Christy’s Ramblings

These frost particles were on my truck windshield this morning.  I pulled out the Kenko extension tubes to see what I could get and this is what I ended up with.  Not too bad for the first attempt.  I’d really like to get a true macro lens for this type of stuff (and bugs).

So it’s Super Bowl Sunday.  We’ve been invited to several outings, though don’t know if we’ll make it out at all.  I still have quite a bit of work to catch up on so it mainly depends on how much I get done and how much I feel like going out after working all day.  I do have some money on the Colts through an office pool, so GO HORSE!

I don’t think much fishing will be done in this pond anytime soon!

If you’re not reading this via RSS I’m sure you’ve noticed a change in color scheme. I changed the template from a light color scheme to a black scheme to better display my photos.  After trying many, many different themes I kept coming back to this one because I like the layout, the versatility and the ability to have my rotating images in the top banner.  So I hacked around a bit and made it look how I wanted it to.  I’d appreciate any feedback, any issues or problems you may find, etc.  There are a few small things I will be tweaking, but probably nothing too drastic.  I’ve also added the polls back on the right side if you enjoy poll type stuff.  Happy Monday!

Frigid

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:

Wow, it actually happened!  We got about 4″ of snow.  We’re now getting a nice layer of ice before the next 4″ comes in.  Got out of work at 2:00 today, too!  Happy birthday to me! 

The sparkly view from my front porch while waiting for my truck to thaw out this morning:

Looks like we will after tonight - possibly 10 inches of snow and ice by Tuesday evening for the Kentuckiana area.  I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I hate winter. I really, really hate winter. I hate winter in Kentucky specifically. It’s cold, it’s gloomy and depressing. The ground is always mushy, which results in three sets of dirty dog prints throughout the house for three months straight and an irrate cat that tries to sneak into the house any chance he gets. One day it’s sunny and 50 degrees and the next it’s dreary, windy, cold and in the midst of an ice storm. Not to mention the tornados we had 6 miles from my house on Tuesday night. I mean really, tornados in January? What the heck is going on around here anyway?

So here I am on a Thursday afternoon, getting out of work in less than an hour. I was supposed to meet my friend Jenn for an evening out, to get away from it all for a few hours (which very rarely happens). But no, now we’re waiting for 1/4″ of ice and sleet and an inch of snow tonight. If it was just snow, meh, fine, I have 4 x 4. But ice - nope, not gonna risk it. I, being the weenie that I am, do not want to be stuck out on the slick roads in my new truck for just any moron to come flying by and hit me or push me into a ditch. Of course now that I have cancelled my plans the weather will “take a sudden turn” and do nothing but spit a little rain and move along - it never fails.

Luckily tomorrow is Friday and the work week has flown by. Thank goodness for the little things.