arrived, pretty much as predicted. After a warm night and day today, with plenty of standing water in fields and yards, and even more flowing water across other fields with a bit of rain, the temperatures dropped and the snow started. At 4:30 this afternoon it wasn't much of anything falling out of the sky, but by 4:45 or so when we left for a potluck and movie, there were some big flakes falling. By a little after six when one person got there for the movie, she said it was starting to get slippery, and by the time we left for home at 8:30ish, it was well over an inch, if not pushing two, and Hubband was debating the best way home to avoid as much of the highway and as many hills as possible. The roads were slippery, lanes were indiscernible, and the on-ramp was rather nasty. We did pass one van off the road into the median on our slow way home, but there really wasn't much we could do to help (better they went off to the middle as off the other side would have been a bit of a dropoff). The lanes on the highway, the off-ramp, and the main road home (the one to the gravel road to our street) were all covered with snow with no way to tell where the lanes/shoulders were. Needless to say, the road that had been very slippery mud when we left had turned to extra icky slippery snow. We pushed a lot of snow off the roof etc of the car in the driveway before pulling into the garage in hopes of reducing the size of the lake it would be making overnight (once again, I am grateful for the floor drain in there!).
Once inside with our stuff set down, I measured the snow on the deck, and it came in at about 1.5" at around 9:00 or a little bit after; it was up to 4" when I checked it at 10:30 or so. They are predicting the possibility of 8-9" or more by morning. If that happens, I predict one of three scenarios, #1 being Hubband works from home for the day, #2 he gets to take my car to work and I go nowhere for the day, or #3 I drive him to work if I decide I really need to go somewhere while he is at the office (FYI, I put those in the order of most likely to happen). I'll keep you posted as to which one of those happens (or the very remote possibility of #4, which would be him driving his truck to work).
Sunday, March 10, 2013
Saturday, March 9, 2013
This morning Hubband
grabbed my camera (which is usually kept either on the counter/desk thing in the kitchen, or in my purse when I am out) when he had the chance to get some pictures of the pheasant out in the yard (via the kitchen window as usual). Apparently it had been fighting with itself, but then stopped while the camera was out. Yes, we have a mirror in our yard, it belongs to Hubband, and yes, it needs to be cleaned. The yard looks a lot different now than it did this morning, due to temperatures in the mid-plus 30's all day and rain. It is kind of a lake out there now, along with the one out front, and the sloppy, slippery road to our road. It isn't going to be pleasant in the least when it freezes tonight and then gets freezing rain, wintery mix, and snow on it. Ick. (These should biggify if you want.)
Thursday, March 7, 2013
Well, yesterday turned out
to be Migraine Wednesday, aka nothing happened involving me other than a lot of sleeping. Part of the time my feet had company and part of the time the company moved up to my side; I guess I might have given the company an occasional ear scratch, but that was about all I could muster.
Fortunately today was a much better day and I was able to go to a couple of appointments, shovel the front walk that still needed doing, as well as the bird feeder paths on the deck and in the yard. Then filling bird feeders also happened as well as fixing dinner and such like.So, pretty much back to normal.
While I was fixing dinner there was the normal parade of small birds at the feeders, as well as some turkeys checking out the pheasant feeder (meaning that is more than just a pheasant feeder), and then the usual parade of deer poking about to see what corn they could get out of it. The odd thing was that then one of the deer must have decided she was tired and needed to rest, as she just plunked down and settled in for awhile. We are pretty sure that some deer are doing this at night in the front yard, but we had never seen them do it in daylight, especially when they have a fairly good idea that we are watching them from the kitchen. (During dinner a four or five point buck wandered up to the feeder as well, but I didn't bother to try to get his picture as I was pretty sure I would have startled him away when I got up to get the camera. Again, we have seen "him" after dark a few times, but this was while the sun was still up.)
Fortunately today was a much better day and I was able to go to a couple of appointments, shovel the front walk that still needed doing, as well as the bird feeder paths on the deck and in the yard. Then filling bird feeders also happened as well as fixing dinner and such like.So, pretty much back to normal.
While I was fixing dinner there was the normal parade of small birds at the feeders, as well as some turkeys checking out the pheasant feeder (meaning that is more than just a pheasant feeder), and then the usual parade of deer poking about to see what corn they could get out of it. The odd thing was that then one of the deer must have decided she was tired and needed to rest, as she just plunked down and settled in for awhile. We are pretty sure that some deer are doing this at night in the front yard, but we had never seen them do it in daylight, especially when they have a fairly good idea that we are watching them from the kitchen. (During dinner a four or five point buck wandered up to the feeder as well, but I didn't bother to try to get his picture as I was pretty sure I would have startled him away when I got up to get the camera. Again, we have seen "him" after dark a few times, but this was while the sun was still up.)
Tuesday, March 5, 2013
We had a winter storm warning
that expired tonight. Needless to say, we did get snow. That 7.5"ish measurement was taken around 9:30-10 this morning, on a flat surface that had been clean before the snow started falling last night shortly before ten.
Needless to say, Oribel was NOT impressed with the stuff coming down that was keeping her inside. (Though she had plenty of opportunities to go out if she had wanted to.)
We are rather excited that the snow gauge in the yard has registered one foot, since for a fair portion of the winter it hasn't had much of anything to register at all. The guy who made this for me by special request will probably be happy too.
A few random pictures of snow evidence.
Sunday, March 3, 2013
This morning Oribel was desperate
to go outside, which isn't terribly unusual. Well, at least the telling us she needs out part is desperate and usual, but when it comes to the actual going out part, not so much. She always thinks she wants out, until we open the door and she finds out it is cold/windy/snowy (or any combination) out there. Once she realizes it is cold, no matter how sunny, or the wind is blowing "too" hard, she has to think about it, which of course involves standing in the doorway with just her nose, or maybe as much as her head, sticking out. This morning I told her that she wasn't even going to get to sniff the air since I needed to leave, but I did promise her she could go out once I got home.
When I got home, I could immediately tell Hubband had fulfilled my promise to her, and that she was already back inside. (There was a towel near the door to go with all the footprints, so part of her had already been cleaned up. ) He told me that he had been able to work on her feet a bit, but that her tail still looked like it had been dipped in mud and her feet were still a bit messy. I was able to wash the tip of her tail off and her feet seemed to have at least dried off so she wasn't leaving any more mud blotches about (and Hubband also had closed the bedroom doors, so she couldn't stomp mud all over the bedding).
Shortly after I was done messing with Oribel's tail, this beautiful guy flew in to see about a snack. He was able to find a few scraps left in the feeder (and stuck around there long enough for me to grab the camera and get several pictures of him through the kitchen window).
Then he flew over to the deck railing to check out the suet feeder there. I had to grab a picture of him quickly, since it was likely he would startle easily, since there were only about twelve feet between us. (Last week I did see his lady friend fly into the feeder, but I was upstairs and the camera wasn't, so couldn't get her mug shot.)
Needless to say, we are both pretty excited to have these in our woods and coming to the feeders. Good thing going suet shopping tomorrow was already on my to-do list.
When I got home, I could immediately tell Hubband had fulfilled my promise to her, and that she was already back inside. (There was a towel near the door to go with all the footprints, so part of her had already been cleaned up. ) He told me that he had been able to work on her feet a bit, but that her tail still looked like it had been dipped in mud and her feet were still a bit messy. I was able to wash the tip of her tail off and her feet seemed to have at least dried off so she wasn't leaving any more mud blotches about (and Hubband also had closed the bedroom doors, so she couldn't stomp mud all over the bedding).
Shortly after I was done messing with Oribel's tail, this beautiful guy flew in to see about a snack. He was able to find a few scraps left in the feeder (and stuck around there long enough for me to grab the camera and get several pictures of him through the kitchen window).
Needless to say, we are both pretty excited to have these in our woods and coming to the feeders. Good thing going suet shopping tomorrow was already on my to-do list.
Friday, March 1, 2013
Leading an introspective discussion
about a movie or book isn't exactly my favorite thing to do, but I keep volunteering for it at least once a year. Don't get me wrong, it isn't like I really hate it or anything, it just means that I have to think of interesting and topical questions. As it happens, I am doing it twice in as many weeks. A week ago I was the discussion leader for The Dovekeepers for our book group (yes, I do realize I am repeating myself), and it went quite well, in no small part due to the wonderful help from my dear Hubband. He is much more practiced than I am on leading discussion groups.
Round two is coming up on Sunday evening, on a movie this time. I will be showing the movie The Dark Crystal and then leading a the discussion afterwards. Hubband might be able to help me out again, but at this point we still aren't sure. Other than the obvious theme of "Good vs Evil" I am totally open to suggestions of themes and questions to ask if any of you out there have seen the movie.
Thursday, February 28, 2013
This is even more exciting!
I found a way to upload pictures directly from my computer without using Pisca; much easier to use the computer keyboard than the iPad. (Sadly, I am not sure that you can enlarge the pictures at this point. ETA: You can!!!!)
This is the pheasant feeder we got from some friends that weren't using it any more (they got it from a pheasant organization). It turns out to be a pretty basic thing and we could easily make more if we decide we want/need another one/several. There is a bit of a flaw in the size of the holes for the corn to come out in terms of how quickly the corn flows out, it slows the deer down in their feeding, but they were still able to consume a lot of corn. However, the biggest flaw in the hole size turned out to be that they weren't small enough to keep squirrels from crawling inside the bucket to get stuff to eat.
Our solution was to put some hardware cloth on the inside of the bucket, which made a big difference in how fast the corn flowed out and how easy climbing inside was. However, either the deer or the squirrles, or both, figured out how to push the wire mesh up enough to render it only partly useful, so Hubband judiciously used staples to keep it in place. The deer and squirrels still eat the corn, but the pheasant is also seems to be getting plenty to eat whenever he comes to eat (maybe even two different ones). Night before last I looked out the window and noticed that the deer had kicked the lid off of the bucket and were eating out of the top, so Hubband took some screws and the electric screwdriver out to fix that problem. So far it seems to be holding well, though it is about time to add more corn. Just in case anyone is interested, a five gallon bucket holds about forty pounds of whole kernel corn.
This is the pheasant feeder we got from some friends that weren't using it any more (they got it from a pheasant organization). It turns out to be a pretty basic thing and we could easily make more if we decide we want/need another one/several. There is a bit of a flaw in the size of the holes for the corn to come out in terms of how quickly the corn flows out, it slows the deer down in their feeding, but they were still able to consume a lot of corn. However, the biggest flaw in the hole size turned out to be that they weren't small enough to keep squirrels from crawling inside the bucket to get stuff to eat.
Our solution was to put some hardware cloth on the inside of the bucket, which made a big difference in how fast the corn flowed out and how easy climbing inside was. However, either the deer or the squirrles, or both, figured out how to push the wire mesh up enough to render it only partly useful, so Hubband judiciously used staples to keep it in place. The deer and squirrels still eat the corn, but the pheasant is also seems to be getting plenty to eat whenever he comes to eat (maybe even two different ones). Night before last I looked out the window and noticed that the deer had kicked the lid off of the bucket and were eating out of the top, so Hubband took some screws and the electric screwdriver out to fix that problem. So far it seems to be holding well, though it is about time to add more corn. Just in case anyone is interested, a five gallon bucket holds about forty pounds of whole kernel corn.
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
It is nice to know
the picture posting thing works, it makes this more interesting for me, and probably to the audience out there (no matter how small it may be). Though it would be nice if I can figure out a way to re-size the pictures; that shall be another day's project.
The first picture up yesterday of Oribel was when she was contemplating going outside into the eight inches of snow; the second was how far out into it she went, which wasn't very. It was kind of funny watching her trying to figure out how to turn around and get back inside, all while doing her best to step back into the footwells she had already made in the snow.
Today I shall give you a picture of the most recently finished knitting project that I have been going on about. A highly modified two-color color cowl, that for the most p[art I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The two-color part could still use a wee bit of tweaking, but I think I know what it needs if I ever decide to do it again.
The second picture is from this afternoon, just for entertainments sake.
The first picture up yesterday of Oribel was when she was contemplating going outside into the eight inches of snow; the second was how far out into it she went, which wasn't very. It was kind of funny watching her trying to figure out how to turn around and get back inside, all while doing her best to step back into the footwells she had already made in the snow.
Today I shall give you a picture of the most recently finished knitting project that I have been going on about. A highly modified two-color color cowl, that for the most p[art I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The two-color part could still use a wee bit of tweaking, but I think I know what it needs if I ever decide to do it again.
The second picture is from this afternoon, just for entertainments sake.
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Monday, February 25, 2013
Well, that challenge didn't go well.
Or perhaps it is better put that I lost the challenge, or something. Also known as a shiny new idea ran around and around in my head and the only way to get it to stop was to bring it to life. So on Saturday I got some yarn out, scrounged around to find a needle compatible with the yarn, cast on a bunch of stitches, and knit them for awhile to see how it would turn out. Of course I was also telling myself that this new idea would be a lot easier to take out in public on Sunday since it was only one color and I wouldn't need to look at charts and other "pay attention stuff" that could be distracting to the people around me.
The only thing was, after working on it for several hours yesterday, I decided I wasn't crazy about the gauge and how long it was taking me to knit each row. So today I ripped it all out, added a second strand of yarn and with bigger needles cast on fifty less stitches than I had before, and now have something that I am a lot happier with. That said, I did work on my "two-color-at-home" project tonight and now have it back to just one color on the final ribbing, so it will quite likely get bound tomorrow. (If it is any help, think of it as kind of like the difference between N and HO scale.)
The only thing was, after working on it for several hours yesterday, I decided I wasn't crazy about the gauge and how long it was taking me to knit each row. So today I ripped it all out, added a second strand of yarn and with bigger needles cast on fifty less stitches than I had before, and now have something that I am a lot happier with. That said, I did work on my "two-color-at-home" project tonight and now have it back to just one color on the final ribbing, so it will quite likely get bound tomorrow. (If it is any help, think of it as kind of like the difference between N and HO scale.)
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