Brrrrrrrrrrrwah, chikka-ch-bow*

The plague
My house (aka the RaccoonBear City aka RBC) is currently a house of pestilence. Last week both roomie D and long-term houseguest M caught what is likely the flu, or at least some really nasty cold. Roomie D puked and now has a nearly constant cough - seriously, he doesn't go 30 seconds without coughing; M rarely crawls out of bed to venture downstairs, and when he does looks like death warmed over. Both had temperatures that topped out at over 102F. So far neither D's girlfriend J, nor el señor B, nor I have caught the dread virus, although B & I are sporting less severe colds at the moment. Viruses! All the rage here at RBC!

My eyes itch.

Biking in the winter/The crappy weather we are currently experiencing
I am crazy. I am somewhat assuaged by not by not being the only one. But seriously, yesterday was a weird winter-biking day. In the morning it was overcast, maybe even misty, 35F with a gnarly headwind. I was racing a train to all of the intersections as I made my way to PowerFlow class. I beat the train to the first intersection, but it caught me at the next two, thanks in particular to a bunch of asshole drivers who wouldn't let me by. I flipped off at least 80 people, mittens off, both hands. It's been at least a month or two since I got warm enough on a commute to take off my balaclava, unzip my coat, and remove my mittens.

Then I went to go get a haircut in the afternoon and the temp had dropped to ~10F with crazy gusting and this weird, pellet-y snow that stung my poor face, or what was exposed of it anyway. A few pellets even hit my tongue, which really hurt and I'm not sure why my mouth was open. The bike paths/sidewalks/roads, which had been clear in the morning, were now coated in half an inch of the pellet-y snow over sheet ice. Ouch. I decided to walk my bike as traffic was moving so slowly that I could still beat the buses to the capitol square in such a fashion. Then I got bored, and the crunchy stuff on top of the ice seemed to have okay traction, so I switched to biking. White-knuckle material for sure. At one point the wind was blowing my bike UP a hill with no pedaling, and I didn't even consider using my brakes on the sheets of ice. Harrowing indeed, but I made it to my hair appointment just fine and was only a few minutes late.

After the haircut (with Melissa at Chameleon Salon who is the awesomist stylist EVER - give her your business!), a mere hour later, the temperature had dropped well into the negative range and who knows how much further with windchill factored in. Me and the SDB4k took the bus the rest of the way home. Word. I refuse to ride again until we're at least experiencing positive digits in the morning.

*(at least, that's the closest I can come to writing it out) "Dael" - Autechre