The last couple days have been beautiful…and a little snowy.
Right now I’m looking out the back door. On the deck railing there is about 16 inches stacked up, about 4 inches wide. On the deck chairs, it is about 20-24 inches. What used to be the kid’s picnic table, within about 8 hours, turned into a very mouth watering representation of a hostess coconut cake, and is now on the verge of representing, basically, a snowy hill. The roof has new eaves formed entirely out of snow, the driveway, is apparently still there, and I am wondering exactly how I will get the mail today.
Picnic table last night
Deck chair last night
Picnic table and deck chair as of this writing
Turns out that our concrete is not the kind that reacts well to the granulated ice melt stuff. About 8 hours after applying a bit to the walkway to our door, I went out to do a quick shovel-off. It was then that I noticed a few darker chunks of “snow” in the mix. Turns out those were bits of our concrete. Ouch. Should have treated the driveway first, but oh well. Think I will treat it now? If you said yes to that then you obviously don’t know me.
No. What I really need is a snow thrower, but that also means I need about $800+ dollars. I know, I know. You can get them cheaper. The problem there is I have a neighbor with a cheap one (and not even that cheap - about $650) and he wishes like crazy he had spent the extra three or four hundred for a good one. He says you don’t need the best, but there are some features you gotta have. For instance, he would like one that doesn’t suck. So, when you go shopping for one, make sure the tag says, “Non-Sucking.” Of course, I suppose it would actually be a good thing is the tag also said something like, “This Things Blows.” If you’re buying a vacuum, reverse that.
Anyways, a snow thrower would definitely make this much easier. I have been out to shovel a few times now and with our fairly long driveway (about 2.5-3 cars long and 3 cars wide), it’s not the easiest of tasks. You know what I should do? I should follow the lead of all the savvy politicians of late and have myself a Money Bomb! I’m sure you would all contribute, right?
Ya, right.
So, here’s to hoping that we don’t need the use of our driveway today, because I ain’t going out there again.
Seriously though, one of the cool things about living here in the Denver area is that, while we will get some massive snow storms, within days, the sun is usually back out and shining and the temperatures are back into the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s. Add to that the fact that, for whatever reason (dryness, elevation, better insulated homes, etc.) 20 and 30 degrees here doesn’t feel anything like as cold as 20 and 30 degrees in the places I have lived on the west coast. I think at least part of that has do with the dryness here. Cold weather in California and especially in Portland, Oregon, almost always meant wet weather - if not rain then fog. And wet weather always feels colder. Despite days in the 20’s and 30’s and nights in the teens, I have yet to feel that shockingly cold chill that I used to experience in even warmer weather in other places. So, that’s, uh, cool.
That’s about it for now. It’s still snowing. It looks to be moving out toward the plains, though it’s still falling strong here in Castle Rock. The picnic table is essentially gone now. Just got a NOAA weather warning over the emergency radio: blizzard conditions on the way with winds up to 40mph. I think that is mostly for the areas northeast of us though. We’ll see. Weather is anything but predictable out here.
Oh ya, one more thing. Power went out for a few hours last night. It actually worked out well. Most people know I am a bit of a emergency preparation nut. Well, this nut had power-failure lights turning on and 100-hour candles lit within seconds of the outage. I even had a light stick for PJ to play with. Here’s what I was most happy about. This week has been my “get your emergency kits re-evaluated and prepared” week. What last night showed me was that I have a handful of items that I simply can’t find. Things I had before the move, but now have to assume are stuck in boxes somewhere. I was able to take our situation last night and turn it into a list of items I need to reinforce my kits. Yay!
Do you have an emergency kit set up? No matter where you live, you need to put something together. One of these days I will try to put up a post about the topic. There are a lot of good resources out there, some better than others. I’ll try to hit on that later. For now though, especially with winter weather on the move, it’s time to get ready for power outages, earthquakes, travel emergencies, and more. Get a good kit in the car and one in the house at the very least. And don’t forget about food and water storage. I can offer some suggestions on all of these things. Wait for a post or just ask for specifics.
That’s good enough for now.
