I did the winter grilling deal a couple nights ago. I had to fish out the grill lid from underneath the porch, where the wind had deposited it recently. This event usually happens late at night, and even though the wind is roaring (Dutch white noise) it usually wakes up the cats and myself.
The SMOKEY JOE grill was given to me shortly after I moved here. It has been used a LOT. Thanks to Casa! I noticed the lid does not fit very well, a victim of the winds. There is a nice dent on the edge from that storm that blew the lid out and around my porch, then down the hill 150 feet. Since then the handle on that lid has been knocked askew at an oblique angle. (BENT).
Yet it cooks my favorite meal once a week, shish ka bob. #2 is my personal recipe of chicken wings. Hot, but a bit different with my own combination of spices. I thought about trying to market the spice mix, but one third of it is JOHNNYS Seasoning. I imagine there are some patent restrictions.
JUAN EAR has been back, usually a brown ball barely visible in the morning light. Waiting in my back yard o' rocks. Hanges.I turn on the light and he does the long casual stretch and BIG yawn, never changes. This morning I was under the gun and had to get to work quick. But he appeared just as I was leaving and I took care of business. Fox fattening.
The big boats are back. A bunch of big boats. Katie Ann, Starbound, Northern Eagle, Arctic Storm,
American Triumph, Northern Glacier, and the biggest big boy of them all, Alaska Ocean. We were very busy today. And there was a blizzard. 39 degrees and snowing hard.
There were only 2 of us along with my office lady, so I had to get my hands dirty. I pulled an early order (we had an email that we saw at 8:30 AM saying they needed their order by 9 AM). Then I wrapped it up and delivered it. The flat bed died when I tried to leave the dock, so I was blocking everything at a major dock. A dock humming with the arrival of all those boats. I had my other guy come down and tow me back to the warehouse.
The snow continued all day, 4 or 5 inches at this point, and temps are now down to 32. It is coming down steady. My footprints on the porch where I stood in my socks 2 hours ago taking pictures were 4 inches deep. They are now almost re-filled. Looks like an interesting Friday where we have to unload three freight vans. After we plow the dock.
Bad day for snow today. GNU guy was flying in. WAS. He got to Anchorage and remains there. Been there done that. He is stuck at The Millenium, trying to fly out at 6AM. We need the help.
Louisville is #1 in college basketball! Big game Saturday against Syracuse. Kentucky is back in the pack lurking.
It was an interesting cuppla weeks with that media frenzy over the now boring Kulluk Debacle. I heard from NBC, CBS, and some guy in the UK. Last year I had contact from The Weather Channel. Then I get a note from some company saying they liked my photos and wanted to purchase some. The net result. ZIP. NADA. I am glad I am not COUNTING on something coming out of this. Maybe something will happen. Forgive me if I do not get real excited next time. Get in line boys, and SHOWS ME THE MONEY, or I SHOWS YOU THE DOOR...
My boss is in town this Monday. Looking into buying a house with a 3 bed apartment, a one bed, and a studio for employee housing. Mandatory in Dutch nowadays. Plus we will also discuss the future of Joe in Alaska. Should be interesting.
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You should have gotten more credit for the footage that the media did use. But, your friends saw it and knew it was yours and appreciated it all the more.
Muriel and I have been down for about a week with a rotten head cold but are getting over it pretty much. Was not a flu, but that didn't make it any more pleasant. Herbal teas and all that.
I hope the negotiations with your boss go well. I'm sure I speak for all Joebloggers that we'd hate to see you leave Dutch for some dull stateside location.
Sleep beckons.
Truck: they always seem to die at the most inopportune moment, don't they?
Boss: hope it turns out the best for you, whichever decision you and the boss(es) come to.
Weather: Methinks the chill finally has come to realize that Florida was still stuck in October. Temps went from 26C to 4C w/in 24 hours. Gonna be rather chilly the next few days. I'm okay with that. It IS, after all, January and we're s'posed to get SOME cold (not near 80F temps).
Hope the snow that's blanketing the US Southeast and at least parts of Great Britain is not causing wide spread power outages. Also, thoughts to the Down Unders where temps have sparked many wildfires.
Have a great MLK Holiday weekend everyone!
I enjoy the sunny days and clear skies, especially at night...or I would if the next door porch light wasn't shining brightly 24/7; foreclosed house...only 6 houses on this street, and of those 6, only 3 are full-time residents, so the part-time folks leave their lights on all the time in fear of burglary, irritating.
Guess I'll take my crabby self off of here for now.
As for lights, I know what you mean. I love the night sky. Refuse to put outside night lights on the property (electric company tried to compel me to do and I told them to take the pole you-know-where...).
Last night, Orion, Canis minor / major, the elusive Monocerus (Unicorn) blazed in the sky before fog rolled in. This morning, Scorpio flashed its heart star, Antares in the same space. For those not familiar w/ Greek myths, read up on the reason why Scorpio and Orion never are in the sky together. Interesting story. Also, makes sense to have the two dogs (Canis major w/ Sirius and Canis minor) be at the great hunter's feet (marked by Rigel, opposite Betelgeuze in Orion). Monocerus rests between the two dogs on the night sky.
Also, Eridanus, the Sky River was visible last night. Pretty elusive too. Would never see either of the Unicorn on the River if there were any lights on the premise. Bad enough I have to deal w/ the light from town and I'm a looooong ways from the city lights.
No word on the current law governing the shipment of GNU’s.
Just thinking out loud…
The news services have apparently NOT been hunting high and low for reaction to the HUGE QUAKE that rocked Derbyshire at 5.20am yesterday. I was awake already, and perfectly convinced that the noise I was hearing was from a couple of tons of snow sliding down the roof tiles. Turned out that it was a mahoosive magnitude two point niner. WOW.
The snow slept right through.
Wales got hit with a foot of snow, as forecast. My bit of Derbyshire had 12 hours of non-stoppable snowage, which amounted to about 5 inches of feather light powdery stuff that blew about if you sneezed on it. We’d had a couple of inches of weightier stuff the night before which itself had landed on the couple of hard packed inches that arrived on Monday.
Effectively we have developed layers that vary in their ability to
a) make brilliant snowballs
b) make brilliant earrings for cocker spaniels
c) make brilliant multiple bone fractures
I didn’t actually require any snow to hurt myself this week. Oh no, I can do that without any help from the weather…
I have a big decorating PROJECT underway, one which involves painting any AND EVERY surface that is stupid enough to cross my path. Painting my old furniture means applying multiple layers of the slow to dry kind, and my well laid plans took this complicating factor into account.
Largely I am working on drawers, wardrobes, cupboards and chairs that are still in daily usage – but I have to apply paint to a minimum 3 sides on each, which necessitates leaving gaps around furniture that normally butts up neatly to the walls. This meant having to empty some drawers to lighten loads then doing a kind of waltz/ hot shoe shuffle whilst firmly embracing my tall chests of drawers to my bosom.
I’m not sure who was taking the lead but we were never going to win votes for artistry as we sashayed across the bedroom floor. Having found suitable parking spaces on the dance floor I set about sanding surfaces and washing things down. I got stuck in awkward positions on many occasions and considered the stupidity of my actions on several more. I sandpapered my own fingernails and dipped my hair in a bucket of ‘Spring Fresh’ cleaning fluid before I was done (in) for the day.
Then I spent all evening repeatedly stubbing my toe on stuff that normally isn’t there, but I had survived relatively unscathed and intact. As a bonus my hair was pine fresh and 99.9% free of harmful bacteria.
Next day I had to fit in some paid work with my unpaid decorating job. Which is a bit of a pain but that is how this whole project is going to get done, Easter is my conservative, stick a wet finger in the air, finishing date. That is looking less likely by the hour.
Somehow, whilst I was painting the first undercoat to my bedside drawers I managed almost inexplicably to damage my left foot which then seized up over the next few hours.
Had I been standing on my tippy toes the whole time I could have understood how it happened but it seems I was inadvertently stressing a tendon that doesn’t normally have a use. Yesterday morning I realised I was in BIG TRUBBA with it.
PAIN.
Even sleeping had been near impossible, hence I was awake before the quake. Now it was getting to the crunch point – my bladder had an urgent appointment with a bathroom which was many meters distant and my foot could not flex even a tiny amount without hideous pain.
On my one good foot I had to take on my new assault course of still slightly tacky bedroom furniture in near complete darkness.
I had helpfully packed the bedside light away in another room, because I knew I could manage without it for a few weeks…
DOH!
All I had was a single yellowy street light and the reflected glow from the pristine carpet of snow outside my window. I inched across the mattress like a sack of spuds, every move I made appeared to be forcing that tendon to creak. It seemed even breathing required my foot to flex a little, swearing makes your foot move too, putting a pair of knickers on involves thousands of tiny left foot manoeuvres. Who knew?
I now have a very swollen foot, paint on my nightshirt and an imprint of my arse on my bedside cabinet. But I can hobble about slowly now, once I’ve cracked through the initial early morning pain barrier.
So I obviously won’t be playing out in the snow this weekend, but we have much more forecast over the next week, with continuous temperatures at or just below freezing courtesy of that Siberian weather front.
Russian weather calls for Russian measures.
Do you think the average British Blue Tit can handle a feeder full of Smirnoff slush?
An update on the Aussie weather:
I see on the little map on the front page of Wunderground that Australia has been the hottest place on the planet a couple of times this week. Today I see its Birdsville. That’s to the west of here.
We have a lot of fires. In New South Wales (that’s the state I live in) there are 130 something fires burning and about 30 of them are burning out of control. The only chance of putting them out is to get rain but that don’t look like happening anytime soon.
There’s absolutely no chance of it snowing at the moment but I wouldn’t mind if it did.
Were just trying to keep cool.
Tony.
The strongest that I have personally experienced occurred in Livermore in 1980. It was a 5.8 and did quite a lot of property damage -- millions in fact -- and caused 44 injuries, some of them major. My dad held the family record. He lived only ten miles from the epicenter of the Loma Prieta Earthquake of 1989, a 6.9 affair, which killed 63 people and left 3-12 thousand temporarily homeless. At Dad's place in Los Gatos, if there was anything to break or topple to the floor it did. Clean up was by dumpster and shovel.
Particularly in country underlain by "old" rocks such as much of the eastern US, Canada, and I suspect England, a 2.9-3.1 quake is not to be sneezed at.
Btw, you know that paint dries much faster and better during warm dry weather. I couldn't think of a worse time to paint that during the beginning of the Little Ice Age.
Be kind to your tendons and ligaments. Worse things await. Oh, and look up peroneal tendon:
Peroneal tendon injuries most commonly occur in individuals who participate in sports that involve repetitive ankle motion. In addition, people ...
For me, Lifting a bag of groceries out of the tailgate of my truck is to be considered a sport. My latest agony now has a name: Desiccation of the Cervical Spine. I sounds so simple. The little squishy things between my neck vertebra are drying up and shrinking. This past week has been the first in nearly two and a half months that I've been able to hold my head and chin up so that I can shave without doing dangerous contortions with a razor in my right hand and my left hand trying to pry out enough space for its passage under my chin.
I am getting relief from strong hydrocodone/acetaminophen tablets, various vile and dangerous muscle relaxants, a Chinese "embrocation" called "KWAN LOONG OIL (it will clear your sinuses and fog your corneas), AND, my 880 nanometer near-infrared LED deep heating lamp. I've taken enough of the hydros, trade name Norco, that I get no buzz from them anymore. They supposedly don't addict us old cusses they way they do the kiddies behind the school. I get much more pleasure from the LED heat lamp.
They main concern right now is that inflamed and squished nerves in my neck have probably been affecting my gait and balance. I keep a walker readily at hand and Muriel has had to take over all the driving. The've already done two "open" MRI scans of the neck and lower skull but I moved a little on the neck scan and there were artifacts on the other due to the machine's geometry. [Ed. note: open MRI machines don't encircle the victim but have the form of a gigantic hamburger bun; they can handle people of great girth.] My doctors have decided that at least my head is skinny enough to jam into a latest, fastest and, undoubtedly, noisiest of the closed scanners. Kaiser does buy good quality stuff. If they have to, I have begged them to use Propofol; if it works so well for colonoscopies, it ought to make an MRI a cinch.
At one of my scans, they did bring in an anesthesiologist to help a dear, sweet, horrified to the edge of death, old granny. I'm sure that scan probably extended the life of her cancer ridden body for at least the time it took to perform it.
Early in the game, I asked my doctor if she would prescribe me a neck brace. "Veddybididdia" she replied in her melodious Sri Lankan accent. "YouvilllenduplykmzzTshel". Well, perhaps, but at least then I would have a neck brace!
Sounds like UK has a real redecorating project happening. I hope all the pain is worth it when it is finally finished. We want pictures!!!
You two get well soon!
We had a gorgeous day here in KY yesterday - I guess about 55 degrees and sunshine. Clouds only came when Louisville lost to Syracuse x 2 points. What a game.
Cheer up everyone and have a great day!
Thanks for all the hummingbird juice info...as a birder (twitcher in the UK) I should have known that; last year we got down into the teens so I did have slush in the feeders, and you're right, Arbie...they did drink the slush. I took the feeders in at night but the daytime temps were what did it, so I rotated feeders inside to warm up (I have four feeders just for that reason), and the little buggers were right there demanding instant gratification as soon as they saw me in the window...very vocal too.
The night sky is one of the things I really loved about my location when I bought this place; the lots are mostly heavily covered with brush and evergreens, still used for camping on some, and as investment property by others (THAT didn't work so well!), many have been foreclosed. The lot next to me was purchased by a woman with many disabling health issues, scraped clean of anything green, covered with a thin layer of black rock to stabilize the sand, then she had a 1728 sq ft manufactured home moved onto the 6780 sq ft lot. It's too big to face the street so it sits with all the big windows facing my house...which is now totally exposed to prying eyes, all the trees and big bushes having been cut down to fit that monstrosity on the lot. Yep, Rottie...I'm disgusted, but can't afford to buy the island I wanted for my own privacy and the dark nights. sigh...
I'm sure I am not the only one wondering how the talk with the boss went...if he made it into town (if GNU guy couldn't get in, what about the boss?). I remember when long-time workers retired or moved on, the quality of the job seemed to diminish as the information and know-how went with the staff. So many little details are learned through time and hard work. Take care of yourself, Joe...don't want to read about your going into the drink atop a forklift, or even worse, seeing it on The Deadliest Catch!
The new camera is fun to use, but I have a ways to go to learn how to use it correctly. One of the effects I like is where it focuses on objects nearby, and dulls the background. FOUR THE BIRDS.
I hope JoeA and his boss share good karma tomorrow.
As opposed to being as rough as mine.
The foot is repairing itself, slowly, though I have little patience with the snail speed of such things. I have been advised to lie on the floor with my legs going straight up the wall to “discourage” the swelling. It is a popular yoga position apparently. I'm guessing most regular practitioners of yoga don't have to deal with an intrigued cocker spaniel examining their face at close quarters and then settling down for a nap on their splayed hair.
It is also, as it turns out, not recommended to apply moisturiser immediately prior to attempting to climb the walls. Turns out that Body Shop Blueberry Body Butter is incompatible with absorbent surfaces. Where or where is an oil spill containment barge when you need one?
Good job I planned to paint that wall.
Casaford may have some snazzy little fingerprint recognition gismo in his bedroom but I've got footprint recognition right across mine. Left foot bigger than the right foot.
CSI Derby, coming to a big screen near you. Hope I haven't spoiled the plot too much...
I had more snow overnight. The country is now completely at a standstill because London got a cuppla inches. It is always a bigger story when them softies down south get a flake on 'em. Having said that panic buying reportedly broke out across Derbyshire last week, the supermarkets were stripped bare of bread, milk and bananas.
For some reason we always go for the bananas in a crisis.
In actual fact the good people of Derbyshire were behaving entirely sensibly. We knew what was forecast in this area, so everybody that normally does their BIG SHOP on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday decided to get it done early – on Thursday. That left the regular Thursday evening BIG SHOPPERS a bit short on fresh stuff due to empty shelves.
This would not have happened in any supermarket whose stock levels were controlled by Joealaska's ordering system. Obviously.
He has a designated banana room. That is, he has a whole room earmarked specifically for his bananas. Nothing else. Just lovely fresh bananas.
That man would be trampled on if he lived here.
His boss must surely acknowledge what he has there in Dutch.
I personally fix a bit pot of home made chicken and vegetable soup, easily re-heated on top of the woodstove. The December 2007 storm taught me a lot.
UK, I had forgotten how weird your 2012 weather was, and I understand you make the most of what you are given. That is the way 2011 was for us; everyone complained about the lack of "heat units" for their tomatoes. The news is, we rarely get enough heat for tomatoes! Anyway, I am enjoying your posts about the decorating.
I have discovered the depth of doggie love. The end of last week I got the flu. The wanting to lie down and just die now and be put out of my misery sort. My main path was from sleeping bag on the floor to the bathroom back to the floor. Figured I couldn't fall off the floor.
Anyway, Friday night, when I was feeling the worst, I put dog out and she came back to the door with a fat rabbit in her mouth. She was trying her best to take care of me and make sure I didn't go hungry while I was sick. Unfortunately,nothing was staying down at that point. But, I cleaned her treasure and last night we had slow baked rabbit brushed with bar-b-que sauce. Dog got her half and there is still a bit left for lunch. It's nice to have someone to care for you when you are ill. Nobody else wanted to be near me. So, dog was it. She did a bit better than UK's cocker spaniel.
I see the northern parts of our country are in a deep freeze presently. For some reason our weather is going the opposite way. We are expecting highs around 80F the next couple of days. I have not bothered to see why this is.
I can relate to UK's sogginess problems, being near the Gulf Coast. I have waited several days for fudge to set. And I buy cheap towels because the thicker ones don't dry out for days. Does this sound familiar, UK?
I have never heard hummingbirds be "noisy". That comes under a special experience in my book.
When a storm is coming and I know I may be without electricity for awhile, I do stock up on things like apples and bananas, along with all the other stuff. Hurricanes are usually during hot weather, and bananas don't last long in hot weather, so I go more for apples and raisins. One thing I stock up on that "nobody" else does is extra sharp cheddar cheese. I don't think many people know that hard cheeses keep a number of days at room temperature. Its a great way to get your calcium when the electricity is out.
IAOtter, that is SO cool about your dog bringing you a rabbit when you were sick!
Realtime Space Weather Photo Gallery
NORTHERN LIGHTS: A CME hit Earth's magnetic field during the late hours of Jan. 19th, producing Northern Lights so bright, they woke up the Arctic fox:
Vladimir Scheglov sends the picture from the Kupol mine in the Chukotka region of Russia. "The Kupol mine has banned hunting, so wild animals are not afraid of people," he explains.
Great picture. Thanks.
Glad to hear the Russians banned hunting in that area. It is hard to believe that this fox is much safer in Russia than he would be here in Dutch.
UPDATE later tonight or tomorrow.
An article with lots of photos of the big freeze happening to InsideUK:
Link
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