With the warming of the weather comes the bettering of my overall mood and disposition. This past winter was the worst for me that I can remember, but I’m loving being able to walk outside in short sleeves again. For the first time in months, I actually enjoyed feeding the horses yesterday and spending some time just watching them. It’s always so relaxing – despite the resultant mud from the thaw that threatens to (and sometimes does) suck the shoes right off your feet.
Punxsutawney Phil said that spring would be arriving early this year – and it looks as though he was right.
Tags: mood, personality, punxsutawney-phil, weather
Holy geez, it’s frickin’ minus-11 out there!
Tags: weather
Yup, it’s about that time.
Tags: weather
And I don’t mean of the Dairy Queen variety (though I do like those very much).
I think I know what it’s like to trek across the frozen Antarctic with the wind blowing ice crystals to the horizontal and drifts of snow three and four feet deep. You could almost believe that you’re out in the frozen wastes.
Today has been a good day for hunkering down inside where it’s warm and cozy – and aside from the occasional foray to walk dogs and feed horses, we’ve done just that. The road in front of our house is covered in six inches of snow, and the main highway that runs a little further away is virtually empty but for the periodic glimpse of twirling yellow lights. Chances are good that tomorrow we’ll be stuck at home, as well – and I don’t think I mind much. The respite from work is always welcome.
I’ve actually enjoyed the snow this time around. It’s been a good opportunity for rest. I’ll enjoy it for as long as it lasts.
Tags: snow, weather
I’m on a writing dry spell right now. It’s been two or three months since I’ve written anything speculative. I just haven’t had the interest lately. I’m just happy to be able to survive each of these cold, cold days right now. With eight horses to feed, this means breaking ice in buckets several times a day, hauling water from the house to the barns (no running water out there yet), mucking stalls (when it’s warm enough to be able to tolerate the temperatures), and taking care of feeding. Most of my life right now is horses and shivering, especially when the wind chills are as low as 30 below.
But there is a light at the end of the temperature tunnel. While the forecast doesn’t reveal temps over freezing anytime within the next week, they are on an upward trend, which gives me hope. And for once, I’m actually wishing that Punxatawney Pete is correct and that spring will be here six weeks earlier than normal. This is the single longest – and worst – cold snap in recent memory, and I’m ready for it to come to an end. And hopefully, once the weather warms up and the temperature in my office at home becomes tolerable again, I’ll feel a bit more like writing.
But for now, I’m going to add another sweatshirt and wrap up in a blanket and think sunny, warm thoughts. Maybe that’ll help.
Tags: horses, weather, Writing
Now this is the kind of weather I can actually tolerate – for a while, at least. The temps have dropped enough that the persistent rain has become snow. It was actually a lot of fun to work out in it tonight, but only because I was bundled up and actually working hard enough to stay warm. The horses were happy to get their feed, and I was happy to have something physical to do for a little bit.
I’ve been back on the South Beach diet for just over a week now. It’s been a bit of a rough week, complete with hunger pains, crankiness, and temptations to hop down off the wagon. But I’m glad I’ve stuck to my guns because already I’ve dropped six pounds and can see a visible difference. Another 12 pounds and I’ll be back down where I was before the big move last year.
I’ve been adding to my blogroll the last couple of days. There is now a new section for science related blogs and websites, all of which have RSS feeds (which is about the only way I roll these days). Go give them a look-see if you’d like. I suspect I’m going to have more reading material and story ideas in coming days than I quite know what to do with.
I’m trying out a new automatic wallpaper program I found today called Desktop Earth. It automatically refreshes your wallpaper with a satellite image of the Earth, showing you what part is currently under daylight and which is under night. You can play with the options to show you city lights at night and moonlight reflections. It’s pretty cool, but it’s a little bit resource intensive. I’ve had to set it to refresh every 15 minutes (default is 5) just so it doesn’t bog my computer down too much.
I’m finally making some time for some story writing. I’ve been terribly remiss in my obligations here, so it’s catch-up time. I had a great flash fiction idea just tonight, so I’m in the midst of setting this one down to paper. And, speaking of which, I’d best get back to it.
Tags: desktop-earth, health, software, south-beach-diet, weather, Writing
One downside to owning livestock is that, no matter what the weather outside, you have to be out in it at least twice a day. This has definitely been an unusually wet season, and coupled with the falling temperatures, makes it quite miserable out there. But, making sure the horses are all tucked safe and dry in their stalls makes it worth it. It just makes their human caretakers wish for Spring’s arrival all that much more. I got a nice reprieve from the elements this weekend upon going out of town, but now it’s back to business; and hopefully this will be the worst things get for us as we develop our land for our four-footed friends. Honestly, it is nice to be home, however much work it sometimes involves.
As Dorothy once said, there’s no place like home.
Tags: weather, whinging
“In the absence of the sun, I’ll take a full moon.”
It’s funny how attuned a person can get to the cycles of the moon. I’d never really paid all that much attention to what phase the moon was in – I never had much cause to. It took buying land and actually moving our horses onto that property coupled with the short days of winter to change that. I miss those nights (or early mornings) where the moon hasn’t risen yet (or has just gone down) or where the moon is new, thus plunging the landscape into complete darkness. Those are the nights where I actually need the flashlight to see deliver the hay and grain out to the horses.
But when the moon is full, it’s almost as good as full sunlight. The human eye is able to make amazingly good use of exceedingly low light, and I love being able to walk around outside with just the moonlight to illuminate the way. There’s something about it that sparks the imagination. I can just see the plains of Middle Earth, men (and hobbits and dwarves and elves) traveling hard and fast to reach their destination before evil can catch them. I can see a special forces unit making a nighttime assault on a secret compound, their equipment amplifying the moonlight.
Of course, the moon hadn’t come up yet tonight when I went out to feed. Moonrise is still a little ways off, but at least it will be up for the morning feed. Things are always a little more spooky out there without the moonlight, especially when our local pack of coyotes is making a racket about a mile away. But it’s still a night for imagination, for creativity, and it’s always a lot of fun.
Tags: astronomy, creativity, life, physiology, Science, weather
I hate this weather, and I intensely dislike this time of year. I used to look forward to fall and winter, but the older I get, the more I despise the season. And what I wouldn’t give to have a nice, warm, 10-stall barn right now. Ever tried moving seven horses – one at a time – into their respective stalls, in the rain, as the temperature drops, in the dark? Not fun, let me tell you.
It’s going to be a long winter.
Tags: horses, weather, whinging
A thunderstorm rolled through our area in the early hours this morning, fortunately moving on quickly enough that I did not have to feed horses in the rain. It did not roll through so swiftly, though, that I was not able to see some of its beauty as it fled south. It was almost breath-taking to watch the cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning, particularly as it would follow a chain reaction from one end of the horizon to the other.
It’s those wee hours of the morning, before the sun comes up, that allows one’s mind to dwell on fantastic possibilities, and it was not hard to imagine that these electrical displays lighting up the dark sky were the product of some apocalyptic event or some extraterrestial invasion. It was enough to spur my writer’s mind into action, and I felt like a child again with endless possibilities before me.
I only wish I’d had the equipment to capture the storm on film.
Tags: creativity, horses, weather, Writing
