Saturday, January 02, 2010, 05:48
Happy New Year!
I have been waiting a long time for this day. Maybe now we can finally be finished with the "two thousands" and get into the "twenties" -- as in "twenty-ten" instead of "two thousand and ten."
I'm not sure why, but this whole "two thousand" thing has bothered me from the start. Whenever I had the opportunity, I would say "twenty-O-" whatever the year.
I heard some announcers on television and radio saying "twenty-O" too rather than "two thousand" so I know I'm not the only one.
And now that January is here, I can say, "It feels like January" when it's below zero, and it's actually January. Which, by the way, it is -- below zero.
We are having Christmas with my family Saturday (January 2), and all I can say is -- I'm glad the newspaper office was closed New Year's Eve day and New Year's Day. The extra time to work on the house and the food was worth its weight in gold, so to speak.
I am hoping that once we get past this cold snap, it will warm up and snow a little bit. It snowed about an inch on Wednesday. If we can only get a little more snow, we'll be able to take the snowshoes out and go exploring.
Randy took some pictures of the last sunset of the decade and the last moonrise of the decade (and a blue moon to boot). When I'm finished with Christmas, I will post the pictures to the Rural Route 2 photo album.
LeAnn R. Ralph
Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 08:38
Hazardous to Your Health
At noon on Tuesday, my coworker and I walked two blocks to a church to pay our respects at a visitation prior to a funeral for a prominent community member.
Along the way, we discovered that, in spite of the best efforts of the property owners, the sidewalks were glare ice. And the street was not any better.
See, now. This is the thing that makes winter seem twice as long. It is bad enough that is cold out (a high of 10 degrees on Tuesday) but then everything is covered with ice and you can't hardly walk around.
What started out as two blocks seemed like two miles by the time we arrived at the church.
After that, we walked two blocks in the other direction to the post office. The sidewalks and street were no better that way, either.
On the way back, we decided to take the sidewalk along Main Street, which was in somewhat better shape. When we turned onto the side street, though, we were back to glare ice.
I am happy to report we arrived back at the newspaper office unscathed.
Monday we had put snowmelt on the sidewalk leading up to the office door. When we arrived back Tuesday, I took the scraper out to break up and scrape off some of the ice.
I know that snowmelt granules are not particularly good for the environment, but I don't think falling down on the ice is particularly good for people -- especially since many of the people we see at the office are elderly people coming in to renew their newspaper subscriptions.
I am going to have to invest in another bag of snowmelt granules for the sidewalk on either side of the walk leading up to the newspaper door. I am taking my spade shovel from the barn to work with me, too, to try to chip away at it. We have a pipe with a two-inch wide blade welded on the end for chipping ice, but I am thinking the spade shovel is a better idea. I don't want to break the concrete on the sidewalk. I just want to loosen up some of the ice.
You might know that our Christmas snowstorm turned out to be a rain event instead of a snow event. It's bad enough that I did not get snow for snowshoeing, but now I've got to deal with ice? Maybe I ought to invest in a pair of ice skates . . .
LeAnn R. Ralph