As in 7 and 8.
Coldest it’s been in 3-4 years.
Jane’s out tending to some shopping and getting a strand of lights to replace the dead one for the ‘woodland tree’, a little tree we hang all our wild-animal motif things on: it has frosted little round lights and one strand has bit the dust. It’s about 15 years old, so we can’t complain. Strange to think that everything we brought from Oklahoma is now at least 13 years old and probably older.
I’m finally able to get back to work. And we do finally have all the winterizing done except that Jane needs to wrap that new little mimosa she planted, with this freeze coming.
Stay warm! I hope you will not have to go out and function in the cold and I doubly hope you don’t get too much precipitation!
We had several days of below freezing temps, but now we are expecting a week of temps in the high forties and fifties. The sun has come out and all the ice is melting.. This is not unusual weather for this area. We have had many falls when dahlias and petunias are still blooming at Thanksgiving. Some years we have had six inches of snow. If you don’t like the weather wait ten minutes!
The cold air is going to hit California in midweek, and through the weekend. The forecast for Davis, west of Sacramento, is lows in the high 20s. It will be the mid to high 30s in the part of LA where I live. Winter!
I noticed this morning that I have another couple of oak seedlings up – I planted a dozen acorns from the big, old valley oaks down the street.
Poor Jane is still out looking for tree wrap. The stores are all out. I can’t imagine why, she said facetiouly. I’m a little worried: she’s not well enough to be running around in this cold. I do hope she doesn’t relapse.
And of course while I’m feeling like crap, trying to get my writing going again on this scene, having attacked the book in a total re-edit to get my sense of story back—DAW just sent me the galleys for Peacemaker and gave me a week to get it in.
Word. Bad word. Your choice.
If Jane will be removing it in the spring, can she just use a double or triple layer of Christmas wrap? It would be festive, and most of the less expensive tree wraps I’ve seen are just Kraft paper.
Thanks! she did get back—she finally bought burlap at the fabric store, and we have protected our two new trees, a green Japanese maple and a chocolate mimosa.
Sharon Lee (yes, that one) reports that they had a snowfall of 1-3 inches where she lives at the Confusion Factory and Cat Farm in Maine. She referred to it as a “Practice Snow.” We were scheduled for snow again on Thurs, but the Weatherpersons apparently decided we would get (freezing?) rain instead. Probably just as swell. Snow is tantamount to a declaration of demolition derby day here in the So. Plains of Tx*. Yes, everything is bigger and better in TX including our local collection of some of the worst drivers probably anywhere.
(*Tx geography is complicated. North Tx is that stretch north of the Metropox along the Red River which is that long squiggly bit between Tx and OK. We are the South Plains, although technically we are norther than they are. To be fair, though, we are indeed the southern most extent of the Great Plains that cuts quite a swath through the central US and includes the Panhandles of both TX and OK.)
If we get snow, it’s generally confined above the 10,000 foot level on our mountains. This immediately brings out people with boogie boards and whatnot to ascend the mountain and slide on the snow. Occasionally you hear of someone who got up a good head of steam, then ran out of snow and coasted into the lava. One hopes they kept all their body parts on whatever they were using as a toboggan; lava is a giant-sized cheese grater for humans.
“Word. Bad word. Your choice.”: “Gods infelicitous” doesn’t quite cover it, does it?
“O ye four hundred thousand gods and goddesses! O the five ledges of the pit!”
I like that.
Proofreading.
😀
😀 Walt! Very good.
(Though now I’d have to admit I was a proofer, among many similar hats, professionally.)
Still lovin’ the humor. It fits.
CJ, best wishes with the proofreading. A case in which “rag-eared” would be particularly troubling!
Also, luck with the freeze prep and *no* relapsing for either of you.
I, too, must admit to committing proofreadery.
Proofreaditude?
These two Lowes have tree wrap in stock:
E. 5204 Sprague Avenue, Spokane, WA
16205 E Broadway Avenue, Spokane Valley, WA
The Internet is a wonderful thing. I just ordered some random computer stuff, which ought to show up about Friday. Extra cables and USB extensions. The big thing was a lighted keyboard: this one can switch among blue, red, purple, and off. My theory is to use blue in the morning, red otherwise when needed, and purple before bed. An experiment in sleep hygiene. Darkening the room is wonderful for concentration, but I’m only a haphazard touch typist.
I also got the latest Civ V expansion for $10 and another game for $1 and change just to be able to not worry about the key disk. Getting rid of key disks is nice, but Steam is a pain, so I didn’t get several games I was thinking of that had Steam in the fine print.
Walt, bless you, I think there was a run on it in our area. But I think we’re ok.
Yep, we don’t like Steam, either.
We did, at Lynn’s urging, get Guild Wars 2, which she swears is great, and she wants to play online with us…we’ll see how this goes when we get some actual spare time!
Don’t tell me I’m am old dinosaur, the only computer games I play are Freecell, and Empire–which I first played on a VAX11-80 in the ’80’s. Written in FORTRAN, it is.
Excuse my presumption: “Jane needs to wrap that new little mimosa she planted, with this freeze coming.” impied to moi that the location of the Tree Wrap was not known.
Winter storm advisory for W.C. Ohio, they predict 4 – 6 inches of snow for my area, possibly a little more, come Friday. I’ll have to go fire up the snow thrower to make sure it’s running so the neighbors won’t have to shovel. If it’s a heavy, wet snow, I definitely do NOT want my neighbors, who are mostly up in their 70s and 80s to be shoveling snow.