Events

As of Saturday, Chicago set a new record in gloominess by having no sunshine at all for 17 days in December: Low pressure passed to our north and a cold front swept through our area from the west Saturday. Winter Weather Advisories for 50 to 200 mm of snow were in place from northeast Nebraska through northern Iowa and southern Minnesota into northern Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, while cloudy skies and widely scattered light rain showers prevailed across the Chicago area. But those clouds cut off the...

The brilliant Central Coast morning that produced the photo I posted earlier gave me a hell of a view climbing out of SFO an hour ago: Home in four hours...

...I stopped here one more time this morning: At the moment Chicago's weather isn't too bad. At the moment. But it's still nothing like this. By the way, I've actually reduced the saturation in this photo a bit. The sun was directly behind me and relatively low on the horizon, so the colors in this shot are very close to what I saw.

Chicago has had its least snowfall—specifically, just a trace with nothing measurable—in the past 102 Decembers: Only three Decembers have recorded this little snow since records began in 1884! 1889, 1894 and 1912 hold those numbers. No snow is forecast through the end of the year, but it will be a chilly -9°C on New Year's Eve. And I'm pretty sure no one in Chicago wants a repeat of last year.

I only got 13,000 steps yesterday owing to Christmas Eve dinner and some ill-timed rain. (Perhaps 25,000 may have been too ambitious?) This included two walks around Half Moon Bay State Beach: I even shot some video, in the stiff breeze: Later, we went to Christmas Eve dinner, where poor Roger once again had to wear a Santa suit:

While we're getting ready to celebrate the birth of Baby X this Xmas, links are once again stacking up in my inbox. Like these: Someone made a transit map of Westeros. Someone explained the history of Chinese food and Jewish Christmas. Someone hacked Sony, but Schneier isn't convinced it was North Korea. Someone leaked the CIA's travel guide. Someone bumped uglies with a 737 at LaGuardia. Someone convinced American and United to allow free flight changes today. That might be it for The Daily Parker today.

A friend upgraded my wardrobe. Specifically, I received a real bow tie for my concert tuxedo to replace my ugly clip-on. I am grateful; the clip-on was really ugly. However, the friend may not have realized that I have never tied a bow tie before. And so, last Saturday before our Messiah concert at the Harris Theater, I attempted to learn: Fortunately, one of the other singers helped me out before we went on, so the end result didn't suck too badly: Unfortunately, I had to take it off after the concert....

Yesterday, the majority of weather models forecast a major winter storm over Chicago that was going to snarl traffic, ground airplanes, and make life a living hell for several friends of mine. One of the models had a slightly different prediction, however. Looks like the minority opinion was right: The northbound storm driving Chicago’s Christmas Eve 2014 rainfall is going to have a hard time producing the kind of cooling which would support big snow accumulations. It’s been clear from the range of...

You may have noticed that the photos I've posted lately have unusual aspect ratios and sizes. This is because I have been lazy. Usually, I upload photos from my camera or phone to my laptop, process them with Adobe Lightroom, and crop them to a pleasing 2:3 aspect ratio. Lately, though, I've just shot them through Google Hangouts from my phone. I have little understanding of Google's choices but they seem to be around the byte count and not around the dimensions. Here, for example, is a shot of O'Hare...

I missed this a couple days ago. The Sun-Times stopped by during an Apollo Chorus rehearsal just after Thanksgiving and published a feature on us on the 13th: Well, Chicago’s Apollo Chorus is that type of choir. The members can sing old classics, modern classics and even new standards, and have performed with everyone from Josh Groban to Jackie Evancho. And since December is the holiday season, the chorus — Chicago’s oldest, having been founded in 1872, just after the Chicago Fire — is in full swing....