Weather

Project 365: 95/365

We have our first tulip bloom in the back yard flower bed!  It's so pretty and vibrant.  I'm sure the rest will soon follow.  We also have yellow and white tulips that bloom for their short stint, not to be seen again until next spring.

Project 365: 94/365

I painted the stairway and upstairs hallway over the weekend since it's never been painted in the 10 years we've lived in this house.  Nothing extravagant, just painted from a dingy grey to a light beige to be neutral and help lighten up the dark stairway and hallway.  Lois Lane decided she was going to help, but alas, she removed more paint with her side and tail than she helped with.

Easter weekend was absolutely beautiful and aside from painting most of our time was spent outside.  We worked on the pond a bit, had a cookout Friday night and totally vegged out on Sunday just enjoying the beautiful weather.  This is my type of weather!

Ah

Ahhh the lovely beginnings of spring's pretty colors!  These blooms are sprouting under our front yard maple tree.  I'm really not sure what they are, but what a wonderful sign of the color and blooms to come!

Doing so much better today.  I actually removed my butt from the couch and spent most of the day at my office computer.  Then Jason and I porch dwelled for a bit.  Once it got chilly we started up a nice fire in the fire pit on the lower porch and had a great evening chatting and enjoying the nice weather.  From tomorrow through Saturday it's supposed to be in the upper 60's - whooo! Because of this glorious weather we plan to porch dwell with friends on Friday evening and I can't wait!   Even with all the Wii goodies going on the last few months, I can't wait to hang on the screened in porch in the nice weather again!

I stopped by the cemetery on my way home from work today because there were about 100 geese around the pond.  They all high-tailed it to the water as soon as they saw me approaching - I must take food next time!  These four captured my interest as they were swimming towards the other bank in the light of the setting sun.

In more weather news, we're expecting snow still tomorrow, but we don't know how much.  We've heard anywhere from half an inch to six and a half inches.  How's that for a spread?  At this point it all depends on how the system moves through.  Guess we'll find out tomorrow!  We're all prepared with the generator and kerosene heater should we lose power again.  This time last year we were living in a 40 degree house with no power for five days.  You can see posts about that here, here and here.  I hope it doesn't happen again, but at least if it does we're a little more prepared for it.

I'm also hoping the snow isn't too bad.  We've volunteered to help transport a Great Pyrenees named Zeus on one leg of a long trip to get him to the rescue organization he needs to be at in order to get adopted into a new and loving home.  I'm sure Saturday's photo will be of Zeus - but you already knew that.

Today was one of the foggiest days I've seen in a long time here in Louisville.  This was taken just before noon today and it stayed this foggy most of the day and finally burned most of the way off around 5:00.  My lunchtime commute looked like this all through town with very low visibility.  It's cold and damp, but it was very pretty!

Poor B. Dog. He messed up his back again and is on vet ordered cage rest for 10 days. He is none too happy about this outcome. But it sure beats the 6 weeks of cage rest he required when he ruptured a disk.  We're not really sure how he did it, but I believe it came about after a good round of rough housing with Buddy the Giant Dawg.  Then the next morning he jumped off the bed, yelped and started walking funny and all hunched over so it was off to the vet for a diagnosis of a severely pulled muscle.  Poor guy.  All in time for our first snow too.  We're supposed to be getting 3 - 5" tonight - so much for Blue's playtime in the snow.  However tomorrow's photo may be quite festive and seasonably snowy!

This morning as I was starting my truck to warm it up for my trek into work, the moon peeked out from behind the clouds and illuminated the branches of the neighbors tree in a great silhouette.  It was 13 degrees and a few flurries were falling.  So far it's been a very cold year, about 20 degrees below Kentucky's normal average.

Jason and I took a trip up to Dog Woods (our 6 acre campsite and get-away) yesterday to see if there was any damage from January's ice storm and last weeks wind storm.  We expected a few trees and limbs down, but were shocked to see that nearly 50% of the trees throughout the property were either down or severely damaged.   Two trees barely missed hitting the camper and the dog kennel is buried under one of them.  The brand new utility pole we had put in at the end of last year was snapped in two and laying on the ground behind the camper.  The utility company had come out to put up a new pole, but we have to call someone else to reattach the box and meter, so until then we have no power to the camper.  There also used to be a nice line of trees behind the camper shielding it from the road and the driveway, but now there are only a couple left.  The main power lines that run along the easement are only about six feet off the ground right now so I looks like the utility company still has some work to do as well.

Needless to say, Dog Woods did not fare well through the storms and we have a LOT of work to do.  The upside is we will certainly have enough firewood to last us for the next decade.  I think once the weather warms up a bit we're gonna have a tree cutting party and invite any friends and family that cares to help.  *hint hint*  ;)

Hopefully this spring and summer we'll have enough coverage to make it nice and secluded as it usually is.  However right now you can look through the trees and see the hillsides, whereas before you couldn't see the hillside at all, even in winter.   Here are some photos I took while we were there.  They really don't do the damage justice, but gives an idea of what we are contending with.

Most of that blue sky behind the camper used to be shielded by trees:

You can see how low the power lines are in this one:

This is a massive pile of trees, around 8 feet tall where they just all fell on top of each other. It almost looks like a tornado ripped through there.

What is with the weather around here this year?  Two weeks ago we had highs of 12 degrees and a massive ice storm that took out power to most of the city.  This week it's been in the 60's and wonderfully warm - very rare for February in Kentucky.  And now tonight and tomorrow we're expecting strong thunderstorms with high winds and gusts ranging up to 60mph, which in turn has the weather folks heading warnings of the following:

The recent ice storm has left many trees in a weakened state with many large...loose hanging branches. These strong winds may result in new power outages for some areas and may result in minor property damage. Given the rains and soft ground conditions... these winds may be strong enough to blow down whole trees.

I just hope we manage to keep our power this time.  At least we have the generator ready and this time a kerosene heater in case the house gets too chilly.  We shall see what happens.  At least the sideways rain will help wash some of the salt off of my truck!  :D

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We finally got power back this afternoon.  Normally the power being out for a while doesn't bother me, but when the power, and thus heat and hot water, goes away on days where the high temp is still below freezing isn't my idea of a good time.  All I can say is, thank goodness for generators!  We had several  friends and family members offer to take us in for the duration, but with three unruly dogs, one cantankerous cat, three mice, one evil rabbit and two beta fish we figured we were better off staying put.

We settled in for the long haul by hooking up the generator under the back porch (to lessen the noise) and running extension cords up through the deck and into the kitchen window, which we then sealed off with masking tape and plastic.  We have a 5000 watt generator so we were able to run both fridge's, the freezer, the tv, the Wii, two laptops, two lights, one space heater and a few other things as needed.  One little space heater wasn't going to cut it for the entire house, so we settled into the living room and put plastic up over the doorway leading to the rest of the house.  It worked brilliantly!  The  living room stayed at a nice 65 degrees while the rest of the main floor was around 50 degrees and the upstairs bedroms around 42 degrees.  We still slept in the bedroom and kept really warm up there due to our awesome bed and mattress.  The issue was getting out of bed in the morning...brrr...talk about a wake up call!

Wednesday wasn't too bad.  We had only generator power, but we still had our cable modem for Internet usage.  By the time we woke up Thursday morning the cable was out as well.  So no tv and no Internet.  Luckily the TiVo was hooked up so we had tons of stuff to watch. But there is only so much tv one can watch in a day.  And no Internet - gasp!  What did we do before Internet?!  I thought I was going to lose my mind.  I was actually excited to get back to work!  Luckily the power came back on about 2 hours before I got home from work today so it was already almost back up to normal temp...and I got to take a shower!  Ahhh clean and warm.  Life is good.

So we got this nice ice storm yesterday and we were doing pretty good until this morning.  At 9:45am our power went out.  It is now after 10:30pm and still no power.  Worse yet, the word is it could be 7 - 10 days before they get it restored due to the 475,000 homes without power.  All I can say is thank goodness for generators!  We sectioned off the main living room from the rest of the house with plastic over the door to the kitchen (and thus the rest of the house) and powered the living room for the lights, tv, laptops and a space heater.  The plastic is keeping the heat in the room - though the rest of the house is freezing!  I think I'll be sleeping on the couch tonight for the sake of my appendages staying intact.

Our office closed today, but I'm sure we'll be back in business tomorrow.  At least there I can get warm, assuming I can make it out of my driveway.

A branch of the maple tree in our front yard - this is pretty much what all of our surrounds look like, with an inch of snow on top: