For the first time since last fall, I drove home from work today with my windows rolled down (not all the way, but down a couple of inches) and the radio cranked up (or at least loud enough for me).

It’s 46° out right now, and the sun is out. It actually feels like spring. It’s almost perfect … just a little too windy for me.

It’s weather like this that makes me wish I had a grill. I gotta check the Fleet Farm ad to see if they’ve got any on sale Now that I have a balcony, I can actually HAVE a grill. I can’t wait … grilled burgers and chicken breast. Mmmmm …

K … time for me to stop talking about food. I’m already hungry. I’d better go find something to eat.

Mood: cheerful

The calendar said that spring started this past Monday. But it’s been a little chilly all week. But right now it’s up to 40° out. I’ve even got my balcony door open a little. I’d have it open a little more, but it’s a bit windy out. I REALLY hope this means that spring is back. I did see on the weatherscan channel that they’re predicting 49° for later in the week. But I’ll believe that when I see it. This IS North Dakota.

Well, winter came back with a vengeance this morning. We’ve had spring-like weather for the past couple of days … with temps around 35° to 40°. A lot of the snow was melting … the driveway at my apartment building was starting to clear off.

Well … that was yesterday. This is today …

When I got up this morning around 8:30am (I just couldn’t get back to sleep, dammit), the snow was coming down with a fury. And since the temp was around 33° or 34°, it was really wet. The temp is up to 35° right now, so it’s getting even sloppier.

I went out and shoveled out in front of my garage. There was a good 3 to 4 inches in front of it. But that’s because the wind was blowing it TOWARD my garage. I’m not sure how much we actually got. I’ll have to watch the news tonite to find out. But I wanted to get that snow moved before the temps dropped and it froze solid. Earlier this winter, the snow had built up at the front of my garage where the garage door lands … due to the fact that I have a crappy plastic shovel … so there was a gap of at least an inch or 2 because my garage door couldn’t shut all the way. So … when it snowed, it got in my garage. And when it did get warm enough to melt, the water would end up in my garage. Talk about messy. But thankfully, someone with a nice shovel chipped away at the ice one day. I have no idea who that was, but they definitely helped. And I didn’t want things to get that way again after this crap.

Well … I’m getting hungry. I think I’m gonna go make something for dinner. Probably a salad (since I just bought some lettuce, and I don’t want it to go bad on me before I can eat it) with chicken in it. Man I love my Forman grill. The chicken can be cooking away while I’m chopping up the lettuce. I’d be lost without my Forman grill (I’m actually on my second one … the first got wore out and the coating was coming off). I’ve got a grill pan for the stove … and I love that too. But if I’m only making one chicken breast … it’s easier to just use the Forman (since the grill pan covers 2 burners and what I’m cooking only needs one).

Added at 4:55 pm:
I actually typed up this entry this morning. But my website has been down ALL DAY. I guess there was some problem at the datacenter where my host has its servers. They FINALLY got it resolved about 5 minutes ago or so … WOOHOO!!

Since I wrote this post this morning, the sun has come out and the temp has gone up to 37° (it hit 38° earlier). Most of the snow in the driveway has melted. They came through about 45 minutes ago or so and plowed away the slush. It still looks mighty sloppy though. So … maybe winter hasn’t kicked out spring-like weather to the curb.

Mood: working

Fuckin’ Cold!!!

Right now, it’s -21°F out with a -43°F windchill. The actual temp is 21 DEGREES BELOW ZERO!! Damn!! We WERE having a mild winter. That is ’til that damn groundhog came out of it’s hole and saw it’s shadow. LOL. That’s right … I’m blaming ‘ol Phil …

Thank goodness my car started fine. I am SO GLAD that I’ve got a garage. That car might be a POS at times … but it has never given me trouble starting when it’s been so cold out. I guess you get the good with the bad … LOL.

I’m glad I only have to go from the house to the car and the car to work. I just hope my car starts okay tonite after work after being out in the cold all day.

Mood: cold

In my last post, I said that I was working on a class to parse the XML feed from the NWS. Well … that is done. It’s not very fancy, but it works.

Tonite, I’ve created my own database connection class. I still want to work on it some more and maybe create a recordset class as well, but for now, the connection class is working great. I’m very proud of myself for that. I did find a little help online, but I modified what I found to work the way I want it to.

I’ve also managed to successfully set up a cron job that takes my xml parsing class and parses the weather XML feed and stores it to my database. Woohoo … That’s the first time I’ve ever created a cron job. It wasn’t too hard to do in cPanel.

Now I’m working on the weather class. I’m going to use it to grab the data from the database and display it how I want to. The feed from the NWS only has the current conditions, not the forecast. I’m going to dig around to see if I can find a forecast one. Hopefully I can. If not, I might try to see if I can find something elsewhere … like weather.com or somewhere else. Don’t know yet. I’d rather use the data from the NWS … I trust them. It’s their job. (I should know … I was trying to get a job with them before I fell into web design.)

Well … I’m going to get back to my weather class. I’d like to get at least a little something done before I go to bed tonite. I should get off the computer at 9pm and watch CSI: NY (I’m going to watch it whether I’m on the computer or not … I’m hooked on those CSI shows) … I think being on the computer all day at work and then all nite at home is preventing me from getting a good nite’s sleep. I just haven’t been sleeping very good lately. But when I get started on a project, it’s hard to put it away.

:: EDIT (9:34pm) :: I’ve got my weather class working. Woohoo!!! Here’s a sample of what it’s doing so far. Just displaying the data … nothing fancy. I need to work in the icons for the weather conditions. I already know how I want to do that … I just need to actually do it. But I’ll save that for another nite.

Mood: working

Man … it’s April in North Dakota, and it’s 85°F out …

When I watched the noon news, they said that it was warmer up here in North Dakota than it was down in Texas or Florida. Talk about crazy. THAT doesn’t happen very often. Kinda cool actually. I just wish the wind would go down.

And I wish the warmth would stick around for a while. Maybe not in the 80s, but the 70s are good. Tomorrow we’ll be lucky if we hit 60°. We’re supposed to get some rain showers too.

I REALLY wish we would get some big storms today. I saw on the radar that there was one north of Grand Forks … around Grafton. I wish there were some around here (or that gas prices were lower so I could go chasing … ) I haven’t been able to try out my camera on any stormy weather yet. Hasn’t really been any around since I got it … at least not during daylight hours. I’m hoping this summer will give me some opportunities. I may even go chasing around here, if gas doesn’t hit $3/gallon. I won’t go very far though … at least not unless I have someone to go with me. I don’t wanna get lost or drive into the ditch while watching some cool cloud formation … LOL. That would be my kind of luck … LOL.

Mood: hungry

I’d like to know who the person was who named Chicago the “Windy City”. I think whoever that was needs to come up to North Dakota. We’re the “Windy State” up here. And it’s so flat that there’s nothing to stop that wind … it keeps picking up speed. LOL

It would be a gorgeous day again if it wasn’t for the damn wind. It’s 69°F out right now (I think it got up to 73° a bit earlier, but I’m not sure.) but there’s a 21 mph wind. I’d love to go for a walk, but not with that wind. Maybe if it goes down around 6:30 or so I’ll go then. I’ll just have to wait and see.

Mood: hungry

Today was just gorgeous. We hit the lower 60s … I saw it go as high as 62°. It’s still 61° out right now. I decided to go for a walk. It is a bit breezy out … around 15 mph … but I went anyways. I needed to get out of my apartment. And I need the exercise. I took my coat with, but ended up tying it around my waist after about 5 minutes. But at least I had pockets to put my keys and phone in.

I didn’t take my usual path around the golf course ‘cuz I need to work myself back into a routine. I did go on about a 40 minute walk. The breeze did give me a bit of a headache … but it went away before I got home. It was nice. And the exercise actually felt good … As long as it stays nice out, I’m going to start going on walks after I get home from work. But it is April, and this is North Dakota. It’ll probably get crappy and cold again. And there is rain in the forecast for tomorrow. Hopefully we won’t fall back into winter … I really need to get into a routine. I need to drop some pounds. Exactly how much, I don’t know. I can’t remember the last time I stepped on a scale. I don’t like those things. But I do know I have a belly I need to get rid of. Maybe if I slim down and tone up, guys will actually look at me. LOL A girl can dream, can’t she.

Mood: okay

The weather for the past couple of days has been gorgeous … well … yesterday would have been if it hadn’t been for the wind. But the temps have ventured into the 50s and even hit the 60s today. I’m not sure how high it got, but I’m thinking it was around 63° … according to the weather plugin in Firefox.

But I’m not gonna hold my breath. We can get blizzards in April here in North Dakota. But I’m not gonna complain. I’m just glad that all that ice in my garage has melted. I don’t have to use the key to keep the garage door shut anymore … woohoo!!! Found that out last Wednesday.

Mood: blah

Okay … not exactly a whiteout. But it is blowing around … the snow that is. Like I said in my last post, we’re under a blizzard warning ’til tomorrow morning. I thought I’d take a video of it. It’s not the best … it’s looking out through my living room window. And I had to compress it. But it’ll give you an idea of what it’s like here in town. (And I like playing with the video mode of my camera … I’d really hate to be driving around out in the country tonite. That would NOT be fun.

Anyways … you can view the video clip here (it’s embedded in the popup window). [it’s a 14 second video clip that’s 218kb]

Mood: hungry