Tomorrow is, quite unexpectedly, October. Though the official temperature at O'Hare has not hit 32°C since August 16th, our weather has remained stubbornly summer-like. The 16-day forecast suggests the weather will continue as far as the model can predict, and may see 32°C as early as this weekend. That will make my Friday plans a bit more challenging as my Brews & Choos buddy has gotten over Covid and we're all set to walk to Lake Bluff then.
For my part, I am experiencing a very rare side effect of the Moderna MRNA vaccine: a persistent, metallic taste on the tip of my tongue. Its incidence is apparently something approaching less than 1 in 10,000, but it appears to be harmless and to clear up on its own. I have never had this side-effect from the Pfizer vaccine. I will request Pfizer again next year. Bleah. I'll let everyone know if I start growing a giant spike protein on my forehead.
Meanwhile, the OAFPOTUS has threatened to send 100 more troops to Chicago, a city which has something like 12,000 sworn police officers already. But it's kind of hard to take the regime seriously when this sort of thing happens. Or this sort of thing. Or this sort of thing.
As Joe Biden said five years ago yesterday, "Will you shut up, man?"
As planned, Cassie and I walked a lot yesterday: 13 km total, in 2¼ hours. The temperature at Inner Drive Technology WHQ got up to 26.9°C, and 30.6°C officially at O'Hare; i.e., a warm, July day, except for the sun setting just past 6:30 pm.
As good as yesterday was for me, and however great it was for you, I guarantee Cassie's day was better. Did you get to splash in a kiddie pool?
By the time we'd walked 11½ kilometers, and plopped ourselves at Spiteful Brewing, Cassie did what she always does after lots of exercise:
And, despite spending 7 continuous hours outside in beautiful weather, I still managed to get GitHub Copilot running the ChatGPT 4.1 card to write some pretty good integration tests for what will become The Daily Parker's replacement for BlogEngine, which replaced DasBlog almost exactly 10 years ago, which replaced my own custom code almost exactly 10 years ago. There seems to be a pattern here...
Cassie and I are about to spend the next 8 or so hours outside. The official temperature at O'Hare hit 29.4°C (85°F) a few minutes ago, and it's 25.8°C (78.4°F) at Inner Drive Technology World HQ.
Just for comparison, the normal high temperature from July 11th to July 17th is 29.3°C.
We're in no danger of setting a record high temperature today—that was 33°C set in 1971—but yes, I can tell you it feels like July, just with a lower dewpoint (12.2°C at O'Hare, compared with an average of 20.8°C this past July).
Still: I'll take it. Looking forward from the last weekend in September, I don't see too many more sit-outside-with-a-beer days in 2025. But right now, Cassie and I have a date with a dog park.
A few weeks ago I gathered up the dewpoint statistics for Inner Drive Technology WHQ to show that, yes, this summer really sucked. I promised the final numbers after summer officially ended Sunday night, and here they are:
|
Jun 1 to Aug 31 (UTC)
|
2024
|
2025
|
|
Avg temperature
|
22.6°C
|
23.1°C
|
|
Avg dewpoint
|
17.9°C
|
18.7°C
|
|
(June)
|
16.8°C
|
16.8°C
|
|
(July)
|
18.9°C
|
20.8°C
|
|
(August)
|
18.4°C
|
18.4°C
|
|
Total days dewpoint ≥ 20°C
|
27
|
42
|
|
Total readings dewpoint ≥ 20°C
|
3,791
(33.5%)
|
5,856
(45.0%)
|
|
Total readings
|
11,317
|
13,009
|
The average dewpoint for the summer and for August both dropped a lot in the last 10 days of the month. August 24th to 31st had an average dewpoint of just 12.8°C, while for the first two thirds of the month we had a tropical 20.5°C. Those 8 autumn-like days ending the summer made a huge difference.
As if to underscore that we're now officially in autumn, a cold front is pushing through the area. It's still 22°C at IDTWHQ; the overnight forecast has the temperature steadily dropping to 11°C by sunrise. If that happens, it'll be the coolest weather we've had since May 31st (9°C).
After a lovely weekend that included not one but two long walks with Cassie, not to mention the only baseball game I've attended this season and what is likely to be the last of 10 consecutive days and nights with the A/C off and the windows open, work has returned.
I'm mulling a number of different topics to attack this month, but first I have to finish the massive storage locker reorganization I began June 15th. I'm happy to say it looks like I'll have reduced the volume of my own and my mom's things in the storage locker by close to 40%, while at the same time bringing some long-overdue order to the remainder.
After winning 9 straight on the road for the first time since 1998, the New York Yankees (76-61, 3 GB) lost to the Chicago White Sox (49-88, 30.5 GB) yesterday at Rate Field in Chicago. And yet, it was a beautiful day for a baseball game!
My cousin got the tickets for $32 each, and they came with a hot dog, chips, cookie, and bottled drink. Each. He also said he popped for a 10-ticket package, good for any home games next season (except against the Cubs), for $14 each. Desperate times!
We also discussed why they oriented Rate Field southeast, which, as you can see in the photo above, has no view whatsoever. The original Comiskey Park pointed northeast so that fans sitting in the equivalent upper-deck seats we had yesterday would have seen the skyline:
Rate Field, which opened as "New Comiskey Park" in 1991, ended what my cousin and I call the "Ugly Years." My least-favorite parks on the 30-Park Geas were built between 1962 and 1991: Shea Stadium, Dodger Stadium, Kauffmann Stadium, Oakland Coliseum, and Tropicana Field. (Oddly, Angel Stadium was also built in 1966, but it has a beautiful view that makes up for the clunky architecture.)
I could go on about Mid-Century and Brutalist architecture at length, but I'd rather go play outside. Autumn has arrived, and the weather is perfect!
Meteorological summer ends in just a few hours, so this weekend I'm spending lots of time outside. Today, unfortunately, Cassie can't come with me. So yesterday, she and I left the house at 1:15 and didn't get home until 9:15. She got almost 3 hours of walks (including this 8.7-km hike to the Horner Park DFA), tons of pats, lots of treats, and extra kibble for dinner. And perfect weather.
She also met new friends:
And had some time to chill while I read my book:
Isn't she pretty?
Like I said, she can't come with me today as my cousin got me a ticket to the Yankees game at the minor-league park on the South Side. There's a chance the Yankees could win their 10th straight on the road this afternoon, so I'll be cheering them on. (For the record, the Yankees are my 27th-favorite team. The team they're playing is my 29th-favorite team. The Mets are 28th and the Cardinals are 30th. It makes sense if you grew up on the North Side of Chicago in the 1970s.)
Only 14 hours of summer left...
The forecast today looks perfect: 21°C under sunny skies. Perfect for a Brews and Choos trip! And while one of the stops will be to a brewery that could under no circumstances be called "craft," the other stop will take us to a brewery incubator suspiciously close to Wrigley Field.
Fitting, then, that Crain's reports today about how craft breweries have had to evolve to stay in business:
After a decade of unbridled growth, the industry hit a rough patch in the years following the pandemic. Ten percent of the state’s roughly 300 craft breweries closed between 2022 and 2023. Consumers did not return to taprooms after COVID restrictions lifted. Retail beer sales sagged as people turned toward wine, spirits and canned cocktails. The price of ingredients, like grain and aluminum cans, skyrocketed, but people will only pay so much for a beer. Craft breweries that took out big loans to survive the pandemic could not pay them back.
The moment proved to be a crucible. In need of additional revenue, the survivors evolved. They rolled out non-alcoholic options, food menus and THC-infused beverages. In aid, Illinois introduced a new brewer license category that allowed breweries to sell wine and spirits in addition to beer. To stay afloat now, craft breweries must look a lot more like Brother Chimp and a lot less like the taprooms of the 2010s that sold nothing but their own beer.
As craft breweries’ business models have evolved over the past couple of years, their numbers have improved, said Ray Stout, executive director of the Illinois Craft Brewers Guild. Only four craft breweries in the state closed between Jan. 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025. In that same period, 16 breweries opened or expanded.
By Stout’s count, Illinois now has 308 breweries. That’s a record high for the state’s almost $2.9 billion industry.
Beneath those improving numbers, though, the headwinds remain. Craft beer sales in stores are down about 4% compared to a year ago, according to data from market research firm NielsenIQ. The average price for a case was up about 2%.
And would you just look, the article goes into detail about our second stop!
This weekend, I expect to finish a major personal (non-technical) project I started on June 15th, walk 20 km (without Cassie), and thanks to the desperation of the minor-league team on the South Side of Chicago, attend a Yankees game. It helps that the forecast looks exactly like one would want for the last weekend of summer: highs in the mid-20s and partly cloudy skies.
I might have time to read all of these things as well:
Meanwhile, my birthday ribs order got delayed. One of the assistant butchers backed into a meat grinder, so they got behind in their work. He was the biggest ass in the shop until he recently got unseated, so I don't feel too bad for making him the butt of my jokes.
G'nite.
The temperature at Inner Drive World HQ bottomed out at 14.6°C at 6:35 this morning. It was last this cool on June 5th at 8:18 CDT, just under 81 days ago.
I like summer, I really do. And I recognize that the overnight low at O'Hare this morning (12.8°C) was a bit below normal for August 25th (17.8°C). Still, I didn't sleep with the windows open for 22 days, which may be a (summer) record. That's too long.
The next few days should remain unseasonably (but delightfully) cool before it gets warm again after Labor Day.