Month: January 2012

Still Digging Out

Well. This week has been very weird. Thank you to everybody who commented on my last post. It is indeed traumatic to lose a grand old tree, and even more traumatic to think how close it came to doing serious damage to my sweetie and the house. At some point though, you have to put it in perspective, and move on. We were only without power for a little over a day, and we do have a generator that runs the essentials. I couldn’t  get my car (a little VW Bug) out of the driveway until Sunday, but John was able to get his car out once we cleared some of the downed branches, so I did get to work.

We still have snow on the ground, though it’s melting relatively quickly. We also still have a huge tree on the ground in the back yard. Zeb (remember Zeb?) and his crew came last week to survey what needs to be done, but couldn’t get their truck down into our yard, so all they were able to do was cut the tree back enough so it wasn’t leaning on the house and deck rails, in case it were to shift. They are coming tomorrow for more definitive management, meaning turning it into firewood. Here are some more photos.

And here’s the maple in the front yard. It lost about a third of its branches. Zeb thinks it will survive, though it looks like it got drunk and gave itself a really bad haircut.

The good news part of this is that we’ll get to plant a new tree in the spring! Exciting! I want an oak tree, but I’d have to live to about 150 to see it grow up. Whatever we plant, it will be fun to watch it grow.

In much more fun news, my home town has a new burger joint. The sign has been up for awhile, but they finally opened a week or so ago. We got there today for lunch.

Really, John was much happier about his burger than he looks. I just didn’t want to take any more pictures. Yum!

And speaking of even better news, I got an early Valentine’s present* yesterday.

My old camera was starting to get a little “quirky”, and this (it’s a Canon 60D) is a definite step up. It does everything except, apparently, clean dog hair off my furniture.

OK, I’m off, I have an appointment for a haircut later today. One of these days I might even post knitting photos!

*Of course, John thinks it’s OUR camera. He can have his little delusions.

The Ents Are Sad

We are at the tail end of a big snow storm here in the Pacific Northwest. It started on Monday, and we woke Tuesday to a light layer of icy snow on the ground. Snow here is pretty crippling in general, mostly because the weather hovers around freezing, so we get a layer of ice along with the snow. It hit in earnest on Tuesday night, and we had about 6 inches on the ground yesterday morning. It’s all quite pretty, and John took some cool photos yesterday to prove it. I don’t have the heart to post them today though.

Last night we were doing the end of the day routine before we went to bed. John took the dogs out back and came in. A few minutes later we heard a loud crack and a crash. A huge old maple off one of our back decks had come down from the weight of the snow and ice, landing within a few inches of the kitchen windows and decks. It took out at least one smaller tree that we had planted on the other side of the yard a few years ago, we can’t really get to it to see for sure but it is leaning and looks like all the branches are stripped.  There are broken branches over all three decks, but the only house structural damage is a bent railing on the upstairs deck off our bedroom. A few inches to the left and I would not be sitting in my kitchen this morning. A few minutes earlier, and this could have been a tragedy, since it came down right where John had been standing while the dogs did their thing.

Here are a few photos.

Sorry those are so dark and gloomy, it’s pretty difficult to get decent photos here today.

I’m pretty bummed out by this, though it could have been much worse. One of the big branches landed right up against our kitchen windows, I’m really surprised that the windows didn’t shatter. The fence that separates our yard from our neighbors’ house got pushed over a bit, but there was no damage to their house. We also lost a big limb from another large maple in front of the house, hopefully the rest of that tree won’t go as well. The forecast is for about the same temperature today, with freezing rain, so hopefully this will be the only tree damage we get. Right now we can’t get out of our driveway due to downed limbs. We have the tree guy coming hopefully tomorrow, I’m supposed to work tomorrow, so I hope we’ll be able to get out by then.

In light of other tragedies, this seems minor, and I’m not unaware of how lucky we are that this wasn’t a disaster. But still. There have been many, many days in the eleven summers we’ve lived here that we sat out on one of the decks under the shade of that big old maple. We have commented many times how much we loved the canopy of the tree. Especially from our upstairs deck, it felt like we were living in a treehouse. We’ve complained every fall about the little whirligig seed pods that end up everywhere, including the rain gutters. I really will miss that tree. I’m already trying to get used to our new view, and I suppose we will plant new trees to replace the two that are gone. It won’t be the same.

I’m sure that the Ents sang a sad tree song last night.

Damn. Damn, damn, damn.

Happy New Year!

Ok, Ok. I’m starting out the new year already behind. Terrific! We did have our blackeyed peas on January 1st, so I’m quite confident that this will be a great year. If you forgot about them, I think you get a bit of a grace period. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. We did modify that recipe this year. I’ve decided that I’m just not that big a fan of a ham hock in beans or peas. It just gets too greasy in general. However, I love pancetta. Instead of using the ham hock or shank, dice up a handful of pancetta, have the deli slice it thicker for this than regular bacon. Saute it until crisp, then drain the fat, then add to your peas. Yum. It’s probably healthier than boiling a whole pig leg in your supposedly healthy pot of legumes.

How did I do with my December goals? Here they are:

Continue to write.

Finish the grey mittens, my hands are cold.

Get a grip on the True Blood Faery sweater sleeve problem. I need to mostly MacGyver the whole thing, so I might need some whiskey. I may not finish it, but I am going to figure out what to do with it.

And how did I do? I finished the mittens, and also a pair for John. Win! I did sort out the True Blood Faery sleeve. In case you’ve forgotten, this sweater pattern was never finished in the larger set of sizes. However the armscye on the size I’m making is the same measurement as the one on the size smaller, which was finished by the designer. I started out knitting, decided it was going to be wrong wrong wrong. Fortunately I set it aside to let my brain stop exploding before I ripped the whole thing out.

I ran the numbers through my Sweater Wizard software. And surprisingly, it’s not far off. I dragged out a couple of sweaters that fit me and have decided that the sleeve as written is going to work. So I’ve been knitting onward. Here it is.

As for the writing, after I finished Nano, I haven’t done much, but I have been writing a bit here and there. December always feels like riding on a bullet train to me. The whole month just has too many things going on to really slow down and enjoy any of them. Oh well.

So what are the January goals? I have a pair of socks on the needles that I’d like to finish. Here they are.

So:

Finish those socks.

Keep working on the sleeves. I don’t think I can finish both in January, but I’d certainly like to get one done and make good progress on the second.

Blog more.

Read more. I keep track of my books on Goodreads, and read 20 books in 2011. That doesn’t sound like a lot until I translate into a page count. I tend to read huge books, and my 2011 page count was 9992. My goal is 25 books in 2012.

Write a bit.

Spin a bit.

There you go. I’m not doing the 2012 resolution thing publicly, except for the books, but I do want to get some of the ancient projects done and off the needles. We’ll see how that goes. I will try to keep up with the monthly goals. That seems to keep me on track at least a bit!