A frosty start heading out for our Carribean cruise

But we're in Florida now and will be boarding ship tomorrow. I'll try and post again before we sail (steam? diesel?) out of range.

Monetizing My Yard

I've added a couple more photographs of the scenery & plants in my yard to the slowly growing list of those slapped on items at cafepress.com. The latest additions are:

Apple Blossom - a close-up shot of a cluster of sunlit apple blossoms. These are from the smaller of two trees, chosen for their proximity to eye level and position in the sun. They were pretty nice looking too. (Pictured above on a mug. Also available on buttons, magnets, and a round ceramic ornament.)

Snowy Stream - a shot of the stream behind our house on a snowy day. Taken through our rear bathroom window. (Available on large & regular mugs.)

Maybe more later.

Entry for February 27, 2007

Well, it's been nine days since I've blogged last. What's happened in that time? Lots of working at Secret Headquarters. Lots of design brainstorming & production on cafepress (over 200 designs now, including size and light/dark variations.) And a bit of pleasure in between.

I took my wife to a quilt show this past weekend. You can see the photos in one of my albums on the top page, if Yahoo sees fit to allow you. A friend of my wife sent her a link to these photos of the show posted by someone I don't think any of us know. They're smaller, but include more of the information sheets and cover some quilts I didn't even see.

We had a bit of snow the night after that. Two inches of wet slushy stuff. At least it was easier to shovel than the half inch of ice we had before. (I had to chop at that with a spade to break it off the front walk.)

That's about it, other than watching a three-episode marathon of Heroes recordings to catch up before the most recent one. I suspect I may have missed an episode of Rome due to the vagaries of our DVR's scheduling system. I'll have to check HBO's online episode list against my recording list to be sure. I think I'll move it up on the prioritizer list.

Anyhoo... How have you all spent the last nine days?

A Lesson In Handling An Ice Storm

Well, I learned a little lesson this week: when there's an ice storm, shovel your walk ASAP.

I'm sure many of you heard about the snow and ice storm that passed through the eastern US. (It was the same system that sent a tornado through New Orleans.) Where we are we pretty much got ice, sleet, and freezing rain. A little over an inch of it. Pretty stuff, but a pain in the ass to deal with.

Tuesday night the storm hit us. We had worked late and got home to find the front walked lightly glazed with ice. I sprinkled a little salt for traction and we went inside for the night. I stayed up late that night, listening to the ice ticking against the skylights, and against the front window once the wind kicked up. Fascinating stuff for a guy from New Orleans. I watched as it piled up on the deck rails - our standard means of measuring snow and ice accumulation from inside our warm home. It was quite impressive, with all the ice granules and the icicles hanging down.

The next morning I started shoveling the walk. It was heavily crusted with grainy ice and the bottom layer was pretty solid because of the salting I had done the night before. I got the step mostly done when the shovel broke. It's a plastic scooped snow shovel with a metal edge riveted on. It cracked where the wood handle attaches, which means it's now good only for pushing loose snow and ice chunks, but is not rigid enough to hack at the solid stuff. We resorted to salting again fro traction and going on in to work. Wearing LL Bean "duck" boots our heels crunched into the ice pretty good and gave us enough traction to get by.


By the time we got back, late again, the ice was frozen solid enough, if still granular, to support us without breaking. That meant we we free to slide across it if we didn't step right, so out came the salt again. We had brought the shop shovel home, but I was tired so I didn't do any shoveling. It was too cold anyway.

This morning I went out to the shed and got the spade, figuring that would make short work of breaking up the ice so it could be easily scooped away. No such luck. The ice had solidified somewhat, but was still grainy and in the shady places where it hadn't melted so much tended to not come up in chunks. Eventually I worked out a technique of chopping straight down into it about an inch or so from the edge. If I chopped clean through to the concrete the ice would usually break off in chunks. Finally I finished, put a little salt down on the more stubborn parts, and back to work we went. Man, my toes were cold.

It would have been much easier had I shoveled it all that first morning.

Lava & Ice

We finally had some snow this past weekend, followed by sleet which froze on top the snow. The next day we found the ice sheet on the bed of red lava rocks had holes in it around the higher rocks. I thought the juxtaposition of lava and ice was interesting, so I snapped a picture and off we went to the Secret Headquarters. Will post another winter pic later.