A big, quiet sky

Excuse the poor man's panoramic.  I hope you can sense at least a fraction of the power latently blanketing this evening sky.  Sitting beneath it, I heard nothing but the wind sweeping the already-fallen snow over smooth fields.  The absence of noise has yet to fail to amaze me, and I repeatedly find myself feeling blessed to be so removed from the ubiquitous cacophony of more densely populated places.  The power of quiet permeates everything out here.

More snow...(this time without the exclamation point)

My checkout lady at Kroger informed me that we are in for more snow beginning Monday night, continuing throughout Tuesday, with accumulation expected in the 7"-10" range.  I just returned home and confirmed (to the extent that any prediction relating to weather can be confirmed) the accuracy of Kroger-lady's forecast.  Since it is highly, HIGHLY unlikely that I will get a snow day of any sort, the magic that normally accompanies abundant snowfall is laced somewhat with thoughts of terrible traffic, lots and lots of shoveling, potential auto accidents, etc.  For cryin' out loud it took Joel and I nearly an hour to dig him out of my driveway!  Ungh...another 7"-10" on top of what's currently here?  The snow is pretty, still fun to watch, but now that the work week is here: not so fun to deal with.  However, so as to not appear salty, below are some pics I took with the iPhone last night as I crunched through the snow drifts on my way to feed the animals:

FYI: Above (previous two shots) is where Joel's car was parked...whew.  Probably goes without saying that we were both out of breath and suffering from tired shoulders when he finally steered himself home.

Above is a picture taken facing directly south.  Looking at the trees, you can see how the snow came from the east.

JPW-ism for Sunday, February 7, 2010

• Wives have an uncanny capacity (especially on Saturday mornings) to say, "You know, I've been thinking..." -- in a way that just scares the shit out of you.

More snow!

Got some pretty decent snow last night.  The wind changed directions and came in from the east.  This change really caused problems for the barns and the courtyard.  Most of the stalls open to the east, and so now most stalls are under roughly 6 inches of snow.  The courtyard is inaccessible except for the perimeter, and the wind pushed snow into every nook and cranny.  The llama and goats found themselves barricaded in one stall, while the pigs found their blankets blanketed!  Definitely have some work to do today.  Couple more pics:

Joel continues to work on the floors.  We will have to dig him out if he has any chance of going home today.  Not only do we keep him working hard, but then he gets SNOWED on last night while trying to sleep.  The window next to his bed is boarded up while it's being restored, and the gaps in the barrier let in some snow!? Poor guy.  Then we wake up to a car outside spinning its tires after it went off the road and got stuck.  By the time I got up, there was nobody in the car.  Demon Farmer Brown subsequently got his tractor out and unstuck the person.  Probably was angry 'cause the city-slicker had the nerve to get stuck on what Brown surely considers to be his road.

JPW-ism for Saturday, February 6, 2010

• Scrabble is a dumb game of simple chance--unless you're ahead.

Satan's Entryway

Or so Joel has dubbed his most recent assignment.  I don't disagree with the label.  Check out the bottom right pic, you can see how much varnish (or whatever that stuff is) that he had to remove.  Apparently Joel has worked his way through countless packets of sanding disks!  Ahhhh - we appreciate the efforts, brother (the pics of Joel sanding were taken at roughly 8:30 last night). The floor is looking fantastic!

JPW-ism for the Friday, February 5, 2010

• Getting lost is almost never a waste of time. 

Refinishing Floors

Joel is coming back into town today!  From I can gather, his main objective will be to refinish the floor in the entryway.  Joel did our floors in the last house just before we moved, and they ended up looking fan-flipping-tastic.  I have high hopes for these floors.  You hear that bro?  High, high hopes.  No pressure.  Just sayin...

JPW-isms for February thus far:

Monday, February 1, 2010

• Cynics are people who hope they can get others to care less.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

• Don't expect effusive from teen-agers.