First Snow and Ice of 2024

The January winter storms have hit and covered much of the Willamette Valley with snow and a crust of ice.  Power lines are down, and it seems like half of my friends up and down the valley are without power, or their wells have stopped, or trees have come crashing down near or onto their houses.  The city has closed public parks and bike paths.

We’re lucky to be in a part of Eugene that seems to have robust power transmission.  I believe the last time we were without power was due to someone speeding down Willamette Street at something like fifty miles per hour and smacking into a power pole (Willamette Street is straight, so they would have had to work a little bit to hit a pole at the side of the road).  

The time before that was a strange occurrence: lightning overhead caused a mechanical switch (maybe a line arrester) at the top of a pole near our house to trip.  I’m guessing that the lightning caused an induction surge in the transmission line.  Only houses on our side of the block were without power, but some linemen came and used a very long (and insulated) cherry-picker type tool to flip the switch closed.  

Luckily, the temperature has only gotten into the mid twenties, so the animals can go outside when they need to.  Aoife doesn’t appreciate the snow on her paws—although one of her plush toys, a fox, has turned into an icicle that she likes to chew. The cats only want to be outside for a short period of time, mostly so they can stalk songbirds attracted by the suet we’ve put out .  The snow is covered with a crust of ice; walking is not too bad as the ice is bumpy and dry.  

Today it’s supposed to be sunny—it’s currently sunny in Corvallis—but at the moment it is still overcast with diffuse light bouncing between the white ground and the grey clouds.   But there’s a Winter Storm Warning issued for today through tomorrow morning, so maybe all we’ll get is deeper grey.  

I think an expedition for chocolate may be in order.

Snow Wishes

More snow this morning--not a whole lot.  No moon or stars, only grey clouds making the snow a dusky pastel blue.  The forecast for today is a tug-of-war between snow and rain.  I expect the day to become darker as the rain washes away the snow.

Yesterday the sun came out and turned the snow brilliant.  The light bouncing off of everything lifts my spirit, and makes for some fun photography.

The cats are hopeful that the snow will go away, and seem dashed when we open the doors to that cold white stuff covering everything.   They spent most of yesterday on tables and chairs, in the sunlight, waiting for the snow to melt.

The dog loves it, though.  Mark has been making snowballs for her and filling some of them with dog treats.  

Wrapping Up December 2021

  I envisioned myself blogging (and writing) much more this December than has actually happened.  Part of this is due to posting to social media more than actually blogging.  I suspect that I need to have add some time-keeping software to my apps to bring social media usage back into balance.    

To recap the last few weeks.   

Through a series of events, the Day Jobbe has expanded to full time.   It's mostly remote, and I drive in to work some days.  I am doing a combination of departmental intranet design and web site management.  It has been a reminder of how brutally insurance benefits are awarded (or not) to vested employees. 

 

Writing is going very slowly, which I find it tends to do this time of year.  

My extended family is doing mostly well and managing to stay healthy during the pandemic.  

The cats have crossed another threshold with the dog and are more likely to spend the night in the house (rather than the garage) with the dog.  The cold might have something to do with this.  They also seem more tolerant of the dog in general, and no longer zip out of a room whenever she appears.  

Smokey seems to have recovered from his earlier medical emergency.  He's still as fluffy as ever, but--whether through the medicine he's taking or through the touch of age--he is bonier than he used to be.  

On the design front:  last November I sat down and decided to see about reproducing an Islamic design I've always thought was an interesting interlocking of circles, triangles, and hexagons.  As is usual with these sorts of designs, one can make it tile infinitely.  Other design projects include designing this year's family calendar and paper projects.

Pre Ides of Winter Moon

 The Ides of Winter are soon.   As I was walking home from the grocery store, the moon and the clouds were all lit up with various hues of grey and blue, with a little bit of purple and red.  I wish I could have caught it on camera.  The moon seemed so much bigger, and the clouds more like a shell with the sunlight shining through them.  The whole sky appeared to be pausing between steps of a very slow dance.

After sunset, the moon shone in the middle of two rainbow halos for a minute before the clouds thickened and drew across the moon's face.  There were too many clouds to see Aldebaran or the Pleiades, which the moon visited two days ago.  

There's been talk of snow, but the actual snow levels are higher than the projected ones.  It is seasonal, especially if we're traveling to a weekend birthday celebration for my father, for there to be a thick coating of black ice on I-5 or for two feet of snow to besiege my folks' house.  Since his birthday is in the middle of the week, Oregon is spared (for now).

Writing Weekend with Ice

Went to the Gym Saturday afternoon.  About 300 calories on the Nordic Elliptical.  13x(30+40+50)lbs o the pec fly.  3x13x30lbs on the deltoid fly.  13x(50+60+70+80)lbs on the lat pull-down.  3x13 curls on the Roman chair.  3x13x30lbs on the barbell curl.  3x13x30lbs on the triceps pull-down.  5x5x5lbs on a sort of combination arm-flapping motion where I keep my elbows straight and move at the shoulders while alternating the dumbbell vertical or horizontal depending on how I rotate my humorous around my radius.

The gym was filled (or so it seemed) with humorless, square-jawed, blocky folks.  Groany McSlamweights was there (I am not sure why some folks have to sound like their making love when they lift weights), and at one point one of the attendants told him to tone it down. 

Writing:  I spent a lot of time editing; on the plus side, I have a rough first-draft of an opening chapter.  I managed about 800 new words.  I'm reminding myself that forward progress is progress... and right now I am more likely to reach my 90,000 word count by May 1 if I just write without using the backspace key.  I'm thankful for Scrivener, which allows me to break up my writing into scenes, vignettes, character sketches, and parts where I'm arguing with myself into separate, organizable sub-documents.   On days when I don't feel creative, I can always dive into the waiting drafts.  I think the pit-fall I have to be aware of is getting distracted with characters' back-stories... on one hand, it's useful to have some key scenes, but on the other, I'm wanting to start the story when the main characters are in their twenties, not their teens or childhoods.   

On the weather front, we woke up Sunday to a light frosting of snow, which melted, and then returned and then melted and returned again.  The Child was ecstatic at the prospect of a possible snow day (there's no school on Monday in any case) and of extorting the neighbors for money for shoveling drives.   When the snow fell, it came down in cakes of think flakes.  Later in the day, rain drizzled down, as if it came from a greenhouse mister, in a more typical Oregon February fashion.

Mark and I (OK, mostly Mark) cleaned out the garage, so we were able to actually get the car into it.  This enabled me to drive to work without having to scrape ice and snow off of the car.  The forecast warned about black ice on the roads, but the streets were mostly dry.

Skiing Weekend Warrior

Over the weekend we went skiiing at Willamette Pass.  I stayed for most of the day on the bunny slopes called "Sleepy Hollow." This is where kids learn to ski; it's a nice wide, gentle slope.

Snow fell at first, but turned to rain around 10 AM.  I think I would have been fine except the chair lift was wet, so my butt and hands were soaked by the end of the morning.  Luckily, I was wearing enough layers so that I didn't feel cold.  Still, that wet squishy feeling on one's butt isn't very dainty.  

The most difficult part of skiing was getting off of the chair-lift.  It was calibrated for eight-year-olds, meaning that the bottom of the chair was about a foot above the snow.  I needed a geriatric chair-assist, bionic quads, or an eight-year-old's legs to sit up at the top of the lift.  There were a couple of times where I was struggling to stand and slid into a pile.  The last time, I rolled off of the exit-ramp to avoid any other skiers, under the path of the chairs as they swung around on the line, and nearly got clocked in the head by a chair.  I felt like a failed James Bond as the chairs swung over me and I tried to right myself.  The chair operator stopped the lift and helped me up, and I asked her for some tips (get out before the line that says "exit here").

Once I got the hang of getting off of the chairlift, I had fun.  My favorite song to hum skiing down hill is "Premadona" from "Phantom of the Opera."

We had lunch in the lodge, which was vaguely like eating in a high school cafeteria.

I did want to have a romantic co-ski with Mark on another beginner slope called "Duck Soup," but OMG, every time I had to make a right-hand turn on some of the steeper parts, I ended up wiping out.  I'm going to guess one of those times I jammed my right index finger, which I didn't notice until the next day.  The second wipe-out I did hear my neck crack like I was at a chiropractor's.  The third wipe-out, I stupidly buried my skis' tips into a snowbank.  Mark's snowboard needed to go more quickly than I liked, or he'd get stuck in the wet snow, so I'm afraid it wasn't the most fun run for him.  We did enjoy the lift up through the trees, though.  

The temperature dropped in the afternoon and it began to snow again.  At one point, I simply stood and watched the snow falling over the firs and pines.  A fine mist shrouded the top of the mountain in thickening grey veils of falling white flakes.  The dark green trees - lighter green lichen cascading down their trunks - became black and then greyer and greyer with the distance until they became one with the mist.  The falling snow accumulated on the ends of the sagging branches, white highlights that also became one in the greyed distance.  And all around, beneath the squeaks and creaking of the chairlift, the sliding crunches of skis on snow, the whispered pats of falling snow, and the voices of young skiers, there was a sense of a vast, slow, sleeping from the trees, as if they had collectively paused at the end of a monumental inhalation and would exhale into an even deeper sleep. 

At the end of the day, a bunch of Middle-Eastern tourists, who seemed new to skiing (one of them was at the bottom of the chair trying to put on a ski on backward) and were more interested in going down the hill as quickly as they could until they fell in an explosion of snow, arms, skies, legs, and poles.  Then they'd laugh and yell to each other.  And do it again.  They seemed friendly enough, but we were a little worried their antics would involve colliding with one of us.  

It was wonderful getting out of my ski-boots at the end of the day,  but three days later, my calves still ached. Ow.

Ice in the Willamette Valley

Thursday morning it started to snow.  When I went to work, the flakes were large.  And dry.  The roads weren't too bad, but I was able to skid and spin out when I tested the traction on the road.  Going about 20 mph was fine.  The local school district held classes (but other near-by ones did not).

And then it snowed and snowed and snowed.  By the time I left work, pulling out of intersections was tricky, and the wheels usually spun out before the car would move forward.  And then there were a few times when the car lurched in some diagonal directions not quite matching the general forward motion of the car.  By this time we had about eight inches of snow on the ground.  Most parents with children had pulled them out of school by noon rather than wait for the snow to pile any higher.

I declined to sled down any hills, as I didn't want to re-live last snow-day's crash into the sidewalk curb.


So I walked to work Friday.  The snow flakes were even larger.  During the night there had been some freezing rain, so the snow crunched when you walked through it. The snow was still dry, but the additional ice on the roads made me glad I live close enough to walk to work.  The copes of trees near the Amazon Slough were frozen cathedral columns of white and sable.

The University waffled on if they were going to be open or closed, saying that they would be starting classes at 10 AM and requiring staff to be at work normal hours, but then cancelling classes at 9:30 AM (which I'm sure made the travelers who set out at 9AM joyful).

And it snowed and snowed and snowed.  There was a horrible pile-up on I-5 near Albany.  Someone slid into the blue metal heron sculpture near the entrance to campus.  And more snow fell.  I rode the bus partway home and walked a few blocks in the falling snow, past the copes with my hands held out, like some pilgrim between the snowy veil in a cathedral.

Some time in the evening, the snow turned into a mixture of snow, sleet and rain.  The snow on the cars, walkways and trees became glazed.  This morning, Saturday, the precipitation is primarily rain, and icicles are forming on everything.  I wasn't going to take photos of ice all over everything, because I'm sure if I look back at old photos from twelve years ago I'll find my cache of photos of plants and fences with ice all over them... but then I did.

I hope our magnolia tree makes it through the next few hours, because it's looking sad, and may illicit haiku.

Rain and warmer temperatures are forecast for tomorrow.

Ramparts of Ice

 It's been really cold in Eugene.

I walked into work, which was fun.  The university closed a little early Friday, and the streets have been very slippery. The ride on the bus home was interesting (and much longer than usual).

 I've had my obligatory sledding accident.  We nosed into a sidewalk curb instead of swooshing over it.   Luckily I haven't cracked my spine, so I have use of both legs -- although sitting is uncomfortable.

 Saturday was cold, dry and clear, and I went out with Mark's camera to take some pictures in "magic light."  Since we're about two weeks away from the Winter Solstice, from dawn to 9:30 AM and then from 3:30 PM to dusk we get lots of slanting, ruddy sunlight (at least when it's not cloudy).

 Obligatory water tower photograph.

 Sunset through the trees.

 We live within walking distance of the city reservoir up the hill, and I discovered that it's a giant, two-block large icicle machine.  Alas, I made this discovery at dusk.

 This frozen door reminded me of the door in C.S. Lewis's "The Last Battle."  I was getting cold (I had to take my gloves off to work the camera buttons, which were cold), and it was getting dark.  The moon was nice, but Mark's camera doesn't have a zoom lens.

 So... I forced myself to be up before dawn the next day.  I girded myself with extra layers--including fingerless gloves under thick ski gloves--topping it all off with the grey-green wool cloak.  The cloak came in handle for covering my less-gloved hand and the camera, and prevented frostbit fingers.

 At first, I thought the trees would block the sunlight going through the icicles.

 The moss was still green, and made a contrasting background for frosted spiderwebs.

 I think this is my favorite shot of the day.

 Mark's camera is thinner than mine, and I was able to get it behind the curtain of ice.

 After about fifty photos, I realized that I was taking the same picture over and over ... and... it's frozen water.  Also, the sun was getting higher and the light was loosing it's "magic" quality.  And my toes were freezing.

 I was trying to keep my hands from freezing, so I tried to refrain from taking more photos.  Yeah; right.  I thought a drain cover surrounded by snow was funny.

 I dusted the snow--it's dry and perfect for skiing--over the cover to bring out the salmon.

 Mark told me about a near-by holly tree.

 In other weather related news, Mark froze soap bubbles and took some photographs.  These are all his.

 Today's sun has been slowly melting the bubble from the bottom up.

 These are from about 10 AM.