outskirts: life and times in charlottesville

Today pretty much sums up the village. It is raining for the first time in many moons and the power has been off for a good bit of the day. It has been going off for 15 minute spurts since around 11am. I was on the historic downtown mall getting a latte and half of the mall had no power. As soon as I had my latte the other half of the mall lost power. From this map, looks like up to 25% of the village has no power. No other place in the commonwealth is this short on juice. I won’t even be able to make my green goo if this keeps up.

Outskirts may have to go down for a break if we don’t get power back at some point….

Why can’t this village modernize? Why can’t they buy a new mule? I guess people like this historic way of life.

Update (3:45pm): It also seems as if the C-Ville water main has broken, and there are many accidents on pretty much every road in the area. Gotta love holidays here in Virginia. I sure hope we get power back today. Sirens can be heard throughout the city. Earlier there were three fire trucks on the downtown mall at Rapture (which tries to catch on fire at least once every month).

Update 2 (4pm): We now have a freezing rain advisory in effect. Of course it will be sunny and 65 on Friday. I hope we have power back by then…especially for those merchants that need to sell to those idiots that will go out for green Friday (more appropriate than black).

Update 3 (5pm): It sure would be nice to have some electricity. Outskirts continues to suck energy from the UPS…which won’t stop beeping. Time may be running out. One of these days I have to yank that speaker out.

I love Apple. The iPod changed music, and having a Mac is joy. I also like their stock. See that cute little red dot? That is when I bought a few shares

I sure hope iTV and iPhone are good products. I also hope you all head out and buy a new iPod and iMac for the holidays.

I really wonder why anyone would call a few hour shutdown of I-81 unexpected. Basically this highway that consists of bumper to bumper semis combined with Virginians gets shut down at least once each week due to collisions. Politicians discuss changes, but nothing ever happens. I wish they would stop talking about it and just keep on taking kickbacks. Be a Goode Virginian.

After years of delay the new ACAC will be opening tomorrow morning. I did the pre-opening tour and was rather impressed. The pools won’t be opening until “sometime in the winter” (so I’m guessing 2009). The most amazing fact is that they will now be open on Sunday. I bet they had to get permission from the tribal elders for that. I’ll be popping by tomorrow for a workout.

The Fins continue to roll along and despite having a total of -4 yards of rushing during the game managed to beat the Vikings. If Jason Taylor doesn’t get the Defensive MVP this year there is something wrong with how such things are determined. Can the Fins win another 6 in a row? Not bloody likely…but always keep dreaming.

On the college front it was sad to see Michigan lose yesterday at OSU, but in the BCS rankings Michigan has held on to the #2 spot, so there is a chance the national championship game will be a rematch of that game on neutral turf. That would be quite an event. Hope it happens.

Update: To top it all off, Indy lost, so the perfect season of the Fins lasts for at least one more year.

Looks like the top hotel in the area which sits right on the historic “tourist trap” downtown mall of C-Ville had a bit of gun play going on last night.

(image from WCAV site)

NBC29 also has a story on this one.

Welcome to the start of the holidays. Speaking of which, the Salvation Army people have already been ringing the bells on the mall. Perhaps someone just snapped as the bell slowly sucked them dry of sanity. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

I now have 9 days in a row with no work. What will I do with all my time? Read, clean, discard stuff, geek out, take pictures, rip on the village (I’ve got some fun posts planned), sleep, watch football (sad day…BO SCHEMBECHLER: 1929-2006), run 5k’s, buy a spare hard drive, maybe buy a nano, clean (yeah…I know it was listed already), continue to improve my green goo recipe (soylent green!), catch up on bills, catch up on 3 year old emails, get my iMac up to snuff on bookmarks and such, laundry, change the survey question on this blog, eat some turkey, watch the Fins, catch some movies, and….anything else? Any suggestions?

Should I do all that…or just sleep the entire time? Should I not aim so high? Hmm…

I woke up too early this morning since work was poking the back of my mind. Too much to do before the end of this year. Ugh. The day was sunny and warm so I figured I’d better get out for a run, since winter may get here one of these days (I’d give it a 20% chance of occurring this year based on the past eight).

I was just going to do the short run but I was feeling pretty good so I headed off for my long run with my “hill section” thrown in as a bonus. A bit more than 8.5 miles. I hadn’t done that full run for quite awhile. Now I’m pretty whipped.

Two shows that have rather high quality, but few viewers, have been renewed for the rest of this season. These are Friday Night Lights and Studio 60 (my personal favorite). Both will probably be moving to new timeslots after the holidays.

Another viscous rumor was circulating that said The O.C. had been cancelled, but FOX denied that one. Just because its ratings are in the sink does that mean it should be cancelled? OK..maybe they should have stopped after the very first season, which was an amazing season.

If you are interested in a lengthy article about two shows (30 Rock and Studio 60) that both cover the same subject you can read all about this battle of network stars.

It is now official…the ABC16 analog signal is up and running and they have a lovely posting about it. They apologize to those analog viewers who sent in kind messages. Of course, they say nothing to us digital viewers that won’t watch analog signals. Maybe our requests for modern technology aren’t kind enough.

Please give us a digital signal. Please give us a HD feed. Pretty please with sugar on top?

Is that kind enough?