They were talking of 24+ hours of solid winds in the
20s and 30s, with gusts of 50 and up, and as I noted,
up on the ledge everything's a bit amplified. It's been
18 hours, and nothing is abating. We actually got a
splash yesterday afternoon, though it evaporated almost
immediately, and nothing registered down below.

==
The wind howled mercilessly all night, and as most of the
windows are single-paned (only sissies install double-paned
windows in California), the whiparound caused pressure
changes and the only ear-popping that I've experienced
since November. Lilli said, well, could be worse, we
could be in Cheyenne. I begged to differ. These are the
forecasts for Cheyenne and here, respectively.

 Sunny, with a high near 51. Windy, with a west wind 30 to
 35 mph, with gusts as high as 55 mph.

 A chance of showers. Mostly sunny, with a high near 61.
 Windy, with an east wind 35 to 40 mph, with gusts as high
 as 60 mph. Chance of precipitation is 50%. New
 precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch
 possible.

Lilli doesn't know, but she's likely not to get to
watch the inauguration, because there's a power out
scheduled for soon into the afternoon. I guess she
could look at it on Facebook or something, but it
wouldn't be the same. I thought about having an early
lunch, but I don't really need any lunch.

==
P.S. Lilli would have missed her TV anyhow, as she had
a 9:15 for her S2 shot and said she'd be right back,
and I said ha. It took her two hours. She must have
known about the electric company's nefarious plans,
because came back shortly thereafter bearing peculiar
tributes ... a Big Mac and a quarter pounder with
cheese, which were extremely salty and quite a bit
worse than I remember them from my dissipated youth. 
I asked her why she had gotten them, as though she
likes McDonalds, she has always avoided the local one
because it's famous for being bad. But they were
advertising 2 sandwiches for $6, and it was right near
where they were giving the shots (I'm in a lower tier
than she so can't get one, though also sadly I am not
in a lower tier for hamburgers and so qualified for
one). We split the burgers, and I made such a face that
Lilli suggested that I just abandon my share, which I
should have done, as it would have been easy to just
define it as "not food" to bypass my aversion to waste.
As it was, I was off my feed for the rest of the day and
really didn't want to cook, let alone eat.

==
Also nearby was Stater's, so I had asked her to get
juice and whatever she wanted me to make for supper.
This turned out to be 4 lb of baby backs at $5/lb (you
know how I feel about paying as much for bones as for
meat, but TWICE as much?) and little samplers of three
kinds of sausage, because I'd mentioned that sausage
would go well in my ragu/sugo. She got longaniza, 
calabrese, and pepper and onion, luckily only a quarter
pound of each, unluckily $4.69 to 5 a pound and none
being what I'd envisioned with my red sauce.

I rubbed the ribs, which actually were reasonably
trimmed and decent-looking and -smelling, with salt,
celery salt, sugar, garlic powder, mustard, ancho, and
El Avion brand Spanish smoked paprika, which was tasty
but on the bitter side. Foiled them up and slammed them
in at 212 for 3 hr and meanwhile took a nap. The smells
were okay if not nuts-driving when I got up, so I took
them out and let them rest while concocting a slightly
less sweet than usual ketchup and cider vinegar sauce
that had most of the above seasonings plus a little
thyme and a small tot of Wright's. An hour at 350 with
a potato for her, and the smells actually turned good.
The meat turned out pretty well, and I ate one rib with
pleasure but almost gagged when dealing with Lilli's
left-behinds - she is one of those won't-let-her-teeth-
touch-bone people, so half the meat remains unscathed, and 
I have to yadda yadda. I'd given her two ribs, quite meaty, 
and she actually ate maybe 4 oz of meat between them so 
will not starve this night. Oh, yeah, two things I forgot 
to mention. She has decided she hates cumin (my go-to spice
for barbecue, chili, etc.), so I have to be careful with
that and didn't use any at all this day. She also
admitted to me, after all these years, that she likes
falling off the bone ribs, which I guess would make sense,
because of the teeth thing, but she was always a good
sport about it before, accompanying me on multiple trips
to Houston, Austin, Dallas, Lockhart, Taylor, and Kansas
City, with single barbecue-centric jaunts to Memphis,
Nashville, St. Louis, and elsewhere, with none of these
deal-breaking peculiarities coming out until now.

So why ribs at all, ever?

P.S. One really strange things about liquid smoke. You
put a little on, and it provides a mild somewhat
attractive hickoriness, but the smell is more pronounced
two rooms away and two hours later.

More tastes: Ocean Spray brand blueberries, product of
Chile, imported by the Oppenheimer Group (Seattle) under
license from Ocean Spray Inc. What can I say besides
Do Not Buy. Starchy and tasteless with a strange mixed
artificial fruit aroma that reminds one of bananas or
maybe apples.

On the other hand, Razzle grapes are back; the season here
in California is well and truly over (the last native ones
were pretty bad), and now they're coming from Peru. Sort
of interesting - nicely crisp, sort of sweet, extremely
puckeringly tart. Not bad at all, just peculiar.