tubaart

So slow about updating. A thousand humble apologies to the both of you who might read this. LOL

Friday through Sunday was a 72 hour ice storm. Tremendous fun. We had sleet and freezing rain, and then flurries on Monday. Our driveway is a 3/4" - 1" thick sheet of ice. It's a good thing it's banked on both sides -- you just sort of get your momentum up and take it like an uphill luge ride. I went to get the mail last evening, and walked down to the mailbox on the grass, which was slick, but not awful. When I had to cross the drive, though, first step and whoosh wham! down on my kiester. I crawled across the drive (no way I could get back on my feet). Got the mail, and then had to walk about 50' along the road until I found a place where the bank up from the road ditch was level enough I could go up it on my knees!! You know it's bad when the dogs wipe out -- and they both have, several times.

It sucked, too -- between the precipitation/clouds and the build up of ice on the dish, our (satellite) internet connection was either flaky or non-existant all weekend. Now the sky is mostly blue, but instead of hovering around freezing (where it was), It's now 17, which is our high for the day (it was 3 this morning). (For our metric friends, that's like -8 and -16.) Fucking cold!!

Work is changing a lot, which is mostly good, but a little unsettling. Another consulting thing I'm doing is looking like turning into a board of directors position for a non-profit. I'm not sure I'm qualified, but we'll see. I'll fill more in on it another time, but suffice it to say, it's a great project that should provide VERY low cost hospital (and lab, radiology, etc.) information systems to hospitals that otherwise wouldn't have this available. It's sweet stuff.

I got some ice pictures on Saturday, which I'll include at the end. I'd like to get some more, but I'm not sure when I'll have the time and the daylight. I'm also totally loving the anime fox hat from Noir. I get so much hat-love and hat-envy. I just wish it covered my ears! Looks like I'm gonna have to buy another when one comes out (no more custom orders ). A lot of people can't believe I wear it, but that's half the fun. Go send Noir some luvin' for all her great stuff!

We're finally through all the holidays -- no more work holidays until Memorial Day. Between late November and mid-January (< 2 mo), we have 5 of our 8 vacation days (TG, TG+1, Xmas, NYD, MLK) and now we go more than 4 months without any. Suck-o-rama!

So anyway, enough rambling. Here are the ice pics (Ice picks?)