Category Archives: wind

late winter, rice, weather, wind

The Joy of Coming Spring and Other Oddities

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This has been a typical late winter week of weather here on the high plains. Monday and Tuesday it was cold and it snowed. Wednesday was undecided. Thursday it was warm, close to 70. Today it is warm but the wind is howling at a sustained 40 mph with gusts up to 55 mph. What will tomorrow bring? Who knows?

Enough about the weather. Let’s get on with another topic of late winter – dieting. It seems that the impending arrival of spring has a certain group of people diving head first into the idea of getting rid of the “winter excess”. Some have resorted to the more mechanistic approaches:

Others have been a bit more organic in their approach:

In any case, it can suck the fun right out of luncheon meetings when the diet monster is in full rage. Especially if you are the only one not eating a salad. {*grin*}

That brings my meandering mind to the topic of brown rice. The other night L was bemoaning (on the phone to me) the amount of time it takes to fix brown rice up in the mountains because of the altitude. The boiling point of water is so reduced at the close to 2 mile altitude that it takes forever (and at least twice as much water) to prepare brown rice there. Given that it is a 40 minute task down here at just less than one mile of elevation, you can imagine how long and frustrating it is up in the mountains. In any case, I could tell that L was frustrated. (After all, why call me to kill the time while the rice quasi-boiled away. Watching brown rice boil is not noted to be a source of high entertainment value. I can’t picture that talking to me while I fixed my supper and watching her rice bubble away has a much higher rating.)


More later …

jury duty, weather, wind

Huff and Puff and ….

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The wind howled today, at times hitting 50+ mph and the temperature never got above freezing. Right now the mercury is dropping and the wind chill is in the 9 below zero range. I think it is safe to say that fall is officially here.

In contrast to the cold and wind outside, I spent all day in an overheated courtroom.

All day from 8:30am to 5:30pm and there is still no jury empaneled. I hope to find out tomorrow if I am on the jury or not. There is nothing like the maneuvering of attorneys in a multiple felony case to bring out the worst of the jury selection process. Thus my new theme song:

Hi ho, hi ho

It’s off to court I go

Defense to the right of me

Prosecution to the left of me

And the judge in the front of me 

How low can we go

So off to court I venture in the morning.

weather, wind

Wind, Wind, and More Wind

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The wind has been blowing for the last several days here. It has everyone on edge as the howl and gusting is continuous. It even drove the number of calls to the Humane Society to record levels as dogs and cats took to any shelter from the wind. Add to that the fact that the wind was mixed with periodic downpours and a spot of hail and we have had what I like to call a spa treatment weekend: a derm-abrasion via blowing sand, a mud pack due to the rain and flying dirt, and finally a poor man’s Swedish massage from the pounding hail. Best of all: no reservation or payment required.

Today the wind finally knocked the basketball hoop head over heels and sent the garbage can and garden carts flying too.

Here’s hoping the wind and continued low pressure will abate soon. (Low pressure makes me ache in every joint. Not just me, but I am naturally more attuned to my joints. {*grin*})

(A completely extraneous aside: I just found a huge fly in my coffee. Yuk! Nothing like drowned fly flavoring to make one sprint to spit out the coffee and the corpse of the fly.)

I’ll leave you with an ingenious method to avoid putting laundry away, especially if your spouse is at all picky. It is somewhat akin to the prohibition against me washing L’s colored laundry. {*grin*}

ice, weather, wind

Windy Tuesday

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If you saw the national news, you probably saw mention of the area out here. The winds came up yesterday and then got really strong last night and this morning. Coupled with a smattering of snow and rain and temperatures below freezing with wind chills near 0, it made for an interesting day. We lost some trees around town and had signs and other such things blow down as well. I took this picture of the ice hanging off the eves of the house from inside the kitchen.

 
You can see the big one in the corner out of the breeze. Note that contrary to the dull dark look of this picture, it was taken at noon with the wind howling and the temperature up to the 30s. It’s just that the day stayed gray, dull, and overcast. Yet another view of the surviving icicle is given by this close up shot.

It calmed down a bit by this evening for the city council meeting where we had a marathon session. In retail sales it is Thanksgiving through Christmas tat is the make or break. In municipal government in cold climes, it is the March – June time frame that is make or break. If projects don’t get started in time, they don’t get finished before the possible arrival of winter. So we had a two page agenda of items and contracts to go through tonight, along with several public hearings. Made for a fun time for all. {*grin*}

We did have a first at the meeting. A citizen actually came to speak at the unscheduled block reserved for people not on the agenda, and he was not there to complain! He came to tell us thanks for the hard work and good job we are doing. It rare to be hearing it from one of the people we serve, especially in public like that. The council and I were deeply appreciative.

Finally, amidst the wind and the breeze, Mom got to go home today. It was challenging when the van brought her in her wheel chair to the house and the wind was so strong that it took two of us to hold the door open for the wheel chair lift to deposit her on the side walk. It was likewise fun as I loaded and unloaded her stuff from my truck. But in spite of the ugly weather, Mom is really happy to be back in her house, able to do the things she wants, and eat the food she wants.

Time to head for the bed so I can get up and mosey down to the radio station tomorrow morning. I only got a few hours sleep last night with the wind and crashing and … so 6am is going to come early. After the show I’ll head over to Mom’s to get her grocery list since she can’t get out and about for a while yet. She’s learning that wheel chairs on thick carpets are very hard to push compared to the tiled floor at the nursing home. {*grin*}

tooth, weather, wind

The Century Mark

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This is the 100th post on this blog. (Go ahead and count, I’ll wait … see I told you!) Yea me. Poor you.

The faux “yea me” is how I feel about the weather today. The winds came and the winds went, but mostly they stayed with the cold to make it feel downright nip out there. Wind chills were in the negative numbers all day and not a skiff of snow to show for it. There was snow to the west of us, but none out here in the valley. A good day to just curl up and do something indoors.

My temporary cap on my broken tooth from this post and this post finally disintegrated into a lot of shiny pieces of metal in my mouth this evening. It wouldn’t be too bad, but the ground away part of the tooth is now exposed to the air and to temperature variations. Thank heavens the permanent cap is ready to be put on Monday morning bright and early. Chewing and hot and cold is right out the window for the next 24 hours. I figure if it really starts to hurt, I’ll go drag my dentist out into the wind. Serve him right taking so long to get the permanent cap in place. One advantage of a small town is that I know where he lives, so it is hard for him to hide.

Tonight the wind has been swirling enough to bother Molly. So she has been going from window to window doing the whimper-woof thing that dogs do so well. I figure she is telling the bushes to hold it down out there. It must have tuckered her out because she is now sleeping at my feet as type this in. She looks a lot like a dead piece of road kill all splayed on her side. If you don’t watch for the bellow of her sides, you might think she was dead. I’ve never been able to figure out how dogs and kids can be going 90 mph, running full tilt and then suddenly curl up and be out like a light bulb. I vaguely remember being able to do that many years ago, but the older I get the more things hurt and the harder it is to just drop off to sleep. How about you? This is Molly as I type. The black blob in the lower left corner is a piece of my leg

As a parting gift, here is the view by my keyboard. Note the piece of the broken cap circled in red (and a couple of old ring boxes from a bunch of stuff I am sorting through). I should have made it a mystery photo and asked people to identify what each item was. I might have had a poser given the poor quality of the picture and the oddity of the subject. Oh well, next time.