moe’s mom was supposed to be here for christmas eve dinner, but the ice-pocalypse has still got us in its icy grip… mind you, issaquah-hobart road has been chemically de-iced and plowed, and for every other place in the greater seattle metropolitan area, the roads are passable, at worst… but i had to walk out to the park at the corner of hobart-ravensdale road, this afternoon, to pick up a package, because the fedex driver, the USPS driver, a door-dash driver, and a tow truck had a “confligration” (complete with flashing lights and everything) at the top of our neighbourhood. there were two cars that passed me on the way to the park, which i’m not sure whether they got through or not, and there were two more cars that passed me on the way back… and i’m not sure whether or not they got through either…
so, conditionally, moe’s mom is coming for dinner tomorrow (after it has been >50° for more than 24 hours), along with scott and nancy (our friends from up the road towards issaquah about 10 miles), and that means that moe has decided that she has to make TWO dinners… she had originally planned to make indian food for dinner with scott and nancy, but her mom won’t eat indian food, so she’s getting enough steak for dinner, and to take back so she can have left-overs tomorrow… and, because of the fact that steak night was supposed to be tonight, moe made pasta tonight…
so, around here, anyway, it’s not so much a “snow”pocalypse as it is an “ice”pocalypse… there was only about two inches of snow last night at 9:00, but it was really windy overnight, and my guess is that it sleeted and/or freezing-rained enough that, this morning, there’s two inches of what LOOKS LIKE snow, but is, in reality, one to one-and-a-half inches of old crusty snow that has been TOTALLY ENCASED in a clear layer of ice… there’s ice on all the tree branches, and our slight incline out the garage door into the back yard has become totally impassable — unless you want to slide on your ass… it’s supposed to warm up and mostly dissipate by tomorrow, and the high tomorrow is supposed to be 50°… but, despite the fact that it is “warming up”, currently, it’s “warming” from yesterday’s low of 14° to a somewhat-more-normal 31°, and it’s supposed to start snowing at noon, and continue until 7:00 or so… in other parts of the metropolitan area, king county metro is COMPLETELY shut down, and seatac airport has gone from COMPLETELY shut down, to having one runway open, and alaska airlines cancelling 100% of their flights out of seatac today. moe says the last time she remembers this happening was in 1996, but then it wasn’t anticipated, which made things that much worse.
ETA: it is now 1:30 pm, and it’s 33° and raining… which, of course, means later on, when the temperature once again dips below freezing, that we will have SEVERAL LAYERS of increasing thicknesses of ice. woo. i’m SO glad i don’t have to go anywhere for the next few days. 😒
it started snowing in fits and starts sunday evening, after the panto. it mostly melted yesterday, and it was raining hard this morning… but then, around 11:00, it changed from rain to grauple, and then to sleet, and then to snow… and it transitioned back and forth between rain and snow at least three times before it got dark, which means that our beautifully plowed street (for a change!) is now two inches or so deep in slush, ice, and snow. i went out this afternoon around 1:00, and on my way home i saw two cars off the road on hobart-ravensdale road, one of which was a fairly substantial jeep or something like that, which had been going uphill and slid off the road facing oncoming traffic… which was complicated by a row of oncoming cars which were stopped because of the aforementioned jeep, which was just after a curve in the road. once i got past the conflagration, i encountered a large semi-truck with a huge piece of equipment on the trailer, which was tooling along at an elevated rate of speed, as though there weren’t about 8 cars that were stopped a thousand or so feet further up the road… 😒
it’s not really deep, but it’s REALLY slick, and people around here don’t know how to drive when it’s slick… which, of course, doesn’t stop them from trying, and failing in the most spectacular ways. 😒
fortunately, i don’t HAVE TO drive ANYWHERE until after the first of january, and, hopefully, it will all be gone by then. 😒
last saturday and sunday were the first four performances of the panto during the winter holiday season, in three years. the last time we actually had a panto performance during the holdiay season was in 2019. the panto has been performed at the oregon country fair, last summer, but i missed it because i got COVID19 less than 12 hours before i was scheduled to leave. 😒 it was really fun to perform in a group for an audience again, but i was also acutely reminded of all the “politicial” horseshit that surrounds working for a group of actors and musicians. i was asked to provide a “5 minute warning” which, after two tries, no less than the stage manager told me not to make that noise any longer (this was one of the people on the board of directors, a few years ago, who screwed up the process of printing the posters because she refused to understand how the pricing breaks work, and almost screwed with the process of having the banners created in 2019, because she thought that grommets were not going to be necessary, or some crap like that 😒). also, i was asked to provide two different “ratchet” sounds, but, after two performances, they decided that the quieter of the two (the one that i had actually boughtspecifically for this performance) was loud enough that the actor couldn’t be heard above it, which means, not only that they don’t have two different ratchet sounds, but, because of the fact that i’m having to “mute” the remaining ratchet, i can’t match the ratchet sounds to the actors actions as well, which is, i’m absolutely positive, going to be irritating and a cause for a “note” later on.
monday (yesterday) i had to get up and take moe’s CPAP machine to the company that made it, because it has been making a strange noise for 6 months or so, and they’ve JUST gotten around to calling her back and making an appointment… but when i got there, they told me that the machine was beyond its EOL, and they would replace it, except that they didn’t have any machines, and didn’t know where to get one. i said, “so, what are we talking about, here? days? weeks? months?” and their response was “i’m not sure”. 😒 i thought it was somewhat unusual for them to have such a blasé attitude about moe’s prescribed medical device, but i brought it home… and, some time between then (around noon) and 7:30, they called moe and said that they had found a machine, which i picked up this morning.
the past couple of months i have been averaging about two incense orders a week. mind you, a lot of them have been for ONE BOX, but, at this point, i’ve stopped trying to get people to order more than one… if they want to pay twice as much (or more) for shipping, as they pay for one box of incense, it’s none of my business… or, i should say, it IS my business… which i would be driving away by telling them that it’s stupid to just order one box of incense. however, at this point, the price for a medium flat rate box is $17.05, my base rate for shipping is $16.50 (which is smaller than a medium flat rate box), and one box of incense is anywhere between $1.50 and $7.50 or so… it’s stupid… but it makes me money, so i’m not going to complain… after all, as far as i’ve been able to tell, i am the ONLY place they can get aparajita, or krishna puja 999 online… 🤷
the snow is mostly gone, but we’ve still got at least two more months of actual winter before things usually start getting back to normal, and despite what that “evangelical” preacher i saw a video of THIS MORNING says about “global warming doesn’t exist because it says so in the bible” (🤬), climate change has already had more than one negative effect on the environment around here, so i’m not going to hold my breath. it really astounds me that we are twenty years into the 21st century, and there are STILL people who believe in angels, demons, jeezis, and “de debbil”, but DO NOT accept the evidence of their own eyes concerning climate change, the economy, abortion, homelessness, health care, gay marriage… people in positions of authority whose word most other people treat with considerably more credibility than mine. 🗡🤬
221201 snow
it’s early enough in the season that i hesitate to call it an actual “snowpocalypse” (particularly since mercer island apparently has no snow at all), but, around here, it’s bad enough that i had to cancel my attendence at the (essential) panto rehearsal, last night, and i’m going (once they open) to have to cancel my attendence at my circus class this afternoon. 😒
moe waited until 8:00 am to go in to work, and, apparently, the “main road” is clear (having been plowed this morning), but i still worry about her ability to get home. yesterday, she left work at 5:00 pm, and didn’t actually get home until 7:30, because of the snow/traffic that had built up in issaquah… and she said the state patrol had just closed down eastbound highway 18 as she was going by.
AND i have four incense orders that have been scheduled to ship out today, and it doesn’t look as though i’ll be able to do it, because… well… moe took the truck, and my car is snowed in! 😠
i hate snow. 👎
BUT… there’s this weird thing happening in the pond across the street, this morning. i THINK i know what is happening, but that doesn’t make it any less weird: 221201 circular hole in the pond
i think that this circular hole in the pond is where there’s something (a branch, i think) sticking through the surface of the pond, and making a place where the snow/ice doesn’t stick… i’m not sure, because i have never seen this kind of thing before, but that’s the only thing i can think of.
on this day, in 2007, i started this blog, as a response to livejournal selling out to the russians, which means that this blog has been in existence for 15 years, in more-or-less the same place. i wonder if it will last another 15 years. 😏 as a result of getting closer and closer to leaving “twit-turd”, i have established a presence at linktr.ee, where i put ALL the links to EVERYWHERE that i might be contacted… which is a little strange, because, as far as i know, it is the first time i have EVER posted, in the same place, links to personalities that i have endeavoured to keep separate, prior to this. it is also a bit strange, because i actually switched my harmonic flute video to “public” from “you can’t see it unless i gave you the link”, because i didn’t want “salamandir” and “rev. deluxe” obviously associated with each other. now, i’m not as concerned, i don’t think anyone of consequence will notice, and, even if someone of consequence DOES notice, it simply doesn’t bother me as much as it did 15 or 20 years ago.
“twit-turd” has become a seething morass of white supremacists, nazis, fascists, MAGAts, drumpf-lovers, vaccine denial, and hatred, ALL OF WHICH is more-or-less unmoderated, because (among other stupid things he’s done), when “ELONgated MUSKrat” bought it (under duress), the first thing he did was to re-instate a whole bunch of people who had been kicked off the service, for violating rules that “ELONgated MUSKrat” disagreed with… which, at this point, includes “Fartgorie Taylor-Greene” (who was booted for spreading vaccine misinformation), and Donald J. Drumpf, himself (who was booted for spreading lies about the 2020 election). how long i stay there is still up in the air, but it’s a matter of days, weeks, or months, and certainly not more than a year, unless some massive change happens. 😒
the first show of 2022 fell yesterday. it wasn’t very much, but it’s enough that i am re-thinking my plans to go to the panto rehearsal this evening, despite the fact that we only have three more rehearsals until the show starts.
221129 – 0930 am
this was yesterday, at approximately 9:30 in the morning. i PROBABLY could have driven my car in this amount of snow, but unfortunately…
221130 – 0745 am
this was today, at approximately 7:45 in the morning… i definitely COULD NOT drive my car with this amount of snow… moe says that, outside of our neighbourhood, the roads are plowed, clear, and passable, but… from where i sit, it looks like a skating rink, and i have to get up a hill (which moe said is a skating rink) in order to get out of the neighbourhood… and the only reason moe knows this is because she took the truck, loaded with concrete blocks to work today, because her car needs new tires (which she just discovered yesterday, after having slid around on various streets on her way home from work, yesterday).
day NINE of more than one foot of snow, and it’s currently snowing at this very moment!
i tried getting out to ship out the IOTM orders this morning, and didn’t even make it out of the driveway before getting stuck!
220103 stuck car
this is not fun any more. 😒
although, it’s a good thing i got stuck when i did, because i could have made it halfway down the street, or halfway to the middle-of-nowhere post office before getting stuck, which would be even worse…
[ETA] moe came home early, and informed me that there is a tree down across the road, about 150 yards up the street from our house, where it can’t be seen from our house… which means that, even if i had gotten out, i wouldn’t have got far. a lady heavy equipment operator came around and plowed the street in front of our house, all the way to the dead end, in exchange for $100. she said she’s been plowing the roads in our neighbourhood for 4 years.
day 5SEVEN of 1+ foot of snow. keeping fingers crossed, but no power outage yet. at this point, the main roads are slushy, and some of them are bare and wet, but the street in front of our house has few enough tire prints that i can still count them. last year someone eventually plowed our street, but i don’t know who, and they haven’t done it this year. i brushed all the snow off my car, and ventured out today, because i’ve actually got a unicycle class tomorrow, and i needed to know whether or not to admit defeat, and take monique’s all-wheel-drive car (or the truck). as it is, it’s supposed to get up to 42°F, so i will probably take my car to class.
snow is mostly gone… there’s still some large piles, where whoever it was that ploughed our street piled it up at the head of the road, and in the ditches, but everywhere else, it’s gone.
210222 gutter overflow
i had to take a ladder out and climb up to clean out the gutter, in front. it had collected a bunch of tree detritus and, what with all the melting snow, combined with torrential rain, the gutter was totally clogged and overflowing into our driveway… it all ran away from the house, though, and once i cleared the obstruction, the downspout did what it was supposed to do, so that’s good.
i’m the default tuba player for the SANCApators at the moisture festival, this year. the moisture festival was cancelled, at the last minute, last year (because of COVID), and this year, instead of having live performances, they’re releasing some videos of performers that would have been live, except for COVID… and their regular tuba player is ill (no word on whether or not it’s COVID) and can’t make the videos that they asked for from the musicians, so i got tagged. last week i got the parts, and the tracks to play along with, so i practiced for a few days and sent the videos to “doc” sprinsock, so that he can combine them with everyone else’s videos and — hopefully — get some reasonably “together” music out of the whole deal…
but i’m not holding my breath… particularly with the thing that said “Rock” for the style, but the backing track was played as straight as an arrow, with no “swing” or “rock” stylings at all… and that’s what i played, because there was no way to “swing” a part that hadn’t been recorded to “swing”, so… i’m not holding my breath. we’ll see what happens when everybody else’s videos are part of the mix. 😖
no word on the phremont fillharmonic’s addition to the chaos, yet. i contacted kiki last week, and she said she’d heard about it, but is waiting for further instructions from “the powers that be”, whoever that is.
and i think the antidepressant may be working. i’m not sure i agree with georgia doctor, who wanted to boost my prescription back up to the level that was causing me frantic anxiety and restlessness, plus she wanted to add ANOTHER antidepressent — lexapro — to the mix. at the time, i wasn’t sure whether it was working or not, so i said i’d rather wait on the new scrip until i had a better idea of whether the current one was working, and she agreed to hold off… which is good for a number of reasons, not the least of which is reinforcing personal boundaries.
and she had never heard of psilocybin… 🤯
because of her accent, i asked where she’s from, and she said she’s from “africer”… but i can’t imagine a psychiatric nurse-practitioner who has never heard of psilocybin. i said that the “common” name for them is “magic mushrooms”, and she immediately started ranting about heroin and cocaine, and said that it’s possible that they contained psilocybin… 😕
so i still don’t have any solid information about the interaction of bupropion and psilocybin, which is a little scary, but within tolerable limits. and actual mushrooms are still a ways off, yet, so there’s still time to gather more information.
but the fact that there’s some “good” stuff happening in my life seems to indicate that something has changed.
my shoulder is REALLY sore, and i’m feeling kind of low-energy, but no other side effects.
which is kind of bizarre, since moe was sick (but went to work anyway) for 12 hours after her second dose.
on the other hand, moe’s mom had her second dose and it didn’t make her sick, so… 🤷
we still have 2 to 4 inches of almost-snow everywhere that isn’t paved, but bits of the lawn are starting to show through, and the roof is melting. meanwhile, everywhere outside of an approximately 5-mile radius from us, is back to normal, with no snow whatsoever. microclimate. 😒
we still have anywhere from 2 to 6 inches of mud, slush, almost snow, or sort-of snow, on everything that is unpaved (which includes both of our driveways), but once we get past the driveway, everything has been plowed, and the snow is melting rapidly, even at night.
the hobart post office has a graphic up behind the window which is a picture of the grinch in a santa claus hat, and the legend “LET IT SNOW… somewhere else!”. i would tend to agree, in spite of the blatant intelectual property theft. 😒
tomorrow i have my circus class (YAY! 🤡) and an eye appointment. thursday i get my second covid vaccine.
there’s still a lot of snow, pretty much everywhere…
but it’s 44°F and raining, and the forcast doesn’t get below 37°F for the rest of the week…
we’re probably going to have snow around the edges for a few more days, but my guess is that it will go away quickly.
ETA: okay, apparently today is “presidents day” — it’s my recollection that it’s actually the 16th 22nd, but today is monday, or some horseshit like that — anyway, i’m pissed off because i actually thought i would drive down to the post office to ship out a package i got the order for on sunday…
yeah, driving and snow don’t mix, but i learned to drive in the snow, so i figured it would be okay, just to go down to the little store and back, right?
i had to clear 11½ inches of snow, ice, and slush from all over my car.
then i had to get it out of the driveway. then i had to drive it up to where there were tire tracks that i could use to get some traction — fortunately, they started in front of our neighbours’ house, next door. then i had to navigate the tire tracks which were OBVIOUSLY made by a larger vehicle than mine, so i could only get the right set of tires, or the left set of tires into the track, and the other side was sliding along the center space, where the snow, ice, and slush were higher than the bottom of my car. then i had to navigate those same tire tracks up a hill that kids have been sledding down for three days. then i had to pull over to the side so that two cars that were going in the opposite directions could get by. then i had to pull onto a busy, 50-mile-an-hour road (not a freeway, or even a highway: it’s hobart-ravensdale road, otherwise known as 276th avenue southeast) from a dead stop on a road covered with ice. then, i had to pull into the parking lot, which was full of ice and a disabled car…
THEN i found out that the post office was closed because of some FUCKING holiday! 🤬
so i reversed my course.
completely.
okay, so i didn’t back into the driveway, like i usually do. and i didn’t pull as far into the driveway as i usually do, but all in all, i made it out and back, in severely adverse conditions, and i didn’t get stuck ONCE.
grr… stupid fucking holidays for a fucking president that is a total joke… and i’m talking about the current president, as well as the former one. 😒
and don’t look up “presidents day” in wikipedia. it’s full of shite about george washington and the julian calendar. 😒
it’s raining now, but it’s supposed to start snowing again after dark, which is in about an hour…
i walked out to the main road. it’s clear and wet, with patches of slush. the snow accumulation off the road is pretty similar to what we have here… but in order to get out to the main road, you have to drive UP a hill that kids have been sledding on for two days. it’s possible to drive up the hill, but only barely.
and, because of the fact that they’re there, we also had a couple of downed trees. they didn’t hit anything, and they’re not across the road, but it’s not over yet, and i haven’t been out further than the mailbox — it had come open, somehow, and was three-quarters full of snow, which was on top of the letter that i was hoping the letter carrier was going to pick up — so i don’t know what “the real world” is like… supposedly, we have a “micro-climate” around our neighbourhood, and the weather is substantially different about a mile away, on the main road.
this is the one of the… i’m not sure whether it’s an “advantage” or it’s a “danger”… of living in the remote wilderness.
at this point, it’s not an awful lot different than any other day, during COVID. 😒
i get my second covid vaccine a week from thursday (210218), but i’m scheduled to play my first concert in a year on saturday the 13th (9:00 pm, streaming to fecesbook, eventually posted on youtube), and, wouldn’t you know it, cliff mass, the only meteorologist moe believes, is predicting 12 inches of snow, starting thursday and lasting AT LEAST through saturday…
and if it snows, it’s almost guaranteed that i won’t be able to make the concert… 😒
bush collapsed, tree down, driveway blocked… 😐 closeup of the collapsed bush… every single needle was encased in about half an inch of ice. in our back yard… the chainlink fence and weeds encased in ice the bush, free of ice, for comparison.
i wrote a whole bunch of stuff that i realised would go really well in a post that i have scheduled for the 30th, so i incorporated it into that, and now i don’t have anything for today…
wait, yes i do…
SNOW!! 😛
monday, snow pretty much all day. everythingtotally screwed up: jack-knifed trucks shut freeways down, people abandoning cars on the freeway, roads blocked by abandoned/crashed cars and busses, people driving the wrong direction on the freeway, bus flipped sending 10 people to the hospital… total DRAG. tuesday, frozen snow left over from monday. some new, but not very much. roads are a little better, but people got the idea and stayed home, so there wasn’t as much chaos. wednesday, persistent frozen snow from monday, no new snow so far. they’re saying that the weather should be back in the mid-40s and raining tomorrow.
i can’t wait. i hate snow…
no, i don’t hate snow, i hate being cold. i would far rather be too hot than too cold (and when i have the chance, you can’t get me out of a sauna). i also hate having to get somewhere when it’s snowing. not because i can’t drive in the snow (i actually learned to drive in buffalo, new york, where there is 6 to 12 feet of snow, pretty much all winter, every year), but because other people can’t drive in the snow. it’s really, really sad when i am driving my front-wheel-drive ford station wagon with no chains, and i pass up a fully chained hummer that has driven into the ditch and been abandoned… really sad…
