respublica

This Polar Vortex brought with it all kinds of new terms

These terms are new to me in any event. Watching the weather obsessively this week, I've learned these things:

1. Frost Quakes. It seems these have occurred in many of our cities which have been hit by the minus temperatures. They are loud explosion type booms which can make the ground shake. Frost quakes happen "when water trapped underground freezes suddenly as the temperature drops, causing it to expand. All that rapidly expanding water underground can split rocks and put stress on the soil, causing loud booms."  Lots of reports on these this week.
2. Bubbles freese in sub zero or near zero temperatures. This takes some practice according to those who do this, but it starts with getting some soap bubbles like you find in the toy aisle or better yet, make your own. "Every bubble is made up of three individual layers: a thin layer of water molecules squished between two layers of soap. It might look like the entire surface of the bubble is freezing, but what you’re actually seeing is the innermost layer of water—which freezes at warmer temperatures than soapy water—turning to ice within the film." The  bubbles don't last long and when cracks in the surface begin the bubbles explode into crystals.
3. Boiling water turns into snow. Get some boiling water into a pot or bowl or cup and toss it up into very cold outdoor air. It immediately explodes into snow.
4. Halo around the sun has been noticed by many this week. It happens when thin, wispy, cirrus clouds move in front of the sun. Cirrus clouds are made of ice crystals and are much higher up in the atmosphere than the big puffy cumulus clouds. If the cirrus clouds pass in front of the sun, the sun's light refracts from the ice crystals and creates the illusion of a halo.
5. Setting train tracks on fire. I saw this going on in Chicago from lots of news outlets yesterday. Railroad workers in Chicago were setting the tracks on fire. Why? "Tracks are affected by extreme cold in two ways.In some cases the tracks experience what's called "pull-aparts." This kind of rail defect occurs when two rails separate at their connection. The extreme cold shrinks the metal and the rails literally pull apart from each other and Heating the tracks with fire expands the metal until the two rails can be put back together again. The tracks aren't really set on fire, it just looks that way. The flames actually come from gas-fed heaters that run alongside the rails and keep them warm.

Temperature and real feel

It has taken a painful deep freeze over a good portion of the country to bring us all together with one mind. We all feel horrible in sub zero weather. What's interesting to me since I'm stuck inside and bored, is the difference between the actual temperature and the wind chill temperature. At the moment it is -4, 4 below zero in St. Louis but the Real Feel is -33.

That minus 33 supposedly is due to the wind (wind chill) and my weather app has the wind at 20 mph.  As I walked Ferdie a bit ago and now look outside, there is very little evidence of wind. No way the wind is 20 mph this morning. It was during the night for sure. So, I'm not believing the -33 Real Feel.

Not that it isn't bitter cold. It certainly is.

What day is this?

It's Curmudgeons Day!

Perfect. It's how I feel about the weather, technology and politics. Perfect

"Curmudgeon’s Day is an annual celebration of the crusty, yet insightful, old fogeys who consistently apply the needle of truth to the balloons of hypocrisy, political correctness, and social norms. It is always held on January 29th the birthday of W. C. Fields…one of the truly great curmudgeons of all time."

There is something maniacal about printers

We've owned quite a few printers over the years and each new one we get is harder to set up and use than the one before. Early on they were fairly simple, attach the cord from the computer to the printer and plug it in, turn it on. Now the advance of technology gives us more compact and wireless printers which should be fantastic, but the set up is ridiculously hard.

We bought a new one on Sunday, a very small, simple printer to use for small jobs like printing off Dale's class notes. We didn't want all the bells and whistles like a fax (who faxes these days) or much in the way of a scanner. I studied the reviews on many printers that had what we wanted and went off to Best Buy and bought the HP 3755 wireless printer. It had good reviews and it was indeed small which is perfect.

I read the instructions and followed them to a T. But the darn thing would not communicate with the computer. I tried again, this time with the website set up as opposed to the cd. Nothing. It was great at printing out the set up information but would not communicate for printing what we needed. Frustrated I took it upstairs to my computer and tried again. Same thing. It would not communicate with the second computer.

What I find odd is that I was never asked for our wireless password. You'd think that would settle everything. How can the two things communicate if one does not know how to get online?

I googled this issue and found many people with the same problem and the answers were gibberish or no help at all. I just don't get why it should be so hard.

Staying warm in this deep cold

It took me what seemed forever to get dressed this morning as I pulled on several layers from tops to bottoms. Then I went outside with Ferdie and the cold went right through those clothes, at least the 2 layers of pants I put on. That led me to thinking how much better served men are in their options for cold weather clothes. Women's winter clothing are seemingly called thermal or cold resistant, but are made more for looks than actual warmth. We don't want to look bulky I guess.

Back on a 90 degree day in mid-September, the Cardinals played their last game of the season and the give-a-way was a red plaid fur hat with ear muffs. We all got one and laughed a lot over the seeming absurdity of these hats. But, frankly, I'm wearing mine this week without shame or embarrassment. The funny thing about the hat was finding an L L Bean catelog for winter with a Golden Retriever on the cover wearing the same hat.

The falling continues

I've been behind in posting the number of mattresses and ladders which have hit St. Louis roadways in 2019 so this is catch up day.

Mattresses 2

Ladders 6

Cleaning an electric coffee pot

Some time back I bought an electric coffee pot after becoming weary of the Keurig. I read an article in Food Network Magazine on chef Bobby Flay's home kitchen and on the counter was an electric pot which he said they use all day long. It was sold at Bed Bath and Beyond so I went over and bought one. Unlike the Keurig which we used for some years, periodically buying a new, updated model, it is necessary to clean the electric one every day. There are 5 pieces- the cap, the grounds basket, the lid to that, the stem and the pot itself. This gets to be boring, but important to clean.

Even cleaning it every day the parts still discolored so I went to Google and searched for advice on the best way to take care of this. What I found were many electric coffee pot cleaning videos with pots that were so filthy I had to wonder if the users ever washed them out after using. It was gross. Here's an example.

The best way to get the discolored coffee stains off was using baking soda. A quarter cup of baking soda with half of that in the pot, the other half in the grounds basket, fill the pot with water and then plug it in and run it as you would a pot of coffee. Let it sit for 15 minutes or so and then rinse it out and run some clean water through the cycle. That works great.

Unless you've never cleaned it before and it's as gross as the videos. Then you need to repeat the soda a few times.

A new thing to worry about

Something I never gave a thought to or worry about until I came across this headline from WTOP in DC.

"Worried about specks on your tomatoes? WTOP's garden editor has a few suggestions"

The cold of 2014

It is so darn cold today, single digits, and we're in what some weather people are saying is a Polar Vortex. This reminds me of a really painful Polar Vortex that hit in January of 2014. Not only was the cold bitter, but we had so much snow it took days to remove it. The days the sun came out and the skies were blue made everything look gorgeous, but the snow did not go away nor did the cold.

I guess I'd take today's Vortex over reliving that 2014 one. Here is a blog post I did back then.

 

We learned then that ice melt does not work when it's zero degrees or even 10 degrees. And, if you toss a pot of boiling water up into the air when it's zero degrees, it practically explodes.

This is most certainly true this year