This is the best we've done yet, negative boy
Hi guys! It has been a strange few weeks; I had a great visit in Colorado with the family, but between that and the Headstones shows and the extreme sleep-deprivation and travel and whatnot, I was pretty burned out when I came back, so I hibernated for a week or so, and then it snowed last week, and then it ice-stormed, and I had to hibernate some MORE, because our power went out very early last Thursday morning and just came back yesterday. WHEE. This actually didn't feel nearly as frustrating to me as our last several-days power outage, which happened a few years back; this time around we had smart phones, for one thing, so we did have some access to information (which the power company was pretty awesome about providing; I think they had around 270,000 people without power at the peak, so it was a HUGE undertaking to get everything fixed, and in pretty unpleasant conditions, including wind and rain that caused more outages even as they were trying to fix the first round; the people who work those jobs are ROCKSTARS and I would like to buy them all a cookie and a hot beverage). Plus I had my Nook, on which I'd just loaded a few library books, so I had plenty of reading material. I snagged some Tintin comics for Mr. McK to read on his Xoom, and we found a Starbucks that had power where we could hunker down and charge our devices and have wi-fi (the power was out at work, too, on Thursday and Friday), and we spent a lot of time holed up in our bedroom, since we have a gas fireplace up there, and we have gas-powered hot water. So as hardships go, it could have been a LOT worse. AND we were able to salvage most of the food in our freezer (due at least in part to how it was about 45 degrees in the rest of our house), so that was AWESOME.
Of course it also helped a LOT that I fucked off with
zabira on Friday night to visit desfinado for the weekend, which was AMAZING. (I felt very guilty abandoning Mr. McK to the cold and the powerlessness, but he was totally in favor of me going, and we've been planning this trip since, like, October, so.) We ate/made delicious food (including rutabaga fries, SO GOOD, and I had this pear-prosciutto buckwheat crepe with winter greens and it was LIFE-CHANGING) and had delicious conversation and Desfinado's apartment is fabulous and her neighborhood/city is fabulous and SHE is seriously REALLY REALLY FABULOUS. And I feel like perhaps it was not an even exchange, fannishly speaking, the fact that she delighted me all weekend with the soundtrack of Led Zeppelin and Jack White and all sorts of classic rock goodness, and I reciprocated by traumatizing her with Hard Core Logo. Um. ILU DESFINADO. ♥ (We also pimped her into Pickwick and I mostly-unintentionally intrigued her about Neal Tiemann AND we watched MCR's iTunes Festival set, so it was not ALL trauma, but still. I have watched Hard Core Logo so many times that I kind of forget that it's a little bit of a mean thing to do to people. Hee.) (Also this is the first time in a while that I have watched HCL without Sock Puppet Joe Dick being nearby for cuddling purposes, and I am NOT making that mistake again. *pets him*)
So anyway. It was a WONDERFUL, restorative weekend, and Desfinado is amazing and of course Z is amazing and I feel extremely lucky to know them both. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
I also took some pictures of the ice and snow, which-though very destructive-was also very pretty!
This was last Monday, actually, when we had power and nowhere to go and were really enjoying the snow:
Y'all, if there is anything cuter than my husband playing with my dog, I'm not really sure what it is. ♥ Then by Wednesday night, we were seriously into ice-storm territory… it snowed about half the day, and then continued to pour freezing rain for several more hours, which was freaky, but beautiful. This is a chain-link fence at a park near our house, where we took the puppydog for a romp on Thursday night, after he was cooped up in our room all day while those of use who are NOT sled dogs huddled by the fire:
And here are some blurry trees from the same park:
It's hard to tell from this picture, but all the branches were completely encased in about an inch of ice. Which was, of course, what ended up causing most of the downed trees/branches, and hence the power outages-walking along in the park at night, with all the lights out, the sound from the trees in the distance was constant and ominous, crackling and crashing in the dark. Freaky. Walking was also interesting, since each step crunched you down through a thick layer of ice and into a powder-puff of snow. It was fascinating, actually, and when we got back to the house, we had some fun cleaning the ice and snow off our cars; the top layer of ice was like a carapace over a few inches of powdery snow, and we could crack the ice off in huge chunks, which made a very satisfying noise when they hit the ground, too. Hee.
The cherry tree outside our house:
And then a bunch of trees along the road where we typically take the puppydog for his walks… this was Friday morning, after the worst of the ice storm:
Poor trees. :( This was also a mildly harrowing walk, just because it was raining and had warmed up enough that there was a near-constant shower of slush and ice chunks coming down off the trees; the ground underneath the bare trees, like these, looked like the product of an ice-making machine, all these rounded little chunks lying in the snow. Crazy!
But very, very pretty:
It felt a bit like winter ending in Narnia, only vaguely scary. Heh. Seriously, I am SO grateful to all the power company employees who had to be out in that, especially since they were spending a lot of time working in and around these trees, which had to be both miserable and dangerous. Rockstars!
So ANYWAY. I am behind on EVERYTHING-I did not even know about Gerard's new hair until Saturday, OMG-including comment replies, but things seem to be moving back toward normal, so I am hoping to be a better internet citizen VERY SOON. ♥
This post is also at Dreamwidth! http://brynnmck.dreamwidth.org/284209.html Comments at Dreamwidth:
Of course it also helped a LOT that I fucked off with
zabira on Friday night to visit desfinado for the weekend, which was AMAZING. (I felt very guilty abandoning Mr. McK to the cold and the powerlessness, but he was totally in favor of me going, and we've been planning this trip since, like, October, so.) We ate/made delicious food (including rutabaga fries, SO GOOD, and I had this pear-prosciutto buckwheat crepe with winter greens and it was LIFE-CHANGING) and had delicious conversation and Desfinado's apartment is fabulous and her neighborhood/city is fabulous and SHE is seriously REALLY REALLY FABULOUS. And I feel like perhaps it was not an even exchange, fannishly speaking, the fact that she delighted me all weekend with the soundtrack of Led Zeppelin and Jack White and all sorts of classic rock goodness, and I reciprocated by traumatizing her with Hard Core Logo. Um. ILU DESFINADO. ♥ (We also pimped her into Pickwick and I mostly-unintentionally intrigued her about Neal Tiemann AND we watched MCR's iTunes Festival set, so it was not ALL trauma, but still. I have watched Hard Core Logo so many times that I kind of forget that it's a little bit of a mean thing to do to people. Hee.) (Also this is the first time in a while that I have watched HCL without Sock Puppet Joe Dick being nearby for cuddling purposes, and I am NOT making that mistake again. *pets him*)
So anyway. It was a WONDERFUL, restorative weekend, and Desfinado is amazing and of course Z is amazing and I feel extremely lucky to know them both. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
I also took some pictures of the ice and snow, which-though very destructive-was also very pretty!
This was last Monday, actually, when we had power and nowhere to go and were really enjoying the snow:
Y'all, if there is anything cuter than my husband playing with my dog, I'm not really sure what it is. ♥ Then by Wednesday night, we were seriously into ice-storm territory… it snowed about half the day, and then continued to pour freezing rain for several more hours, which was freaky, but beautiful. This is a chain-link fence at a park near our house, where we took the puppydog for a romp on Thursday night, after he was cooped up in our room all day while those of use who are NOT sled dogs huddled by the fire:
And here are some blurry trees from the same park:
It's hard to tell from this picture, but all the branches were completely encased in about an inch of ice. Which was, of course, what ended up causing most of the downed trees/branches, and hence the power outages-walking along in the park at night, with all the lights out, the sound from the trees in the distance was constant and ominous, crackling and crashing in the dark. Freaky. Walking was also interesting, since each step crunched you down through a thick layer of ice and into a powder-puff of snow. It was fascinating, actually, and when we got back to the house, we had some fun cleaning the ice and snow off our cars; the top layer of ice was like a carapace over a few inches of powdery snow, and we could crack the ice off in huge chunks, which made a very satisfying noise when they hit the ground, too. Hee.
The cherry tree outside our house:
And then a bunch of trees along the road where we typically take the puppydog for his walks… this was Friday morning, after the worst of the ice storm:
Poor trees. :( This was also a mildly harrowing walk, just because it was raining and had warmed up enough that there was a near-constant shower of slush and ice chunks coming down off the trees; the ground underneath the bare trees, like these, looked like the product of an ice-making machine, all these rounded little chunks lying in the snow. Crazy!
But very, very pretty:
It felt a bit like winter ending in Narnia, only vaguely scary. Heh. Seriously, I am SO grateful to all the power company employees who had to be out in that, especially since they were spending a lot of time working in and around these trees, which had to be both miserable and dangerous. Rockstars!
So ANYWAY. I am behind on EVERYTHING-I did not even know about Gerard's new hair until Saturday, OMG-including comment replies, but things seem to be moving back toward normal, so I am hoping to be a better internet citizen VERY SOON. ♥
This post is also at Dreamwidth! http://brynnmck.dreamwidth.org/284209.html Comments at Dreamwidth: