Cold weather photos

Here are a few cold weather photos.

The first two photos show the electrical post for plugging vehicles in at Manor Care. The first during the day, the other at night. This is a big help for these -20 F days and nights.

The next photo was taken after 1 am just before I went to bed. The "orange" color is a neighboring house's furnace smoke in the cold night air. Think cold when you look at the photo.

Today is warmer as the temperature is finally above zero at 10 F. And it is sunny too.

Window Frost

Another cold morning.

How cold was it? The thermometer outside the kitchen window said -27 F when I first got up at 8:30 am. A bit cold. By the time I took a photo after 10 am it had warmed up to -22 F and now it is a "balmy" -13 F.

Also my bedroom window was completely frosted again over this morning. This time I took a photo of it after carving the word "Hi" into the frost. As the sun has come around to this side of the house this morning I have been soaking up the water as the frost melts.

People who know me know I like it cool when I sleep, so my bedroom was cool to begin with as I had closed all the heat vents in the room to keep it comfortable (for me) for sleeping. I think the cooler room made it easier for frost to cover the window.

Even though it is cold I just saw a squirrel bounding down the sidewalk in front of the house. Don't those pests ever rest?

At least it is sunny outside so it looks warmer than it actually is. Oops.. wrote this too soon as clouds are starting to arrive.

No trivial snow

Late Monday afternoon a strong and stormy cold front came through town.

The day had started off nice - for North Dakota - with little wind and a temperature of 19 F. Around 4 pm I could hear the wind pick up and see the leafless tree branches sway in the wind. The wind increased to a low roar and soon snow either began to fall else merely get blown in from Canada miles away.

I had planned on attending Trivia Night at the Landing Bar but dropped those plans. The temperature fell to zero and with the very strong wind (gusts to 40 mph) the wind chill was well below zero.

My brother was at Manor Care with my mom but he came home after 5 pm before it got dark. It was hard enough to see to drive in the blowing snow much less try to do so in the darkness. He said it was hard to keep the pickup's window defrosted during the drive home.

Here are a couple photos I took of the weather as the storm came.



My brother had bought a bunch of bananas earlier that day and had left them in his pickup when visiting mom. The bananas were frozen by the time he got home. This morning their skins were black.

This morning the temperature on the thermometer outside the window was at -24 F. Officially the overnight low temperature was -20 F. The wind was still blowing at 27 mph with gusts to 34 mph. The wind chill all morning was -46 to -48 F. A little cold.

My brother and I waited until noon to drive up to visit my mother. The temperature had warmed in the clear sunny sky to -14 F and the wind chill was still less than -40 F. I must have psyched myself up to the cold as it actually didn't feel cold as I swept the snow off the driveway. The sun made it feel warmer.

At Manor Care I saw a woman scrape frost off a window outside mom's room so she could use her remote car starter from inside the building to start her car. Later I noticed someone had pressed one of their hands against the frost and used their body heat to melt a hand print in the window. This window is on the north side of the building which is why the today's sun hasn't melted the frost on this cold day.

My brother has an engine block heater in his pickup so when we left he was able to start his pickup rather easily even though it was -18 F with a wind chill of -41 F. There is a post with many electrical connections for vehicles with engine heaters - and many vehicles were plugged in.

Annoyed during a mid-Winter thaw

Things that annoyed me today:

• It is a very warm and sunny 46 degrees outside and I am inside buildings most of the day.


• My fix last night to the washing machine worked, but the washing machine this morning had another problem - a small water leak.


• A checkout cashier at Walmart who moved so s... l... o...w.... "Why me? Why did I have to get the cashier who moves in slow motion?!


• Two women in line in front of me at a Walmart checkout. You'd think one of the women - who were perfectly able to do so - could have put each grocery bag in their grocery cart when the cashier moved on to putting items into a new bag. Instead we all had to wait until the cashier gathered up the bags and walked around the counter to place them into the cart. This delayed our items from being checked out. I could make a comment about some women who expect everything to be done for them even though they are well able to do it themselves, but that would be politically incorrect now, wouldn't it? Whatever happened to feminism where a woman could do anything a man could do? I never see guys standing around and waiting for someone to load their bags into a cart.
  


• A man walking in traffic in the parking lot who seemed oblivious to the traffic. He slowed down even further the slow traffic as vehicles had to stop and/or drive around him. I stared at him as my brother and I drove by. He didn't seem to be on drugs. I was wearing sunglasses but I wonder if he got the drift that I was not happy and was shooting visual daggers his way. Walk on the sidewalk, or if you are looking for someone, stand on it.
  


• I planned on buying some small dumbbells for Mom to exercise with. Walmart was out of them. *sigh*


• Hollywood starlets and want-to-bes: Britney, Lindsey, Paris, Nicole, and on and on. And all the TV time and spent discussing their actions and what they are wearing, etc., etc. You know, if a causality of the Hollywood writers strike is the cancellation of the award shows and red carpets, I will be fine with that.
  


• I should be enjoying the nice day but later in the afternoon a line of clouds moved over blocking the sun. A harbinger of the cold - well below zero! - weather that is forecast to arrive in a little over a day.

• Springtime is suppose to be nice, but early Spring - or a mid-Winter thaw - is not,
  
  
  • the nice weather is temporary,
    
  • it is muddy and sloppy outside, and
    
  • the trees are bare and no color is seen other than a dirty white and a muddy brown.
  
  I like my hometown but as we drove through some of the residential neighborhoods I wondered why anyone would live here. The houses and properties seemed old, close together, and drab.

I tell you... I am in some kind of mood today. I didn't think that I had gotten up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but maybe I did.

E Pluribus Unum

Isn't it nice to have smart friends? My friend Francis found out about the phrase, "E Pluribus Unum". He knew the correct spelling and sent me a link to the Wikipedia entry that has information on the phrase. I actually found it to be quite interesting.

"Never codified by law, it was considered a de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when the United States Congress passed an act (H.J. Resolution 396), adopting In God We Trust as the official motto."

"E PLURIBUS UNUM", in capital letter spelling, is included on most U.S. currency, with some exceptions to the letter spacing (e.g. the U.S. dime reverse side).

Hmmm... maybe the reason on Trivia Night that Rod, Austin, or I (Alan is blind) couldn't find the phrase on the currency we looked at was because:

• the lighting in the bar wasn't all that bright,
• we all are getting older and need bifocals,
• some of our group had a bit much to drink.

I like the motto's meaning: "From many, one", or "Out of many, one". This appeals to the part of my personality that likes order. Now all I need to do is remember how to spell it, and to practice with pronouncing it. For me, saying the phrase correctly is harder than it looks.

Trivia Moon

Monday night I attended another Trivia contest at the Landing Bar. Rod, Austin, and Alan were also there to make up our team: Bicycle Built For Two (BBF2).

I was home prior to the trivia contest so I walked the 3/4 mile to the bar. Or I should say "ran" as I was late and the temperature was on the cool side. The temperature was above zero as it was 8 F, but with the wind, the wind chill was -5 F. Fortunately the wind was at my back.

Because I would be spending time in a smoky bar I didn't over dress, choosing to wear the least possible and still be warm. That worked for being in the bar, but made the run to the bar a little chilly. Some people had cleaned this day's snow off their sidewalks, others had not. The snow was light so it didn't make much of a difference.

The contest started just as I arrived. Rod, Austin, and Alan were not at our usual table. They decided to move to another table as they wondered if the usual nearby team was over hearing or seeing our answers. That team's table was a tall table with stools to sit on. This team had been caught in the past texting for answers. Apparently my group's suspicions were unfounded as this other team scored higher than us in both contests, and won the first one.

I thought were were in good shape in the first contest as we had solid answers for all but one question. However we ended up with only 13 out of 20 correct.

For the question, "What is the motto of the United States?", my suggestion of "In God We Trust" was overruled as the others felt that was a saying only on our money. They went with "E Publius Union". I was right. In fact, I just tried to do a search of their answer and came up with nothing. No wonder they could not find it written on a dollar bill when they tried to figure out how to spell it.

I wasn't as optimistic of our chances in the second contest as we had more guesses. I needed one of my former girlfriends as one question was "What was the circumference of a bowling ball?" A clue was that the ball's diameter was a little under 9 inches. I am a rancher now and have left my computer science / math background behind. Rod came up with a formula and I have still enough math skills to run the numbers of a piece of scratch paper.

"Ummm.. I think 61 inches is wrong. That is over 5 ft."

I re-ran the numbers. Still 61 inches. Rod came up with a new formula. Now I got 14 inches. In hindsight that would be too low but by now the contest had moved on several questions into the future, and with no other formulas we went with 14.

We were wrong. The correct answer was 27 inches.

We only got 12 of 20 questions correct in the second game. I wasn't drinking like the others so I had no excuse for our declining performance. Still, in both contests we finished in the middle of the pack.

Rod won one of the "quarters" contests. While I knew that the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson started in 1962, I didn't guess and therefore didn't win. The prizes were one's choice of insulated lunch bags. Upon reflection, one of these would have come in handy to keep my lunch cool when I go on summertime hikes.

Several teams were the regulars (i.e. the lawyers/judges, and the 'cheating' team), with others that were new. No "birthday girls" - with or without cleavage - were in attendance this night.

The host, Ed, came over after the contests were over and chatted. I've yet to write about the trail hike Rod and I did a few weeks ago where we passed by a sweat lodge. Ed has participated in a few of the sweat lodge ceremonies so I had a number of questions about it. Some day I would like to participate in a ceremony for the experience of it.

A short time after the trivia contests were over the lights were dimmed a bit and the karaoke started. The first singer was a late 20-something mild mannered man who sang a heavy metal ballad. I wasn't familiar with the song but Austin thought it was originally by the band, Queensrÿche. The karaoke singer wasn't too bad.

The next singer was an old man. I mean an old man. He must have been over 80 years old. Age wise the bar mainly had 20, and 30, and some 40 year old somethings. I never noticed this old man earlier, and he would would have stuck out from the crowd when I earlier scanned for signs of "birthday girls".

The old man used a cane to walk and it took a while for him to climb the few steps to the stage. The karaoke host had to go over and show him how to turn on and work the microphone as the old man needed to have one hand on his cane as he stood.

We were curious as to what he would sing as we couldn't imagine him singing any pop or heavy metal songs. He ended up singing some old cowboy song that probably came out of the 19030s or 40s. It was fitting as a number of trivia questions this night were about cowboys; their horse names or sidekick names. But, who wold have thought an old cowboy song would be in the karaoke machine?

The old man was a pretty good singer and it was fun to listen to him. He was singing a second song when we all decided it was time to leave. Some of the group had to work the next day.

Rod was giving Alan a ride home in his pickup. I lived out of the way so I declined Rod's offer of a ride and I walked home. Or "ran" as I ran much of the way home only slowing down to walk backwards to give my face a rest from running into the brisk wind.

Walking (normally) the last block allowed me to see the almost full moon high in the night sky. The sky had some high light clouds which acted like gauze to partially veil the moon. The moon's edges were easily seen.

The bright light from the moon strongly lit the clouds in a wide circle. The light changed from white to yellow to orange to red at the edge of the circle of light. I don't know where the colors came from unless it was from ice crystals in the cold night air. At any rate it was quite pretty and I mostly forgot about the cold.

Frosted window

Winter has arrived in North Dakota. There is a little snow, a lot of wind, and cold temperatures with sub-zero wind chills. This is weather where one buttons up their coat and shrinks down inside it. The temperature today never got above zero Fahrenheit. The weather man is predicting we won't get above zero until next Tuesday. At least the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly today. It looked warm even though it wasn't.

I believe I had mentioned that my brother's newer pickup had shifting problems last week. This past Monday he took his old pickup to a repair shop to have a couple heater cables replaced and he has been driving it ever since.

Last night after we left mom at Manor Care my brother's old pickup had several problems. First, the pickup didn't want to start in the cold night air. Eventually it turned over and started. *whew* But then we had another problem: the heater's blower didn't work. Two warm bodies in the cold air of the pickup cab meant the inside of the windows were rapidly frosting up, not to mention there was no heat blown out of the heater.

Our breaths hung white in the still cold air inside the pickup. That was better than being outside where the cold wind whipped our breath away.

It was after 9 pm, little traffic was on the road, and the outer lights lit the way. We drove home on the back streets to further reduce sharing the road with other vehicles. We tried to avoid scraping the window as the frost would come back more solid and not as speckled.

We found that as the pickup warmed up our forward driving movement would encourage warm air to flow out the defrost vents. Soon small circular areas were clearing on the driver's and passenger's sides of the window. By the time we got home the clear spots were relatively large and we could see out the window without scrunching down low.

After we got home, and my brother had swept the dusting of snow off the driveway, he banged a few times on the pickup's dash and the blower started to work. *argh!* We're guys and are suppose to bang on things to make them work. Why didn't we think of that in the beginning?

Life expectancy map

Here is an interesting web site that lists people's life expectancy in countries around the world. The United States is ranked 31st.

Life Expectancy web site

Trivia night starts again

After taking a few weeks off because of the holidays, Trivia Night is back.

I arrived late as I came from visiting Mom at Manor Care. The contest was already on the 7th question. More people were at Trivia Night this week than the previous time, but not as many people as the first time I attended before Christmas.

Rod, Alan, and Austin were already there. They were joined by Jason, a friend of Ed, the host. Originally from Minot, Jason now lives in Minneapolis where he works as a chef.

Our team did fairly well. We had 14 correct out of 20 each time. In the first contest we finished in the middle of the pack. In the second contest we tied for second. The winner of the second contest were the lawyers/judges who won with 18 correct.

The next table over was a '4 women and a guy' team. It was one woman's birthday the next day. She was feeling good and was not afraid of saying what was on her mind. When the lawyer/judge team won their third "quarters" contest, this woman made a slightly humorous comment for everyone to hear about the lawyers/judges winning so much. After the contests were over I saw this woman talking with the lawyer/judge team so apparently there were no hard feelings. Of course the true answer would come out if she every appeared before one of the judges in court.

On our team Rod won one "quarters" contest and Austin won two of them. Between our team and the lawyer/judge team we won all the quarter contests. Our team would have won one more "quarter" contest if I was more forceful with my answer.

"On which island is the tallest mountain on earth?"

I wanted to say "Hawaii" but when the previous guesser said "Mauna Loa" and was wrong, I had doubts as I didn't know the exact island name. The correct answer turned out to be "Hawaii". The "Mauna Loa" guesser was unhappy as he claimed his was the correct answer but Ed ruled against him as the guesser gave the mountain name and not the island name. It was just as well I didn't win as the prizes this evening were t-shirts of various liqueurs and whiskeys. With all the t-shirts I have, the last thing I need is another t-shirt.

This wasn't the only question where a controversy erupted. For the question "What gun did James Bond use?" It appears everyone answered "Walther PPK". Ed said the correct answer was " Beretta". Ed wouldn't back down, and when the protest continued, he said this question/answer did not affect the outcome of the contest. Wikipedia says James Bond initially used the Beretta in the first five novels, then the author switched to James Bond using the Walther PPK when a fan complained the Beretta was a "ladies gun". Click here for the article.

Before the second contest was over Tammy, a co-worker of Rod's, her husband, and another guy arrived and joined our table/team. It was Tammy's birthday this day and she was out celebrating as she had the next day off work. Tammy already was in a good mood. She has a loud voice which made it difficult to keep our answer discussions quiet enough so as not to help nearby teams.

After the contests were over Ed joined our table for post game socializing and to set a date/time this week for Ed to join Rod for bottling some of Ed's molasses wine Ed and Rod were making.

While several conversations among our team members were going on I was distracted by the other table's birthday girl. She was in my direct line of sight. She was wearing a light low cut dress and had some cleavage. She was sitting sideways to me and... she had a nice cleavage curve going on.

She and all the women at her table smoked a lot. I think that between all her smoking and drinking the birthday woman looked older than what she may have been, and she looked to be in her early to mid 30s. Her face seemed a bit older than her body.

The guy at their table appeared to be 40ish. He had dark and graying hair. It was long enough to be tied back, but not long enough to show a ponytail. He seemed to be "with" the women but not really part of their group. The birthday woman was the only one with much life in her as the other people just seemed to "be there". After the contests were over a 20-something guy showed up and sat next to the birthday girl. I'm not sure of his status; whether he was just another drinking buddy or where she was going to get "lucky" on her birthday.

People knew the answers to the "quarter" questions that night so the final "quarters" question for the "bucket" netted the winner less than $5.

lolcats website

I like cats and I learned of this web site recently where people take interesting and/or amusing photos of cats and put humorous captions on them.

Some of the photos have themes and it may help to go to the last few pages and look at the initial photos. The last page has the original lolcat photo and the reason behind the web site's name (icanhascheezburger). A few pages from the end is the original 'walrus and bucket' photo.

icanhascheezburger web site

Moose on the loose

Interesting story from Flathead Valley about a moose who has been scaring the local skiers and snowmobilers. Click for moose story.

I also found the snow in the photo interesting. Apparently it has been snowing there and they have plenty of snow. The mountain snow pack is in good shape so far this year. December's mountain precipitation was 123% of average.

Friends of mine live in this part of the Valley, which gets more snow than my part of the Valley. They told me they have had 31" of snow so far this January and 90+ inches this Winter. I am happy I don't have to shovel all that snow, but I am missing out on some great cross-country skiing.

Set back

My mother had a set back in her recovery. She was improving quite well and last Friday one of Manor Care's occupational therapists had scheduled a home visit to see how mom could manage at home. They do this when they plan to soon release a person from the rehab facility.

However Mom had leg pain in just her left leg slowly building last week and was not feeling good enough for a home visit Friday. Dawn, mom's orthopedic doctor, believes Mom has spinal stenosis (narrowing of the spine). Dawn thinks this is the reason behind Mom's recent leg pain. Not a whole lot can be done as surgery is not a good option now.

• Spinal stenosis: WebMD
• Spinal stenosis: US News Health
  

Manor Care's nurse practitioner prescribed more pain medicines for mom, and over the weekend the meds may have built up as by Sunday night and especially on Monday afternoon Mom was extremely sleepy and loopy from the meds. She could hardly stay awake much less stand on her own. Monday afternoon I got the nurse practitioner to cut back on and discontinue some of the pain and muscle relaxant meds.

This seems to have done the trick as mom has come out of her fog, can stay awake, and is more alert. She still has some leg pain, but it is not as constant and doesn't seem as quite as intense as initially. Also she and my brother figured out that when the pain builds, sometimes using a hand to apply pressure against the muscle above the knee where it hurts makes the pain go away after a few minutes.

Now mom has to return to the level of strength she had before this recent over medication.