Sunday Update - Week 5

Welcome to Sunday.  For some reason, I keep waking up at 4am.  Which makes me want to go to bed extra early, which makes me want to wake up early... Blerg.

Anyhooways...

I'm making progress on Song of Storm and Shroud.  This third round of editing is not going any faster than the second, though.  Still, I'm at the part where I make notes and then enter them right away, instead of the part where I make all the notes and enter them when I reach THE END.  So, what I have now is pretty close to what's going to be there when it goes out to the world.  (Unless I go totally nuts and decide to make this one book into several by fleshing out shorter scenes and delving deep into the characters and the world.  Which would be kind of cool.  But if I do that, I'll never get this book done.  Except it might be better for it.  GAH!)  Anyway, I'm 49 pages into what is currently a 370 page Word file.

No marketing this week.  I'm too busy.  

No reading for the same reason.

I did do some baking, though.  I made white bread.  It turned out pretty good.  It could be better.  I screwed something up early on and I also probably should've kneaded it more.  Hubs likes it, so it's all good.  I also made no-bake cookies and added tiny pretzel sticks to them.  Those are tasty, but gargantuan, so eating one is like eating three or four.  

I also got some log work done.  That was 3 out of my 4 active days this week - sawing logs and working on restacking the stacks.  We've pulled out a fourth pallet and we're putting all the smaller wood pieces on that, which means taking the smaller wood pieces out of the other three pallets and restacking those.  

The fourth day was shoveling snow.  We got about 8 inches.  It looks pretty, but it also looks like the reason I left Michigan.  Derp.  

In other news, Beauregard the Broad-winged Hawk took down what I think was a Brewer's blackbird.  I got some awesome pics of him eating it in the snow.  

We've been having flocks of blackbirds (I think they're Brewer's) pass through over the last week or so.  Easy pickin's for a hawk like Beau.  

We're also having larger numbers of deer stop by.  The snow draws them in because they know they can get food here without having to dig through the white stuff.  I think we counted 24 at one point yesterday.  

Okay, we've been watching the Olympics.  I know, I know.  They shouldn't be holding an Olympics in China in the first place.  Here's my thinking on the subject:  The time to boycott this crap was when the Olympics committee was thinking about awarding China with the prize of holding this winter's games there.  When there was still time to change the location.  It's not like any of China's crap hasn't been going on for years.  So, the games are there now and our athletes - the ones who've been working for years to get to this point - are there now.  So, I'm watching.  If you want to hurt China, beat the crap out of their athletes by winning.  Win everything.  And highlight the dirty, rotten, nasty things China has done and is doing while celebrating the achievements of all the other athletes.  Not watching and not cheering on the good people who had no part in China's abuses doesn't hurt China.  It hurts the good people.  

And besides, I'm already boycotting so many things.  It's tiring.  I want to watch people achieving their goals and winning awards.  I want to get excited when they do something awesome.  The world is a shitty enough place.  Leave me alone with my little bright spots.  =op

Not much else going on here.  They still haven't plowed my road.  But I have nowhere to go, so I'm not that twicked about it.  (Twicked... it's something I used in my book, so I'm trying it out here.  On a personal note, I need to cut down on my swearing.  New neighbors have little ears and I swear a lot when I'm working outside.  It's not an easy task, lemme tell ya.)

Okay, your turn.  How was your week?  

Thursday This n That

We never lost power.  The huge ice they predicted was only a glazing.  Basically, enough to screw up the roads and make it so I'll need either a warm spell or hot water to get my car doors open.  Thankfully, I have no plans to go anywhere.  Snow, on the other hand, is supposed to start tonight and dump white-cold hell on us.  I've heard as low as 3" and as high as 8".  Again, not going anywhere any time soon.  I talked to Mom yesterday morning and she was getting an inch of snow per hour up there.  

Yesterday, I made bread.  Just plain ol' white bread.  There's nothing quite like homemade bread.  Hubs had a piece with jam and butter for dessert.  

The day before, I made no bake cookies with pretzels in them.  I had one for breakfast.  Yeah, I'm such a rebel.

Today, I might try my hand at baking hamburger buns.  Because like a stupnagle, I forgot to buy those when I was stocking up on supplies.  Bought burger... no buns.  Derp.  I also forgot apple juice.  Double Derp.

I also may wimp out on the buns and just put burgers on my fresh-baked bread slices.  Maybe I'll make patty-melts with them.  Crap, now I'm hungry.

Needless to say, I had a boatload of dishes to do last night.  I hate doing dishes.  But I hate dirty dishes in the sink more.  

Man, I went to Wallyworld on Tuesday morning and it was a madhouse all up in there.  Pre-storm people panic-buying.  I went down to stock up on corn at the feedstore because the deer will be eating a lot over the next few days.  Anyway, I only stopped at the big W to top off a few things we were out of, and GAH!  And there was this one woman who insisted on yattering at me in the checkout line.  Except she had a mask on and I couldn't understand half of what she said.  I spent a lot of time smiling and nodding.  I was kinda mesmerized by the way her mask poofed out and sucked in with every breath.  She definitely didn't act like she was getting enough oxygen to her brain.

By the way, they jacked whole corn in the fifty pound bag up by $2.  Which kinda sucks.  Fifty pounds lasts us two days.  Less if we're feeding heavy due to the weather being craptastic.  I wish I could claim those furry buggers on my taxes.  Sixteen dependents would help a bunch.  LOL

Anyway, I'm here and inside for the foreseeable future.  Drop a comment.  If I don't approve it within a reasonable time, we lost power for some reason - like it's wet, heavy snow and it dropped a limb on the lines.  Derp.

Have a great day and stay warm wherever you are.

Sunday Update - 2022 Week 2

Here we are with the second week of 2022 ended and dare I say it?  Things might be looking up*.

In my own little world, nothing happened of national importance but there were a few things of personal note...

Fifty pages got edited and I'm now within 80 pages of being done with this round.  Can I do 80 pages this week? Tune in next Sunday to find out.  Once this is done, I'll have to do another round of edits to make sure everything I did this time makes sense and to clean up any lingering typos.  Then maybe it'll be ready to send to readers.  I may take a break from this and do some writing of new words.  Go back to Duke or Dennis or SCIU for a change.  We'll see.

I uploaded Fertile Ground and Early Grave to D2D yesterday afternoon.  EG is already hitting some other outlets.  We'll see how that goes.  Most of the other books are available at everywhere but Hoopla (they take forever).  DE and RHI are still waiting on a couple, but not any of the major ones, so have at it.

As for reading, I finished three books and DNF'd a couple others before the wrap-up went live.  Then I DNF'd two books yesterday.  Blerg.  But I downloaded a bunch of yesterday, too, so I have plenty to keep me busy.  You'll hear about all that on Saturday.

In baking news, I did honey corn bread - this time upping the honey and the sugar to 1/3 cup instead of 1/4 cup.  Yummers.  As for other cooking, I made a vat of chili and a stroganoff fail where I dumped the uncooked rice right into the beef/sauce mixture in the crockpot and left it to cook.  It ended up as mush with crunchy bits.  I know better, but I was being lazy.  I'd say lesson learned, but I've done it before and I'll probably do it again... in a couple years after the taint of this has left my brain.

On the activity front, I did something every day last week.  Woods work and log work mostly.  Then yesterday it was dealing with the snow.  I haven't weighed myself since the 5th, so I'm not going to bother dropping a weight here right now.  Maybe later.

Speaking of snow, around dark last night we had about 4 inches worth of yucky, dense, wet white stuff.  Mid-afternoon, Hubs and I were out knocking it off the cedars as far up as we could reach on the big trees and off all of the smaller trees.  It was still snowing then, so we'll see if my little cedars are laying on the ground this morning and whether any of the big cedars lost limbs higher up.  =o\

Also, speaking of woods work, I discovered a hack.  The nozzle on my can of WD-40 broke, and when I zipped over to the Dollar General, they didn't have any.  I bought some Goo-Gone to clean the blades, but I still needed something to act as a lubricant.  So I bought a cheapy can of non-stick cooking spray (NSCS).  It worked like a charm.  Every time the blade started to choke up in the wood, I sprayed it and it went back to zooming through the wood.  Afterwards, I duck-ducked whether substituting non-stick for WD-40 was a thing and IT WAS.  I'm so cool.  Then the fridge door started squeaking, so I zapped it with NSCS, too.  No more squeak.  Also yay.

And that's about it.  I can't think of anything else, so I guess I'll just wander off in search of more coffee.  Have a great day, everyone.  And drop a comment to tell me how your Week 2 went.

* The Supreme Court decision against mandates and the newly-elected people in VA doing their jobs.  Yay.  They're little spots of hope.

Yeah, I'm Still Alive

 I forgot to post yesterday.  No real reason.  Maybe my brain was too wrapped up in this weather crap.  :shrug:

Speaking of which it's negative 9 outside right now.  Nine below zero...  41 below freezing. :shudder:  And it's just under 64F in the office.  The furnace - which isn't really a furnace, it's a heat pump - is having trouble getting the house up to it's usual 68F.  Plus it's always colder in the office.  But the thing is running and as long as it's running, life is good.  The two space heaters in the garage are keeping the areas where there are pipes at 40F.  Anything above freezing is bonus.  I do not want to see the electric bill for next month.

Having a bathroom in the garage is kind of a pain in the ass.  I mean, it's good for washing yucky things in the sink out there rather than in the nice bathrooms, but I don't think either of us have used the toilet in there in 8 years.  If there were no bathroom out there, we wouldn't give a rat's furry, white hiney how cold it was out there.  

We got about four and a half inches of snow from the first round of snow dumpage.  It's supposed to start snowing again tonight.  Maybe an inch or two more from that.  Blerg.

From a FB page I follow about local weather, I got a link to a site that tracks power outages.  We haven't lost power at all.  I saw someone on FB talking about potential rolling blackouts in the area due to shortages of natural gas (due to the NG wells freezing), and a neighbor stopped yesterday to tell Hubs he heard our power company might be considering doing that, too.  Fingers crossed they don't actually have to do it.  I mean, it would only be for 30-60 minutes at a time, but blerg.

One upside to all this is that I've been making yummy things to eat.  For instance, yesterday I made frittatas for breakfast and then stew for dinner and also coffee cake.  Sunday, I made a vat of spaghetti with a side of garlic bread.  Saturday I made chili and cornbread.  I now have a freezer full of leftovers and Hubs will have to roll me out of here when this is over.

In other news, the weather is making people cranky.  I watched people basically yelling at each other in several threads on the area road conditions.  Dudes, chill.  Yeah, people are asking the same questions over and over without reading the other threads where the questions might be answered.  Yeah, it's pretty logical to think if road X and road Z are crappy, so is road Y.  But for the most part these days, logic has flown the coop.  More so when people are concerned about their safety and their needs.  They're hoping against hope that THEIR ROAD will be okay because they need to get to work or to go buy milk and bread and baby formula.  While their asking might be annoying, it's not really hurting anyone.  Sheesh.

On a lighter note, I saw someone made a meme that shows a snowy road.  In answer to the question 'how are the roads?', it has a dialogue bubble popping up from the road itself saying "I'm fine. Thanks for asking:.  Humor is the key, man.  I saw another one that showed a snowy, steep road and said something like 'Texas Driving Tip: Stay Home.  Y'all aren't conditioned for this.'  It made me LOL because my brother in OK messaged me yesterday with something along those lines.  We're Michiganders, folks.  The pictures I'm seeing of the 'bad roads' are pretty tame compared to what I used to drive through on a regular basis.  It's all relative.  I saw another meme that said something about 'don't laugh at southerners for not being able to cope with the cold and snow, we don't laugh at you northerners when it gets hot up there'.  Umm, yeah, you do.  And you should.  Share the laughs.  Sometimes laughing is all you've got to keep from crying.

Know what I mean?

What are you finding to laugh about today?

One last thing that I hope makes you smile.  Through all this snow and frigid temps, we have sparrows singing their little hearts out.  They're all round like feathery tennis balls right now, but they're finding something to sing about.  Maybe they're just happy we're leaving them loads of sunflower seeds so they have stuff to eat without having to scratch through the snow.  And we're happy to do it for them.  

The Weather Outside is Frightful

Here in southwest Missouri, the temperatures are frigid and they're set to plummet to ungodly levels starting tomorrow.  Additionally, they're calling for like 3-9 inches of snow next week.  Right now, we're looking at roads covered in ice with little hope of that changing before the snow flies.

Yes, I am from Michigan.  Up there, this would be just another yucky day in the month of February.  Hell, in the upper peninsula, that weather would be defined as 'Tuesday'.  Down here, it's bad.  

Since southern Missouri and the entire state of Arkansas don't see weather like this but once... maybe twice... every decade, it means they just aren't prepared to deal with icy roads and more than a dusting of snow.  They can't drive in snow and ice, and they don't do well keeping the roads clean.  (For the record, Missouri is better at it than Arkansas, but not by much.)

Add in the fact that the roads around here are mostly hills and curves, and you've got a recipe for disaster.

So, we're staying home.

Oh, I have no doubt I could safely drive to pretty much anywhere around here.  Might be a little sketchy getting out of the neighborhood, but after that, I'd be golden.  The main problem is other drivers.  They can't seem to maintain their lanes on gorgeous days.  What will their craptastic driving be like when the roads are bad?  Personally, I don't want to find out the hard way.  Nope nope nope.  I have never ended up with my car in the ditch and I don't want to start now.

Yeah, it would be a little sketchy getting out of the neighborhood.. that's the other thing.  You see, they don't send the big salt trucks and plows in here.  Ever.  There's one dude in a brown pickup who comes through with a spreader attachment in the truck's bed, sporadically shooting salt as he goes.  When we have snow, he has a plow attachment on the front and a spreader on the back.  I think the county contracts him to do it.  Lord knows, it's not a county vehicle.  He'll get here when he gets here.  

And until he gets here, the hills my little car has to climb to get out to the highway are going to be slippery as hell.  And I don't even want to think about that S curve right before the BIG hill.  Blerg.

So here we are and here we'll stay.  We're pretty well stocked up on the necessities.  The only thing we're going to run out of before too long is deer food.  Which sucks for them.  And I feel really bad that I wasn't more on the ball last week and got loads more corn to carry them through.  =o\

How's the weather where you are?

Pictures in a Winter Wonderland

 Sorry I'm late with this, but Blogger was down when I woke up.

I can't think of anything else to post about, so here's a few pictures from the snow we got yesterday...

First off, here are a couple of shots taken of the same general area  - one from early in the snow and one from later...

Those were taken about three hours apart - 10:30am and 1:30pm.  I didn't take any pictures from later than that, but it got even snowier.  Hubs figures we got about 2.5 inches.  This is the most snow we've seen here in years.  It's a Winter Wonderland out there.

There's Oberon (the white oak) covered in snow.  And here's the woodpile that Pierre was recently evicted from:

Here's one of the two big cedars in our front yard.  Unfortunately the north tree (the farther one in this photo) lost a big limb overnight due to the weight of the snow.  =o(

The cedars never did get snow under them this time.  

Most of the snow should be gone by the end of the day.  It's supposed to be sunny and up into the forties.  As long as the roads get cleared so I can go out tomorrow, I'm fine with it staying.  It's kind of pretty.

How's winter where you're at?