Ice Blossoms, Banners, Fire Pits, and More

When we lived in Greensboro, I regularly engaged an excellent printing company to create my banners for conventions, booksignings, etc., but I was overjoyed to discover that an acquaintance of mine, Joe Martin, here in Martinsville, owns What's Your Sign?, a nice little print shop uptown. I always prefer to buy local, so last week, I sent my new banner design to him, and this morning, I picked up the finished product. A great job at a fair price, I must say, so I give top marks to Joe and his shop.

 

Far less pleasing is the weather forecast for the next few days, which calls for substantial snow, sleet, and/or freezing rain, along with bitter cold temperatures. A severe ice storm is the most hazardous of these, not just because of almost certain extended power outages but because falling trees here could be catastrophic. Several trees in the woods around our property could smash the house flat should they fall on it. That possibility was made very clear when a tree came down in the backyard just before we moved in here (see "The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade, February 13, 2023"); it was a big old white ash, and it would have caused massive damage if it hit the house. So, we are hoping and praying to avoid any damaging nastiness from Mother Nature.

All that aside, since we don't have a generator at the moment (I've been pricing them), and our fireplaces are old and not fit for use, an extended power outage can be at the very least supremely unpleasant, and at worst, downright dangerous, particularly since on Monday, the low is supposed to be around zero degrees Fahrenheit, and this house will not hold but so much heat.

 

I'm a little sad, too, because Brugger is in Asheville at an arts & crafts retreat, which she'd paid for many moons ago, and they did not cancel or postpone it due to the coming weather. Given the conditions that will likely linger well past the weekend, she may be stuck out yonder a lot longer than either of us might have expected. It's gonna be a lonely time until she gets back home.

 

I did buy a new fire pit, which I put together this afternoon. If nothing else, I can take it outside the garage and use it to cook. I stocked up on a lot of dry firewood for good measure. It's kind of ironic that I might have to go outside in the bitter cold just to warm up...

 

Anyhoo, here's hoping for a less-than-eventful winter storm.

Fortifications

WHEW! I've spent over a week playing concrete mason every morning, as so much of the old stuff around the house has broken away, some quite severely. A couple of buckets of Quikrete down and probably enough sweat to fill them both (it's not exactly chilly outside). It does feel like I've spent an awful lot of time heading back and forth to Lowe's lately...

 

I have a little more touching up to do, but I think the most extensive work is finished. And yes, I'm keeping myself very well hydrated, thank you so much.

 

Everything else out there is certainly keeping hydrated. Every day for almost a month now, we've had big rains, frequently with accompanying thunder and lightning storms, and all that water is washing away tons of the topsoil around our place. As a result, a couple of trees have fallen in the surrounding woods, one of which came down partially in the driveway. Thankfully, it didn't do any damage to the house, although there's still quite a few nearby that could...

 

To top it off, we need to have some gutter work done as well, as the existing ones haven't been able to keep up with these blasted deluges.

 

As they say, it's always something....

The Winter Storm Aftermath, Sort Of

For the past few days, the local forecast called for a potentially serious winter storm starting yesterday, and a winter storm we indeed got. Thankfully, for most of us in the area, it stopped short of being terribly serious. The severest issue in our area was vehicle accidents last night as the roads became slippery, and I've heard reports of a handful of power outages. We've kept ours, at least so far; around here, it's typical to weather the worst of a storm without problem, but when it's all over with, then the power goes out. The temperature dropped well below freezing early last night, but it's on the rise this morning, and right now, the snow and ice have become mostly slush.

I went out for my usual morning ramble and took a few pics around Lake Lanier, just down the street.

Big Honking Winter Weather

It's supposed to be a big honking weather event today and tomorrow, starting with snow and ending with ice, which is not a good combo for the power staying on and trees not smashing your house. The snow started about 1 p.m., at first just flurries, but shortly thereafter, it began falling in earnest, and I swear to Yog, these are the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen. Many of them are four to five inches wide, and it went from almost no accumulation to four inches of accumulation in about an hour. In the photo above, you can kinda see the big-ass flakes, but the photo certainly doesn't do them justice. These are definitely Godzilla-sized.

The forecast calls for freezing rain later, which is a really bad finish for several inches of snow. I really do hope the power stays on, and—even more than that—that no trees around the house decide to give up the ghost because some of these fuckers are big, as in house-whomping B-I-G. Now, I do love these woods around here, and we had reputable firm do a health check on the biggest of the trees a while back, which reassured me that we're probably okay, at least for the foreseeable future. Still, this past year, a falling tree totally demolished a house not too far up the road, and that's not the kind of thing I wanna see up close and personal.

Anyhoo, I had some writing to finish up this afternoon, so to complement the work, I made myself a lovely smoked Old Fashioned, using the smoker Ms. Brugger gave me last Christmas, with a skull ice cube, made with the mold she gave this Christmas. For the moment, at least, I have a warm house and a good drink. We'll just have to see what develops over the next 24 hours.

Before any of the weather started, I took down all the Christmas decorations, including the lights around the trees I had put up in the woods. Now I kinda wish I'd at least left the ones in the woods because they'd have looked fooking cool in the snow tonight.

If ice begins accumulating before bedtime tonight, I might just sleep downstairs, for whatever good that might do should the worst happen.

The One-Man Chainsaw Brigade

I posted last week that the prodigious rainfall of the past month or so (with yet more in the forecast) did the root systems of the local flora no favors. At Pleasant Hill, a.k.a. The Old Homestead, in Martinsville, after more inches of rain in a few days than we should see in months, the roots of a couple of trees on the hillside behind the house gave up the ghost. Fortunately, the house escaped unscathed (although the Greensboro homestead is still awash in mud). Possibly unfortunately, there are still a lot of trees within falling range. Make no mistake, I love my woods, I like trees, and a totally cleared lot and neighborhood is the bane of my existence.

But I so dislike trees what cost me insane amounts of money.

 

Anyway, this business left me with the question: pay the professionals to do an expensive job or spring for a chainsaw and show the deadwood who’s boss? Well, I can’t say I haven’t lamented not having a chainsaw for the occasional jobs that have begged for one, so... I sprung for a chainsaw.

Above: Picture left, taken on the day of the falling flora. Picture right, after a couple of hours work this morning. I will tell you, that is one heavy motherfuckin tree right there. For a one-man job, it was pretty rigorous, so I'll be back at it again tomorrow — and for the final clean-up, probably next week as well. Did I mention I has a tired?

Well, I do.

Just getting going

Definite improvement. Will hope to finish on my next visit.

Winter Storms, Blogger Fuckery, Historic Churches, and Smoked Cow

Immediately upon our return from Myrtle Beach last weekend, dire weather fell upon us. We had only a light coating of snow, but there was ice aplenty and winds like I've not heard since the last hurricane to blow through here some years ago. We lost power at 4:00 a.m. Monday morning, though it came back on about noon — some kind of speed record for Duke Energy. Our yard became a mess of branches and sticks, but next door, a whole tree uprooted and fell. It remained as you see it in the photo above for several days, until finally, this weekend, the neighbors took it upon themselves to get rid of it. Rather than call professionals — an admittedly expensive prospect — they employed a couple of friends, a pair of electric chainsaws (one of which got stuck in the tree for a day or so), an assortment of wooden boards, a footstool, and a pickup truck (which got stuck in the mud in their backyard for a day or so). 

"Maybe if we put this over here, and that over there...?"

At this point, the chainsaw is stuck in the tree, and the truck is stuck in the mud.

On Friday afternoon, I headed to Martinsville while the trio of men were out there working, so I didn't get to see how things eventually unfolded. But when I arrived back here yesterday, the tree was gone. The fence between yards (which I believe actually belongs to the neighbors behind the next-door folk) failed to escape damage (relatively minor), and there are deep ruts and mud splatters aplenty in their backyard (and part of ours). However, to the best of my knowledge — and by some minor miracle — none of the guys out there suffered death or dismemberment. I guess you'd call that a win for do-it-yourselfing.

More snow fell in Martinsville than here in Greensboro, but there appeared to be less ice and far less property damage. I have no idea whether it was actually storm-related or not, but the heat pump at Pleasant Hill had ceased the pumping of heat, so I found the house rather chilly. Yesterday morning, I managed to engage a service tech, who determined the system needed a new thermostat. He installed one, which got the heat pump working again, but a most complicated device, this thermostat. I hope I can figure it out without needing to go back to school to get an engineering degree. In any event, I managed to get the Christmas decorations taken down and finish up a significant writing project, which I'll be promoting the hell out of in the coming days.

St. Matthew's Episcopal Church
in Hillsborough

Since today's weather, at least for the morning, appeared conducive to geocaching, three old farts — Scott (a.k.a. Diefenbaker), Old Rob (a.k.a. Old Rob), et moi — decided to head eastward to several different locations, culminating in Hillsborough, where a new Adventure Lab cache awaited us. First, we headed to the Haw River Trail in Graham to see if we could snag first-to-find honors on a newly published hide (we did); then we zoomed over to a nearby park & grab hide, of which we made very short work; and finally, we moved on to Hillsborough. The Adventure Lab cache ("Historical Churches of Hillsborough") took us around the town's picturesque historical district, to... guess what... several historical churches. Hillsborough is a lovely town to walk around, and we enjoyed the opportunity to see the sights (again).

We topped off our Hillsborough outing with a visit to Hillsborough BBQ Company, which is a longstanding tradition when we're over in that neck of the woods. I'm a smoked beef brisket junkie, and Hillsborough BBQ Company has historically had some of the best brisket I've ever tasted. Some time ago — over a year, I'm guessing — we had visited to find the brisket not quite up to snuff. Not bad, just not top-notch. Someone we met on another caching trip told us that the restaurant had changed their smoking time or process or something, but the brisket was definitely inferior. Regardless, I wanted to make sure they had another chance, and this time around, it was better. Much better. Maybe not quite what it used to be (and certainly not as eyes-rolling-back-in-the-head-incredible as The Smoke Pit in Salisbury, which is now our favorite brisket venue), but we were altogether satisfied. Plus I found a really good, jalapeno IPA (Fire Escape, Asheville Brewing Company). So Hillsborough BBQ is most definitely back in my good graces (not that it ever fell very far).

But speaking of falling far....

The most frustrating — no, infuriating — issue of the weekend was discovering that Blogger (and by default, Google) fucked up my blog in numerous instances by their constant altering of code. At one time, formatting this blog, including placing photos (for which one might have a reasonable expectation of being permanent, since they're from Google's own blog photo hosting site) was simple. You could pop a photo in, place it as you desired, look at the html code, and see the photo ID in the code. No longer. Now you get typical Google Photos gobbledygook for the ID, leaving you with no way to trace it back to its origin. But the worst issue here was that a shitload of my blog photos, mostly from 2017, now displayed only broken link images. So I ended up spending a massive amount of time replacing and relinking the pics — with no guarantee the code will actually hold. Jesus God...  this constant ABSOLUTELY GODDAMN NEEDLESS fucking around with the blog code by bunch of technological halfwits is so infuriating, if it were up to me, I'd shitcan the lot of them (the decision makers, anyway) and make sure not a one of them could work in a technological environment ever again. Maybe cleaning shit out of pigpens would be more suitable.

Anyway. Go on, git. Bye.

Three Old Farts: Old Rodan, Old Diefenbaker, Old Rob

Blobs, Rebels, and Rogues

It has not been a particularly cheery week, what with ice storms, power outages, tax time, technology issues, dealing with my mom’s and brother’s estates, unexpected bills (big), and being generally indoor-bound. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen this much water fall from the sky, frozen or otherwise. Whatever passed for my front yard is a partially frozen lake. Geocaching has been right out. And although I’ve been exercising like the dickens, inasmuch as I can in the house, my old body hasn’t felt altogether right after a week and some change of no hiking. Thirty-six hours of the past weekend were spent without power at home, so I took up residence at Brugger’s place (make no mistake, I count my every blessing that, at least for the moment, I had the luxury of a place of refuge as the temperature dropped). This morning, as the latest ice storm moved in, I lost power for several hours; thankfully, it was restored, though the sky is once again falling and the temperature is dropping. It ain’t over yet.

In the plus column, I finished a brand new short story for an upcoming anthology. I’m pleased with it; the plot involves an “Owl Man,” which is kind of like the Mothman’s first cousin. I sent it off to the editor last night, and now the waiting game begins. Also, the very welcome news has come down that I, and the rest of the office staff, now have the option to work at home for the long haul. It’s a far, far better option than commuting out to the badlands every day.

For last night’s entertainment, I put on the original The Blob, which I hadn’t seen in a good while. Frazier and I enjoyed it as always, though Droolie appeared nonplused, probably because he thought that, based on the title, the movie was about him. Alas, no.

So maybe I’m an even bigger Star Wars geek than I realized. A while back, just for shits and giggles, I put on the animated Clone Wars series. I can’t say I expected it to grab me, but guess what. It grabbed me. Really grabbed me. So then I went straight into Star Wars: Rebels, which — again — at its start failed to tweak the right nerves, but then suddenly it did. So I ended up compelled to watch that whole series. Tonight, having finished Rebels, I kicked back with Frazier and Droolie for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which has been among my favorite entries in the series since I first saw it. The guys enjoyed it quite a bit, as you might infer from the photo above.

I don’t anticipate a sudden turnabout of fortune or mood, but I haven’t kicked off the planet yet, so that’s something for the plus column as well. Cin-cin.

It Was a Dark and Stormy Night!

In front of my house about 9:00 p.m. last night. The wall of snow and ice to the right is over two feet high.

To no one's surprise, after 15+ inches of snow, with sleet on top of it, the power went pow! about 10:30 p.m. last night. I had anticipated this very thing, so I had lanterns, flashlights, candles, extra food & drink, blankets, cats, etc. to get through an indoor cold spell. Sure enough, the house turned frigid overnight, but at least the bed stayed warm (bundles of cats help a lot). Yesterday morning, I had made a huge pot of coffee in case the power went out earlier in the day, but then I neglected to make more later. And irony of ironies, I had just thought to do so when electricity vacated the premises last night.

Happily, not long after I got up this morning, electricity returned to Casa de Rodan, and so far has hung around. Hopefully for the long haul. First order of business: brew bucket loads of coffee. The office is closed for the rest of the day, also happily, since getting out on the road is a virtual impossibility, and even if it were possible, highly unsafe. So, barring another power outage, it'll be a good day to make a prodigious amount of progress in Michigan: The Dragon of Lake Superior, my next entry in Elizabeth Massie's Ameri-Scares series.

You people in the affected area stay safe and warm. Things are going to re-freeze tonight.

The Rodan mobile, parked for the duration.

T'ain't Fit for Man Nor Beast....

I may end up snowbound for some time. The big winter storm that came in last night dropped a good 10 inches overnight, and it's still piling up. Right now, it's mostly sleet, but it keeps changing out there. Eventually, this is supposed to turn to freezing rain, which is when the power is most likely to go out. So far, so good here, although there are reports of outages here and there.

There's no way in hell my little car's going to be getting out of my driveway until there's been plowing and considerable melting, which shan't likely be happening in the next 24 hours. I trust the office powers-that-be will have the decency and good sense to just close the office tomorrow. Nohing our company produces is worth risking life, limb, and property for a day at work. I believe it was three years ago that my car got banged up real good by another vehicle that went out of control—and I narrowly avoided getting banged up myself—due to having to drive in conditions where no person with a lick have sense should have been out there. I love my day job, but only up to a point....

It's getting darker and deeper out there even now. The big old flakes are back. I'm stocked up with supplies, but I so hope to keep power through all these. Else it's gonna be a cold, cold time.

About 11:00 a.m. this morning

About ten inches came down overnight, and it's not supposed to stop till tomorrow.

Shiver me beeches!

Michael the Bitch

There's a certain appealing eeriness about the total darkness—apart from my lantern—at Casa de Rodan
with virtually the whole city devoid of electrical power.

When Hurricane Florence reared her ugly head a few weeks back, advance reports indicated she was going to be the Mother of Dragons... er... Storms, and everyone in North Carolina was advised to buy hurricane snacks and batten down the hatches. Most of us at least got as far as buying some hurricane snacks, i.e., wine and brie. Florence brought significant rain to the Piedmont Triad, and took out power in a few places, but what was supposed to be this giant gale turned out to be more of a fart. Then a few days ago, Hurricane Michael showed up south of Florida, and word was we might get fairly heavy rain for a day or two.

Michael kicked our asses. North Carolina got hit with more wind, rain, and damage than any other state in the storm's path, and the Triad—where I am—got hit worst of all. According to official reports, about 90,000 people lost power. As yet, property damage has not been fully assessed. There were downed trees literally everywhere I went. Duke Energy indicated they had to contend with 75 broken poles, 40 transformers, 150,000 feet of wire on the ground, and over 2,800 individual outage locations. Falling trees knocked out a transmission line that fed two of Duke's substations in northeast Greensboro, and massive flooding delayed the repair.

The first sign that Michael is a bitch.Start bailing,
ladies and gentlemen...

The first sign that things were going really badly on Thursday was when water began flooding our second-floor office, primarily due to the balcony having zero drainage, and water six inches deep having nowhere to go but inside the building. Not to mention non-existent seals on windows, which admitted significant quantities of water directly into the suite. And air conditioning vents taking on water and dumping it on us from the ceiling. As far as I'm concerned, it's a staggering indictment of the builder's stupidity, which I have been harping on since long before Michael. It's easily the most horrendously designed building I've ever worked in. We—the staff of The Mailbox—ended up having to take responsibility for bailing and sopping up water all Thursday afternoon. The building management finally got some pumps working sometime after business hours, so that on Friday—after the worst of the weather had passed—at least we had a mostly dry office.

Since our homes were both dark, rather than go straight home on Friday evening, Ms. Brugger and I ventured over to Rioja Wine Bar, a favorite destination of ours, and one of the few establishments in the area to retain power. So we honored them with some significant patronage on Friday night, I can tell you.

Saturday morning, after about 30 hours in the dark, Ms. B.'s power came back on. So yesterday, still with no electricity flowing at my house, I trucked over to her place and made myself productive working on West Virginia: Lair of the Mothman, which is in its finishing stages. Despite my presence, Ms. B. managed to make the best of the situation. However, I knew my mom, in Martinsville, VA, was without power or working telephone. I eventually managed to contact some of her friends as well as my brother, who went up from Winston-Salem last night to make sure she was secure. And I headed there early this morning to help set things straight—ironically, just about the time my own power came back on, after almost 60 hours.

Martinsville was hit hard as well. It's a miracle my mom's power came back on when it did, as literally every power pole on the block north of her place—right up to her yard—was demolished. It was all still down when I left for home a short while ago.

I rarely have a good word to say about Duke Energy, and as a supposedly competent corporate entity, I have naught but disdain for it. However, I do give those hardworking crews who have gotten out there to clean up this horror all the credit they deserve. Given the sheer scope of the damage, I am fortunate I'm not still stumbling around in the dark. I did lose some of my refrigerated items, but I managed to get a fair amount of the most expensive edibles I had in the freezer transferred over to Ms. B.'s freezer before it was too late. Currently, my cable and internet are still out, but since I have phone service, I'm using my phone's hot spot to connect via my laptop.

This has been a matter of making the best of a bad situation and counting one's blessings under the circumstances. And quite frankly, because the storm turned out to be such a monster, dealing with it hasn't been the bitter pill it is when someone spits on the road and knocks out the power in Greensboro for hours on end—which is so commonplace that investing in a generator has become a most appealing prospect.

If you were in the storm's path, I hope you have made out no worse than I. My best to you and yours.

Damage to power lines at the lot adjacent to my mom's

Trees and poles down at Patrick Henry Mall, Martinsville, VA

Rufus Brugger cares not a whit about the inconveniences of hurricanes when it means he can lie on
Old Dude's laptop case.

Riding the Storm Out

Hurricane Florence hit the east coast hard the past couple of days, especially along the North and South Carolina coasts. Here in Greensboro and other areas of the Piedmont, we've all battened down the hatches (and cleaned out the bread and milk from every grocery store), but so far, we've avoided the brunt of it. Florence has been downgraded to a tropical storm, and despite a few deluges and some big winds, the damn-near apocalyptic event so many expected hasn't materialized. This is not a complaint.

That said, it's still dumping rain, and as anyone who follows me on social media probably knows, we lose power here if someone spits on the road. There's been a lot of spitting, and there's still a couple of days left of it in the forecast. I'm immensely thankful to have weathered things so well to this point. Hoping for the best until this beast passes into history.

I can probably go ahead and break into the hurricane snacks I stocked up on. Not bread and milk, I'll have you know.

Big Water

In my damn-near six decades of existence, I have never seen water hit my old hometown of Martinsville, VA, the way it hit this afternoon. I was driving up from Greensboro after work for my regular maintenance visit with Mom, and I'd heard just before I left there was a flash flood warning in Martinsville. The rain was coming down in buckets, but I didn't run into the floodwaters until I reached the city limits. On U.S. 220, I encountered several stretches with water a foot deep, and on Spruce Street, just before entering our neighborhood, I came upon a hundred-yard section of road under a couple of feet of water. A few cars approaching from the opposite direction plowed through it by driving down the center of the road, which is what I ended up doing—but if the water had been even a few inches deeper, I might well have ended up stranded. From there, the road appeared clear, and I stopped for some Chinese food to bring home for our dinner. It was only on that last mile that the extent of the flooding became clear.

The creek that runs along Indian Trail was swollen beyond anything I'd ever seen. The stream runs through a little gorge anywhere from 10 to 30 feet below the road level, and in places, the water had risen to the point it was washing over the road. At a small apartment complex on the corner of Indian Trail and Prospect Hill, the parking lot was flooded, the water level above the tires of the parked cars. Several broken trees lay next to the road but did not present a hazard. However, about a quarter mile from Mom's, a city vehicle was blocking the road, and an officer was turning back cars traveling the same way as me. He told me a tree had fallen across the road just past the electrical substation—the lot next to ours—and beyond that, down by Lake Lanier, the road was under water. I told him I only had to go one lot past the substation and I'd take my chances, so he let me through.

Indeed, directly in front of Mom's house, a good-size tree had come down over the road, taking out the phone line but—thankfully—leaving the power lines untouched. I was able to edge around its uppermost branches and turn into the our driveway. But sure enough, not even a hundred yards down the road, the creek was no longer a creek but a lake, the water easily ten feet deep in places and fully engulfing a sizable section of the road. A pair of ducks were swimming happily around their new pond, and I suspect they fully approved of the neighborhood's new decor.

Tree across the road right in front of Mom's house

Big water just down the street. Apparently, the level had gone down a little here — from photos I've seen,
it was waist-high in the middle of road.

Around the corner, on Sam Lions Trail at the end of Lake Lanier, a sinkhole had opened up and taken out a thirty-foot section of the road. The massive flood had washed the huge pipe underneath a hundred feet into the lake, and as I watched from a vantage point almost too close for safety, another section of road collapsed into the newly formed gulf. The city crews had already set up a barricade, but several more soon arrived and set out additional orange cones to warn drivers away from the danger area.

Not be deprived of a rip-roaring good time by inclement weather, the local redneck contingent took the opportunity to come out in their jacked-up pickup trucks and race up and down the roads, spinning their tires in mud and running over curbs into people's yards—including Mom's, as I discovered when I got back to the house. Chalk up another one for the Martinsville brain trust. It is rather a pity none of them got their kicks by discovering the sinkhole the hard way.

All this less than a month after a tornado passed within a half-mile of my house in Greensboro, unbeknownst to me at the time. All I knew was that the sky delivered a monstrous roaring wind and lots of water in the matter of a minute or so and then fell silent. Ms. B. lost power for a few days, but neither of us suffered property damage.

For now, Mom is okay, I am okay, the house is okay. Mom's phone and internet are out, but we still have power. From what I understand, the roof of the local Roses store collapsed and injured at least one person. A lot of cars suffered water damage over at Walmart on Memorial Blvd. Much of Collinsville is closed because so many businesses got flooded. So I'd say that, so far, we've been fortunate.

I do wonder if the Martians are going to invade to make things really interesting. Oh wait... there might have been one in Mom's basement, driven in by the flood waters:

The Martian invaders?

Some scenes from Indian Trail and Sam Lions Trail:

Apartment building at the corner of Indian Trail and Prospect Hill Drive

Footbridge over the stream that enters Lake Lanier under Sam Lions Trail

The culvert that had been underneath the road

Sam Lions Trail washout. Fixing that will take some work.

When It Rains...

Any idea what you're looking at in the photo? No? It's a handy-dandy little improvised space heater, the idea of which I got from Brugger, who is something of a dilettante in matters of do-it-yourself and crafty things, last year when the power went out. You take a heat-conducting basin of sorts, a grill or other surface that allows air to pass through; a small candle, which rests on the grill; and a clay pot. Then you set them all up to create the contraption shown above. Right now, I'm sitting with this apparatus next to my chair in my office, and the heat radiating up through the hole in the base of the pot, while hardly considerable, is definitely noticeable.

As it is, here I sit, snow and iced in, my car broken, and my heat pump suddenly gone out. For the moment, at least, I still have electricity, but this is Greensboro, so I have no idea how long this fair fortune will continue. Don't know what happened to the heat pump, but it doesn't appear to be the circuit breaker or the fuses. Had a similar issue just a few months back, so I shall be taking it up with Central Carolina Heat and Air, whenever they can get someone out here. I know it won't be today, so I'm looking forward to at least one very cold night.

As yet there's maybe three inches of snow on the ground, with sleet falling, and possibly freezing rain yet to come. Perhaps with the above contraption nearby and a couple of cats to bundle up with, I'll avoid turning into an icicle.

A Random Tornado Story

I just heard there's a tornado watch in our area. I don't see one out there, though, so it seems a waste of time to sit here and try to watch it. Now, back in my college days, at University of Georgia, we had this one tornado warning — a twister had reportedly touched down very close to campus. In Georgia, tornadoes are something to take seriously. Gainesville, where my mom grew up, was utterly destroyed by a tornado in 1936, when she was very young. One of my relatives, William M. Brice, wrote a book about the tragedy, called A City Laid Waste. In the instance at hand here — 1980, I believe it was — because this tornado was in view of the UGA campus, the powers that be paraded the residents of my dorm down into the basement of the building, where it was supposed to be safer. Well, if you were on one side of the wall down there, it might have been safer, but in the common area, where I and several friends were sent, there was a bank of plate-glass windows that faced the lower parking lot. When my roommate, Steve, and I realized we were being set up to become shredded southern-style barbecue should that tornado come through, we decided we weren't going to stay there. I shall not right here admit to having done certain mind-altering substances in college, but I will say that I did have a rather different mindset then than I do now. Rather than seek a more suitable place of shelter, Steve and I hit the street and went looking for the offending windstorm.

The sky was black, pink, and green, and there was a prodigious wind pummeling us, but I think we walked a mile or so around campus, searching, searching, searching. Never did find that tornado. I don't know that I was disappointed, necessarily, though I might not have complained too much had the thing come through and taken down my dorm building. The bathroom kind of sucked.

Ice In, Lights Out

The third significant winter storm in as many weeks here in the North Carolina Piedmont, this one resulting in over 400,000 people in the area losing power, over 100,000 of whom have yet to have it restored. It's been many years since I've seen so much damage from ice in this area. My electricity was out from early Friday morning until the middle of the evening last night (Saturday), and I was clearly one of the lucky ones; Duke Power is anticipating it taking until Wednesday or Thursday to get all power in the region back on. In only a few hours, over four inches of heavy slush accumulated at my place, and I knew it was going to be a rough one when I could hear trees cracking and falling with such regularity it sounded like a gunfight outside. I took the picture at left a few seconds after a pair of tall pines — from that bunch in the distance in the center of the photo — came crashing down (unfortunately, the zoom on my phone camera makes the image rather blurry, but you can click on the photos to enlarge them). I did lose one medium-size cedar at the corner of my house, which can be seen in the first photo below. That first day, I was pretty well stuck in my house, since I couldn't have gotten the car out of the driveway if I had wanted to (not that I wanted to). Once I got out yesterday, I got a first-hand look at how much damage there was. In places, there were still more power lines down than remaining up, and several roads were closed because of trees falling across them.

On the positive side, even though I had not intentionally stocked up on supplies before this storm, I had plenty of food, cats for warmth, and martini fixings to keep my spirits up. I rather enjoyed cooking breakfast and making coffee on the grill out on the front porch yesterday morning; it was just like camping out, only not. Since we missed work on Friday, Brugger decided to go into the office yesterday, so I went in as well and got some writing done on my current short story, which fits firmly into Robert W. Chambers' King in Yellow mythos.

Mess with Mother Nature, and she'll whomp you a good one, that's for sure. Stay warm, peoples.

But lord, I hate the onset of Daylight Saving Time....

Those low shrubs to the left aren't low shrubs; those ordinarily stand about 12 feet tall.
The cedar on the corner was uprooted, and I had to take it down completely today.

On Willowlake Road in Guilford County yesterday evening. There weren't many
power lines left intact along this stretch of road.

Another shot along Willowlake Road. That big tree is cracked about halfway up and
leans out over the road. I'd hate to be underneath it when it falls.