’s keep pretending it ain’t happening, because you know, money. Which is the bottom line of the GOP argument: it would cause money to cope with climate change, eat into profits, and diminish executive bonuses. Meanwhile, we’ll build sea walls, as they’re doing in Florida, even though the feted dikes of Netherland show that sea walls can only do so much.

Naturally, money spoke to my mental Alexa, who ordered a recall of “Moneytalks” by AC/DC from 1991 to the morning mental music stream. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed by the situation, and get the vax and booster when you can. Here’s the music. There’s my coffee. We good. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Hello, my fellow homo sapiens. Today is Wednesday, October 27, 2021. A dreary day in the valley of my home. Clouds blustering about rain. Winds whispering about storms. And the sun, quietly hanging back after its 7:38 AM, is a wallflower on this dance. A mild 52 F degrees now, we expect some of these clouds to skate away and leave us in the upper sixties before sunset takes over at 6:43 PM.

I was feeling philosophical last night. A power outage of five hours changed the day’s dynamics. It was a bit of a release, a staycation, as my other and I sat and chatted for most of those hours. I walked later, admiring the gowns the trees brought out for their fall collection. Russets have sprung into many, but there are mild browns, deep scarlet, brilliant red, and most impressively, lemon yellows that still your sight. Some of these leaves, especially on maples going red, seem like they’re lit with an inner light. Before that, I was enduring the monthly dark funk that likes to shroud me once a month for a day or two, spooning bitterness and weariness into me while maligning my energy channels. The walk helped reversed most of that, refortifying shaky defenses and infusing new determination back into my spine.

Out of that came a 1989 Indigo Girls song, “Closer to Fine”. Closer to fine is a good place to be. Not perfect but better than before.

Stay positive, test negative, don a mask as needed for the situation, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the tunes. Listen while I head off to the kitchen for my coffee. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A little late with my typical posts. Power was out for over five hours today. Just back on line. Here we go.

The wheel has turned. We’ve all landed on Earth on October 26, 2021, a Tuesday. Speaking for my planetary sliver, it was a rainy night. Hungover rain clouds still drift aimlessly around, like they’re ready to go but don’t know where they’re going. A mild wind blows. It’s a cold 46 degrees F right now. The sun’s presence between now and sunset at 6:13 PM should add another ten degrees, giving us a high of 56 F. Sunrise, mild as an infant’s burp, arrived at 7:36 AM.

Our power is off. Yes, a power outage. Been out for half an hour now. Rare in our area. We had one a year ago, I think. They typically last one to three hours for us. The city has its own electric company, so there’s no outside company to blame. Like most, the questions of what happened and when will it end are foremost in our mind, with attendant worries about what it’ll do to our plans. I’m typing this in Word. Once power returns, I’ll connect to the net and post this, at which time, the power will be on. Follow?

I have “Heavy Fuel”, a 1991 song by Dire Straits, in the morning mental music stream on this Tuesday. BO – Before Outage – I’d a busy day planned. As I made and ate breakfast BO, I didn’t make my coffee but thought I’d do so soon because I’d need heavy fuel for the busy day. So I’m without coffee at the mo. I do have some Starbucks Via – think that’s what it’s called – instant stuff, and a gas stove, so I can boil some water and make do if I need. (Edit: which I did.) That’s why that instant coffee is on hand. It’s part of my emergency evacuation go bag. Meanwhile, I’ll go work on the novel until power is restored. Before the laptop’s battery dies. I replaced the battery a few months ago. The laptop is charged and says that it can give me another two hours. We’ll see.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Welcome to Mocha Monday Madness! How I used to refer to Mondays. Back when I used to regularly visited coffee shops. We’re still under masks limitations in our county, which makes it all a little wearying. But we’re trending toward lower positivity. Fewer COVID-19 cases. Of course, if people had vaccinated, the story might be a little shinier. Even so, I think masks and limitations are here for a while. How long the while lasts depends on too many factors for serious guessing. With my track record, though, these thoughts will push Oregon to life mask restrictions for our county immediately. Just how life sometimes seems: contrarian.

Today is Monday, October 25, 2021. Sunrise came in with grey slug speed at 7:35 AM. Sunshine will spin out of our valley at 6:14 PM. Wind and rain will dominate topics and weather appearances. We’ll top out in the low sixties, which is higher than the current 46 degrees F.

Exasperations and frustrations inform today’s morning mental music stream occupant. Laura Branigan passed away back in 2004. Fifty-two years old. Her greatest commercial success came in the 1980s. That’s when this song was released. “Self Control” was a hit for her in 1984. Her song is basically about partying at night and losing control. Which was the quasi area I was shooting at in my thoughts. As modern frustrations arose, I reminded myself to maintain self-control. To not wallow in a negative energy pool. But that inspired my mental Alexa to pick up on self-control and deliver the Branigan song to my conscious awareness. Love how that works. Stream of consciousness music shuffle.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, get the vax and boosters when you can, and use self-control when called for. Here’s the music. I’m gonna go indulge in a that dark brew that I so enjoy. The one that gets my heart going. Yes, coffee. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Season’s greetings to you, my fellow autumnites. Today is Skunkday, October 24 2021.

Yes, Skunkday, where everything is coming up skunky this morning. Sometime about 2:43 AM, a massive skunk front swept through the house. It was Phase III of the Night of Nature. Phase I was furious winds beating up the house and trees. Wind died. The second assault began: heavy rain. Didn’t mind it. Then Phase III: the skunk assault.

Don’t know what transpired. Dawn at 7:34 AM brought no evidence for this amateur sleuth. No wind damage; just nose damage. Woof. The air purifier is on. Some windows open on the non-skunk side. We’ll see if the air is fresh by sunset at 6:15 PM.

More rain is expected today. Temperatures remain in the mellow zone — low, 42 F, high of 60. Winds have calmed again but we’re being warned that the bombogenesis that’s churning storms out off the coast will be sending more our way. BTW, I love that word, bombogenesis. I think whoever came up with it was probably stoned or tipsy. Sounds like a word my friends and I would come over cups of wine or mugs of beer.

No songs in the morning mental music stream this AM. Made coffee. No song. Fed the cats. No song. Figure that between my dreams — it was a heavy dream night — and the skunk and weather, my brain was too full to register music. But then, there, thinking my head is heavy with dreams brings up Collective Soul playing “Heavy” from 1999. Which is a relief. Thought my mental Alexa had gone on the fritz.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, like when the skunks battle, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the music. I’m going back to my coffee. Cheers

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