This is when it’s raining styrofoam. Or snowing little cubes of very light spongy stuff.
This is what we had, when we’ve been mid-50’s. We will be again this weekend, but the pond skinned over with ice in great wrinkles this morning, and we had a real downpour of graupel yesterday.
We are, however, getting out there to rake and de-mulch the roses (a leaf blower works best for that!) and generally to find out where we left things last fall when we were both down with the crud and unable to do much.
The fence guy is coming to do a final measure soon.
And we hope to get this show on the road.
We’re behind on accounting, still trying to get the credit cards entered.
And we are just fried…I have told Jane we are packing up the cats tomorrow and driving to Priest Lake, just a scenic drive to get us out of the house. That’s 80 miles from here, and 80 back, and maybe we’ll have lunch at the local BBQ. The lake gets its name from the Jesuits who had a post there way back when. And it’s got bears and moose and lynx and probably cougars and all sorts of birds and fish, surrounded by the Selkirk mountains, of which our own Mt Spokane is part…it’ll be a pretty drive. And we need some mental floss.
Cougars? I don’t know how old the women there are. But I’m sure they have puma! 😉
Sorry, obviously I couldn’t resist. 🙁
I had a pair of Pumas once…..unfortunately, when they assembled them, the nails they used were a bit too long and poked my heel through the insole. No matter what I did, I still got poked….never bought another pair.
BTW, speaking of repairs, the roofers are coming Monday morning to replace the lost shingles on my roof. Finally.
I tries some on once, but my feet said ‘no way’ – the shape they use is too narrow for me to wear them.
LOL, I can never remember the correct term and just call them popcorn farts! Boy, that’s a great drive. Due to things outside my control it does not look like I’ll be applying for the job up in Sandpoint after all 🙁 You also have grizzlies and wolves in the vicinity of Priest Lake, so take the camera and don’t go trekking off track.
Ok, now which vocab do you think I am now going to remember, ryanrick – CJ’s or yours? This is not going to help me with polite conversation when I look out the window and spontaneously exclaim, “Oh look, it’s…!”
Heeheehee. Sorry — well you could go with styrofoam balls….
Grins! Lively conversation, hey? But it’d have to get cold enough before I could say either one. “Graupel” looks a bit like “grapple” with an “aw” instead of an “ae/aa.”
Off topic, but I just spotted a small article in the New York Times book update email praising Patricia Briggs that I thought others here might be interested in. It’s here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/books/review/inside-the-list.html?emc=edit_bk_20140321&nl=books&nlid=33852572&_r=0
I picked up the first book in the Mercy Thompson series a few days ago since I’ve heard so many good things about her writing here and other places, especially since I might get to meet her in September.
I got out and fixed the fence, doo-dah, doo-dah . . . Stupid fence probably dates from the 1970’s, the wood is dry and brittle, pickets are warped, and it was nailed together to begin with. We had a regular howler the other day and the wind tore it loose at the corner and blew pickets off. I got out yesterday afternoon and applied some strategically placed deck screws, and so far, the pickets have stayed on and it’s stayed up. The only reason I bothered to fix it was to keep stray dogs out of the back yard. However, It Ain’t My Fence! and as of mid May, I shall not give the hindquarters of a rodent whether it falls down or not. Where I’m going, I will have neither fence nor yard to fool with, and frankly, I won’t miss them.
Hope you enjoy your little jaunt, the cobwebs get blown away, minds get unfrazzled and other such good things transpire.
Squirrel squat? Bunny behind? Rat rear? Guinea pig putz?
Always interesting to see place names echoed on the other side of the Atlantic. Selkirk is just over an hour way, 40 miles south of Edinburgh, in the rolling hills of the Scottish Borders; no mountains.
English, Scots, Irish, Dutch, and German immigrants were the majority of the colonists and up through the 1800’s. So often, people might stick “New” on the place-name from back home, or their parents’ old country, and there you’d have a new place here named after an older place back there. (Though some were reused for no particular reason besides perhaps a historical allusion, e.g. Palestine, Texas, or Athens, Texas.) But then there’s New Braunfels, Texas, which was settled by German-speaking immigrants. Many settlers (Scots, Irish, German, English) either first or second generation, followed routes from the coastal port towns further inland, and through, for example, Cumberland Gap from Virginia to Tennessee, and then across the Midwest to Missouri and into Texas. During the middle and late 1800’s, you also saw Czech, Polish, and other more Central or Eastern European settlers arrive. — And those very routes are how one side of my family ended up in Texas. (Names like Thompson, Rayburn, Baggett, and Brodie, on my mother’s side, who moved from Texas into Oklahoma.)
So for Americans, it can sometimes be surprising to come across a “familiar” name and find it was someplace in the British Isles or the Continent.
Indeed; Houston, Texas, has become rather more famous than the original Houston here in Ayrshire. As you’ve pointed out, the trail of surnames towards Texas and elsewhere also tells a story and I know there were a number of Scots at the Alamo. President Woodrow Wilson said “Every line of strength in American history is a line colored with Scottish blood.”
Seeing Scots place names in the ‘new world’ always make me wonder who it was who left them behind as a clue they were there and how they ended up there, so far from home a couple of centuries ago. I also wonder about the reason for the name – simple nostalgia or a wee joke – “You think these are mountains? You should see the ones round Selkirk”.
It’s 10 days until the US pre-order of Peacemaker is due, in print hardbound and ebook formats.
I’m halfway through a reread of Merchanter’s Luck. Stevens and Allison are trying to get Lucy cleared.
I just got a note from Amazon that Peacemaker’s price went up from $18.60 to $19.68…..
I just got my “Peacemaker” today from barnesandnoble.com today!! Happy surprise.
According to Amazon, if you had pre-ordered at the old price that is the price you would pay regardless…
I agree. I checked what they are charging me, and they say it’s at the price it was when I ordered it – $18.60. Sometimes it pays to be quick on the draw.