Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Weather. We Like It Or Not.

(ice, ice, baby.)

Well, we are having weather again here. That's a table on our patio. I'm sure all you northerners scoff at the piddly amount of ice, but Texans take weather VERY seriously. I took that picture around 11:00 p.m. and that's all there was, but all the schools are closed and I imagine Meals on Wheels will be closed tomorrow too. And if you think that's extreme, our local channel 8 pre-empted "Oprah" today from 4:00 - 5:00 p.m. just to talk about the weather. OPRAH! I know! I can't begin to imagine the amount of ad revenue they gave up. But they know that Texans love their weather.
~~
My Sweetie went out to turn on the spa pump so it doesn't freeze and practically repeated exactly my knee/ice incident of almost exactly a year ago. He fell the same way and everything. Fortunately, he is built differently than I am and did not wrench his knee out sideways. You'd think we would know by now that the deck is a lot slicker than the patio.
~~
Meals on Wheels doesn't announce closings the night before so I have to set my clock for the normal time this morning and then call in. I'm pretty sure they will be closed, though. I cooked a whole cut up chicken tonight and made a great soup with some of it which was perfect for the weather, and tomorrow night I am using the rest to make a chicken, artichoke and Havarti cheese casserole, so I am all good for being iced in. And I have plenty of beer.
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I think I'm going to shave one day off of the first round of my rock tumbling. If you could see how rough the rocks that came with the thing are and compare that to my beach rocks, I think you'd agree. Plus, they're beach rocks. I mean, they've already spent their whole life being tumbled by coarse grit and water. Heck, I probably could have just cut out the whole coarse grit round altogether.
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We had our house appraised recently and it really blows me away how inexpensive housing in Texas is. I watch "House Hunters" all the time and see these clapboard, one bathroom homes in some towns going for $193 a square foot, or a one bedroom condo going for $200 a square foot and I'm all "WHAT?!?". Our house comes out to only $77 a square foot. I remember a while back when My Sweetie was looking for jobs all over the country, we never saw the salary offered as a stand alone thing. We always looked at housing prices and cost of living. If he were offered double his current salary to work in California we could probably afford only half this house. I wonder why more people don't move to Texas. Oh, yeah. The weather.

12 comments:

VioletSky said...

Yup, we're getting that blast from Texas. The 'low' curves so far south it is off the map. That is just so wrong.

Chicken, artichoke and havarti ... yum.

Scarlet said...

No Oprah?? That's some serious weather you must be having! :)

Nice ice picture. I haven't seen anything like that in over 20 years!

I'm glad your Sweetie is OK and I hope you have a cozy snow day together.

Scarlet said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jazz said...

I love that expression: "We're having weather" as if balmy and sunny aren't weather.

And yeah, your "storm" has gathered force and traveled north and we're getting it here now. We're expecting 25 cm of snow in Montreal and I'm thinking I should hold you personally responsible, run down south and impose myself when you start serving up that casserole.

Big Brother said...

Good lord, they've closed school? Here there has to be enough snow for the Big Boss of the School Board to not be able to come in on snow shoes for them to close us down. ;o)

Anonymous said...

I'm on the floor, I really am. They closed the schools and Oprah because Geewits has a thin layer of frost on her patio table. I sure hope Jazz is wrong and that Texas winter storm doesn't make its way up here. Uh oh -- too late, there's a blizzard raging outside already

Carole said...

Gee, I don't think people realize that we have huge sweeping overpasses here in the DFW area that get completely covered in ice during these storms. People compare our overpasses to roller coasters for a reason!

I found this article:

Freeway ramps that make you acrophobic:

Tallest highway ramps in Tarrant County:
1. I-35W northbound to I-30 westbound, 110 feet Mixmaster_2
2. I-20 westbound to I-35W southbound, 95 feet
3. Texas 183 westbound to Texas 360 southbound, 72 feet
4. I-30 westbound to East Loop 820 southbound, 70 feet*
4. Texas 360 southbound to I-20 eastbound, 70 feet*

My daughter has to drive over numerous of these overpasses to get to work in downtown Dallas, and I for one don't want her driving on extremely dangerous icy roads like that.

I've driven in the snow when we lived in snowy regions, and driving in the snow and driving in the ice are two completely different things.

VioletSky said...

Carole is right - snow isn't the problem, it is the ice underneath the snow. Snow actually gives good traction.

110' mixmaster ??

Anonymous said...

don't you just love this weather? well, i cannot tell you how much i despise it!! our school had yet another snow day. ah. not oprah. THE oprah? you have got to be kidding. you should really post that chicken, artichoke and Havarti cheese casserole .... it sounds really yummy but then again anything with havarti has to be good.

geewits said...

VioletSky,
~~The weather is crazy here. I hope your blast from Texas isn't too bad.

Scarlet,
~~Meals on Wheels was canceled, but the sun came out and My Sweetie went to work about 9:30 (instead of 8:00). No ice ever in Florida? And it doesn't get as hot there either. That's not fair.

Jazz,
~~If I were personally responsible for the weather here...

Big Brother,
~~Well, A) no one her owns snow shoes and B) no one here owns tire chains and even with all the closings there were hundreds of car wrecks.

Xup,
~~Yeah, no that was pure ice. Snow? What's that? We just get sheets of ice.

Carole,
~~Thanks for that info. Well said.

VioletSky,
~~You guys don't have 110' mixmasters?

Raino,
~~I didn't really love the casserole and threw the rest away. It may have been been that my appetite was soured by an important loss by my team. The freaky part about their not showing "Oprah" was thinking about how much money they lost.

VioletSky said...

No, I've never heard of mixmasters in the form of a highway. I have a visual, but I could be wrong because it's not a very pleasing visual, and if it is right, I'm never coming to DFW to visit.

VioletSky said...

Thank you!!

I have been studying the mixmaster lines and have decided that it is terrifying in the extreme, yet an engineering marvel at the same time. We have four leaf clovers which have been declared not that good so they don't build them anymore, but nothing like a mixmaster.