Look Outside! It’s Snowing!

We have had yet another snow day this winter in North Texas. Now, the 3 inches we got Christmas Eve was a great showing for this part of Texas, for sure, but well, we've zinged right past that now. I was all toasty warm this morning when my phone said "Message Received" at about 6:55 this morning. Now, I'd heard someone come downstairs and fix coffee sometime between 6 & 6:30, but I'd managed to go back to sleep. I opened the phone and found this message: Look outside! J, to which I replied "HELL NO woman I don't care what's outside unless it's Ed McMahon with my Publisher's Clearing House prize I've not entered to win!!" that I was all warm & snug in my bed with all the kitties.

 The texting went back and forth for about 15 minutes until I gave up and agreed to go out into the living room & hang with her to let the man sleep a little longer…

My first look outside saw this:

It was too cold to actually venture out for awhile, but when I did brave the cold for the first time, we had about 2.5 inches at around 9:30 this morning. By 11:15 we were up to 3.75 inches, just under 4.5 at noon, 5.5 at 2:30, 7 at 6 pm, and the last time I went out at 9, we were up to 8 inches, with more falling! I quite suspect that tomorrow morning will be a lovely icy mess on the roads!

Our incarnations of the snowperson…

                          The teens, me, and our SnowWench!

Our Highland Snowman


















 

                                   

 Looking at the driveway before anyone went anywhere

I like snow, but I'm pretty sure that by tomorrow afternoon, I'm going to be absolutely OVER IT! I don't do cold, and sure I bitch and moan in the heat of the Texas summers, but I will take those summers over the endless weeks of cold (and snow) that make up winter in points north of the Red River! I have gotten some shots that I absolutely LOVE though!

Our sweet little elf that sits by the driveway!    

     

We clearly need to have class on how to make a snow angel J

  

After dark I went back out to check depth, and just HAD to take some shots in the dark… I'm pretty happy with them though.

Poor SnowWench has lost her head, and started passing out!

Tomorrow will probably yield more photo's, we'll see what we end up with!

Stay warm ya'll!

Introducing Random Weirdness Wednesday

Introducing what I'm hoping will become a regular feature, in Random Weirdness Wednesday. I’m sure there will probably be random weirdness on other days, but I’m going to do my best to focus on the weirdness for Wednesdays. I'm taking a page out of Bo & Jim's book, their Weird Ass Wednesdays are the most awesome days to tune into the show!

There’s been a pretty good bit lately, that I haven’t managed to post about yet. Most recently was this evening’s “fashion statement” at the restaurant where I had dinner with the teenager. My current phone takes crummy photos from any kind of distance and doesn’t zoom at all, but hopefully you can see the photo.

The kid has on jeans, a fitted tank top, and a long-sleeved shirt, which may or may not be a sweatshirt on. I know you’re asking yourself how I know what he has on under the long sleeved shirt, aren’t you? I know this because he only put the damned thing on half-way. Yep, apparently, he pulled it over his head, put his left arm in and pulled that side down toward his waist, and that’s all he did. The right side is still sitting on his shoulder, with the sleeve flapping around like some freaky, deflated extra appendage. Before you chime in with “maybe his arm is broken, or he has a shoulder problem” let me say that I saw him move his arm & shoulder freely, and apparently without pain, so I don’t buy that excuse. In the photo he’s outside talking on his phone like he’s some hip, important player or something. I wonder if he realizes how unkempt he actually appears.

Back in September, on the trip to Corpus, there was a good bit of RW, which, I suppose, is to be expected when you are driving through small town Texas.

In one little town, honestly, I don’t remember the name of the town, we drove past this sculpture, in front of a Knights of Columbus hall, and had to turn around and go back to be sure that we had seen what we thought we had seen. Sure enough, yep, a sculpture of what we have dubbed “alien baby fetuses”. Seriously? Who does a giant steel sculpture of FETUSES? It was just creepy!

Further down the road, in Hallettsville, there’s a restaurant called Snowflake Donuts & Chinese Food. Yeah, since I can’t even stand the scent of Chinese food, I’m pretty sure I’m glad they were closed, and we didn’t have to stop.

Spotted around Corpus:

Giant inflatable rhinoceros

Double baskets

On the road to Houston & in Houston

Beaver Nuggets? I think I’m afraid to know

RC car on the roof? Who drives their RC car on the roof??

And finally:

Ruffled panties for the BIG ASS chicks. UMM, yeah, we Fat Bottomed Girls need to add even MORE to our asses to fluff them up a bit!

 
Thanks for stopping by, and c'mon back next week for another installment of Random Weirdness Wednesday!  MWAH!

Once Again

When I think things are just bopping along fine, someone or something comes along and yanks the rug out from under me. Yesterday, I was fired from my job, with no warning whatsoever. I didn't know that there was a problem with my performance until they told me that they were firing me. It totally pisses me off because I liked that job, and generally I like the people I was working with, but apparently I had a false sense of security. So now I have to get my resume back together. The last time I had to send out resumes my desktop was still working. It has since gotten the blue screen of death, and I'm on my 3rd laptop (first was a gift of an ancient, barely working unit; 2nd was killed by water spillage a few weeks ago). On the upside, I am going to spend this week getting pictures edited from Scarby this season, sorting out my itunes, and finding all the stuff I transferred from the previous laptop and still haven't had time to find and reorganize on this one. Also on the upside, I don't have to take vacation time to leave early friday for faire, and go back down to the site on Tuesday to pick up my cooler, etc. I also have a friend flying in early Thursday afternoon, so now I don't have to leave work early that day, either.

Yeah, it's been awhile since I managed to get a decent post up. A lot has happened of late. Thursday night, some dork (gee, I wonder who that might be?) bumped into the tv tray table that had my laptop AND a half a glass of water on it. *sigh* even though I had plans for a new laptop in the next several months or so, I was NOT planning on it right now, especially since this week I have to pay my deductible to get my freshly repaired Escape out of hock at the body shop. In the end, I have a shiny new laptop for less money than what I spent on the other one, and with more memory and a faster processor. I was terribly distraught at the idea that I could lose thousands of photos, and have to totally reload all of my Itunes music (somewhere around 2500 songs). My Ipod decided over the weekend that 3 of the tunes that are on my "totally zone me out and calm me down" playlist (it's actually just 1 cd) were no longer worth having at normal speed, and therefore they were put on SPEED. Now I need to resync my Ipod too. GREAT! When I got home from faire on Sunday evening, I tried turning on the original laptop, to discover that it powers itself right back off again. Ok, sure, I'll let it dry out some more. Last night, I discovered that it would power up, but only stays on as long as it's plugged in, and the battery doesn't charge up at all. In my search for my Ipod cord, I did come across an EZ Transfer cable. SCORE! I powered up both units, connected them via the cable, and transferred everything from one laptop to the other. At least I hope I transferred everything. Of course it all transferred into random places, so it will probably take me weeks to figure out where everything is, and I'll spend hours populating my Itunes Library and getting my playlists set back up, but at least hopefully I didn't lose anything... Last night I picked up my car, YAY! I may have mentioned that I HATE that Prius. Sure, I'm all for being environmentally conscious and reducing my carbon footprint, however I HATE driving cars that are low to the ground. I've been driving trucks/vans/small SUVs for about 10 years now, and I literally felt like I was getting road rash on my ass! I don't drive a gas hog, I average about 20 mpg in my Escape, and since I'm not about to go back into a compact car, that's about the best I can expect in whatever I'm going to drive. I have to give kudos to Craig's Collision for getting my car done and back to me in 13 working days, rather than the 21 that my insurance adjuster estimated. I was a bit concerned about that because it meant I would need to turn in my rental early or over a weekend or two so that I wouldn't run over my allowed days (30 calendar days). The car looks great, everything matches, and the front is all shiny with it's fresh coat of paint.

Time to Play Catch Up, Part 1

I'd tell ya that I'm going to try to give you the short version, but well, I don't know how to do a short version of much of anything, so bear with me. My festival season has officially started. NTIF is held every year the first full weekend of March and many of the local rennies consider it sort of a kickoff for the Faire season, because it's one of those situations where we can dress up in garb, or our kilts and be out in public without garnering much negative attention. This year marked the return of The Rogues to the festival after a much too long absence. As a result, my favorite Canadian, his wife, and a fiddler came down and stayed with me. It was a long and busy weekend, and I feared that my sweet Leo would be stressed to the max. Then, about 6 on Friday night, Randy said, as he was leaving to go meet other friends for dinner, "I'll see you about 10 in the morning." Puzzled, I said "Oh, you're coming over to the house? Ok, that's fine" To which he responded "Oh yeah, didn't we tell you, we've got to rehearse, and we are planning to do it at your house. Is that ok?" "Umm, noo, you didn't tell me, but sure, I'm game for it." Before I left for the airport, I did manage to visit with my friends Mary & Sakeeta at their Estelril Enterprises booth and get more lotion and salves, as well as catching the Clandestine show (yeah those pictures aren't all edited yet), and a wee glimpse of a wee new Ameri-Scot, Max Kean, who was a whole 3 1/2 weeks old. By the time that I got home from the airport with the Canadians, I had learned that in my media room there would be 2 sets of bagpipes, a fiddle (actually 2 different ones, but played separately by the same guy), acoustic guitar, probably bass & electric guitar. Yeah, that was going to be interesting. Since we didn't get home until almost 12:30 and the Canadians' were at 1:30 a.m. after being up since early the day before, a text was sent telling Randy not to show before noon! Bow fell in love with Nelson's wife, and commandeered his guitar case for her morning nap. She's such a rotten thing. She learned from the master, the late, great Mr. Moro, who was absolute the King of sweet kitties, thus she believes that the only reason that guitar case came to TX was to provide her with a new and interesting bed for awhile. For DAYS after they left she kept going into the guest bedroom looking for them and wailing her head off when there weren't there! I got a couple of shots of the rehearsal as well: Doug's back, Lyric on chanter, Nelvis, Randy beating on the wall, and Corey on fiddle Doug & Lyric both on chanter, and Nelson's back Apparently years of listening to bagpipes blare through the house on the CD player/Ipod has mellowed Leo somehow, because he slept through the whole thing. By the time we got to the festival on Saturday there wasn't much shopping time, and I didn't get many decent shots because I was at the sale table instead of sitting on the front row.

Sunday was a better photo op for me, and I got some great shots, but haven't gotten them all edited to upload, so you'll just have to wait. We got out there a little earlier, and I got to spend some time with Erin, Tony & Tom, and later with Mark and sweet baby Claire, who, OMG is almost a year old! And isn't she absolutely darling? She LOVES her Auntie Rae and the camera!

Probably wasn't my best decision, leaving the festival to take the Canadians back to D/FW, then going back to the festival for a few more hours, because I was definitely POOPED by the time I got home that night, but I had fun and made some awesome purchases that I'll eventually add photos of as well. Yeah, I suck at getting photos done in a timely manner most of the time, so sue me. Note to self, schedule a vacation day for March 7th next year to recover from NTIF.

And well, I'm tired, so you'll just have to wait for Part 2, I guess, cuz I'm too tired to keep typing and 5 a.m. comes early tomorrow.