The Daily Parker

Welcome to the semi-annual update of the Chicago sunrise chart. (You can get one for your own location at http://www.wx-now.com/Sunrise/SunriseChart.aspx.)

You can get sunrise information for your location at wx-now.com.

In 2011, I:

• took 8,198 photos, including 4,352 in Chicago, 881 in Japan, 588 in Portugal, and 337 in the U.K. (and only 71 of Parker). This is almost as many as I took in 2009 and 2010 combined (9,140), and more than I took in the first 8 years I owned a camera (1983-1991, 7,671).
• flew 115,845 km but drove less than 4,500 km
• visited 5 countries (the UK, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Japan) and 8 states (California, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Indiana, North Carolina, Texas, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) in 35 trips. Sadly, this meant Parker boarded for more than 100 days
• spent more than 186 hours walking Parker, which partially made up for all those days being boarded
• wrote 539 blog entries, with the most consistency in the blog's 6-year history (averaging 1.48 per day with a standard deviation of only 0.11)
• got 2.3 million hits (object views) on the Daily Parker, and 1.7 million on Weather Now, including 47,956 and 181,285 page views, respectively. According to Google Analytics, the blog had 28,613 unique visitors, and Weather Now had 26,539.
• read only 34 books, but as these included the first four of the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, it should count as 46
• started and ended the year in the same place (Duke of Perth, Chicago)
• went to only 8 movies, 3 plays, 3 concerts, and 3 baseball games, which is terribly sad

Oh, and I also got a master's degree. (Almost forgot.)

First photo of the year, in fact:

It's 2012 everywhere from Cairo to points east, and I've got a lot to do between now and tomorrow, so I will postpone whatever end-of-year summaries, year-in-review posts, photos of Parker, and looks forward to next year until tomorrow. Suffice to say, I didn't accomplish everything I'd hoped to do today, this month, or this year, but I'm satisfied. Mostly. And I think 2012 will improve upon 2011, which improved upon 2010, and so on back to 1999, which, for a variety of reasons, hasn't been topped.

So how to make 2012 better than 1999, without moving back to New York, being 13 years younger, and having the confidence and drive that can only come from unbridled hubris riding on a crashing ignorance of one's profession? I'm sure it won't be that difficult. Perhaps more nuanced, though.

Thanks for reading this year. Expect another few hundred posts next year, with more photos, stuff about Parker, rants about the election, and possibly a note here and there about the weather. And expect 2012 to rock, generally.

Not just here, where we're looking forward to 10°C on New Year's Eve to complete a streak of 21 days above normal temperatures,, but also Northern Europe:

Britons getting ready to ring in 2012 can expect highs of up to 15°C after a year of unusually mild weather.

Forecasters said the past 12 months have been the second warmest for the UK after 2006, in which the average temperature reached 9.73°C. The average for 2011 was just a shade lower at 9.62°C.

It comes after the warmest April and spring on record, the second warmest autumn and the warmest October day.

The U.K. also had its warmest temperature in five years on June 27th, when Gravesend, Kent, hit 33.1°C. Pretty soon Britons will need air conditioners.

But there's no anthropogenic climate change happening. None at all.

There is no tomorrow for the island nations of Samoa and Tokelau:

At the stroke of midnight on Dec. 29, time in Samoa and Tokelau will leap forward to Dec. 31 — New Year's Eve. For Samoa's 186,000 citizens, and the 1,500 in Tokelau, Friday, Dec. 30, 2011, will simply cease to exist.

[Samoan] Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sailele Malielegaoi earlier said it would strengthen trade and economic links with Australia, New Zealand and Asia.

Being a day behind the region has meant that when it's dawn Sunday in Samoa, it's already dawn Monday in adjacent Tonga and nearly dawn Monday in nearby New Zealand, Australia and increasingly prominent east Asian trade partners such as China.

"In doing business with New Zealand and Australia, we're losing out on two working days a week," Tuila'epa said in a statement. "While it's Friday here, it's Saturday in New Zealand, and when we're at church on Sunday, they're already conducting business in Sydney and Brisbane."

The islands move from UTC-10:00 to UTC+14:00, and will therefore be the first places on earth to enter 2012.

At my office today, or rather directly above it, workers are installing carpet. The office is in an 1880s-era loft, with very little separating the banging above from my desk below. Add to that a slightly loosened support holding up the HVAC tubing that squeaks every time someone walks past the door (or, for example, pounds on the floor above with sledgehammers), and I'm thinking of jumping out the window.

A moment's reflection suggests tossing someone else out the window, of course, and since the someone in question has a large hammer, I will demur.

I sense a long lunch coming on...

Chicago's Francis Cardinal George, the highest-ranking member of the Roman Catholic Church in Chicago, apparently thinks gays are like murderous racists:

George’s initial comments came in connection with a controversy over whether next summer’s gay pride parade would interrupt morning services at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in the Lakeview neighborhood.

“Organizers (of the pride parade) invited an obvious comparison to other groups who have historically attempted to stifle the religious freedom of the Catholic Church,” the cardinal said in a statement issued Tuesday. “One such organization is the Ku Klux Klan which, well into the 1940s, paraded through American cities not only to interfere with Catholic worship but also to demonstrate that Catholics stand outside of the American consensus. It is not a precedent anyone should want to emulate.”

Cardinal, I think you're outside of the American consensus in so many ways, it really doesn't take much to demonstrate this point. However, given the KKK's history of murder, thuggery, intimidation, voter suppression, and did I mention murder?, and the Gay Pride movement's history of being murdered, being beaten in the streets, being intimidated, and did I mention being murdered?, perhaps you want to change the comparison. In fact, opposition to gay rights, murder, intimidation, and so on, is a common theme in Catholic Church history and...well...I think you can see where this is going.

Any comment from the Church?

The City of Chicago replaced a bridge on a principal north-south street and opened it up to traffic a week ago...but then it closed the next bridge south for five months:

The Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) on Friday is opening the new Halsted Street Bridge over the Chicago River North Branch Canal, which has been closed since November 30, 2010 for reconstruction. The new tied-arch bridge will feature two full traffic lanes in each direction—up from the current one lane in each direction—as well as marked bike lanes in each direction, a configuration that will improve traffic flow and safety for motorists and bicyclists.

In addition to reconstructing the bridge, CDOT resurfaced Halsted from south of Division Street to North Branch Street and replaced 20 streetlights. CDOT will add 94 architectural lighting elements by the end of January 2012 and will also resurface the intersection of Division and Halsted in the Spring. The cost of the project will be $13.6 million.

As this bridge opens, CDOT will move to close the Halsted Street Bridge over the North Branch of the Chicago River to start a major repair project that will be completed by May 2012.

Seriously? They couldn't leave the road open for a week?

Here's the affected area:

After almost exactly 5 days (actually 5 days and 20 minutes), I'm unpacking, laundering, rehydrating, and figuring out where I put the gifts I didn't get a chance to hand out before leaving.

Regular updates resume presently.

Oh, and: