Speakeasy forum: Weather Hits Chicago

I talked to my Aunt in Glen Ellen ( near O'hare) and she said her area looks like a disaster area. Just south of me a couple of miles the same. My sister in Indiana is getting hammered with high winds and heavy thunderstorms, but it just skirted around us here south of the loop, Man am I glad.

Is that weird ! My neighbors and I were yukin' it up in the back yard having a bbq, ( made this Bacon Bomb) , and we had no idea what was going on just a couple of miles away. ... p.s , if ya want to see a Bacon Bomb check this video out. It was kinna fun to make. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1IiUAtoNBk&feature=relmfu
Digger

is always a Weber, that old one works just as well as the new ones. They never retire! ..... Digger

cook over anything but charcoal. I see that blob of meat takes 4 hours so I have to wonder if he had to replenish the coals now and then. I suppose adjusting the vents to minimum opening would sustain the charcoal for longer but he's also cooking in the snow. I've done that but the fire is much more difficult to light and keep lit. His grill appears to be a bit newer than mine as I have only the tray type ash catcher. I use indirect cooking on such as chicken and sometimes a mix of direct/indirect with other meats but I've never considered cooking anything as big as a meatloaf.

BTW, my wife's maiden name is Weber and I have a niece who lives somewhere in the Mc Henry or Fox Lake area who works for Weber BBQ. I'll need to check to see if she gets good employee discounts if my trusty rusty old kettle ever gives out.

in a crock pot. Put your base flavorings in with the raw meat and the BBQ sauce at or near the end.

Who'd a thought SE would degrade into becoming the cooking channel.

That recipe sounds less safe than injecting lard directly into your coronary arteries.

Some have better gall bladders and some have worse. Some have more gall and some have less.

sorry, Christmas. It was icy and cliche`, cliche` windy, and the drive in was a white knuckle drive with trucks throwing mud onto the windshield and eventually an empty windshield washer reservoir and nowhere to pull off on the adjustable expressways they had then with moveable barriers to suit the time of day. My Aunt and Uncle's home was in Glencoe near where they filmed the first Home Alone. My uncle was a VP with A.C.Neilsen. They moved to CA when he retired, San Mateo, or are there two t's?

Chicago has always been the home of amazing weather, so cold in the winter, and so hot in the summers, but this latest spate of tornado like events has been very worrisome.

My very best to you Digger, and hope the bad stuff continues to miss you.

Now up here, in an unremarkable corner of Toronto where a friend lives, he's been dealing with Microbursts for the last 10 years. He's lived in the family homestead (not kidding, an 1834 stone farmhouse on the banks of the Humber River) for 30+ years, but in the last 10 he's been losing trees to extreme weather. Thankfully no damage to the house in all this, but that's just good luck. He lost an entire Garden set which was picked up and deposited more than a quarter mile away, but a stone farmhouse is pretty impervious to the travails of winds. It even survived Hurricane Hazel in 1954 when the Humber topped out at 20 feet above flood level, or so he and the photographs tell me. The house was about 20 feet higher than the flood.

Rob

Just got a severe Thunderstorm Watch for the local area until 2:00 am tomorrow.

Let's hope his isn't as bad as Friday's storms !!!



What's worse? A "watch" or a "warning" ? We got both last friday.

one was relatively mild. A large percentage of the city is still without power and restoration will take a week or better. A plane full of Texas based technicians arrived yesterday to help as the local guys can't do it. This has happened in the past. I'm among the fortunate. All I've lost is my land line...yes, they still make those and I've kept one. I've been having some trees taken out over the years and now I will probably consider the last two on my property as being candidates for removal. They're overgrown and too close to the house for comfort. One large spreading maple has some good sized broken branches still caught after the Friday storm. These could be blown into the windows in another storm. They're too high to reach from the ground without a 30" pole and I'm not the tree climbing monkey I once was.

I'm now beginning to believe some things I remember hearing about how people build their houses. First, they dig a swimming pool (basement) and put a house on top of it. Then they plant a forest around themselves for love of shade. Seems dumb to me now.

for a Magic Jack "Plus" which hooks directly to my router on FIOS. I switched to Double Play with Verizon instead of the Triple, ended up saving over $400 per year, closer to $500. I've not regretted it at all and kept my old phone number too. I plugged the MJP between the router and a wall jack, then disconnected the line to outside since it was grounding out the system, which allowed all my phones in the house to work as before. Only 4 of the house phones are still on wire inside and one of those is a 4 set DECT 6 system, so the MJP is able to power the phone wiring in the house, which surprised me. I was scared it would burn the MJP to power the house wiring.

And it kept going for over 12 hours when the power went out. I'm not sure how long it does work in total but it's a long time. This is built into the MTA box so you don't need to add any UPS or other battery.
Bob

Since we've had several outages over the years that have required 3 to 8 days to get service restored, that wouldn't help. Eventually I'll need a cell but I still prefer the sound quality of a good land line. When I was working, I needed to contact customers and was of the opinion that phone time with them should be "sit down" time dedicated to their issues and not done with some poorer quality mobile device while I might be engaged in other activities as well. It was a matter of courtesy. I'll keep the land line for now and add a cell for emergency use when and if the price gets a bit friendlier.

I pay $100 per year for more minutes than I ever use and mostly leave in my van for on road or emergency use.