We have striped weather—and this is the stripiest. We got six inches of snow yesterday and last night, and today it will start to rain and melt it all.
Our river will rise, no question.
And people, from timid, have gotten way cavalier about speed on our arterial street that runs past our house. There are tire stripes on the asphalt, but the rest is snow. They go whizzing along to the S curve downhill like lemmings to the sea.
The street that runs across our front (we’re a corner lot) is 6″ deep in snow and there is a mild downhill: you don’t think of it as a downhill if you have never noticed the fact—but last night Jane and I were engaged with Lynn in a Guild Wars melee when I hear the distinctive thump of car meeting something. I got up to look out at the intersection and dial 911 if needed. Sure enough somebody must have approached our stopsign too hot and skidded, and rather than go into the intersection and get T-boned, the somebody had swung left, perhaps hoping to turn onto the arterial by an unorthodox entry.
Didn’t work. There’s a tongue of curbed private property and a large decorative rock at that point, plus juniper bushes under all that snow.
Well, that car was bottomed out on the tongue-shaped patch, and stuck, and the driver probably shaken. I tried to dial 911, realized I hadn’t hung up the contact with Lynn, and by that time someone with a cellphone was walking across the arterial to help, so at that point, since the driver was upright and conversing with said person, I decided things were going to be under control. So we kind of watched the situation: took about an hour for the police and a tow truck to get it all cleared off, and it would be a wonder if gawkers didn’t create more problem down on the S curve, which starts right about there—but that was that.
We did get one of my window treatments hung. It looks good and is solid as can be.
One of Jane’s bichirs (African rope fish type) went over the rim into the downflow again: this requires the ladder, because the wedge-shaped tank is situated in a corner, with the downflow at the rear. Fortunately just the removal of one pipe (which can be pulled out) revealed the culprit, who is now netted and back with his 2 fellows.
Today we will put up the other window treatment and the new ceiling fan. We’re good at ceiling fans.
I’m right with you on window treatments. I bought new drapes for my new place (and two matching area rugs). The living room drapes are a medium sky blue, which I think will look nice with my chocolate brown leather furniture, and that’s the background color for the Turkish style rug. The ones for the dining area are sage green again with matching background on the Turkish style carpet. I got enough panels that I can take the rod pocket out of one and swag it across the curtain rod. The duplex I’m currently in is south-facing which in Feng Shui entails a predominately red and gold color scheme. This new apartment is north facing and entails a blue and green color scheme. (Blue with black or silver accents for north, green with brown or blue accents for east as the bedroom and dining room are on the east side of the house. I’m not going to have a window treatment in my bedroom because I’m going to cover up the only window so the room will be dark whenever I choose to sleep (I’m known to be a night WOL). I have an Indian carved wooden screen I’m going to mount behind my bed over the window. I may buy some more green sheers and swag them. (Arrr, twill be a swaggish place.) Can you tell I’m getting excited?
Oh, and window treatments are up, we can has pictures?
Lol—that’s good!
My room is pale green, and the overall tone of the hanging and rods is a muted grayed bronze, with leaf finials. If this keeps up I’ll have to get a bedspread.
Sounds like a filter of some kind is needed to keep the bichirs from the downflow line. Polyester organza? Quarter-inch plastic mesh (stainless steel would be better)?
Was this impeding rock on your corner or across the street?
I live on a hill that rises about six feet over the course of a block, and steeper than that in the next block. This city has freeze/thaw/go nuts cycles re: weather, and the first time we get warm snow (snow falling at or near the freezing point) I hear those noises CJ describes.
And maybe every time after. Friction is not a friend. Neither is gravity. Snow tires work best on flat ground! And people who live on this hill still behave as if those three things are not true.
In short, drivers in Spokane and Calgary have a lot in common. Here’s hoping your road is graded so that the cars avoid your yard. A lot of the cars that get in trouble on this hill end up in the yard of the building next to mine — and there is a lovely big pine that stops them from ending up in the living rooms of the bottom floor apartments.
The rock and juniper is across the street. The car had 2 tires on street paving, 2 over the curb, its side having maybe hit the rock, and its nose buried in aged juniper.
people with 4-wheel drive seem to think they have an advantage when it comes to slippery roads. Perhaps they do, I’ve never driven a 4-wheel drive vehicle like that. My parents’ car is 4-wheel drive on-demand. I still don’t “assume” that because all four wheels are powered that I’m any safer on the road than in a 2-wheel drive vehicle. You still have 4 tires in contact with the road, and depending on your speed, the condition of the treads on the tires, the surface of the road, your experience, and whether you’re holding the brake pedal all the way down, and where the front wheels are aiming…..I think people who drive the 4-wheel drive vehicles, especially the bigger SUVs, cancel out all of the supposed advantages by their driving habits.
Yep, just ’cause a vehicle has 4 wheel DRIVE, doesn’t mean it has 4 wheel STOP. Ice is ice, regardless.
a friend of mine used to drive a semi rig from San Diego up to Lost Angeles. He said people would cut in front of him and suddenly hit the brakes, they must have figured 18 wheels, 18 brakes, stop on a dime with 30,000 pounds of frozen beef in the trailer. uh-huh.
Oy vey. The stupid involved in that maneuver is so deep it could hide the semi tractor. (I believe the usual result is a jack-knifed rig.)
We got the new fan up.
We almost got the curtains up in my room, but mismeasured the rod. Now we have a patch job, but hey! we’re gaining on it.
I was getting off the freeway once, on a very rainy day, and started to hydroplane going down the ramp. (Literally down – the freeway was about 20 feet above surface street level.) Fortunately I was able to control the car, and didn’t slide through the intersection at the bottom.
Helpless feeling, isn’t it? That’s one reason why I have a manual transmission, I can use the engine as a brake to an extent. My last car had ABS, but Honda doesn’t have that on Civics.
Yeah, it was a Corolla, with a five-speed transmission. Scary, though. The only other time I ran into hydroplaning, I was going up a small hill and braking for a red light.
I once was tootling toward a stoplight in the snow, when a car pulled out of a parking lot for no good reason. I braked, 360’ed in place, ergo missed the dingbat, and calmly proceeded toward the light for a left turn at a sane and graceful speed.
Then reality dawned and I had the shakes.
I went to pass a car on dry pavement once at the same time he decided to change into my lane. I over compensated and spun around the front of him. My car came to a complete stop facing the opposite direction in the emergency lane on the far right side of the road.
A few rubbernecking gawkers passed as I sat there fighting off the shakes. I got to work on time, but had the jitters all day.
No good deed goes unpunished. I was traveling to my guitar lesson one Monday afternoon, heading south in I-75 to Dayton. The stretch I was on was a 3-lane freeway, speed limit 65 MPH. As I was passing the interchange of Ohio State Route 55 and I-75, there were cars coming down the entrance ramp, so I moved over to the middle lane to let them in. Imagine my surprise when the second car in that line decided that the car in front was going too slow and cut out around him into my lane. Brakes and horn almost simultaneously, he FINALLY looked and you could see the horror on his face. I just backed away and let him get as far away as possible – no obvious road rage on my part. Five miles down the road, another interchange, Ohio State Route 571 and I-75, still 3 lanes, still 65 MPH, traffic coming onto the freeway, so again, I move over to the middle lane (now, I’ve checked both times before I change lanes, not just mirrors, I LOOK!) Second car in this line decides the car in front is going too slow, and yep, cuts out into the middle lane without looking. Horn and brakes again, and slow up to let THIS idiot get on down the road. While it would have been fitting punishment for both clowns to have hit me and then pay the subsequent remunerations I would have requested, it wouldn’t have worth it to me. I’m sure eventually, they’re going to end up hitting someone because of their impatience, and hopefully, nobody gets hurt. I HOPE they learned a valuable lesson, though. They must have thought that I’m REQUIRED to move over to let them on to the freeway, which in this case I did, but if I’m stuck by another vehicle in the right-hand lane, then the merging traffic is required to yield and adjust their merging speed accordingly. They don’t seem to think it applies to them, I guess.
You’re sure they had sufficient, paid-up insurance? 😉
If you ever go through Oklahoma—the quaint local custom is what we used to call “After you, Alphonse!” Cars don’t time their speed on an exit ramp to neatly insert themselves into a hole. Oh, no. They race to the end of the ramp, never looking at the traffic stream, and if they spot a car they jam on the brakes to let that car go on by. Visiting New Englanders behind them are often surprised by this maneuver.
This Don’t Look Until You Have To attitude also turns up in Edmond OK parking lots, where people backing out of parking rows just pray and gun it backwards without turning their heads to look. I’m not exaggerating. I lived there for half a decade. It was terrifying. So was the 90 year old lady who used to drive that lot, and up and down Bryant doing much as she pleased, until she decided to venture ‘downtown,’ or the short strip of shops that passes for that. She parked in front of the jewelry store—or that was her intention. Unfortunately she hit the gas and opened a new drive in facility at the jeweler’s. That did for the car, but not, thankfully, for the lady, who at least quit driving.
Small town Oklahoma has drivers you just have to be patient with… In ‘downtown’ Anadarko, on a Saturday morning not so long ago, you just braked and waited as Farmer Jones, driving the car in front of you, exchanged market news with Farmer Wilson on the sidewalk. And then discussed the wife and kids…There could be a line of cars back there, but the old boys would have their chat…
LA, northbound I405 over Imperial Highway, immediately under the LAX landing zone if you’ve flown in. Because of the extra traffic caused by LAX there are two lanes of on/off ramp! I’m in the third lane, lower end of freeway speed because I’m heading for the off-ramp. Not fast enough for Joker #1 off my left rear, he passes me in the fourth lane, heading for the same off-ramp. He’s oblivious to Joker #2 accelerating from the #2 lane on-ramp off my right rear. Joker #1 starts to whip it across in front of me, then notices Joker #2 is about to be where he thought he was going. He whips it back, overcorrecting, and starts heading for the concrete barrier divider on the bridge. Oops!! Whips it back to the right, overcorrecting, to throw a 360! (Mind you, in front of 4 lanes of startled I405 drivers!!!) Meanwhile, Joker #2 is off and gone, and I’m in lane #2 optional-off. Joker #1’s rear-end whips around and from the glimpse I have behind in my mirror, appears to just miss tapping my rear-end–and we know from the reality cop shows what the result of that would have been! I was concentrating on getting down the off-ramp, so I never saw what the consequences of that 360 were. All this in much less time than it took to read! 😉