Thursday, March 26, 2009

In for it!

"A BLIZZARD WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM MDT FRIDAY.

SNOW WILL BECOME WIDESPREAD OVER THE ENTIRE AREA BY MIDDAY...AND
BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES...ESPECIALLY THIS AFTERNOON AND EVENING.
NORTH TO NORTHEAST WINDS OF 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS TO AROUND 45
MPH WILL PRODUCE BLIZZARD CONDITIONS AND CONSIDERABLE DRIFTING
SNOW ON THE PLAINS BY AFTERNOON. THE WORST CONDITIONS ARE EXPECTED
TO BE IN AREAS SOUTH OF A LINE FROM BOULDER TO AKRON.

TOTAL SNOW ACCUMULATIONS BY LATE THURSDAY NIGHT WILL RANGE FROM
6 TO 12 INCHES ACROSS THE NORTHEAST PLAINS...WITH 8 TO 16 INCHES
OF SNOW FROM THE DENVER METRO AREA TO LIMON...AND ONE TO TWO FEET
IN DOUGLAS AND WESTERN ELBERT COUNTIES. THE SNOW AND PROLONGED
WINDS WILL ALSO PRODUCE CONSIDERABLE DRIFTING OF SNOW."

We've been lucky this winter. Too lucky, 'cause Mother Nature has decided enough is enough and it's really ugly out there. In fact, I walked out into the living room (we've been tucked up into bed, reading, this morning, lol) and looked out the window and immediately pulled up the school district's web page. It's almost total white out out there, between the snow and the wind. Sure enough, the schools are all closing this afternoon. It didn't say when though, so we called the kiddo's school and they said we could come get her now. So hubby is on his way to get her and stopping for milk on the way, then we are going to hunker down for the rest of the day.

I'm supposed to go to work at 3 pm today, but I'm kind of thinking that may not happen. I hope not, because it's only supposed to get worse. I worry about my co-workers though, because both managers on duty today come from the next town over, as do the copy specialist and several others. Not a nice drive anywhere at this point, let alone along the very open highways between here and there.

Anyhoo, now I am waiting on pins and needles for the hubby and kiddo to get home. He's much better at driving in the snow than I am, thanks to safety training he was require to take at his old job, but it's still nerve-wracking, knowing how ugly it is out there.

UPDATE: Almost 8 1/2" now, with some pretty hefty drifts out there in the backyard. No school tomorrow for the kiddo. Good news is the wind died down around 1pm and the roads are just snow covered, you can at least see again. We got off fairly lightly, areas just to the south of us got a foot or more. Of course it's still snowing so who knows what we shall see tomorrow. But we are all safe and warm so it's all good :)

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Home again.

Well, actually home again for several days. We got home Friday night and I went back to work Monday. Kind of a fast trip, considering all that driving.

But for the most part it was a good trip. We had absolutely wonderful weather, with only one day a little chilly, the rest of the time it was unseasonably warm. Even the day we spent in Madison was nice enough that we only needed light jackets/ sweaters.

Madison was wonderful by the way. Even if they didn't let me look for any yarn shops, lol. I could totally live there. We had a great time with friends we hadn't seen in years and got to see some of the U of Wisconsin campus. And to top it all off, our friends live only blocks away from the zoo and it's free! So we walked over there and spent some time wandering through the little zoo. Of course the kiddo loved that.

And as a little side note, the giraffes at the Henry Vilas Zoo came from the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs (they let you feed them there, lol. It was way cool when we were there), so that's kind of neat too.

Anyhoo. I'm still tired from the trip, and had a bit of an emotional melt down Monday that I am still tired from as well, lol. So I think I am going to go soak in a nice hot bath and read. Ciao!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

On our way!

We're leaving shortly for Iowa. Our yearly pilgrimage to the old homestead and Gram. Not sure what all we are going to do when we get there, but the weather is supposed to be quite lovely for once, so yay! Makes a change from our trip last April and rain, rain, rain and cold!

No WoW for almost a week, but I am taking some books and my knitting. And I never did check the mail yesterday, so I may do that before we go, just in case my needles are here. (Scratch that. Can't find one of my balls of yarn for the socks, and no time to look now).

Anyway, gotta give the upset cat some more attention and then get moving. See you all later!

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Tools of the Trade

Tools I am taking with me on my USB drive to give my mother's PC a tune-up next week:
  1. Portable Firefox
    Brilliant! I can run my preferred browser with my bookmarks straight from my jump drive!

  2. Defraggler
    Because the built in defrag tool is rubbish!
There are a few other tools I will take with me, but I can't give away all our tech secrets, can I? Lol.

Other tools I am taking with me:

Size 10 1/2 straights, 10 1/2 circular. Lots of green Cascade 220.

Tools I will not be taking with me because they didn't arrive in time:
Size 3 40" circular needle for two socks at one time, Corntastic Yarn. :(

Knitting.

I am! But not what I was knitting. I picked up my knitting for my Flowers on the Go bag and looked at the mess it was and cringed. My join was lose and really the whole 6 rows of it looked awful. So it hit the frog pond.

And really, why the heck am I knitting a purse when I am trying to get away from carrying one at all? Lately I've been looking into just carrying my most frequently used cards (Sam's Club, debit, ID and library cards) with me. I've been looking for a hard card case, something I could just slide in my back pocket and not have to worry about.

Part of that is due to the fact that my old boss had her purse stolen last year and it was a nightmare. And we all carry way too much stuff with us. With identity theft on the rise, most prevention tips tell us to only carry the cards we use with us and to never carry your Social Security card with you. So why the heck am I carrying around store cards that I honestly only use once or twice a year?

And why am I carrying around a checkbook? I can't remember the last time I actually wrote a check at a store.

So anyhoo. What to do with all that green yarn that I would never use for anything else?? I wandered through Ravelry and finally decided to make a modified Booga bag. I've cast on 64 stitches and I'm going to knit for 60-ish rows on the bottom before I pick up stitches. It'll be my yarn bag for home. And if I knit fast enough, I may even be able to get my mother to line it for me next week, lol.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Mother Nature has an odd sense of humor

There's snow out there, y'all. Snow that we actually desperately need (rain just doesn't do it when the ground is rock hard. It just rolls off, snow on the other hand, seeps in). But that doesn't make it any less of a shock to the system when really we've not had much winter this year.

My mind knows that March is typically one of our wettest months, but this winter has been absolutely atypical. Anyone who says there's no such thing as global warming, or that it isn't as bad as everyone makes it out to be, needs a smack to the head. Or just to be brought to Colorado in July, because it's going to be an UGLY wildfire season.

Anyhoo. There's just enough snow out there to make my morning drive obnoxious, so I'd better get moving. Have a good day, y'all.

Tuesday, March 03, 2009

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?*

Wow! It has been in the 70s the last few days and absolutely GORGEOUS! And of course, I've worked the last two days, lol. But tomorrow is supposed to be almost as nice, and I'm off work so it's all good.

Not much knitting going on here, but a lot of reading. I just can't seem to work up enthusiasm for knitting right now and I don't know if that's my projects or just me. I did pick up 2-at-a-time Socks though, and I've found the pattern that I am going to use for my daughter's Corntastic socks, Pitter Patter. It's a very simple pattern but that's what I need if I am going to try making them two at a time, lol. I just need to get a 40" circular now. It would be nice to have them ready to go for our trip to Iowa later this month.

Anyhoo. I'm tired and thanks to a co-worker, cranky. I'm going to grab something to eat and go see what's On Demand to veg to. Ciao!

*Shakespeare, Sonnet 18

For me.

It's been a long winter. Mentally, I feel even worse off than I was before, though things are finally looking up. I abandoned the gym. I...