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Amazing. I went to a guild meeting and spent four hours in the yarn and fiber store without buying anything. (I essentially "sold" some stuff to other people, but they'll use it so that's not so terrible.) While I was gone, Gary put up more bird feeders, one for shelled peanuts, and one for thistle seed. We've been having woodpecker mania in the yard today, but haven't seen a bluejay in weeks which is unusual.
Weather is unpredictable. Because of the meeting this morning, I didn't do my weekly grocery trip until 3 pm. Sunset is around 4:30 here these days. Cloud cover was dense but the weather was dry when I went into the supermarket. Came out an hour later and a mixture of rain and sleet was falling. Temperatures have been in the low 40s here for several days. It felt chilly, but not freezing. However, when I got in the car and started it, the windshield wipers couldn't clear the glass. The stuff was freezing as it hit. Not serious yet, I thought, but obvious. Time to get home without dawdling, which I did, defrosters and rear window heater running to keep the wipers from freezing up. Sure enough, a mile out of town some idiot kid in a Trans-Am pulled out of a cross road onto 176 and skidded nearly into the ditch. I slowed down, watching him recover and then floor it again, skidding once more nearly to the ditch. Jerk. So instead of 55 mph I drove 45 mph the remaining two miles to my turnoff, with irritable traffic piling up behind me. The normal speed limit on that road is 55, but outside of town people generally seem to drive 65 to 70, and some faster than that. It's a long, straight stretch of road, about ten miles, without hills, traffic lights, or curves, but it's also only two lanes, one each way, with no shoulder to pull off onto. There rarely appears to be any enforcement, so many drivers take it as fast as they can go, which is quite nerve wracking to the sensible. I was afraid I'd be in trouble at my corner, where I have to slow down to 30 mph anyway just to make the turn without flipping over. If there had been ice there, I'd have ended up in the ditch, but I made it around the corner with the idiots right on my rear bumper. I hope some of them slipped off the road right after that and had to pay for a tow to get out of the ditch.
At home, Gary was busy moving his crates of stuff around in the garage. He always does that when a winter storm is predicted, insisting I park inside. Usually that keeps the storm from hitting, actually. I'm looking at the forecasts now and it looks set to pass south of us again, so that we get only some scattered rain. Tomorrow night they still say we might get 3 to 6 inches of snow, but I rather doubt it unless both storm systems shift paths farther to the north. That's not on the model right now.
So, we're in for the night. I'm gonna make pizza and we'll probably watch a movie. We have several queued up, but rarely take time to sit still and watch.
Weather is unpredictable. Because of the meeting this morning, I didn't do my weekly grocery trip until 3 pm. Sunset is around 4:30 here these days. Cloud cover was dense but the weather was dry when I went into the supermarket. Came out an hour later and a mixture of rain and sleet was falling. Temperatures have been in the low 40s here for several days. It felt chilly, but not freezing. However, when I got in the car and started it, the windshield wipers couldn't clear the glass. The stuff was freezing as it hit. Not serious yet, I thought, but obvious. Time to get home without dawdling, which I did, defrosters and rear window heater running to keep the wipers from freezing up. Sure enough, a mile out of town some idiot kid in a Trans-Am pulled out of a cross road onto 176 and skidded nearly into the ditch. I slowed down, watching him recover and then floor it again, skidding once more nearly to the ditch. Jerk. So instead of 55 mph I drove 45 mph the remaining two miles to my turnoff, with irritable traffic piling up behind me. The normal speed limit on that road is 55, but outside of town people generally seem to drive 65 to 70, and some faster than that. It's a long, straight stretch of road, about ten miles, without hills, traffic lights, or curves, but it's also only two lanes, one each way, with no shoulder to pull off onto. There rarely appears to be any enforcement, so many drivers take it as fast as they can go, which is quite nerve wracking to the sensible. I was afraid I'd be in trouble at my corner, where I have to slow down to 30 mph anyway just to make the turn without flipping over. If there had been ice there, I'd have ended up in the ditch, but I made it around the corner with the idiots right on my rear bumper. I hope some of them slipped off the road right after that and had to pay for a tow to get out of the ditch.
At home, Gary was busy moving his crates of stuff around in the garage. He always does that when a winter storm is predicted, insisting I park inside. Usually that keeps the storm from hitting, actually. I'm looking at the forecasts now and it looks set to pass south of us again, so that we get only some scattered rain. Tomorrow night they still say we might get 3 to 6 inches of snow, but I rather doubt it unless both storm systems shift paths farther to the north. That's not on the model right now.
So, we're in for the night. I'm gonna make pizza and we'll probably watch a movie. We have several queued up, but rarely take time to sit still and watch.
