Alelou, are you surviving the ice storm?

[Aquarius]

Still, mayonnaise is one of those things that I'm really paranoid about. I don't know why. I love the stuff, but I'm afraid of it!

Don't be. I'm the living proof that you can eat a mayonnaise that is out of date for ten years and survive

OMG!! It was previously unopened, I hope???

Bether--Your pics are awesome, too!

[Alelou]

Yes, beautiful pictures!

If I heard the news correctly last night, Rensselaer County still had 6,000+ people without power yesterday, split between the two power companies. These folks must be about ready to kill somebody. Before we got ours back, my husband was starting to take people's Christmas lights really personally as he drove home to the darkness, and he said he was going to scream if he had to listen to any more coworkers complain about how traumatizing it was to be without power for a day. My neighbor was getting real snarky about the noise other people's generators were making. It's one thing when we're all in it together, but it's really hard when you're among the last ones to get it back.

[Alelou]

Got this email from another friend in town today:

"Turned out I was the *very last* customer in Averill Park to get power, late today!"

Ugh. Poor woman!!!! She just moved from a condo into a country house here a year ago and she's had plagues of ants, a road crew ruin her driveway, and now this!

[justTripn]

It seems as if pictures can't even do it justice. On Saturday I was driving home from work and the sun was hitting all of the trees just right. They were literally sparkling and looked almost like glass sculptures. It was this amazing thing in the midst of all of the disaster. Mother nature...angry, yet still beautiful. Odd. Glad to be warm now, though. Here are some of our pictures.

Amazing that frozen lawn. Every blade of grass looks crunchy. What are those items in your yard, skeletons of bikes or maybe farm equipment?

[Alelou]

Yeah, the lawns were really weird, each little blade of grass an individual spike. I was so intrigued I took a close-up:



This is what a neighbor's birches looked like:

[Bether6074]

Amazing that frozen lawn. Every blade of grass looks crunchy. What are those items in your yard, skeletons of bikes or maybe farm equipment?

My father keeps his exercise equipment outside. Lovely scenery, huh?

[Alelou]

I thought maybe you were a sculptor!

[Aquarius]

Honestly, I think the exercise equipment in the yard makes for interesting photo composition!

[evcake]

A combination of blizzard conditions – heavy snow, strong winds and ice buildups – has the National Weather Service issuing a blizzard warning for much of Western Washington.

This hasn't happened hereabouts for twenty years. What the heck is going on...

[Alelou]

It's awful timing for all the holiday activities and traveling.

As they put it locally, "we're having very active weather for the next 7-10 days." Seems like they've been saying that for a month now.

As of last night we got about 8-9 inches of snow on the ground with more falling right now ... tomorrow we get another storm ... Christmas Eve is another...

And it was 10F this morning. Brrrr. I'm going to have to wrap more blankets around feral kitty's little hut on the front porch. (I'm glad our house is set back so nobody can see this odd-looking mound unless they actually come to the door.) I plugged a seed starter mat into it last year but some little creature started nibbling on the wire and I don't really want to lose the house or our lives to a fire over something like that.

[Aquarius]

A combination of blizzard conditions – heavy snow, strong winds and ice buildups – has the National Weather Service issuing a blizzard warning for much of Western Washington.

This hasn't happened hereabouts for twenty years. What the heck is going on...

I have a friend who lives in Sudden Valley/Bellingham (sp?) and they're just getting wasted on over there.