Kenny ://

What kind of difference does a day make?

Look at that, wouldja? Two days, two posts about the weather. Yesterday was a pretty good day for me - woke up, had coffee, ran 8.3 miles (painful as it was) and thought I'd shrugged airports and airplanes out of my legs and lungs. 

That didn't work so I decided to head out for an evening run last night - another 5 or 6 miles later and I felt like $100.  Aces.  Speck. Tack. You. Lar.  

Today? I wouldn't get out to run if someone paid me. Well, I would actually run if someone paid me, but not fast. It's cold as hell out today. How is it we go from 63 degrees one day, and less than 24 hours later it's 29 degrees?  I grew up here and know the lame old jokes about "Don't like the weather? Stick around another 5 minutes, it'll change drastically" but this is ri-goshdamn-diculous.  

Quick, someone bring me a large order of warm with a side of warm. Extra warm on that, please.  

Unrelated - Baker bag tagged me last night. I think I have an aneurysm down there now.  Thanks AJ. We're even now.

A little bit of snow makes me both happy and angry

I was traveling this past week - started on Sunday with 10 damn hours of airports and airplanes and ended late last night with another 13 damn hours of airports, weather delays, standby, and, finally, airplanes.  What's the best way to get over long hours in airports and airplanes and crappy airport food? Why, go for a late night, medium length run, of course. I decided to go for about a 5 or 6 mile run when I got back just to brush the detritus of less than comfortable travel from my psyche and to have a little outdoors time. I'm huggerish, after all (tree-huggerish, if you didn't know).  I like to be outside without too much automation going on around me.  That run, as expected, didn't go so well. It went, just not so well. 

So, this morning, I decided to get up and go for another, longer run. 8.3 miles later and I'm starting to feel like I belong on my feet again.  I mean, I'm finally grounded again and feeling a little more human on my own two legs instead of being cramped, shifting around in coach trying to find a comfortable position to nap while the boisterous southern ass next to me thinks it's funny to smack his gum and hit on his administrative assistant on her first trip to "the convention" with the sales staff.  Poor girl, she'll never be back. 

Anyway, on this morning's run, in shorts and a short sleeved shirt, I realized how easy it is to live in Memphis.  I was in New York 24 hours ago both loving and hating the snow. I love snow, but not when I'm trying to get somewhere that requires flight. 

Added to that is the fact that there was an older woman sitting next to me wearing about 10 lbs of fur and mink.  She wasn't too old to know better than that, though. She was asleep, but for a while i thought she was dead. If she were dead, it would have weirded me out, in a poetically just way.

The point of this rambling-tastic post is that I finally appreciated Memphis weather in December this morning. It took 30 some odd years for me to do it, but I appreciate the fact that I can get out in shorts and a short sleeved shirt and do something, anything, outside. 

My friend Candice in New York is probably bundled up more than the kid from A Christmas Story just to run down to the corner market.  I don't pity her, she loves it there. I love it there, too, but need my outside, cathartic-in-shorts-and-short-sleeves time more often than I think New York could offer it to me, too.

Unrelated - shobbs is going to look at greyhounds at the race track - he's thinking of adopting one.  Good for him.

Maybe it's just me

Today is the second time I've been on the East Coast when it's been raining. The first time was last Saturday - it relegated me to an hour and a half on the trainer for a bike ride (about all I could damn stand) and then some time in the gym.

There's something about the coast, or maybe it's me - it's really windy here. In order to get anywhere in Charleston, you go over a bridge because pretty much every part of town is separated by a bridge.  There are river inlets that separate everything. Those bridges, by the way, have to be HUGE due to the shipping industry. For example, we have the Ravenel Bridge, (link to bridge website) which is something like the nations largest or longest cable suspension bridge anywhere, which is relatively new.  These bridges have to be built really tall in order to accommodate the freight liner ships that have to get to the port out of the strong moving Atlantic. Here's a google maps shot of Charleston - see all the yellow that goes over a river? That's a bridge.  

 

So, back to today's rain. It's violent, it's really windy here, and the rain makes any attempt to stay dry an exercise in futility.  I think I probably would have caused riots of laughter in anyone sitting warm and dry behind a window while watching me dodge, duck, and dart to or from my car today in the rain if it weren't for the fact that EVERYONE was doing the same thing.  

They're used to it, though.  Me? I'm soggy and grumpy.

Almost forgot

I had a fanfeckingtastic ride yesterday - started at about 9:30, finished at 1:00, and perfect weather all day long. Of course, I'm sunburned since I'm no longer a cabana boy and used to being in the sun, but I missed that anyway so the burn was good, physically and metaphorically.

A few shots from the iPhone from out near and past Shelby Forest, Millington TN, y'all.

I would say I enjoyed the whole thing but my quads decided to start yelling obscenities at me when I got back into town with about 5 or 6 more miles to the house. Sorry guys, you knew what you were getting into when I put the lycra on.

No offense Mother Nature, but make up your damn mind

I think I mentioned repeatedly how beautiful the weather here was this past weekend. It was unforgettable. Weather like from a novel or a song. Perfection if there is such a thing.

Enter Monday - thunderstorms, flash floods and quickly dropping mercury. It kind of sucked to be me that night. One thing I absolutely can NOT stand, one of my pet peeves (other than people who eat with their mouth open and weird mouth noises) is to have wet feet inside shoes. I don't mind wet feet in flip flops or something, I mean, I wear water-friendly sandals when I go to the pool (who knows what's on the floor of that place?) but if I'm wearing socks, I hate having water in my shoes. Those flash floods? Yeah, the shoes I was wearing that night are still sitting in front of the refrigerator trying to dry out.

Then Tuesday was kind of surreal. I woke up and it was cold. Like the proverbial witch's-teat-cold. Walking out my front door to the car, I thought I felt rain but I looked up just in time to catch a little drizzle from Mother Nature's ice shaker. She must have been mixing up quite a mixer of cocktails because it opened up and we had what could be considered, by Memphis standards, a blizzard at one point yesterday. Of course, nothing accumulated, this is the South, y'all. But it was pretty while it lasted that entire 25 minutes.

Today? Sunny and 60. I'm thinking of putting on some shorts and going outside to take pics of the public garden - Tulips are blooming.

Since you asked

I'm so glad you asked, thanks. This is a topic I love discussing. It's 9.30 AM here, already 65 degrees and sunny and is supposed to get up to 76 today. I'm a southern boy through and through and love the heat. I know I've said it somewhere before, but it bears repeating.

We think 102 on the mercury is a pleasant day to mow the lawn and fire up the grill. Pull out the badminton and lawn dart sets because it's a great summer day out. That sort of weather. Coach Z think it's funny that northerner think of hot weather the way we think of cold weather. I'll explain through narrative.

As you may have read, I was in the frozen tundra last week - Minneapolis. In February. It was one of the biggest shocks to my system to step out of the airport into -30 degree temps. There's no amount of preparation I could have done to be ready for that. Honestly, does anything lower than -10 below feel any different? I mean, that's enough to kill off your exposed skin, right? Does it really have to get any lower than that? I get the point.

Today, I'm going to be outside in shorts and a short sleeve jersey. Then I'll be in shorts and a tee shirt in the yard. Then I'll be in jeans and a sweater for rehearsals. It's cold as hell in that theater.

Keeping it real. Memphis style, yo.

Look out for flying pigs or frogs raining down from the heavens

Today was a weird day here in M-town, as far as weather was concerned.  It was really gusty with tornado warnings or watches or whichever means conditions are favorable for most of the day. 

A friend who moved here from the frozen tundra at one point today sent me an email asking if this were something that Memphis goes through on a scheduled basis because, frankly, the tornado threats were weirding her out. Sorry I n g a, we go through this for about 3 or 4 weeks each year here in the mid-south. 

There were wind gusts of up to 50-60 mph threatened, according to the trusty weatherband radio in my subaru, gotta love the favorite car of lesbians everywhere, and I believe we actually got to that. Why do I believe?  I'll not answer that question in words, but with pictures instead.

These were taken as I was walking to my car when leaving the office today.  Guh-ross. And there were two or three of these things in the parking lot, they must have been migrating through the storm.  Yes, it's really a bird. A big duck or goose.

Dead bird fly later
Don't you know it's storming out
Fly horizontal