Deconstructing Christmas

Hola!  It's nice and bright here today, and a balmy 13 17 degrees F - much warmer than yesterday!  There's a snow cover now.  In addition to the recent snow yesterday I'd say I got another 3-4 inches.  Good thing I had just got the driveway shoveled out the night before...

My footprints from last evening and critter prints in driveway this morning.

Seriously, this stuff is the fine gritty kind of snow and I'll go out and sweep/shovel it away later on.  Tomorrow we're due for a high of 36 degrees F and it will feel downright tropical!  Unfortunately, freezing rain and fog are promised along with the warm temperatures.  Blechy!  So, I will make the trek to the Pick 'n Save later on, around noonish, and rub elbows with all the other crazed shoppers, and pray I don't get run over in the parking lot, but if I do, mark my words, I will leave a VERY BIG DENT in your machine of death.

Today I am continuing deconstructing Christmas around the place.  The family room and dinette are now stripped bare of holiday decor - except for the flameless pillar candles, I'm keeping them out permanently, not just relegating them to Christmas use.  Today the more traditional look battery-operated candles that have been gracing the front window and the windows above the sink will be put away.  I am tempted to leave them out - I love the look of "candles in the windows." We'll see...

Look, nearly stripped bare of Christmas!  Just a few more tear drop ornaments to remove
from the barberry branches and those boxes on the mantle will be whisked away...

The room with the mostest is the living room.  I've got the mantle cleared of ribbon, candles, stockings hung with care, ornaments, and the Christmas-decorated topiaries that held down either side of the firebox are now wrapped in plastic and stored.  I'm taking the crystal and tear-drop ornaments off the barberry branches I've got inside a tall hurricane glass.  The branches will remain.  They look vaguely oriental, to go with my vaguely oriental accessorized room.  Christmas accessories from around the room are nearly removed.  It looks bare, naked and cold.  Would a 5 foot long t.v. across the mantle make me happier, I sometimes wonder...

The monster project is - THE TREE.  I keep looking at it and sighing.  Where to start, where to start?

I'm just procrastinating, darlings!  Right now I'm taking a break, deciding how I'm going to tackle the tree deconstruction.  I think I will start with the faux presents piled up around the base, and then remove the new tree skirt and give that a good shake-out before carefully tucking it up with tissue paper to avoid accessive wrinkling over the next 11 months.  Sigh.

It's probably more than a little silly to be feeling "blue" about having to do this.  One year I let everything up until the end of February!  But since I have a cleaning lady now, I don't want to seem er, excessively eccentric.  She's coming on Thursday and I want the house looking back to normal by then.  Dirty, but normal.

So, I've got boxes piled up on the coffee table and sofa, tissue paper all over the place, the vacuum is out and has already sucked up a quarter ton of glitter (it breeds in the carpets if you don't get it all, I tell you).  At least I'll be able to play around with the furniture again, shoving it this way and that to see if I can hit upon some combination, some angles, I haven't tried before.  I've lived here for 21 years so that's pretty tough to do.  The room isn't exactly small, but it's not exactly large either, and I must leave space clear for a path from the front door, it's my main path into the house since I don't drive and therefore don't pull into the garage and use the service door into the family room!  Maybe that's why I want new furniture.  Mind you, the "old" furniture is in near-perfect shape.  I (now my cleaning lady) vacuum it regularly, I have it professionally cleaned once a year, and I have faithfully flipped the cushions and fluffed up the Lawson-style attached backs at least once a month.  Stinky feet are allowed, but not dirt-encrusted shoes.

Looking back over the past 3-4 months, I realize just what a FRENZY I was in, geez!  I don't know what got into me, but whatever it was, the house has never looked better.  I realize, too, that all of that frenetic activity got me through a bleak, nasty time of year, despite the above-average temperatures.  This year, for some reason, winter really got to me.  WHAM! 

Unfortunately, I spent Thursday and last night (and okay, time this morning too) looking at those decorating blogs - I should NOT do that!  Damn!  They make me feel all itchy restless.  I think part of the problem is that after Christmas, I just want to get out and start working in the gardens!  LOL!  Hmmmm, guess I answered my own question - it was those decorating blogs that got into me.  Not envious of other people's beautifully large and well-put-together homes (this house is more than large enough for me, and quite comfortable for me, Mr. Don, Georgia and Michelle when they visit).  Maybe envious of having all that fricking TIME to work at making House Beautiful.

House Beautiful is important.  Yeah yeah, not in the greater scheme of things blah blah, but you know what, there's nothing quite like coming home to a well-appointed, beautifully-kept home after a damn long hard stress-filled day at the office.  A glass of wine, the fireplace on (in winter or rainy damp days), or stretched out with my feet up on the deck (weather permitting, any other time of year -- hell, Mr. Don and I were sitting out there enjoying wine coolers on January 11th!) .  All that nasty stress and b.s. that one has to deal with out-in-the-real-world just falls away like dragon's scales and disappears.  It's a form of magic, I think.

And there are still lots of things to do around here to get it looking the way I want it -- pictures to hang, I still have the issue of the towel rod in the bathroom that is now hiding in a closet so I don't have to look at it and feel guilty about not getting it back up on the wall; not after the fisaco of trying to do so and having to deal with the holes I created, eek!  Yeah, I patched them and painted them but they shout out to me every time I visit the loo...  Not to mention I'm sick and tired of the decor in the family room, but the furniture is still perfectly good even though it's not the red leather sectional I really want.  I will settle for wallpaper stripped off, the horrid stencil job I did around the ceiling banished forever, the oh-so-1980's sponged wall treatement and wallpaper border around the middle of the room gone!  I just can't figure out what color(s) I want the walls to be.  Where did all this indecisiveness come from...

Well, I think it's time for a glass of wine, a sandwich and back into the living room to tackle the Christmas tree.

Updated about an hour later:

About 11:45 I stepped outside, bundled up with shovel in hand, and attacked the driveway.  A scant 55 minutes later, and I didn't even have to take cold breaks to come inside and warm up - it's done!  Ta da!  The sun is WARM, people, WARM!  It felt so good.  I ended up working in my sweatshirt near the finish, huffing and puffing away and it felt so good.  Now the drive is already starting to melt, but the sun is now moving around near the back of the house.  The deck will start to melt now.  It's a mess.  I swept some of it off this morning but the rest of it - eh - I'm just going to leave it and take a nap.

Nothing makes me feel more decadent than snuggling down under an afghan on the recliner and taking a nice 2 or 3 hour nap, when I've just got loads of other things I should be doing.  Tee hee hee!

Snow, Snow Go Away!

Incredible as it seems, less than 48 hours ago Mr. D and I were coatless, sitting on lawn chairs on the back deck sipping wine coolers in the warm January sun!

Mr. D left yesterday morning for home and fortunately his flights were not delayed by the weather.  They went smoothly.  However, once he got home, he had a very long commute, snarled by SNOW!  He writes that it took three times as long as usual for the commute from the airport to his place.  Oy!  But now he is back home safe and sound. 

I was up at 5:30 a.m. yesterday and after he left, about 8 a.m. I zonked out in the recliner and woke up at 10 to the first significant snow of the season:

 View out the front window, early yesterday afternoon.

True to the forecast, the winds did pick up as the day went by and the snow was steady.  Officially, we received 6.1 inches at Mitchell International Airport where they measure such things.  In some places I have a lot less, and in some places I have a lot more. 

As per usual, there was a lot of drifting around my front porch and especially in front of the garage door.  The snow removal crew did a lousy job of plowing too.

View out the back patio door early this morning; the sun was still out.  It has since clouded over.

Look ma, no driveway!  View out the front door early this morning - the sun was so pretty.  It was still out for awhile when I first started shovelling my way toward the road from the front porch.

Some 45 minutes later and two passes with the shovel, this is the result:

Just taking a rest right now, before going back out to do another pass or two. I've got a lot of snow yet to remove.  There's an ice glaze underneath the snow.  If the sun had stayed it would have melted and evaporated away.  Unfortunately, that won't happen now with the thick cloud cover that's come over.  I wouldn't mind this all so much if it hadn't turned so cold.  There's a minus 5F windchill today, thanks to the winds.  Time to pull out the heavy duty down coat and mittens.  Yech.  Two days ago, 56 degrees F and the sun was burning through my jeans as I sat on the deck soaking it all in!  Today, shivering cold, and it feels cold inside, too.  Blech. 

The ground still hasn't frozen here - we haven't had a consistent streak of well below freezing weather this season!  So hopefully in 4 or 5 days when the temperatures begin to moderate again, all of this will just melt away - and we won't get any more for the rest of the winter!  It will, however, be cold at Legendary Lambeau Field on Sunday for the important Packers v. Giants game.  No more 40 degrees F.  Sigh. 

Now I need to go remove some more ornaments from the Christmas tree.  Yes, it's that time, taking down the decorations and the tree.  The family room and dinette have already been stripped bare.  It looks empty and plain in here now...

Ice Storm

In vain did I try shoveling out a path from my front stoop to the road and mail-box this morning.  My shovel does not even penetrate the top layer of the ice-snow mixture.  Goddess - I don't even know whether to laugh or cry.  So I'm just trying to laugh about it as my crunch-crunch-crunch footsteps are left behind and the shovel makes no dent at all.

I took these photos of the barberry shrubs that are alongside my front stoop.  They, at least, were a little spot of beauty in this frigid wasteland.  Oy, and I hear the plowers/salters coming through again - not that it has made any difference on the slick roads in the subdivision in which I live; except for piling up more frozen non-penetrable ice chunks at the foot of my driveway.  You know what - I'm getting too old for this.  Damn.

Stormy Weather!

Ohmygoddess, Mother Nature is doing a number on Wisconsin today, geez!  Just barely had all the snow melted out of my driveway after a week-long thaw that was soooooo nice (except for the icy sidewalks in the morning caused by melting snow, before the temperatures rose above freezing on a couple of days) when today, ICE/SNOW/RAIN/ICE/SNOW/RAIN.  You get the idea.  I expect before this is over there will be hundreds of trees severely damaged, thousands of people without power because ice-coated power lines snap under the strain, and several people killed in car accidents because stupid people WILL drive in this weather and go too fast for conditions. 

We were supposed to have an investment club meeting this morning (we meet for breakfast at 9 a.m.) but we called the meeting off after consultations on the forecast yesterday afternoon.  However, by 8 a.m. this morning no sign of the storm.  I got dressed, had breakfast, read some of the newspaper, and headed out to the supermarket at 9 a.m.  It felt "wet" outside, that is, the air was heavy, but there was no precipitation.  That is, until I got half a block away from home, LOL!  I first heard (did not feel) little "pings" on what was left of the snow banks and, about a minute later, could feel "pings" on my now being pelted with ice pellets face. Thank goddess for a good hood!  That mostly sheltered my face as I continued my mile walk to pick up essential items: wine, bread, milk, eggs, birdfood.  I have a 2 week supply of squirrels' peanuts and almonds already in stock :)

By the time I made my way back home it was snowing in earnest, the roads and sidewalks were already coated over and the salt trucks were already out!  I was to the market and back in 55 minutes (I had a long wait in the check-out line, that slowed me down; evidently everyone else had the same idea I had - get to the store before the storm started.  Crap!) .  Ever since, it's been snow/ice/rain in repeating cycles.  I've got the t.v. on now and there is an unending scroll across the bottom with cancellations.

I just hope my power doesn't go out!

Tomorrow it looks like I'll be trying out my Yak Trax for the first time.  No more penguin-walking to the bus stop!

2011 Blizzard - Fini

It will take several more days of shovelling before I get the deck clear - I'm not sure I even want to try, LOL!  Oh my aching muscles.  I shouldn't complain - actually despite the volume the snow is fairly light, except the ice-berm at the base of the driveway that the plows leave behind, our local tax dollars hard at work!

Yes, there's a branch stuck in that snow drift on the deck - one of several hundred that came flying down overnight in the strong, gusting winds - part of the clamor that kept me awake most of the night.  I expect a lot of people in the area didn't get much sleep - it was way too noisy outside!  Tonight it's a long hot soak in the tub and horse linament for me, and hitting the sack at 9 p.m.  You can get a feel for just how much snow was deposited courtesy of relentless blowing and drifting from a classic nor'easter.

Here's what the front looks like now, after several hours of hard manual labor.  Mr. Don, where are you when I need you?

2011 Blizzard - 4

Now comes the hard part - shovelling out.  Even if I had a snowblower, I don't think I'd be able to manage it, the snow is too deep.  So, I started at the least drifted over spot next to front porch and over the course of about 45 minutes, I made it through to the road.  I partially unburied my mail box - but it's clear that the plows have to come through at least once more and that means anything I shovel in the road will just get snow bermed in again, so I will wait to tackle the hardest part until after the plows have come through.

Meanwhile, I'm taking a break because after a second 45 minute bout my toes started freezing - my old tall boots are too tight!  I haven't had to wear them for years and my feet have fattened out and flattened out, rendering the size 8s too small.  Damn!  Now though, with at least a foot-wise path shovelled out, I can wear my shorter water-proofs and will be okay.  I've started working down the driveway to widen the path out to about 3 feet wide.  The hardest part will be getting ride of the plowed in snow berms at the foot of the drive.  The snowbank on the right is nearly as tall as I am already, which means I'll have to haul the snow, shovel full by shovel full, back up the driveway to dump it on the side where the snow bank isn't so tall.  Great, just great.  Oh crap - I hear a plow --



Hello, house!  Look - pavement!

Well, time to put the boots back on and get at it again.  The winds are still drifting the snow so I may have to get up uber-early tomorrow morning and shovel my path out again before I even shower.  Winds will calm down to about 20 mph later tonight, but a deep freeze is coming.  I can deal with snow, me strong like bull with my trusty shovel -- but I HATE sub-zero F temperatures.

2011 Blizzard - Part 3

As expected, the firm, along with hundreds of other businesses in the area, is closed today, so I've got a snow day.  The snow has stopped but the winds are as strong as ever.  It was not a restful night last night.  The constant howling of the wind, the clanging of the range hood vent which faces into the wind, the thunder snow, all conspired to keep me awake.  The city is shut down.  Expressways/highways are shut down because of impassible conditions and abandoned cars blocking what little traffic there is; while the highways have stretches of at least drivable conditions entrance and exit ramps are drifted and dangerous - many cars stuck on them and the Sheriff's Department and National Guard are getting to them as fast as they can, but they won't tow your car if you're stuck, all they'll do is offer you a lift to someplace warm and dry; white-out conditions continue along with the snow at this time (about 7:30 a.m.).  Snow-wise we got perhaps 12-14 inches on top of what we received Monday.  It's the blowing and drifting that is making things awful.  I tried to capture some of the drifs on the following photos, but it's hard to gauge from them just how big the drifts are!

No bus service - it's been suspended because the roads were so bad.  The county tried to keep the highways open and the city works first on plowing the main thoroughfares - if you live on a side street - foret about going anywhere today with a vehicle!  The entire county was under a snow emergency so if you weren't parked on the right side of the street (and in some neighborhoods, no parking is allowed at all), your car is now gone and it will cost you several hundred to get it out of the tow-lot!  I live in a suburb and eventually we will get plowed but looking out the front door, no plow has been through, no part of road can be seen at all.  How on earth I'm ever going to clear even a path in my driveway to the road is beyond me, oh goddess!  At least I can get my front door opened.  I tried the garage service door and it's frozen shut. 



The blizzard of 2011 didn't stop the squirrels from looking for their breakfast.
I didn't shovel that part of the deck - it's the only part that was untouched by the blowing snow!
So, that's where I aimed and tried to toss the nuts for my hungry buddies.

Blizzard 2011 - Part 2

Ohmygoddess!  It's really really REALLY nasty out there right now.  It's 9:19 p.m. as I'm starting this blog entry.  I tried to take a few photos - haven't downloaded them yet, not sure if they turned out at all.  As far as I could tell, all I got was big white blobs, LOL!

I found this photo at the website for the Milwaukee Journal/Sentinel, and I think it catches the essence of this storm - and this was taken this afternoon when it was still light outside and the winds weren't gusting over 40 mph!  Credit to Rick Wood.

It is snowing hard, but worse is the wind, whipping out of the east/northeast off Lake Michigan at sustained 25 mph in Milwaukee, with gusts up to 50 mph.  The snow is horizontal, in other words, and I saw something tonight in my driveway that I have not seen the entire time I've lived here - 21 years.  The wind is so strong it has actually scrubbed away all the snow in a large swatch of driveway!  That swatch in front of my garage door from this morning is also still scoured down to concrete, and my front stoop, except for about a foot of snow right by the door where one would step out, is also scoured clear of snow by the wind.  Looking out the windows - which are now building up snow crusts and that has only happened a few times the last 21 years - the air is so saturated with blowing snow that it looks foggy outside.  I thank the goddess I am warm and safe inside tonight, and worry about those who are not.  Shelters and churches open for the homeless and those who have lost power in such storms and offer a meal, and a warm, dry place to lay one's head for the night, but now getting to the shelters is, itself, a major issue.

The entire city is shut down tomorrow - schools shut; courts shut; airport, which our intrepid plow operators were able to keep open earlier today to get at least some flights out (not many were coming in), is also shut down tonight, the plows cannot keep up with the blowing and drifting snow; there are no flights in or out; government offices shut, except for essential personnel, and good luck to them trying to get around tomorrow, damn!  White out conditions are the norm. The worst of the snow hasn't even got here yet.  It's forecasted right now to fall between 10:30 p.m. and 3:30 a.m. tomorrow morning, as much as 4 inches an hour. 

9:39 p.m. - okay, downloaded the photos I took.  I'm not very good at this sort of thing and I don't understand how to ajdust the settings on the camera to get better shots.  Anyway, only three turned out, sort of.  The first two are looking toward the southeast from the front porch - well, as much as I could get out to the front porch.  The wind was so strong from the east/northeast that it kept shoving the storm door into my elbow as I was trying to hold the camera out to snap these shots, LOL!  In the first photo you can see the bare patch of concrete that the wind has scoured clear of snow.  In the second photo the idea was to try and get a shot under the street light on the corner nearest my house to show more of the blowing snow, but all I got was a lens full of snowflakes and the side of my porch alcove.  That foggy look - that's actually what it looks outside right now, that's how much snow is blowing around.





This is a photo of the backyard - not from the deck, I wasn't brave enough to attempt to step outside, which would, in any event, have involved getting boots on and cold-weather gear.  Nope, I only opened up the patio door and clicked away.  This is the only image that turned out enough to actually see something other than white blobs in front of the lens!

I expect that the office will be closed tomorrow, so I'll get a "free" snow day in addition to the one I took today - am SO glad I did!  It was horrid outside well before 3:00 p.m. although the snow from "Round 2" as this storm is being called locally, didn't really start up until after 4:00 p.m. but, to be honest, it was hard to tell because of all the blowing/drifting snow off roofs and the ground!  All I can tell you is that whenever I stuck my face outside I got a face-full of snow, LOL!  And why, you ask, would I be so foolish as to stick my face outside in this weather?  It was to throw out hands-full of almonds for the squirrels who still managed to show up between 4 and 5 p.m.!  They had to grab them fast because they were quickly covered with drifting snow.

Okay - now 10 p.m. and the latest forecast is on.  We are now in moderate snow fall of 2 inches per hour, until about noon tomorrow.  Plus we have lake effect snow.  Great, just great.  The official measurement of snowfall thus far is impossible to get because of the winds. All the forecasters can do is guess.  We may have had up to 7 inches yesterday in the Milwaukee area.  Perhaps 11 more inches today, thus far.  Estimated another 3 to 4 inches tomorrow after the worst of the storm has passed.  Ach, I could deal with that, except for the winds and we're to go into the deep freeze tomorrow after the storm passes.

And taxpayers will be coughing up more money next assessment round to balance the city's budget as it will cost well over a million dollars, when all is said and done, to clean up from this storm.

The wind is howling, things are smacking against the house.  It feels cold in here despite the thermostat saying every time I look at it that it's 65 degrees F, and I'm thanking goddess I have a brand new furnace (cha-ching!), which will be chugging all night to keep up with the air infiltration caused by the non-stop strong winds into this rather air-tight house!  I will shortly be snuggling under a heavy down comforter trying to get some sleep, but I don't think I'll get much rest tonight.  But maybe, tonight, I won't be woken up by night sweats!  I'm too cold!

Blizzard 2011



Deck - mostly shoveled at 7 a.m. - I left a pile of snow about a foot deep near the center, photo taken at about 10:15 a.m.  Nuts tossed out for the squirrels are still visible.

It's not here yet - but it's coming.  We went through a preliminary bout of snow yesterday, with most of it piling up overnight, well after rush-hour.  The winds were up but bearable and the temperature was 27 degrees F when I left the office at 5 last night.  By the time I got home though, about 6:30, it had dropped 10 degrees, the winds had picked up and it was blowing gritty pellets of snow smack in my face.  It's the "dry" light kind of snow that easily blows, quickly icing over pavement that was plowed and salted just moments before.  Already last night it was drifting into strange configurations as I walked the last mile home from the Pick 'n Save with "emergency" supplies.  During the height of the blizzard we may get wind gusts to 60 mph and sustained winds of about 25 mph.  It is not going to be pleasant out there.


Back yard view to the southwest, off the deck, about 10:15 a.m.

Got up this morning and checked around the house - already 3 to 4 foot high drifts in some places, and other places bare pavement!  I shoveled off most of the deck just so I could feed my critters, and sure enough, they showed up right on schedule.  I do not expect them to be out and about later today, though, once the hard blow starts in earnest.  Already the flurries we've had since I shoveled at about 7 a.m. have taken their toll, coating a film of snow back over the deck.  By tomorrow morning there may be as much as 12 inches more - just have to wait and see.



Back yard view to the northwest, off the deck, about 10:15 a.m.

I debated back and forth whether to go in to the office today - for at least a half day, and then bugging out at noon and getting home hopefully well before the 3 p.m. forecasted "start time" for the big one.  But, after taking one last good hard look out the front door at 7:15 a.m. I decided that discretion was called for rather than valor :)  I wasn't sure I'd be able to make it safely to the bus stop 3/4th of a mile away, knowing that sidewalks would not be shoveled out and the plowing on the roads was iffy, at best, due to the wind conditions. 

View from the from the front door, to the southeast, about 10:15 a.m.  The driveway was all  clear 24 hours ago!

Since the blizzard warning won't expire until more than 24 hours from now (3 p.m. tomorrow) I'll be home tomorrow as well.  So - what to do, what to do?  Take down the Christmas tree?  But I don't want to take it down until after the Super Bowl.  I have been reading and doing some research.  I may settle in shortly before the fireplace and re-read the last half of the last Harry Potter novel -- I've been wanting to do that.  I'm cooking as well, and perhaps I'll do some baking tomorrow, rummaging around in the cupboards to see what I have that can be whipped up into some magical concoction.

The wind playing tricks with the snow - area in front of my garage door, about 10:15 a.m.

I snapped these photos at about 10:15 a.m.  I will take photos throughout the storm.  There really is something quite beautiful in all this snow piling up - as long as one does not have to be out in it!

I've got a pot roast going in the slow-cooker and the house smells wonderful!  The winds are beginning to howl outside - the big one may be here more quickly than originally forecasted (for about 3 p.m. today).  Brrrrr, it makes me shiver just hearing them.

Yearning for Spring

Photos taken April 17, 2010, views of my back yard.  The Newport plums were coming into blossom.  The daylilies around the house were already up a foot high, but so early in the season, most of the other trees had barely begun to leaf-out and the grass was rough and showing signs of a long, hard winter.  Hadn't been through it's first cut yet.  In the lower photo, two squirrels' nests are clearly discernible in the tree to the left.

I'm trying to hang on for December 21st, Solstice.  It was sunny out today and since I was home (new furnace installation) I was able to open the front door when the sun rose up high enough in the far east/southeast to hit the front porch and spill some warmth into the front room through the glass storm door.  It felt so good.

I don't like this new furnace.  The house is cold.  The thermostat says it's 65 in here, but I don't believe it.  I'm cold, cold, cold.  Sitting here typing with a doubled-up afghan wrapped around me, and my hands are like ice-cubes, but I can't wear gloves and type at the same time.  It's like zero degrees F outside.  For those of you on the Celsius scale, that's about 32 degrees below your zero. 

The good news is that I've got my new-fangled wireless printer/fax/copier/scanner set up and actually got it to work after entering my WEP code about 12 times (not kidding).  I couldn't type it in on my keyboard - NNOOOOOOOOO.  I had to punch it in on a 2 by 2 inch screen on the printer by clicking on an arrow to move a "pointer", one letter (or number) at a time until I hit upon the correct one, and then punch OK.  LOL!  I'm laughing now, but it wasn't frigging funny when I was doing it, let me tell you. 

Wondering what the house would feel like with the thermostat turned up to 80.  Would it be warm enough, finally?  Would my hands work again?

Blizzard!

Ohmygoddess!  I was woken this morning by I don't-know-what-all striking against the house with great force, raised up by strong winds that switched around from the south/southeast earlier in the day (bringing balmy temperatures) to the north/northeast - it was probably around 3 this morning.  After being drenched by nearly an inch of rain yesterday and the water in the bird bath thawing (!), we are back into the deep freeze today and winds gusting as high as 38 mph in the Milwaukee area. 

Fortunately, we were spared a lot of snow, which fell with a passion further west and north - averaging 9 to 10 inches to more than a foot, depending upon location.  The further west and north, the worse it is.  It is impossible to accurately measure the snowfall here, but since I can see grass (except where the snow is drifting), I figure we haven't got more than an inch.  It's been snowing hard off and on; right now my area is in another break.  The roads, however, are in treacherous condition.  There is black ice underneath the dusting of snow, and the persistently strong winds are causing white-out conditions along with coating over the ice so it can't be seen.  I am glad I got the driveway shoveled off yesterday morning or I'd have had to ice-skate to the road this morning to fetch the Sunday paper from my paperbox.  As it is, it was crunch-Crunch-CRUNCH

When I got up this morning it was 26 degrees F; it's only dropped a couple of degrees.  Because of the strong winds, the windchill is a mere 8 degrees F and tonight will drop to between 15 and 20 below zero F. Walking to the bus stop tomorrow morning is going to be sheer Hell.  These winds aren't going away and the temperature will fall well below freezing, leading to windchills consistently in the 20 below zero F range.  Great, just great. 

What amazes me is the juncos and sparrows.  I haven't seen the cardinals or the jays out this morning but the little birds are hopping around and flying.  How the hell do they do it?  They weigh, at most, a couple of ounces and yet they are not being blown away by these gusting gale-force winds.  I put food out under the shrubs along the north fence line which is protected, but they are hopping around the deck, evidently looking for leavings from peanuts!  So I crushed up a few and tossed them out.  Juncos all over the place.  Glad to see them back.  Now I know winter is really here. 

Can I hang on until December 22nd when the days will start to get longer again? Psychologically, that date is critical to my well-being, because I know the days will start to get longer and, even though I must get through the brutal cold of January and February, the worst is over.  This time of year is awful for me and I so look forward to the time when I know that a few more minutes are added to the beginning and end of "daylight."  I am more and more affected each year by the dark and gloomy days.  Fortunately, we had above-normal temperatures with many clear and bright days in November, that has helped enormously.  And, amazingly, the first half of December has seen more days with at least some sunlight! I have made the most of it, knowing how important exposure to that natural light is, even when it's piss-freezing cold.  

Oh crap, the snow has started up again.  Time for lunch!

Winter Is Here

Driveway after a couple of shovel passes.

After a quick lunch, I noticed the sun was trying to break through the clouds and it had stopped snowing.  So, I put on my hat, rubber bottomed-slippers and gloves, grabbed my shovel (after spraying it with silicone) and cleaned off the deck. That is first priority here as that's where the squirrels come to be fed :) 

Then I headed out to the front, cleared my small porch and worked a quick path to the road.  The snow was not light and fluffy as promised, it was fricking wet and heavy!  And, while I was out there, the wind whipped up from the northeast and it started snowing again.  But I got a start, anyway.

Looking to the southeast.

I'm still wrestling with the desktop upstairs.  I implemented another fix, I will run up there after this post, open IE, and see if it worked.

In the meantime, I took some photos of our first measurable snowfall down south here.  Up north (Michigan/Wisconsin border and Minnesota/Wisconsin border) there was a lot of measurable snow a couple of weeks ago.

Looking to the northeast from the front porch.  Buster,
one of my buddies from next store, is near the corner
line of the fence.

Storm Photos

I was greeted with a great deal of shoveling out this morning - views from my front door.  In order to get to work, I had to get to get to the road.  The snow was too deep to trudge through, I had to shovel my way to the road.  Sigh. Oh, my aching shoulders. 

This was on top of the shoveling I did yestereday morning and afternoon, in a vain attempt to keep the path to the road clear.  You can see the drift marks and just barely make out the line where the path I had previously shoveled stopped - about 3 feet wide.  At the end of the drive, you can just make out the sort of bumpy looking snow - that's all the snow the plow crapped up into my driveway - four feet tall and four feet deep into my 30 foot long drive. 

I will be shoveling for the rest of the week.  Tonight when I got home from work, I did an aerobic 30 minutes worth of huffing and puffing, flinging heavy shovels-ful of snow over first one should and then the other.  The sun was out today so things kind of compressed and got heavier than yesterday.  I widened my path to 4 feet wide (more or less) and finished carving out the gigantic boulder that the plow had deposited on the edge of the driveway, and I started carving out a place to shovel up into the other side of the drive toward the garage.  I will mark the boundary of the other side of the driveway and then clear out toward the middle.  The snowbank on the south side of the drive is much lower than that on the north - I won't have to throw the snow up as high to get it out of the way :)  I should be finished by Sunday when the ladies come for an investment club meeting. 

Hell, it could be a lot worse - I could be living in Philly or Washington, D.C.

Snow Day!

The first large storm of 2010 is upon us.  It started snowing some time after I went to bed last night and there was probablyh 3 to 4 inches of snow on the ground when I got up at 6 a.m.  The storm is supposed to last until 3 a.m. Wednesday, dumping anywhere from 10 to 14 inches of snow.  Not a problem necessarily for the plows to keep the roads more or less clear but - the winds are coming too.  By some time this afternoon, wind chills will drop into the single digits with winds gusting up to 30 mph.  As the snow is light and fluffy that means drifts and white-out conditions.  Already, with winds at around 15 mph the snow is swirling around and leaving bare spots on neighboring roofs.  That snow always seems to somehow end up in my driveway! (Photo: My backyard at 7:20 a.m. - the sky is heavy grey and the world looks grey because of the small rapidly falling snow all around.  Now it's blowing too - I got a couple face-fulls of snow blown off the roof when I was out shoveling the deck in the dark at 6:30.  Yech!)

I'm taking a snow day.  It's snowing about an inch an hour right now, that is serious snowing!  Being a veteran of past storms I've opted to avoid the 3/4 mile walk to the bus stop with snow blinding me and half smothering me all the while.  It would be downright dangerous coming home later today, because sidewalks will not have been cleared yet - that means walking in the roads in conditions where drivers might not actually see me until it was too late.  No thanks!

I cleared the deck before 6:30.  This photo is the deck (you can barely see the pitter-patter of little squirrel feet) about 40 minutes after shoveling it off - the deck is hardly visible.  In a little while I will pull on my high boots, bundle up and make a path from the front door to the road - which I cannot see at the moment despite the plows coming through about 5:30 a.m.  My hope is to periodically go out and shovel during the day and tonight to keep a path open.  No way will I be able to keep up shoveling the entire drive, I'm not even going to try, not until the snow stops and the winds die down.

Happily I did stop at the Pick 'n Save last night and was surprised that it was not busy at all! I thought it would be another mob scene like it was Sunday afternoon, a couple of hours before Superbowl started.  Geez!  I have supplies laid in so I'm hunkering down - ahhhh, I feel a nap in my near future...  And I have a new book to crack open -

10:05 a.m. Update:
I shoveled a pathway from the from door to the road in three separate shifts between 8:45 and 9:30.  The plow was working on the road in front of my house as I was out working.  For the time being, at least, I have a clear path about 3 feet wide down to the road - until the plow comes through again and the drifts fill it up.  Already they are forming...