No Time To Post

When I checked in with Mama Pea this morning via e-mail, I warned her that I wouldn't take the time to post this AM, but here I am.  Just a quick one.  More later when my feet are propped up in front of the fire, and I have a cocktail at hand.

For now, though, Snow Triage is the priority of the day.  Winter HAS arrived!  I took the new header pic this AM.  I couldn't get home Saturday night, the roads were too bad.  Got halfway and stayed with friends before I was too far away (from houses) for that option.

The beginning of the storm on Saturday.

Got about 1/2 mile from home last night before I had to walk.  I measured 8" last night, and that's quite a bit more than the Yaris's clearance!  If I'd had the snow tires on the car (that was on my schedule for today), I think I could have made it . . . at least to the driveway.

Anyway, in this order, this is what I'm heading out to do:

1. See if the truck will start or if I have to charge the battery (since the car's not here to jump it).  Noticed I hadn't shut the door the entire way last time I'd grabbed something from inside, and I'm worried that the dome light was on and ran the battery down.
2. Clean off the solar panels in case any sun should shine through today and charge up the electrical system.
3. Try to Hook up the snowplow (by myself for the first time!).
4. Plow the 4 1/2 mile driveway.
5. Get the car home.

Coming home last night.  Ahhh, I sure am one lucky girl!

A blurry picture, but things were awfully pretty.

First Dusting!!!

I was surprised, but not unpleasantly so, to find the first dusting of snow this morning!  I'll try to post pictures tonight, but no promises:  I've got a pretty full day in front of me.

Happy October 21st!

Photo Follow-Up

 Snow on the deck while the rising sun wakens the valley.

 

Snow on the lilac bush.

 And, assuming I didn't lie, proof of the date of the first dusting of snow for Winter 2010!

The Last Couple of Days in Photos

This, folks, is what you call a 'revoltin' development'.

Today's schedule being what it is, I had the opportunity to sleep in. But, of course, Annie Blue meowed and meowed and meowed to be let out around 6:30 (even tho she's a cat, she goes potty outside), and I was sooooooo tired. But, I grumped and groaned out of bed and tromped downstairs and let her out. Then I flopped back in bed. And tossed and turned. Was too hot. Started thinking about this and that. Got up to go potty myself, and got a drink of water. And then? I was awake.

So, here I am. Potential lie-in morning not taken advantage of. (Well, that's a lie - I did get an extra hour compared to a normal morning.) Anyway, as I said, 'a revoltin' development'.

Anyway, here are a few pictures to illustrate life lately.


I took this first one on October 1st. I'd just walked into the kitchen to pull a junky pizza out of the oven, and the cozy scene just really struck a chord in me. What you can't see is that the four pans on the stove contain four fresh batches of cottage cheese, and there's a fire snap-cracklin' in the wood cookstove. Have I ever told you, "I LOVE my kitchen?!" :)


I took this next picture during our first-of-the-year snows. On the 10th, to be exact. With our whacky fall this year, we still had leaves on the trees (green leaves, in fact) when the snow came.


Last Friday while nannying, the weather allowed for some of the earliest sledding I can remember in years! Peanut #2 lives just about 2 miles from Peanut #1 (in order of babies I took care of), and so she and I visited little Miss O (who just turned 4) for some playtime.


And, lest you think little Miss O is not fashion-conscious with her blaze-orange hat, it IS hunting season. Here, Peanut #2 displays her own version on October 2nd (and, yes, she is very into wearing her jackets / vests backwards right now!) ;)


Speaking of hats, I've finished #4. This was a labor of love for a young, beautiful 16-year old whose birthday was a bit overshadowed on Saturday by her brother's wedding! She LOVES the KU Jayhawks (and used to live here, but now lives in Kansas which explains the interest), and it was recommended that I use those colors in the crocheting.


Buuuuut, see how bright and gaudy they are? I just couldn't do it. So, I tweaked 'em a bit . . . and explained myself once she opened the package. After all, I want the hat to actually be worn and used! (And I sure hope it will be!)

Here's a nice shot of Miss Sweet Sixteen and her "Mr. Tom" from the wedding over the weekend.


Finally, I'll leave you with this shot. It makes me laugh. I asked the youngest sibling of the wedding family to take some pictures with my camera during the reception. He's just 12 years old and . . . still short. So, here are the bride and groom . . . from his visual perspective. ;) Hee hee.

Blessed be the . . . .

Blessed be the Technology . . . when it's working again!

After countless trips in and out yesterday between the satellite receiver and his laptop plugged into the modem here inside . . . the HughesNet tech finally got us up and running again! Yayyyy! We still have a few hitches to overcome . . . which we'll take care of by upgrading to a new system. Apparently, technology has improved in the 3+ years since we bought our system. (Imagine that!) I'll price that out as soon as I get a chance.

And, lest you think that getting a service tech here is "no big deal": he came from over 220 miles away! Super nice guy, though, and it was a pleasure to have him in my kitchen for 3 hours!

Anyway, the thing I'm truly excited about is being able to work on the websites I'm in the middle of developing again . . . AND getting some new pictures here on the blog!

So, without further ado, a little photographic catch-up:

Our first snow greeted us this past Saturday morning! That melted, but then we got another 1/2" on Monday. Looking outside, it's cool enough that there are still patches of the white stuff left here and there.


Both of these photos were taken of Saturday's first snow, though.

Monday Morning

6:50 AM

Good morning!

Man, but it is DARK out there today! Seems exponentially so, but what's up with that? The sunrise couldn't be THAT many minutes later this morning than it was Friday, could it? I'll have to check that out, online, once we have Internet service again. (Update: there was only a 4-minute lag between sunrise's twilight Friday and today, so maybe the overcast skies made the difference.)

So, yes, we are still having problems with our satellite reception. It seems that I can get enough (reception) to receive & send e-mails (as long as they don't have attachments), but using the Internet with any success is fairly futile. And aggravating. Hence, I am writing this post in Outlook this morning . . . hoping I can post it later today.

As I was standing on the back step watching Tom get situated in the car this morning, pretty white flurries were falling around me. It's definitely time for that (occasional snow), but what a weird fall we've had! Due to the warm temperatures, we still have WAY more leaves hanging onto the trees than we normally would this time of year.

A really cool thing happened this morning just as Tom was retrieving his iPod from the garage: a sudden "oooooooOOOOOO" rose from just beyond the chicken yard and sounded like it was located about halfway down the driveway. The dogs and I both whipped our heads in that direction, and I was fully expecting the dogs to raise an alarm saying, "Wolf! Wolf! There's a wolf just over there!" when the sound broke away from the rising howl into some "OOOOh, hoooo, hoo!" sounds and then a babbling little "bbblllloooogh" (or something like that!). It was an owl and, judging by how loud its call was, maybe a HUGE one. 'Course, Murphy's Law & Mother Nature's camouflage being what they are, it was probably a teensy little thing! :) Anyway, instead of the canines responding, Turkey-Durk piped up with a very loud gobble shot back in the general direction of the noise.

Purdy neat, though, that's for sure! :)

The first snow of the year greeted us Saturday morning. SO pretty, as usual. I have pictures, but they'll have to wait until later when I can post them. The HughesNet (our ISP & satellite provider) technician is due to come out tomorrow, but I have some jockeying to do since I'm scheduled to work.

I took advantage of a cozy Sunday morning and was a COMPLETE slug-a-bug yesterday . . . hunkering down on the library's couch to watch all four episodes of my recent Netflix arrival, 'CSI': season 9, episodes 5-8. I did feel a bit guilty since Tom was out in the garage changing the oil & spark plugs in the Onan generator (our backup when the solar panels don't catch enough rays to charge up the batteries). We're going into the highest-use season for the generator since sunshine in these here parts is practically non-existent in the early & mid-winter months.

After that electrical system maintenance, Tom continued on with his get-things-done day and split a BUNCH of cedar kindling for me to have here in the house for the three wood stoves. Then, he spent the rest of the day clearing up the remainder of the felled standing dead (trees) that lay along both sides of the driveway that leads up to the Trapper Cabin. That meant chainsawing, then loading into the truck, then driving down to the woodshed & unloading and stacking.

Once I got my rusty-duster out in the afternoon, I got the Subaru Forester (parked back by the Trapper Cabin since we took the insurance off it a couple of weeks ago) started and hooked it up, via jumper cables, to the Subaru Outback which has been dead in the water for over a year now. It's (the Outback) such a nice car, sob! Fully loaded: all leather interior, heated seats, power everything . . . but it needs a new head gasket. Anyway, fast forward past NOT getting it jumped with the Forester to getting it jumped by the pickup . . . but it died every time we put it into drive, so we ended up towing it.

By now, Tom had taken a break from the wood work and was helping me with the extra vehicles. Our objective was to move the three dead ones to another parking area in the back 40 so that we'd have more space to plow snow by the Trapper Cabin this winter. And, we wanted to make sure the back-up plow truck, the '77 Suburban, was ready to go. Unfortunately, we need to order a new cable for that: the line leading from the gas pedal to the carburetor is frozen up. (Not literally FROZEN but rather immobile.) But, it's good that we know that and can proceed as needed.

So, while Tom fought with the Suburban diagnosis, I cleaned out the Forester (found a nice pair of embroidery scissors in the glove compartment that I'd forgotten about!) and drove it down to the new parking area. Then, we hooked the tow strap up to the '78 Chevy pickup and began towing that down. Unfortunately, a vehicle with power steering & power brakes isn't terribly maneuverable when the steering & brakes are pretty much useless due to the engine not turning over. End result? The truck is nicely parked in its new home, but it has a few more dents and there's a spruce tree along that road with a fresh, sap-oozing wound. Oh, well. It's on its way to the junk yard, anyway . . . just as soon as we get around to it. ;)

With the Forester and the old pickup in place, the Outback was next. Once we got the uncooperative thing out of (P)ark and FINALLY into (N)eutral, that move was uneventful and quick.

And, as usual, a quick "let's move the vehicles" task turned into quite the project, but it's done now and another To Do Before Winter job can be crossed off the list.

Anyway, that's the news for today. How was YOUR weekend?

Snow on the Pumpkin

Well, it was no big surprise that we didn't get the "big weather" that was predicted, but it does finally look like late fall outside. We woke to the first-of-the-year dusting of snow this morning and 26° temps. Tom dug those holes for me yesterday (for the mums and hostas, etc.) . . . just in time!

My oldest girlfriend (since we were five years old!!) and her hubby brought their perfect little peanut up yesterday for the first visit to her old stomping grounds and their 20 acres. I didn't get any pictures taken of the visit (wonder what happened there?!), but this is the Apple Upside Down Cake I made for dessert. It looks wonderful, but . . . it was raw in the middle when I brought it to the table to cut! Blech! How embawwassing! Fortunately, the outer half was fine, so I just served pieces cut sideways from the outside-in. Maybe it should have been called Apple Outside-In Cake? Anyway, I want to try it again (right away) to have an accurate feel on how long it SHOULD be baked (obviously, much longer than the 35 minutes the recipe said)!

On their way out to visit us, our friends stopped by my folks' first, and you can see a couple of pictures over at Mama Pea's blog. He's a sweet, sweet little boy, though, and looks EXACTLY like his father. His mother claims that the only physical attribute that he has of hers are detached earlobes!

In other news . . . the bamboo floor that Tom (with the help of another guy) installed looks GREAT! It's at the home of our massage therapist, and so I got a chance to see it Saturday night after a massage. We're so impressed with this sustainable product that we're thinking of getting some ourselves (none of the rooms have finished floors upstairs here in the house).

And, finally, Tom's brother and one of Tom's college buddies are coming up next weekend to help make some progress on the garage! We know we suffered a lot of heat-loss due to the lack of proper insulation out there last winter, and Tom's determined to avoid that same problem this year. And, while the actual insulating is a relatively simple process, it can't be done until the electrical wiring is complete. So, as I understand it, that's the plan for the visit: electrical wiring and then insulating.

Okay, I've got to run. Tom's going into town this afternoon to work on the film festival with his business partner, and I've got to get some mail together to send with him as well as some eggs to deliver . . . .

Snow, snow, snow!

I'm almost downright giddy this morning! And, when Chicken Mama feels that way at this time of year, it generally means one thing: the first real snow of the year! Yayyyyy!

On Tuesday, the lakes and river began freezing, and we had a low of 14.2 degrees that night. Yesterday, the snow started. When I came home from a morning errand, there was only a very slight dusting (but very low, heavy clouds). See below.















Then, by the time Tom got home at the end of the day, he reported that it was hard to see to drive, the snow was coming down so heavily. And now, this morning, it's the first winter wonderland of the season!

The cooler months are just SO much more enjoyable than the summer months up here. There are no bugs. You can always put on more clothes if you're cold or snuggle up to the woodstove (and you can only take off so much in the summertime and still be dripping sweat when you're sitting naked as a jay bird!). Smells are more pungent: the brisk cold morning air, the sizzling of onions sautéing on the stove when you come in with an armful of wood. There's more to see: more birds are drawn to the feeders, and fresh snow shows exactly where wild critters have traveled . . . and who/what they were. Winter is just more comfortable, cozier, and better in every way (in my book, anyway)!