Snow 13 Dec 2010

At least two inches overnight.

That's the driveway.  It may look flat in the picture, but it's at least a 10 degree slope.  It was a little bit of a hassle to get Moxie to pose with the numbers on her side, but she's a real trooper.

The chickens don't seem to be having as much fun as Moxie. Their water dispensers were frozen solid.  I forgot to bring them in last night.

That piece of plastic in the middle of the picture is laying in our back yard, behind the house.  That just shouldn't be.  It was covering Ark II down in the front yard. That's something like 80 feet away.  Where Ark II is sitting is about 20 feet lower in elevation, and there's a house between those two spots.  The plastic had three 6 pound rocks setting on top of it, plus rods for weights along the bottom edge of the sheet all to hold it down.  This is an example of how wicked the wind can whip around up here.  Now I'll have to rig it with bungee cords.

We went to a friend's house last year when it had snowed like this.  They live barely a mile away in the same neighborhood.  We nearly slid off the road into the ditch.  Even with four-wheel-drive engaged there are just too many spots where the slopes are too steep and the curves too treacherous to drive without chains on or steel studded snow tires.

Elvis is just going to look like that for a couple of days.

I woke up this morning at about 02:00.  Checked the wood stove and re-loaded it.  Checked water flow.  Came and sat down in the office and checked the thermometer.  Ten point one degrees Fahrenheit.  Hey, we didn't get all the way down to eight.   I looked at a couple of other blogs by people who live in the Midwest.  Why do we still call it that?  It should be called the North Central United States.  To this day, when I hear "Midwest," I think of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada.  I have to make myself think that they are talking about someplace between Ohio and South Dakota.  If it's confusing to a native American like myself, how much more so to a foreigner?   Where was I?  Oh, yeah. Looked at one blog by a guy in Wisconsin, and it makes me feel a lot better about where we are.  Scroll down and look at his photos.  If you live where there is limited snow, it will make you feel better about just being cold.

I will admit, that I wouldn't mind if just one time, it would snow about six to eight inches so I really could sled down the hill a few times and feel like a kid again.  And hey! it's only December 14.