The witch of November— lyrics from The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Also what I might start calling myself. Anyway, 50 years ago the Edmund Fitzgerald sank.

Will I go back to work soon? Maybe. When I do I will mourn my furlough naps. I don’t usually wear my watch overnight, so my health data is now made of naps.

Thought: next year maybe we should decorate for Halloween in the theme of the Edmund Fitzgerald and then we can leave it up till time to decorate for Christmas.

Spooky Arlene judging the children

Trick or treat y’all 🍷

Getting on StoryGraph has really reignited my interest in reading for leisure. The recommendations plus data viz are just what I need. I’ve head half of these books just this month (thanks government shutdown). If you’re on StoryGraph, find me (same handle). I want to be nosy about your reading. 📖

Well now I have grey-green-dark hair. Before photo for comparison + cat butt.

Margo is zero percent interested in my bag-head

Found ~5 year old hair dye in the bathroom so this is where we are on shutdown day 22.

Furlough activity 80% finished… I have learned I am a speed-run Lego person. Forcing myself to stop to have at least one more day on this one.

Me reading the news notifications on my phone today in particular

Finally made it to Don’t Stress Meowt in OKC. It was everything I dreamed of. I took precisely zero photos in the cat lounge—I was too busy snuggling cats. Enjoy these views from the cafe portion. Look closely for Mr. Pancakes in his hairless glory.

Very interesting!

Tried to treat myself this morning with a dozen Shipley filled donuts. Got home and they are just regular donuts. Day ruined.

Ryan Walters bolts after announcing on cable news (in our studio) he will be stepping down as Superintendent to become CEO of Teacher Freedom Alliance to “destroy the teacher unions”.

Running late so I jumped on a call from home before heading into the office… Arlene is crushed I’m not staying here.

A weird day. Started the morning at the National Weather Center talking to Gov. Stitt. Finished it at @uncannyarthouse.bsky.social watching a sketch show set in the National Weather Center. Loved the show! Therapeutic to laugh at the state of things and enjoy art made by locals.

🚨 Recruiting Two PhD/MS Students 🚨 I am looking to bring on at least two GRAs (M.S. or Ph.D. Level) beginning Spring or Fall 2026 to join our CHAOS research group. Research projects will be related to artificial intelligence and machine learning applications for extreme temperatures and rainfall

Promotion and tenure (P&T) systems rely on external evaluations by arms-length reviewers. Here we find that gender influences the content of these letters... So much so that P&T candidates with more women letter writers were more likely to receive tenure! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Sasha dog found the tiniest turtle in the yard. I reduced him from being tossed across the yard like a ball. He had not come out to say thank you.

Am I the dog or am I the pony? 🫠

Last week: dead mouse in the floor. Yesterday: dried up dead frog in the floor. This morning: stepped on a dead lizard in the floor. Plagues or cats?

Finally had dinner at nonesuch. Was worth it.

Looks like rain It’s so nice to have a window

Just read that AOL is ending dial up service in the next month or so. I grew up in a rural part of WV, and as late as my sophomore year of college (2011-2012) we still had to use dial up. Doesn’t seem that long ago that I was frequently flashing the line to kick someone off.

Happy international cat day! Margo, the cat who is mostly a dog, and Arlene, the tortoiseshell terror, are absolutely deserving of this day.

Set to get less than 4 hrs of sleep ahead of day 1 of a workshop we are hosting. I did sleep probably 80% of all the hours on Sunday so here’s to hoping for the sleep surplus to cancel out the sleep debt.

Mood.

Just fell down a weird internet hole and I think I might be into trains now.

While we were out of town this week this derp got herself skunked. Many products, baths, and a professional groom later, you can see she’s really losing sleep over it. 🦨

Things are great!

I took this photo of Arlene and Sasha yesterday. Thought they were cute.

I’ve been trying to attract blue jays to the house since we moved here because we have an abundance of wasps that just hang out. I put out peanuts and rapidly got wrecked by squirrels. It’s been frustrating. But tonight I saw (mostly heard) a pair of blue jays screaming at cardinals out back!! 🐦

Hell yeah www.news9.com/story/686de4...

CARTOON OF THE MONTH: Putting federal science out of business—since January 20, 2025.

Scienticide www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

If Trump is camp then is Lutnick Trump-camp?

Science 🧪 fair of knowledge lost due to grant terminations. Why isn’t this being live-streamed? How do we - the people - get to watch? nasawatch.com/congress/con...

This guy deliberately downed the News9 radar. This is equal parts troubling and confusing. www.news9.com/story/686c14...

They told me: 'You can tell how well they've bonded by how they fight. If they're just acquaintances, they'll do these gentle taps. If they're best friends... they leather each other.' Beating the crap out of your friend to knock them face first into mud was the ultimate demonstration of love.

It’s week 5 and Ferdinand is on a boat.

Everything is awful, which is not new information, but more people seem to have noticed it. I have nothing to offer on that topic so here is a portrait-mode masterpiece a friend’s toddler captured a couple weeks ago from her car seat (my camera roll is full of Buzz Lightyear).

Wow! Just casually scrolling and there’s Ash, a real human that I know, on the ACLU’s page. Ash has been such a powerful voice for YEARS but in the last year… incredible. One example of Ash’s strength and determination to make the world easier for others: www.newsweek.com/wst-virginia...

I’m laying on my back on the sun-warmed concrete with my feet in the cool pool water listening to thunder with the approaching storms and watching the waves in the clouds change from laminar to shelfy. This is nice.

CLAMPS2 lidar (at the NWC) winds show the low level jet picking up since 00UTC. As the outflow moves south toward Norman it’s neat to see convection initiation invigorate where presumably the LLJ is impinging on the outflow. Watch CLAMPS data yourself: apps.nssl.noaa.gov/CLAMPS/data/...

Sasha is OBSESSED with searching the yard for frogs, toads, and turtles. She is insatiable. Especially turtles. If you don’t stop her in time, she will bat them with her paws, nose them around the yard, pick them up and carry them (gently) in her mouth), or roll around on her back on top of them.

Hard wired into the network and not one, not two, but three options for proving that I am who I am are all failing to function so I can’t access the intranet. INTRA, not inter. Gahhhh 😤

🫶🏼 🙌🏼 🥎 🥎 🥎

200+ scientists are in the middle of a marathon livestream to show why weather and climate science is so important and needs all our help to continue. It is here: wclivestream.com/watch