Christmas Stuff

Weather: Cold, but sunny and clear.

Music: Nothing at the moment.

Mood: Pretty good.

What I'm doing right now: Decluttering the house and taking down some of my Christmas stuff.

We almost had a white Christmas this year--there was a prediction of snow on Christmas Day but we didn't get any until the next day. This is what my yard looked like last Wednesday morning:




The snow stopped by early afternoon, and by 4:00 it had warmed up enough that almost all of it had melted and dried up.

Christmas week was a little busier than usual . . . I got to spend a lot of time visiting with friends, catching up on movies, and eating a lot more than I should have. It was a lot of fun, but I'm kind of glad it's all over now so I can spend a few days at home catching up on other stuff.

I spent Christmas afternoon at my brother Tom's house, enjoying a truly wonderful turkey dinner (did I mention that he and Charlotte are really good cooks?), visiting with the two of them and watching my niece Emelia enjoying her presents, which included a fairy dress, a new chair, and a really cool electric car (which she was a little wary of at first because of one the sound effects):




I've got some other ones, but it'll be a few days (probably longer) before I can get them resized and posted.

The weather outside is frightful . . .

For anyone who hasn't been keeping up with the news, Oklahoma is currently recovering from the most severe ice storm and most extensive power outage in the history of the state. At one point over 600,000 homes and businesses had lost power and the estimated time for getting that power back was 7 to 10 days.. However, much of the power has been restored now, thanks to the round-the-clock efforts of the local repair crews and the 1000 extra repairmen who came here from six other states to help out. Other clean-up crews have been busy taking care of all of the downed tree limbs and toppled trees all over the city (and other parts of the state as well).

The storm started sometime very early Sunday morning and continued until late Sunday night/early Monday morning. I stayed inside and stayed warm, listening to tree limbs cracking and crashing to the ground all over my neighborhood and wondering when one of them was going to hit a power line.


Just after noon on Monday, my brother Tom called to let me know that his power had gone out, and he and my sister-in-law and niece came over later in the day to spend a few days (or so they thought) at my place. However, my power went out around 4:00 Tuesday morning, so we decided to head back to his house and try to use his gas stove to stay warm (which we did and it worked out pretty well). Later in the day a friend of his who still had power brought over his generator, so we were able to use a space heater instead of the stove and enjoyed some light and TV news as well. We camped out in the living room to be close to the heater and spent much of our time entertaining my niece (who was enjoying the extra company and attention), and we managed to have a good time in spite of everything.

Their power came back on Wednesday night, and mine was back on when I came back to check on things Thursday morning, so things are slowly returning to normal. I have a few downed tree limbs in my front yard, but that's the worst thing I still have to deal with as far as I can tell.

I've posted some post-storm pictures in my Photobucket account (just use the link in the sidebar on the right and look for my "Ice Storm 2007" album). All of the pictures except for the last one were taken on 12/10 at various times of the day. The last one was taken on 12/13 (just after I got home from Tom's house) and shows some of the tree damage in my neighbor's front yard (she has four trees and all of them lost most of their limbs).

Monday Musings

Weather: Rain off and on for the last couple of days. It's been nice and sunny today, but we may have more rain on the way.

Music: Something classical (I'm currently listening to KCSC, our local classical station). Whenever I'm feeling a little more stressed than usual, I tend to listen to a lot of classical and/or New Age music--for some reason, it makes my world seem more civilized and organized than it really is.

Mood: Okay, I guess, although it could be better.

I've been spending the last few days dealing with another round of poison ivy (this is my third--I had two really nasty encounters with it last summer) after spending some time clearing out part of one of my flower beds last week. This batch isn't nearly as nasty-looking as the first two--I've got some pink blotches and little blisters on both arms and my left hand and a couple of blisters on my right hand, as well as some blotches on my forehead, the left side of my face, and a few other spots on my face and neck. I've also got a puffy area on the left side of my jaw next to my chin that's slowly shrinking, and the skin under my left eye feels really dry and tight for some reason. The first two encounters made me look like I had some really severe radiation burns, so I'm just glad this one doesn't look any worse than it does. It itches a lot, though, so I've been using a lot of clear calamine lotion mixed with antihistamine for the blisters, and aloe vera gel for the spots that are starting to dry up and itch the most.

I've also been having some issues with our local garbage collectors . . . when they came by to pick up my trash last Friday--two big bins and two bags full of grass clippings--they emptied both bins but tore one of the bags and left both bags on the curb. I carried/dragged both bags from my back yard out to the curb and back again without any problems, so I can't imagine how they managed to tear one, and I'm equally puzzled about why they didn't haul them off.

I wasn't able to get to the bags until today, so they've been sitting out by the curb and getting thoroughly soaked. Now I have to wait until the rain stops (which may not be for another two or three days), dump them out somewhere in the back yard, let the grass dry out for another few days (and hope we don't get any more rain in the meantime), then rebag all of it and take it back down to the curb again.

I really, really hate it when stuff like this happens. (Well . . . maybe I don't hate it, but I dislike it a lot.)

What's happened to my Sunday photo blogging: Okay, I know promised to post something a week ago, and I apologize for not following through, but there was so much going on that day that I decided to put it off until Monday (Labor Day). When Monday rolled around, I was so tired from all the activity of the last three days (I was pretty busy on Friday and Saturday, too) that I put it off until Tuesday, then put it off again until Thursday.

On Thursday I took a look at the pictures I was planning to post (three pictures I took in my back yard several months ago just for the heck of it), decided they weren't really that exciting, and decided not to post them after all.

I want to continue to post pictures, but I need to look at what I've got to work with and pick something new. Hopefully I'll come up with something by this Sunday (but this time I'm not going to promise anything because I have no idea of what sort of mood I'll be in by then).