derekl_1963

Sorry for being a bit late... Random Christmas notes;

Sadly, I was not feeling well on Christmas Eve, so we had to skip Matt & Laura's Christmas Eve dinner. This was a huge bummer, as it's a big part of our holiday traditions.

Brenda and I being the people we are, half our gifts to each other were books. :) I gave her several on calligraphy and illumination, and one on Sumi-E painting. She gave me one on the history of Polaroid, one on photographic philosophy, one on the history of A&P (the grocery chain), and a cookbook by Ming Tsai. She also gave me a cool figure of Dr Teeth and a really nice bottle of scotch. (My scotch collection is growing... should post an inventory soon.)

We'd debated doing a turkey for Christmas, because being away at the family reunion at Thanksgiving meant no turkey leftovers... But ultimately, we did a ham because a turkey dinner is too much work on Christmas Day and a turkey doesn't give me the ham bone and stock I'll need for Hoppin' John on New Years Day.

Christmas was briefly white, just enough to muck up the roads a little, then turned to rain.

Breakfast today will be a big ol' slab of the pumpkin pie Brenda made (with the filling from scratch), since I was too full to have any yesterday.

Pretty much a boring weekend.

Saturday was spent napping and running errands down in Tacoma. Errands we shouldn't have had to run if the company in question didn't have their head up their hind... OTOH, it gave us an excuse to hit up Krispy Kreme. Mmmm... I loves me some Krispy Kreme, they bring back so many memories. (I grew up in the town they originated in, and they're a big part of the culture there.)

Sunday, got up and headed downtown to the ferry terminal pre-dawn because it looked like there would be great light. Only, there wasn't, so after freezing my ass off I came home empty handed. Napped, and then spent the afternoon tending a pork curry... which didn't come out quite right either. Tasty enough, but nowhere near the heat I expected, so back to the drawing board.

I did get some great ideas for some future shots - when it's not so dammed cold at dawn. (As I said in a comment elsewhere "when it's not so o'dammed cold when it's o'dark thirty".) And when dawn doesn't coincide so neatly with peak commuting hours.

With the roads still being quite icky, our friend Rich gave Brenda a ride to work. But by noon, the rising temperatures and rain had cleared the roads enough so I could get out and run my errands... I felt like Rocky from Chicken Run shouting "Freeeedooom!", only (hopefully) without that sudden splat at the end.

Once I got off the back roads, the weather was no longer a problem - instead it was the pedestrians and drivers in the parking lots who seemed oblivious to the slush and traffic and to have the collective IQ of overcooked eggplant.

I was able to pick Brenda up from work, and we celebrated the end of the storm by hitting Silver City for beer and dinner. (Yay good beer!).

But now that the Snow Day series is over, Mother Nature Productions is running her next feature - Windstorm! it's going to be an interesting week...

It's finally stopped, and we've got about four inches. They've plowed Rocky Point, but there's a lot of icy crap underneath, so Brenda isn't going to even try.

So, lots of shows on TIVO and beef noodle soup for dinner seems to be the order of the day.

Looks like I'm going to have to heat the workshop so I can work on a project with a hard deadline of just over two weeks. I have to re-finish the Culinary Guild tables before June Faire, and if I don't the finish won't flow properly.

Yeah, it's why I insulated the garage in the first place - but I never expected to have to run the heaters in effing May.

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Anything below sixty-ish to fifty-ish (°F). But around here (Puget Sound), it's not the cold that gets to you so much as the seemingly neverending greyness and dampness.

Seasonal affective disorder anyone? As John, $DIETY rest his soul, used to say "it's why the Pacific Northwest is a petri dish for serial killers".

It's officially Spring!

Yesterday I left the house for the first time this year in a short sleeve shirt - and not wearing my jacket! Though I did carry it with me... leaving the house without a jacket in sight means it's summer. :)

I just realized I've been updating on Facebook, but not here - so here's a rough chronology of the last 36 odd hours...

Mon, Brenda only worked a half day as the conditions worsened. While we were cooking dinner, the power started blinking so we moved the generator from the garage to the front porch. Of course, after that - no more blinks. Despite the rising wind, we thought we had it made...

Famous last words.

A little before 9PM, without warning, *wham* - and we were dark. I'd preheated the house so we had a little margin... But by 1.30 AM the temperature inside had dropped to near 60 (too cold for little Caramel), so we fired up the generator, rigged extension cords to the fish tanks and to a heater in the bedroom and moved Caramel upstairs and Brenda crashed.

I sat up a little while longer, I'd strained my back hauling the generator and trying to get it started and was in considerable pain. (Hint: check the manual - once I pulled the cord with right technique it started on the second pull.) I didn't take one of my make-it-stop pills as they can leave me dopey for hours, which didn't seem smart. Finally, sometime around 3AM I managed to sleep.

My alarm went off at 6AM so I could get up and check the generator and the house. The moonlight was absolutely awesome... Back to bed.

The alarm went off again at 9AM, and while I was pulling on my shoes to go outside and check the generator again - the lights came back on. After an hour with no blinks, and coffee and a warming house, we moved everything back to normal power and started looking for damage. Nothing froze in the house or garage (the house only got down to about 50), but the pool filtration system was/is frozen solid. No obvious cracks, but we won't really be able to tell until it thaws sometime Thurs (according to current weather guesses.) Other than that, the only other damage was running a staple into my finger while reading the generator manual.

Finally around noon, I took a make-it-stop pill and crashed for a few hours. I woke up still sore, but with the pain gone.

Spent the rest of the day just piddling around, doing a little housecleaning, and watching TV. I'm still a little dopey, so it's off to bed soon for me.

Apropos for today with the first storm of the Fall...

The weather - it's out to get me. Tuesday I remarked that for the last two mornings, the temperature had been above the heater's set point when I got up. Wednesday morning, the ambiguous message. With a teasing did-it or did-it-not, the temperature was right at the set point. Today, the unequivocal metaphorical glove-to-the-face... the heater was running when I got up.