From a Special Weather Statement courtesy of NOAA:

A PERIOD OF UNSEASONABLY COOL WEATHER IS FORECAST ACROSS ALL OF NORTH TEXAS THROUGH THE WEEKEND. TEMPERATURES WILL BE 15 TO 20 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL FOR THE PERIOD FRIDAY THROUGH SUNDAY AS A CANADIAN AIR MASS SETTLES ACROSS MOST OF TEXAS.

BEGINNING SATURDAY MORNING…THERE WILL BE SEVERAL MORNINGS WITH TEMPERATURES IN THE 30S. WIDESPREAD FREEZING TEMPERATURES ARE NOT FORECAST AT THIS TIME.

ACROSS WESTERN PARTS OF NORTH TEXAS…TEMPERATURES MAY BE COLD ENOUGH FOR LIGHT SNOW TO MIX WITH RAIN SATURDAY NIGHT AND SUNDAY MORNING. NO SNOW ACCUMULATIONS ARE EXPECTED.

Don’t get me wrong.  Wintry precipitation is nothing new for those of us in this part of the country despite how much that fact surprises people who don’t live here, but it’s a bit out of the ordinary this late in the year to have snow mentioned in the forecast.

We’ll only be a degree or two above freezing a few times between now and Sunday night.  There’s a chance of rain covering that entire span of time.  I’d love to see a bit of winter weather visit us, although I know it wouldn’t amount to much.

Nevertheless, the predicted temperatures for the next several days are more reminiscent of December through February than they are of April.  Especially in Texas!

[Update] So you know what’s possible here, Dallas can get snow from October through April.  That information comes from NOAA’s DFW Annual Summary of Normal, Means, and Extremes.  I’m not holding my breath on seeing any over the next several days, but sometimes it helps to know what can happen—or what has happened in the past.

I’ve re-added my personal copyright notice to all of my RSS feeds.  I’ve discovered several sites using my feeds to generate income via Google’s ad services (possibly others as well).

But it’s not just me they’re stealing from.  The sites I’ve discovered thus far appear to be pulling feeds from all over the place in order to use AdSense and AdWords for income.  That’s a major copyright infringement.

I’ve already contacted Google and the hosting services for the sites in question, and now I’m going through checking all of the logs for my content to see if this is happening elsewhere.

Meanwhile, I’ve put the copyright notice back on all of my feeds to ensure it’s pulled along with the content (prior to FeedBurner retrieving the info).  It helps to have a common phrase to search for in these cases, and that happens to be one that I can control and append to every post before it leaves my servers.

As you may recall, I start back to work this coming Monday after having been unemployed for more than a year.  I anticipate returning to the daily grind will impact my blogging; therefore, I want to give you an idea of what I think will happen.

I doubt I’ll be able to maintain the volume of posting I’ve done for the past few years.  Perhaps that will be a temporary impact, or perhaps not.  I simply don’t know.  What I do know is that initially I will be unable to maintain the pace I’ve kept for so long.  Once I get back into the groove of the corporate world, I might be able to kick it up a notch or two.  We’ll see.

What won’t be happening is a complete stoppage.

Random Thoughts and Vocabularium will continue daily as these are practically mechanical endeavors (save the rare times when I choose a specific Random Thought instead of allowing the database to spit out an arbitrary selection).

In addition to those regulars, however, I will leave the rest to chance.

I assume there will be at least one photo post each day.  It’s probable I will vacillate between pictures of The Kids and pictures of everything else if it boils down to one such post each day.  I’ll play it by ear, though, and really will let inspiration guide me.

Stories and creative writing will continue based on inventiveness and timing.  I’ve never really scheduled or planned those as much as just let them happen when they so wanted.

Although I never actually called it such, I doubt it will be a problem to maintain my “Movie Monday” agenda.  Because I’ve always tried to post at least one video each week, I have a reminder set each Monday.  Barring unforeseen circumstances, I don’t see that changing, although as has been the case in the past, whether they’re posted on Monday or some other day of the week is pure chance and nothing more.

I’ve worked hard to generate original entries every week for each of Friday Ark, Carnival of the Cats, and Weekend Cat Blogging.  We’ll see if I can keep that up.  It wouldn’t surprise me if I start submitting the same post to more than one of them during any given week (something many others do but that I try to avoid).

Nature posts are generally photo posts and likely will be governed by however the image schedule works out.  I assume that to mean several each week, if not one per day.

To be quite honest, I’ve never tried hard to keep up any specific lineup of items.  I’ve generally played it from the hip, letting whatever developed happen on its own.  While the number of daily entries will likely go down for the immediate future, I’m thinking nothing much will change so far as how I determine what to post and when to post it.  It all boils down to available time.

And that leads me to priorities.

Journaling—of which blogging is only a part—has always been and likely forever will be an important aspect of my daily routine, a cathartic process that also allows me to exercise my writing skills.  I don’t see that changing, yet I do suspect it will be hampered a bit by going back to work.  Insofar as writing is concerned, my main focus in that area will be Dreamdarkers, my first novel, followed by End of the Warm Season (or other title), which will be at least my second novel, if not my second and third (if it grows into a two-book story as I think it might).

Still, as I already said, going back to work will never mean more than slowing down on the blog, never completely stopping.  I just think it’s important for you to know the books are critically important to me and will take precedence over my various journal activities.

Keep in mind all of this is guesswork at the moment.  I won’t really know how much of an impact this job will have until I start working and get into the swing of it.