We went to last night's game against the Padres at Wrigley. It just never seemed to end:
After trailing 8-0, the Cubs rallied some with home runs from Luis Valbuena, Starlin Castro, David DeJesus and Cody Ransom. But [Cubs starter Edwin] Jackson put them in too deep of a hole to escape, and most of the crowd had departed by the seventh inning of the 3 hour, 28 minute game.
We stayed the whole game, though. The weather was gorgeous: 27°C with a few high wispy clouds, with a stiff breeze out of the south. The wind accounts for the high score; so does the Padres going through their entire lineup—with a lagniappe—in the fifth.
Here's the season so far; let's see if the line moves up at all in the next 136 games:
That's "The Year of the Cub" in Latin. At the moment, that year looks like this:
The numbers—04, 67, 104—refer to the years since the Cubs' last division, league, and World Series championships.
They had to put another digit on it after the 2008 season. My guess is the current 7 digits will last about 33 more years.
At least they've won a few recently, and have gotten back up to .400. I'm going tonight; we'll see if they can make it to .423.
Being a season-ticket holder includes a "Rookie Day" open house at the park. Ours was yesterday. The open house included access to all the stands, the first-base-side warning track, the visitors club house, and the press box:
Visitors club house:
And the right-field wall, up close and personal:
More later or tomorrow.
Did I mention cold and wet? Yeah, it's wet all right:
Tuesday marked April 2013's 11th day of measurable rain. The day's 15.5 mm rain accumulation was enough to put this month's 215 mm tally (late Tuesday night, with rains still falling) into the record books as the wettest April to occur over Chicago's 143-year observational record.
The previous record for most April precipitation here—212 mm—was retired after a 66 year run dating back to 1947.
The new 215 mm monthly total is more than 9 times (939%) the amount of rain which had fallen during April's opening 23 days a year ago (23 mm) and 2.5 times the full month's 86 mm "normal" total.
Add to that, we're running 2°C below normal, and we've seen 41% of our possible sunshine (normal for April is 52%).
The rain has helped Lake Michigan water levels, but not as much as one would expect.
This weekend they're predicting 21°C and sunny, finally. We'll see.
As a large part of my brain noodles on how to get multiple IDPs to work with a single RP, a smaller part of my brain has looked out the window and realized Chicago is having a normally crappy April:
- The are 5-13 after allowing a run in the bottom of the 13th last night in Milwaukee;
- It's
13°C 7°C and raining, which is great because we need the rain and cool weather; and
- ...well, that's all I got right now.
I had a third thing, but SAML got in the way, I guess.
We had a lovely weekend in Chicago, and today the sun is still out. Not like last week, which drenched the state:
Northern and central Illinois saw widespread heavy rains on April 18-19, 2013. As a result, widespread flooding occurred first at the local level and then along major rivers by the weekend. Last year we had the drought; this year we have what I’m calling the “anti-drought”.
Below is the multi-sensor precipitation map for the 7-day period ending April 19, 2013. This map is based on radar-estimated precipitation and calibrated using available raingauges. Some of the heaviest rains fell north of a line between Quincy and Kankakee. Areas in purple reported between 150 and 200 mm, while the areas in the two shades of red were between 100 and 150 mm. Areas to the south of Interstate 70 escaped the heavier rains.
So, yeah. Damp.
Oh, and the Cubs are now 5-12, going into a 3-day series against first-place Cincinnati. So, yeah.
It can happen, if the fielders get complacent after a run-down:
When Braun and Segura both wound up at second base, Segura, as the leading runner, had the right to the bag, so Braun was out when he was tagged by Cubs third baseman Luis Valbuena even though he was standing on the base. However, Valbuenna, though he tagged Segura twice, never tagged him off the base (if you pause the video on the second tag you can clearly see Segura’s left toe on the base), so Segura was able to retreat safely to first base, though he needn’t have done so. He was safe on second.
SI has the video.
The Cubs still lost, because as bad as their fielding was, their hitting was worse. Oh, and manager Dale Sveum got thrown out of the game, too. Awesome.
For five whole days of the past seven, I saw sunlight. Not a little; I saw tons of it. There were rumors of clouds, but mostly, just sunlight.
Since I returned home Tuesday night we've not had any. Instead, we've had this:
Storm totals in just the last 14 hours have gotten up to 125 mm in places, flooding highways and making life a wet hell:
The first expressway closures occurred around 5 a.m. The Edens Expressway was closed between Foster and Touhy avenues and between Winnetka and Willow roads, and the Eisenhower Expressway was shut down in both directions between North Avenue and York Road and westbound at Mannheim Road, Illinois State Police said. The southbound Kennedy Expressway was closed at Addison Street, police said.
As of 9:30 a.m., the Kennedy was open in both directions, though some standing water remained. The Edens was closed in both directions between Lake Street and Dundee Road in the north suburbs, and the northbound Edens was closed at Montrose; the westbound ramp from Interstate 290 to Interstate 88 was shut down, westbound 290 was closed at St. Charles Road, and eastbound 290 was closed at York Road; two lanes were closed on the Bishop Ford northbound between 130th Street and the Beaubien Woods.
Travel times during the morning rush ran at least two hours or longer in some areas.
For my part, both last night and this morning I misjudged approaching squall lines and got a bit damp. Parker, for his part, missed them both completely.
It seems the rain has moved off to the east now as a warm front pushes up through the area. (It's 10°C at O'Hare but 19°C in Valparaiso, 70 km southeast.) The warm front will depart the area later today, just to keep variety going, dragging more rain and cold back through overnight.
We may get drier, warmer weather someday. Someday.
The Chicago Tribune reported this morning that, 8 years into the O'Hare Modernization Project, some nearby residents are horrified to learn they might get more noise:
Residents of Edgebrook, Sauganash, Forest Glen, North Park and other Northwest Side Chicago communities are up in arms over the impending increases in noise pollution, which were forecast in Chicago Department of Aviation environmental impact documents in 2005, the same year the Federal Aviation Administration approved the city's O'Hare runway expansion plan.
In addition to the impact on city residents, some suburban neighborhoods that have been spared from low-altitude jet noise are in store for louder environs.
A major shift in airplane noise patterns, known as noise contours, will take place beginning Oct. 17 when the next new runway — 10 Center/28 Center, located south of the passenger terminals — opens as part of the O'Hare Modernization Program. The addition of the runway will trigger a shift to a mostly eastbound and westbound flow of planes approaching and departing O'Hare, accompanied by reduced use of three diagonally aligned crosswind runways, the FAA said.
Uh, yeah. Airplanes will fly over houses 3 km from O'Hare, just as they have for, oh, 70 years. However, airplanes today are much quieter than even 10 years ago, so the noise footprints have gotten a lot smaller since the environmental study came out in 2005.
Still, airport noise complaints baffle me. No one living under the runway 28 departure path at O'Hare suffers more noise pollution now than in 2003, when the O'Hare Modernization Program kicked off. Why are they just complaining now?
Yesterday American's scheduling and ticketing systems went offline around 11:00 CDT. By noon CDT, the Dallas Morning News had this:
“American’s reservation and booking tool, Sabre, is offline,” American spokeswoman Andrea Huguely said at midday. “We’re working to resolve the issue as quickly as we can. We apologize to our customers for any inconvenience.” (American subsequently absolved Sabre of any blame. ”We apologize to Sabre & customers for confusion.”)
She confirmed that the problem is causing some delays of American flights.
Shortly after, American grounded all of its flights for about three hours before getting its networks talking to each other around 3pm CDT.
I found out about this crash while stepping off the BART at SFO. My dad texted, "Are you affected by the AA ground halt?" Talk about a WTF? moment.
I was affected, but I'm happy to report that (a) I got to SFO shortly before American resolved the problem, and (b) American's gate agents had their crap together and got everyone out as quickly as possible. I was only 30 minutes late arriving at O'Hare.
American hasn't explained what happened yet; the Dallas Morning News has a theory...