all about the weather

People say Milwaukee is a beautiful city.
I did not have a chance to prove that saying even though I was there for 5 days.
All I gained were great introductory knowledge of fMRI in the Medical College and highly improved sudoku skill in the airport.
All I could share here with you is about the weather.

When I left Newark on Wednesday, it was 80 degree. I was in summer clothing. When I arrived in Milwaukee, it was 40 degree. I could not wait outside for the shuttle.

I thought I would have a chance to tour around the town on Saturday since the course was over at 4pm. By the time as the bus dropped us back to the hotel, the sky was darkly covered with clouds, and the air was sweating. I gave up my tourist plan and stayed in my room.
Soon, the storm came. Luckily, I am not a TV person, and the internet was working fine. The TV was on all night, but the signal was not. When the TV was saying something, it meant the weather was better than a minute ago. When the TV was silent, it meant that a thunder just scared that particular radio frequency away.

I called the front desk to schedule a shuttle to drive me to the airport in the morning. I asked if 11am departure from the hotel could allow me to get on the plane by 1pm. The lady was like "It'll be fine, and who knows if your flight will not be delayed. The weather doesn't look good."
So I checked my flight status online on a hourly basis.

I checked in and went to the gate. One guy -- shaved head, glasses, yellow wrist band, striped polo shirt, physically fit -- came to another guy who sat beside me and asked if he borrowed the newspaper from him. "Can I borrow the paper? I will return it to you. Well... I may come to borrow it again because my flight to Newark was just canceled."
"Canceled?" I asked?
"You better go there and ask for a standby for the next flight."
I did. The next flight was scheduled to fly at 3-ish.
Around 3-ish, the announcement said the flight was delayed to 5-ish.
Around 5-ish, I felt lucky to get a seat. I looked around and did not find the paper-borrower who first told me about my canceled flight. I wanted to thank him. (If you happened to fly from Milwaukee to Newark last weekend and matched the description above, please let me thank you.)
Being afraid that my luggage was not going to get on the same plane, I asked the clerk "Are you sure my luggage will fly with me?" "Yes." "Are you sure?" "Yes, I am sure."
I did not believe her. She didn't key in anything to the computer. She assigned me a seat by hand writing on my stand-by ticket.
It was 10 minutes before the departure time. I shut up and swallowed my concern and boarded.
From my window, I could see all the luggage. I saw mine on the ground. The worker loaded every bag but mine. As I was about to knock the window and shout, he noticed my bag and uploaded it. Now I smiled. I felt the trip was going to be fine.

Around 7-ish, the captain made an executive decision: let's get back to the gate. That's right, we sat in the plane for two hours, and the control center of Newark just refused to send us a welcome message.
The weather in Milwaukee was cleared up, but the storm moved to the east. According to the captain, it was not safe to fly through Pennsylvania at that moment.
The stewardess was joking, "Welcome to Milwaukee, again. Please don't leave the concourse in case we get a green light and fly anytime. But I am going to leave. I am starving."
She left. The stores in the concourse were all closed by 8pm. We were starving and not leaving.
Finally, around 10-ish, the flight was officially canceled. All the airports near New York City were closed down because of the weather.
Not to make our lives worse, they rebooked everyone to a newly-created flight schedule leaving around 7-ish in the morning. Let me explain why this was not to make our lives worse. All flights to Newark on Monday were fully booked.

I decided to stay in the airport.
After the rough night full of internet chatting and sudoku solving, I passed out during the morning flight, which was on time.
Newark hadn't changed but it was 100 degree.

I sat in my room, sweating. It was like a typical summer day in Taipei.
After a quick nap, I went to work. Yeah... work is fantastic. At least it was cooler there than home.
Why don't I turn on AC home?
I don't like AC in general. I couldn't even if I wanted to. When driving back from work, (the same day I arrived home from Milwaukee after the funny cancel-delay-cancel waiting 24 hours), my favorite jazz radio was going on the hourly news report. It said that the power was out in all the Oranges at least for two hours.
It was right. No power. I was not afraid things would go bad in my fridge. Only air and a huge bottle of maple syrup were stored there.
I turned on my battery-powered radio, listening to jazz, reading WIRED by the window. It was hot.

Today I bought a small "breezing machine" aka fan for my computer. I can sweat and melt, but my computer can't.


Hello, summer.