Ice, Fog and Rain

The street in front of our house looked like a frozen stream this morning. I thought we had upgraded to waterfront property! The entire region was pretty much shut down. 500 cars spun into the ditches along the Indiana Toll Road, so they closed it. The expressway next to our house was closed, as well as several other main roads. Side roads were like glass. Even the birds couldn't walk on the ground without fluttering their wings. It's now 48 degrees and all the snow is melting. We have pea soup fog and they are predicting up to 3 inches of rain and thunderstorms tonight. Because of ice jams and the frozen ground the Kankakee River is flooding in some areas. Other rivers and low areas may flood as well from the combination of rain and melting snow. What a weekend!!!

Dinner was baked salmon and homemade potato wedges. The movie wasn't much worth watching, "Rails & Ties" with Kevin Bacon. I was a bit surprised that the movie was that bland. It was a sad melodrama with a rather weak script. No tears from me, though. I rate it "zero tears".

Gumdrop Tree

Here is the gumdrop tree! Since we weren't wrapping presents I decided to give dad his present a day early. Now doesn't that look yummy?

I bought myself an earlier edition of the AVSA Master List. A few months ago I bought issue number 4, but it became apparent that most of the unregistered violets I was trying to look up would be in number 3, if they were listed at all. After searching for months (they are out of print), I happened upon it accidentally on the Alibris website.

We spent a relaxing day going through old recipes. Now I have a small box packed, some junk thrown away and my old recipes all in one place. I even found some I want to cook!

We had a warm up today with everything turning to slush. All the ice came down out of the trees in a hail of tinkling the other night. Now it's back down to 9 and it's like glass out there. Not many salt trucks going around, either.

Ice in the trees

Dinner tonight was homemade pizza. The movie (on TV) was "It's a Wonderful Life". Oddly I had never watched it before. We enjoyed watching it.

Stay safe everyone and have a MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Raining Ice Cubes

Sleet, snow, rain, ice, and a HUGE clap of thunder toward morning. Who could sleep? The ice kept tinkling on the windows, and every time it got louder we woke up, worried the power would go out. We used to have a very inefficient fireplace, but we don't have it anymore. We don't even have a generator. But the power rarely goes out here anyway. When we move, a generator will be a priority.

Anyway, about midnight I took out one of our oil lamps and set it on the stove, just in case, and made myself a cup of tea while I listened to the ice symphony. I pondered how I would keep roughly 125 African Violets from freezing. I finally decided that if I had to, I could place them all in boxes in the warmest room, which would be the kitchen. Good enough. So I went to bed. The power stayed on.

Dad is so thankful he doesn't have to work in this stuff any more! It's great being retired. We can hibernate in a warm bed and get up when we want. My part-time work is done right from the kitchen table between cups of coffee. Anyway, enough gloating. Here is the morning view out the living room window

And a closeup.

Since dad never reads my blog, I wanted to share what I won on eBay today. A vintage gum drop tree!! I can't wait to surprise him. A gum drop tree is a plastic (or sometimes metal) form of a tree and you stick a gum drop on the tip of each branch. Dad keeps missing the tree his mom had, so I'm hoping it arrives before Christmas. Now I need to go buy gumdrops!

Tonight we had stuffed cabbage and a movie. Dinner was good, the movie was....cold. We are planning to rent movies only shot in warm weather for the rest of the winter. Well, Mongol was really good, but mostly it looked cold in Mongolia. Then we watched Transsiberian, which was an OK movie shot in...you guessed it...the dead of winter in Lithuania. Tonight we watched Far North, which was a barely OK movie, which is too bad because I like Michelle Yeoh, and it was filmed...it the dead of winter in Norway. So that's it, no more winter films till summer!

Stuff

The rain melted all the snow, which wasn't much to begin with, but at least it was warmer. Dad and I made a quick shopping trip to pick up a few groceries. The best time to shop is 10 am. Not many people in the stores at that time.

Came home and I had enough time to create the ID badge for a new employee so I could get that in the mail on the way to the hospital. Oh, nothing urgent! Now that I have the state health insurance there is a whole battery of preventative tests they want everyone to have, and if you don't get them the state gets in a twit. So today I had a bone density scan, but it wasn't one where you place your heel in a little scan thingy. No, this was a hospital gown, lay on a table and get scanned all over deal.

The paper today listed a website where you can check on the air pollution surrounding the school your child attends. It's called "The Smokestack Effect" and it's on CNN. Some of the worst areas are near the mills, of course. One of the cleanest areas (in Indiana) is down by the Hoosier National Forest in one of the areas we are interested in.

Speaking of the environment, my mom would have said, "I told you so". My mom read Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" sometime in the 1960's, maybe as early as 1962 when it was published. I didn't read the book, but I remember my mom explaining about DDT and how it was causing wild bird's eggshells to be too thin, so they would break and the baby birds would die. My mom went on to join several environmental organizations. Her support of the environment, love of nature, and disgust over littering helped form my appreciation of the Earth. If she were here today, I think she would say, "I told you so, and I'm pleased that there is some progress, but why didn't you start 20 years ago!" And my mom would have been proud to see Obama elected. She would have voted for him, I know.

My dad would have had his own "I told you so" with the crash of the economy and the outsourcing of jobs. My dad passed away in 1987, but what he talked about then rings true today. Though I can't recount my dad's complicated lectures, probably because I found economics boring, I do recall the part about jobs being outsourced to the point where the only ones that were left were in the service industry. Do we see much of that happening today? I think we do. My dad was always critical. I think he would be disgusted by the state of the Nation today. I really don't know for sure who he would have voted for.

Well, that is enough "stuff" for tonight.

Dinner & a Movie

And both were good! Hot dogs and sour kraut in the slow cooker and the movie Mongul. This was absolutely the best foreign movie that I can remember watching. It was filmed entirely in the desolate steppes of Mongolia, amidst beautifully sweeping vistas. Just the scenery alone is reason enough to watch it.

The movie is about the early years of Genghis Khan, from childhood up to his rise in power when he was still known as Temudjin. Since very little is known of Khan's life, there is much creative license taken by director Sergei Bodrov, so it is impossible to call it true history, although I felt culturally enriched by watching it.

The actors are all Mongolian, except for Temudjin (Japanese) and Jamukha (Chinese). The acting is superb. It is spoken in Mongolian and Mandarin, but dialog is short enough that reading the subtitles is not hard at all. They didn't use digital shortcuts, either. 1500 horses and riders had to be imported from Kazakhstan to China for one of the battle scenes. Some locations were so remote that the crew had to build roads to access them. Dad and I both give it a big thumbs up!!

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Note--Picture is of Tariat, Arkhangai Province, Mongolia from Wikimedia Commons, a freely licensed media file repository.

Some things on my mind tonight

First of all, I'm back out of my blues. They just happen, and then I'm better.

Secondly, thank you Jenny for all of your great info regarding Bedford and things we need to look into. It's nice to have someone to talk to in the area. Jenny and her DH bought a 1912 house in Bedford and are in the process of renovating it. I wish I could say we could do the same but we are just too old, creaky and lazy.

Regarding the homemade soup. It was ok. I probably won't make it again.

Now I will step up on my soapbox. Hey, Microsoft---I have really enjoyed playing with Windows Vista. I wanted to tab through those open windows in that dreamy glass mode called Aero ever since I saw it on TV. It has been a nice visual experience to play with. Now if you will excuse me, I would like to get back to work on my Windows XP. Hey, don't get me wrong, I'm all for progress, but I also believe if it ain't broke, don't fix it. So here it is, Microsoft---keep the Vista for everyone who wants the Vista experience, and then offer them the new, improved "Vista" when you release Windows 7, but let the businesses and working people KEEP XP for cryin' out loud. And what's with the Office 2007?? The file extension causes email attachments to be stripped out by mail servers because it closely resembles a virus. What kind of thinking is that!!! And Office 2007 pretty much sucks because anyone who works with Office for a LIVING can't figure out where you hid all the familiar features. So it looks cool, but dammit I need to get back to WORK. All the IT departments are screaming at you and you turn a deaf ear??? I'm warning you, Microsoft, you are about to drop the ball and someone will step in and pick it up.

Ok, stepping off my soapbox now.

Trying to move on

Sometimes I still get sad when I think of my mom. It's not just that she's gone, but also that she and my dad moved to Arkansas to be closer to us, but still we only saw each other once every two or three years. We were still too far apart. Then after my dad died and my mom came here, she missed living in the country and missed her friends. I still get conflicted feelings about moving. Yes, I need to get out of the city. Yes, I want to live somewhere where there are hills and rocks and fresh air. But we already have one daughter far away and now we will be moving away from the other. Some days I am ready to pack, and other days, not so much.