A Curious SightIt was a beautiful morning yesterday at Garden Valley and when I stepped outside with my fresh cup of hot coffee to take in the acres of snow, light breezes, blue skies, etc, I noticed an unusual flurry of activity off at the neighbor's place. Some individual was attacking snow drifts with a broom. As I watched from afar this person walked back and forth in front of the long band of deep snow/ice that had been formed by the snow sliding off the roof of the neighbor's house. He was beating this winter formation with your basic Mark III corn broom. As I observed a bit longer, I finally recognized that this crazed person was no other than my good neighbor, Rob.
It has been quite the snowy winter in G.V., so I figured maybe my neighbor had a bad case of cabin fever and had decided to take direct action against the season. Thinking I might be able to calm him down, I approached my neighbor as he was in the depths of his glacier beating frenzy. He finally noticed my approach when I was about 20 yards away. About now I was wishing I had brought the straightjacket...we normally keep several around.
When he saw me he ceased his frenetic activity and simply stated, "Killing Flies." What? As I cautiously edged closer, my eyes started to resolve dozens of tiny fly bodies strewn over the drift. Seeing that I was on the verge of calling the cops (fat chance, the only authority in G.V. is the local game warden) he quickly explained to me that the previous week's warm (?) weather had caused some sort of "fly hatch" and that the little buggers fly to snow drifts that happen to be in the sunshine and then get stove-up due to the cold surface. Thus, they can't fly away at the approach of the broom of doom.
"Here," I said, "Let me try that," and my neighbor broke another broom out of the armory. He gave me the fully-automatic, Feinstein-feared, Assault Broom. I switched it over to Full Auto and attacked the flies.
Hmm....there was something to be said for this recreation. I can only imagine what our elderly, rather straight-laced Mormon neighbor thought as he watched two grown men flogging a snow bank with brooms.
Surprise WeatherI knew I should have suspected something. The National Weather Service said we only had a 20% chance of precip and yet the incoming cloud stream last evening really looked thick. This morning we awoke to about 3" of new fluffy snow. Will post pics later as I don't know how to download pics from Stitch's digital camera. Here's the pic:
I have joined the ranks of the self-employed. Clearly,
not as a digital photographer. I seem to be standing at the intersection of a number of paths which make this a good time to get out on my own. I have some contract software lined-up and I'm starting on that today; however, the big opportunity would seem to be in the dirt moving biz. There is one large and one very large housing development emerging in Garden Valley. The larger development goes before the Boise County Planning and Zoning dudes within a few weeks. You can check out their website at www.southforklanding.com. This, for Garden Valley, is a mega-development. It's located about 4 or 5 miles from beautiful downtown Crouch.
Here's a hot link:
Southfork LandingThe smaller development, Phase I, is about 2 miles from our Mountain Homestead[tm] and is much, much smaller in scope than Southfork Landing.
Nowhere stays the same. That's just a fact of life. I figure a big-assed glacier will do a "Ctrl-Alt-Delete" on all this stuff within 5 or 10 thousand years, so I'm not worried. Leave it to Restless Earth. "Nobody Fools Mother Nature"
Tatertot Accepted at BSUThe youngster was formally accepted into BSU's program for "welders and diesel mechanics" today. There's a formal name for the program, but I can't remember what it is. Tot is pretty euphoric...it turns out his welding instructor was featured on
Monster Garage. While not as cool as consecutive serial numbers on "His and Hers" AR-15's, this is a big deal here in Spudland.
He also tested out of Freshman English Comp 101...a
real benefit given my recollections of that class from decades ago.
It turns out that Tot's first year is mostly going to be about welding. This is a good deal for me 'cuz I've been wanting to learn how to MIG weld for years. Now I have my very own TaterTutor. Of course, I only want to do MIG welding...sorta Lowest Common Denominator among the welding elite...but, hey, I need to weld on the Kubota...I'm just sure of it.
War of the WorldsStitch and I just finished watching this latter-day version of the H.G. Well's classic. Overall, I liked it. At least it wasn't the plageristic (is that a word?) piece of uber-crap that
Independence Day was.
"Homecoming"Stitch, the local Business Analyst (
) and quilt-o-holic has returned to the hallowed halls of the local HP site at the demands of a seemingly demented IT manager. I don't know that I have ever seem her so upset. She wasn't this upset when she was giving birth.
Suffice it to say that I expect the quilting biz will see an uptick in the effort to cultivate new business.
Restless Earth is not to be found here it would seem. Warming days with ultra-clear air and lightening mornings are what this place is all about lately. Nevertheless, I suspect Winter has a few surprises in store.
New tools: Received my super-duper Bostitch floor nailer a few days ago. Hopefully I won't nail my feet to the new flooring (which has yet to arrive, BTW).
