Weather-wise, we are drying out after our week or so of tumultuous weather. The tree service finally got around to sending a crew to deal with the mess in the back yard. I have had so many broken limbs this past year the guy in charge said that I was getting the "Frequent Flyer" discount. It took the crew the better part of two days to get everything sawed down, loaded up and carried off. One guy did most of the sawing, two guys hauled it all out to the trailer and one guy sat in the truck all day, Not sure what his role was, but I want his job.
In the aftermath I noticed that a still-standing tree has a big split down the side. There is no evidence of a limb coming down and peeling this 6-foot scar; I'm assuming it is the result of a lightning strike. I was watching the Weatherbug "Spark" app during the storm and noted that one strike was measured at 0.0 miles from our GPS location! Several friends have mentioned that they had direct hits; most resulted in fried TVs and cable boxes. One local girl was hospitalized from a strike while she was indoors. Seems that was the moment she chose to open the refrigerator door.
Austin received another "best place" accolade. It seems we are the 6th most well-read city in the nation. Amazon compiles this list annually based on purchases of print books and ebook downloads. I have every confidence that our family alone is responsible for the lion's share of Austin's count. In fact, I might should read the entire list; it wouldn't surprise me to find "Anderson household" nestled in there between Akron, Ohio and Tallahassee, Florida.
Keeping Austin Weird: There is an Olympics Heights subdivision in Austin, where the streets are named for Olympic champions. Among the names you will find Jesse Owens Drive, Wilma Rudolph Road and... Bruce Jenner Lane. Now all the residents are wondering if they will have to change their street address.
The 2015 Women's World Cup began this past weekend. I pulled the recliner around in front of the TV and pushed the refrigerator into the living room. Haven't solved the bathroom problem yet; Barb has resisted all my suggestions thus far, even though she knows that there are no commercials during the games. Four games down and 48 to go - US meets Australia tonight. I'm in my happy place; you may not hear from me again until July 6.
Monday, June 8, 2015
Monday, June 1, 2015
Monday Meanderings - 6.1.2015
On this day, 53 years ago in Port Lavaca, Texas, I said the smartest words I have ever uttered. "I do."
The adventure continues. It is common to lose things. Happens all the time. Car keys, nail clippers, store receipts, pot holders. Wait, how can you lose a couple of pot holders? I mean, you get them out of the cabinet to handle that hot bowl in the microwave and suddenly they disappear! Yes, we looked in the pantry closet, and in the oven, and in the trash, and in the refrigerator, and in the recycle bin, and throughout the entire house - AND THEY ARE STILL MISSING! Did we inadvertently add fiber to our diet? It's a mystery.
Last week was an humbling lesson about taking things for granted. Especially electricity. The last 2 posts have been about the Great Memorial Weekend Storm at our house, and about being without power for approximately 36 hours (we weren't home when the power came back on).
We are somewhat prepared for temporary outages; we have some safety lights that come on when the electricity goes off, and some larger lanterns for back up, and of course candles to put in the far reaches of the house. But after they are deployed, that's about the limit. There you are, in the semi-darkness, waiting for illumination.
And TV. And WiFi. And land-line telephone service. Are the cell phones charged? Usually not by the end of the evening. Limit the times we open the refrigerator door and stuff should be good for - how long? The small freezer is probably good for a few days, isn't it?
No coffee maker. Maybe I can boil water (we do have gas) and pour it through the basket. We can scramble some eggs, bake a couple of potatoes in the oven. Wow, how long has it been since we baked potatoes in the oven?
No reading, except for the Kindle App on the iPads. How long will the batteries last? Quick peeks only at Twitter and the news apps to preserve the battery charge on the phones, but it is storming outside; it would be good to know if we needed to move to the hall closet. There's always the charger we can plug into the car outlets. Wait! Our current phones use different connectors. Curse you, Apple. Might as well go to bed.
Morning light and damage assessment. Sure could benefit from our electric chain saw. Need to make a bunch of phone calls. Hope the batteries hold up. We have local Amazon delivery - maybe I could order one of those solar cell phone chargers. However, the sun is not shining brightly at the moment. Wonder how much those portable Honda generators cost at Home Depot. I wonder if Home Depot has power?
Need to take a shower, but it's really pretty dark in the bathroom. Helps to take down the curtain, but there's not much light in the shower itself. We comment to each other about how we automatically flip the switch when we go into a room, or the closet, and having just said that, turn and flip it again.
Okay, we have done all we can do here. Let's head for a nearby motel, where there is electricity, and lights, and TV and WiFi - and coffee. Did you remember to forward the phone? Oh, wait.
Our prayers are with the thousands in Central Texas who have suffered horrific loss and devastation in the Memorial Day floods. In that context, our brief power outage was a tiny, minor inconvenience, not to be confused with an actual emergency.
The adventure continues. It is common to lose things. Happens all the time. Car keys, nail clippers, store receipts, pot holders. Wait, how can you lose a couple of pot holders? I mean, you get them out of the cabinet to handle that hot bowl in the microwave and suddenly they disappear! Yes, we looked in the pantry closet, and in the oven, and in the trash, and in the refrigerator, and in the recycle bin, and throughout the entire house - AND THEY ARE STILL MISSING! Did we inadvertently add fiber to our diet? It's a mystery.
Last week was an humbling lesson about taking things for granted. Especially electricity. The last 2 posts have been about the Great Memorial Weekend Storm at our house, and about being without power for approximately 36 hours (we weren't home when the power came back on).
We are somewhat prepared for temporary outages; we have some safety lights that come on when the electricity goes off, and some larger lanterns for back up, and of course candles to put in the far reaches of the house. But after they are deployed, that's about the limit. There you are, in the semi-darkness, waiting for illumination.
And TV. And WiFi. And land-line telephone service. Are the cell phones charged? Usually not by the end of the evening. Limit the times we open the refrigerator door and stuff should be good for - how long? The small freezer is probably good for a few days, isn't it?
No coffee maker. Maybe I can boil water (we do have gas) and pour it through the basket. We can scramble some eggs, bake a couple of potatoes in the oven. Wow, how long has it been since we baked potatoes in the oven?
No reading, except for the Kindle App on the iPads. How long will the batteries last? Quick peeks only at Twitter and the news apps to preserve the battery charge on the phones, but it is storming outside; it would be good to know if we needed to move to the hall closet. There's always the charger we can plug into the car outlets. Wait! Our current phones use different connectors. Curse you, Apple. Might as well go to bed.
Morning light and damage assessment. Sure could benefit from our electric chain saw. Need to make a bunch of phone calls. Hope the batteries hold up. We have local Amazon delivery - maybe I could order one of those solar cell phone chargers. However, the sun is not shining brightly at the moment. Wonder how much those portable Honda generators cost at Home Depot. I wonder if Home Depot has power?
Need to take a shower, but it's really pretty dark in the bathroom. Helps to take down the curtain, but there's not much light in the shower itself. We comment to each other about how we automatically flip the switch when we go into a room, or the closet, and having just said that, turn and flip it again.
Okay, we have done all we can do here. Let's head for a nearby motel, where there is electricity, and lights, and TV and WiFi - and coffee. Did you remember to forward the phone? Oh, wait.
Our prayers are with the thousands in Central Texas who have suffered horrific loss and devastation in the Memorial Day floods. In that context, our brief power outage was a tiny, minor inconvenience, not to be confused with an actual emergency.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Tornado or straight line winds - who cares?
Let me begin this section of the Great Memorial Weekend Storm Adventure by saying that, in perspective, what happened at our house in no way compares to the loss and devastation suffered by literally thousands of people in the Central Texas area this past weekend. Ours is but a blip on the scale.
If you draw a straight line northeastward from an area on the west side of north IH35, then across the highway at a U-Haul facility, then crossing over our house and proceeding to an apartment complex near Tech Ridge, on Sunday morning you would have found:
The weather service has confirmed that the damage at the U-Haul place was caused by a "small tornado." I'm not sure how they determine that, but the label is moot: at about 9:45pm everything went whoosh and the lights went out. It was raining so hard that we didn't even hear the winds that passed over - either in a straight line or spinning. And it was all over in a matter of minutes.
The good news? No damage to the house. More good news? The tree service will not have to charge me for putting up ladders and roping limbs down. Everything is right there on the ground.
If you draw a straight line northeastward from an area on the west side of north IH35, then across the highway at a U-Haul facility, then crossing over our house and proceeding to an apartment complex near Tech Ridge, on Sunday morning you would have found:
The good news? No damage to the house. More good news? The tree service will not have to charge me for putting up ladders and roping limbs down. Everything is right there on the ground.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
The great power (less) adventure
Last Saturday night a brief, sudden rainstorm hit our area. There were high winds and heavy rain, accompanied by the ominous sounds of limbs cracking outside. Uh Oh.Then the lights flickered a few times... and went out completely. We sat in the glow of our little night-light flashlight that comes on when the power goes off and waited. And waited.
After a bit I got up and found the larger battery-operated lantern, and then we waited some more. Peering out the front window, we could catch lightning glimpses of tree limbs in the driveway and near the street. Yes, the poor pecan tree had given up still more limbs.
By about 10:30pm we began to realize that there was not going to be a quick turn around, electricity-wise, so we went to bed in the dark. Barb and I were a bit restless throughout the night, and about 5am we noticed flashing lights out back. When I came to the patio door to look, I could see that the flickering was from a fire - a brightly-burning torch of flame coming from what looked like the neighbor's towering Ash tree.
About the time I got 911 on the line I began to see men with flashlights in the neighbor's yard, and the 911 dispatch confirmed that the fire had already been reported and that firemen were on the scene. Barb and watched the strange flame for a bit, and just as I was searching (in the dark) for my phone to get some video of the fire, there was a big bang and the lights in our house came on for a second - and then went off again! Barb heard someone say, "Well, that put it out!" meaning that the crossed wires that were arcing and burning had burnt in two.
In a bit a fireman came to our door to tell us that there were lines down in the back yard and to not venture out there, because in addition to the electrical lines, a big tree was being held up only by power lines and might fall any minute!
When it got light enough to see, we could tell (by looking out the windows, of course) that there were 3 very large trees down in our backyard, including the one tangled up in the power lines. And the pecan limbs in the front were blocking the driveway. We were trapped in our dark, powerless, Internet - less, A/C - less house.
So while Barb was texting around to get someone to cover the Bible class she was scheduled to teach that morning, I was thinking about getting the driveway clear. Fortunately, I have a small chainsaw for emergencies like this. A small, electric chainsaw. Oh well.
The adventure continued when a couple of guys came to the door a little later and asked if I wanted to hire them to get all those limbs cut up and stacked for City pick-up. I negotiated him down from $27,000 (really, that was his starting price; I guess anything after that sounded trifling) and we struck a deal. He said they would go get their chain saw and be right back.
They did return and I got them to clear a path in the driveway just barely wide enough for Barb to get her car out, so she headed off to church while I stayed to supervise Paul Bunyan and his son, Ox. Unfortunately it wasn't long before their chainsaw sputtered to a stop, so they said they had to go get another saw - be right back.
They did come back in about 30 minutes, but never got the 2nd saw started. Really, guys? You didn't check it out before you made the drive? They worked on it a long while, then they hopped in their truck and drove off. They had not come back by the time Barb got home, so we went to get something to eat. When we got back I was pretty sure I had seen the last of tweedle dee and tweedle dumber. I'm just glad that I didn't pay them up front, Especially not $27,000.
But I still needed to do something about the limbs in the street, since they stuck out about 2/3 of the width of the street. I called a friend from church who had told me back in the summer he would be happy to cut up fallen limbs for the pecan wood to use in his BBQ, but only reached his answering machine.
Meanwhile another passer-by stopped looking for quick cash (there were a number of them before the afternoon was over). He quoted me a reasonable price, but couldn't start until Monday morning. I told him I was worried about leaving the trees in the street overnight, for fear someidiot neighbor would run into them. He told me to go to Home Depot and get some orange traffic cones and put them out and that would take care of things until he got back in the morning.
So off I went to Home Despot (which was out of gas-powered chainsaws, by the way; mine were not the only trees downed Saturday night) and when I returned with the cones, there was my church friend and his next-door neighbor trimming the branches sticking into the street. Sweet.
We were still powerless, it was getting dark, it was getting stuffy in the house and the phones needed charging, so we stuffed a couple of bags of ice in the freezer compartments, jammed everything that was perishable in with the ice and headed up the street for a motel room with A/C, electricity, lights to see to shower by, and coffee!
When we got back to the house Monday morning, the power was back on, the reasonably priced tree guy was hard at work and there were no power lines in the back yard. What we did find, however, deserves a blog post of its own.
Next: Tornado or straight line winds? Who cares.
After a bit I got up and found the larger battery-operated lantern, and then we waited some more. Peering out the front window, we could catch lightning glimpses of tree limbs in the driveway and near the street. Yes, the poor pecan tree had given up still more limbs.
By about 10:30pm we began to realize that there was not going to be a quick turn around, electricity-wise, so we went to bed in the dark. Barb and I were a bit restless throughout the night, and about 5am we noticed flashing lights out back. When I came to the patio door to look, I could see that the flickering was from a fire - a brightly-burning torch of flame coming from what looked like the neighbor's towering Ash tree.
About the time I got 911 on the line I began to see men with flashlights in the neighbor's yard, and the 911 dispatch confirmed that the fire had already been reported and that firemen were on the scene. Barb and watched the strange flame for a bit, and just as I was searching (in the dark) for my phone to get some video of the fire, there was a big bang and the lights in our house came on for a second - and then went off again! Barb heard someone say, "Well, that put it out!" meaning that the crossed wires that were arcing and burning had burnt in two.
In a bit a fireman came to our door to tell us that there were lines down in the back yard and to not venture out there, because in addition to the electrical lines, a big tree was being held up only by power lines and might fall any minute!
When it got light enough to see, we could tell (by looking out the windows, of course) that there were 3 very large trees down in our backyard, including the one tangled up in the power lines. And the pecan limbs in the front were blocking the driveway. We were trapped in our dark, powerless, Internet - less, A/C - less house.
So while Barb was texting around to get someone to cover the Bible class she was scheduled to teach that morning, I was thinking about getting the driveway clear. Fortunately, I have a small chainsaw for emergencies like this. A small, electric chainsaw. Oh well.
The adventure continued when a couple of guys came to the door a little later and asked if I wanted to hire them to get all those limbs cut up and stacked for City pick-up. I negotiated him down from $27,000 (really, that was his starting price; I guess anything after that sounded trifling) and we struck a deal. He said they would go get their chain saw and be right back.
They did return and I got them to clear a path in the driveway just barely wide enough for Barb to get her car out, so she headed off to church while I stayed to supervise Paul Bunyan and his son, Ox. Unfortunately it wasn't long before their chainsaw sputtered to a stop, so they said they had to go get another saw - be right back.
They did come back in about 30 minutes, but never got the 2nd saw started. Really, guys? You didn't check it out before you made the drive? They worked on it a long while, then they hopped in their truck and drove off. They had not come back by the time Barb got home, so we went to get something to eat. When we got back I was pretty sure I had seen the last of tweedle dee and tweedle dumber. I'm just glad that I didn't pay them up front, Especially not $27,000.
But I still needed to do something about the limbs in the street, since they stuck out about 2/3 of the width of the street. I called a friend from church who had told me back in the summer he would be happy to cut up fallen limbs for the pecan wood to use in his BBQ, but only reached his answering machine.
Meanwhile another passer-by stopped looking for quick cash (there were a number of them before the afternoon was over). He quoted me a reasonable price, but couldn't start until Monday morning. I told him I was worried about leaving the trees in the street overnight, for fear some
So off I went to Home Despot (which was out of gas-powered chainsaws, by the way; mine were not the only trees downed Saturday night) and when I returned with the cones, there was my church friend and his next-door neighbor trimming the branches sticking into the street. Sweet.
We were still powerless, it was getting dark, it was getting stuffy in the house and the phones needed charging, so we stuffed a couple of bags of ice in the freezer compartments, jammed everything that was perishable in with the ice and headed up the street for a motel room with A/C, electricity, lights to see to shower by, and coffee!
When we got back to the house Monday morning, the power was back on, the reasonably priced tree guy was hard at work and there were no power lines in the back yard. What we did find, however, deserves a blog post of its own.
Next: Tornado or straight line winds? Who cares.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Monday Meanderings - 5.25.2015
I'm currently playing chicken with the squirrels. How long can I let that very nicely-developing tomato, the first of the season, stay on the vine? In the past, the varmints have shown an uncanny knack for dining on the tomatoes exactly one day before my target date. Of course, one can pick them green and let them ripen on the window sill. Or, you can run the risk of "Just one more..... Rats!"
Finished up formal therapy on my shoulder last Friday. The staff referred to it as "graduation." I was awarded a tee shirt (promoting the therapy center) and everybody applauded as I walked out the door. They seemed happy to see me go. Maybe too happy.
And, in case you missed it on the Internet -
Finished up formal therapy on my shoulder last Friday. The staff referred to it as "graduation." I was awarded a tee shirt (promoting the therapy center) and everybody applauded as I walked out the door. They seemed happy to see me go. Maybe too happy.
And, in case you missed it on the Internet -
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