Bucket List

In the move "Bucket List", Jack Nicholson writes down, "kiss the most beautiful girl in the world". Morgan Freeman asks how he plans to accomplish this, and Mr. Nicholson answers in one word, "Volume". Later in the movie, Mr. Nicholson meets his granddaughter for the first time and kisses her, whereupon he promptly lines out that item on his "Bucket List".

Today, I had the pleasure of taking my granddaughter out into the snow to play. She delighted in simple things like throwing the snow up into the air and watching it fall. She giggled when neighbors came out and waved, and when one neighbor brought out their puppy to play. Afterwards, we came inside where I had the privilege to fix us some hot chocolate (one of her favorites) and watch her wipe chocolate lips onto the sleeves of a white blouse. I giggled in delight at her innocence.

There is an older granddaughter that I never had the opportunity to play with in the snow. Maybe someday I will, but that is entirely up to her. She is old enough now to make those decisions for herself, and the family dynamic is such that she may not want to. That will be my loss. Anyway, I will relish and enjoy the time now, because the essence of "now" can never be recaptured. It has taken me nearly six decades to realize that.

Living large!

Another N'ice Day

So we have about twelve days straight of sub-zero temps and then it warms up - to the 40's no less. You would think that this would be a good break, but instead it turns into a n'ice break. Let me explain. The ground is frozen and covered with ice - a mixture of compacted snow, sand and gravel, more compacted snow, more sand and gravel, more compacted snow, and then sub-zero temps for twelve days; you get the picture. The temperature suddently warms up, and it starts to rain. The rain does a pretty good job of clearing the roofs, but what happens on the ground is rain water on top of ice. You want to talk about slick! That stuff in the bottom of bat caves got nothin' on this!!

So for the last two days the schools have been closed because it is too warm. Well, actually, they are closed because the roads are just too slick to have people try and get out. The police are asking people to stay home (which they didn't do when it was snowing), and road crews are having trouble getting gravel out because the heavy trucks are sliding off the road and having to be pulled out themselves. It has been nuts around here for the last two days.

Good part is that everyone has been home and we have spent the last two days getting our school work caught up from the start of the new term - sweet!

I would take some more pictures, but everything just looks dirty - kinda like wet snow - go figure!

Bowling Golf

One of the things that Lydia and I like to do during the day is go downstairs into the garage and play ball. The garage isn't "outside", but some of the same rules apply. Lydia can run in the garage (but not in the house) and she can use her "outside" voice in the garage. Plus the garage is heated, so it stays around 60 degrees there, which beats the -11 degrees that it is outside right now.

There are only so many ball games you can come up with using just a couple of balls, so I had this idea on a new twist. I took three empty coke bottles and set them up in a triangle and then had Lydia back off with one of her balls and try to roll the ball to knock them over. A very small variation on bowling. She loved it and gave a delighted, shrill cry when she was successful in knocking them down.

After a while, Lydia invented her own variation to help her win. She would go to where ever the ball had quit rolling and roll it from there. Her success rate went up drastically with her small variation of golf. Viola - Bowling Golf.

She wanted to set up the bottles herself, but has not yet mastered getting the triangle shape down pat, so I took some masking tape and marked the spots on the floor, so she just had to put the bottles back on the tape to have them set up correctly.

It wasn't long before she had it down pat of putting the bottles back on the tape and we had a wonderful time today in the garage. I left the tape on the floor so we can start tomorrow with no effort, and the tape doesn't do anything but sit there waiting to be used!

What To Do

So when the temperature outside is so cold that your lungs hurt to breath, and you start getting that old "cabin fever" feeling; what are you suppose to do...


Why make cookies, of course!

While Christy was off for the holidays, and the temps were hovering in the double-digits below zero, there really wasn't anything to do but go stir-crazy, so she decided to let Lydia go stir-crazy on some cookie batter. Their efforts resulted in a couple of dozen of really good M&M cookies, that have quickly disappeared.

Yesterday morning while I was enjoying a cup of coffee, I shot this picture of the townhome across the parking log. I think it was -17 at the time, but if you notice, you can actually see the wood framing under the windows, including the 2x12 floor joists. This means the temperature gradient between the inside and the outside was enough for the inside heat to penetrate the wallboard, the wood, and the external layers of the home so that the frost did not stay where the wood was installed, but instead only stayed on those parts that were insulated. This was the start of our sixth day with temps below zero, but hey, they are saying we should get up to 10 by this weekend. Christy and I figured we would have to pull out the short-sleeved shirts if it gets that warm!!

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to one and all. We ended 2008 without much of a "bang", but the neighbors around us made up for it! There are no laws against fireworks here (at least that we could tell last night), so it was a big celebration all around. Downtown was the big "Fire and Ice" celebration, with fireworks and ice scultures, and some hardy people willing to brave the -14 degree weather to actually be there.

We enjoyed watching Time Square (on time delay, of course) and sitting inside where it was warm.

Our hopes to you all for this new year!