Tavern trivia, week 2

Wednesday night I went to the Riveria Lounge for another night of World Tavern trivia.  Ed, Randy, Mark and Rod were there for the Funkymonks team I played with last week.  Darrel and Marvin were also there, and this week I played on their team (team name: SOL) to even things out.

Things got off to a bad start for our team when Darrel hadn't gotten the answer completely correct to this week's bonus question.  All the other four teams had gotten the bonus answer correct so we started out 20 points behind them.

But that didn't matter as each round we gained on the other teams until the fourth round when we passed the other teams for the lead.  We also had chosen this round to be our "double down" round which was a good thing as this was our best round with eight answers correct of the rounds four through six when the double down option was valid.

We were still in the lead going into the sixth round.    Most of the teams had used their double down option by now so things were looking good for our team. Then it all fell apart.  The question this round was to name 10 of the 19 names of the kids in the reality TV show:  19 kids and counting.

Neither Darrel, Marvin or I had seen the show.  They left it to me to come up with 10 names. We guessed five boy names and five girl names not knowing how many kids there were of each sex.  Since there were so many kids in the family I figured they were religious and would name their children with religious names.  What I didn't know was that all but two of the kids names begin with J.   "Jinger" with a J?  Come on!

Meet the Arkansas family that has all of America talking: parents Michelle and Jim Bob.  Kids: Joshua, Jana, John-David, Jill, Jessa, Jinger, Joseph, Josiah, Joy-Anna, Jeremiah, Jedidiah, Jason, James, Justin, Jackson, Johannah, Jennifer, Jordyn-Grace, Josie, Anna and Mackynzie.

Therefore the only names our team got right were James and Joesph.

We later learned from the host that another team had watched the TV show and they got six names correct.  I think this team must have doubled down on this round as they won with 490 points to our 440 points.  Dang!  We were so close.

We also had done poorly in round 3 when we had to match the concerts with the years they were held. We did worse than we should have done. We only got four correct.  We knew the dates for the Monterey Pop Festival (1967), Concert for Bangladesh (1971), the Freddie Mercury Tribute benefit concert (1992) and the Tribute for Heroes (2001).  We got the other six wrong though I should have known when the No Nukes concert (1979, Live Aid concert (1985), and SARS Benefit concert (2003) [Has it been that long since the SARS outbreak?!] were held.  Others I vaguely heard of (Live 8 in 2005 and Live Earth in 2007) and one not at all: The Billion Hands Concert in 2008.  I guess as I have aged I get disconnected from the concert scene more and more.

Monday trivia

Monday night I attended another trivia contest.  This contest was at my old stomping grounds: The Landing Bar.

At the trivia contest last Wednesday I learned that the people on my old team no longer regularly came to The Landing for trivia.  But since I was in town Darrel, Marvin and Rod said they would come on Monday.  Darrel came but Marvin and Rod never showed up.  Rod's job is delivering out of town packages, and with the snow that day, he must have had to work late.

Ed is still the host of the contest and he brought Al with him.  So my old SOL team was Darrel, Al, and I.  Mona was going back to work on nights and was sleeping in to prepare. Jeff and Donna haven't been coming to trivia for some time now.

Even though I had seen a TV advertisement the day before for the Landing Bar and their schedule (including trivia night), a number of other trivia regulars weren't there and the crowd was less than I am used to.  We only had four teams competing.   Several old teams had merged.  Only the judge was here from the lawyer team and he sat with the team of women and their team name was "Something" women and the judge.  I forget what  the "something" was.

Mark, the biker dude from my Wednesday trivia team, was here and he was on the "Minds over Minot" team.  I learned that the other guy originally from Hawaii who had been on that team moved to Bismarck.  He was very good at trivia.  His absence didn't matter as the "Minds over Minot" team scored highest in both contests.

My team didn't do well.  In the first contest we got 12 right out of 20 questions for last place.  In the second contest we got 13 right and again were in last place by one.  We gave it a good try but were very rusty.  We couldn't even figure out the answer to the question, "What food processing company is named after the first three letters of each of two adjoining states?"   The answer is at the bottom.

I hung around and chatted with the other contestants after the contest was over.  Karaoke started at 9 pm and more people came into the bar for karaoke and the participants seemed to be decent singers.

In the cold night air I had walked to the bar and found with all the snow here that a number of homeowners hadn't cleared their sidewalks of snow.  I had to cross the street a few times to find clear sidewalks.  A few times I walked on the street itself.  Darrel dropped me off on his way home so that solved the problem of walking home.  I could have used the walk and fresh air in order to get some of the cigarette smoke off my clothes.  I swept the freshly fallen snow of the driveway but that wasn't enough to air out my coat.

The answer is: Oreida for Oregon and Idaho.

Snow pile

Plenty of snow here in North Dakota.  Each day brings a little more.  This morning I shoveled off the inch or so that fell overnight.  It is getting harder to find a place to toss the snow.

Tavern trivia

Wednesday night Rod called and invited me to join him, Ed and a couple other people for a night of trivia at a different bar (the Riviera Lounge) than I usually go to in Minot.  This trivia contest is part of a nationwide trivia contest run under http://www.worldtaverntrivia.com/

Each contest is a series of six parts of ten questions each for a total of 60 questions. Each question is worth ten points. For rounds four, five or six you can "double down" meaning if you feel good about your answers you can have the points earned in that round doubled. It can be a bit of strategy as to when to "double down" as you don't know what the questions will be in the next round and how well you could do.  The game starts with a 20 point bonus question so the total possible for the night was 720 points.  Our final score was 650 points and we won first place by 90 points.  Our prize for the night were two $20 drink certificates for future use at the bar.

Each person on our team (Funky Monks) is good at trivia and we have differing areas of expertize. Ed knows music, Randy is an EMT and knows medical stuff, Rod is good with music, literature and stuff one learned in school, and I know useless things, such as "Pennyworth" is Batman's butler's last name.  The other guy - whose name I already forgot - looked like he could be a member of the Hell's Angels and he knew that blood was thicker than water... in fact, he also knew it is six times thicker.  And we could play off one another as I remembered the author of the novel "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" also wrote "The Great Gatsby".  But I forgot the author's name (you know me and remembering names).  Rod knew the author's name is F. Scott Fitzgerald and we were the only team to get that answer correct.  We all were bad with 1980s TV trivia.  Who knew that Tom Hanks guest starred on "Family Ties" as an alcoholic uncle?  See the video here.

Darrel and Marvin from my SOL team of Monday nights were also there as another team and they were our main competition.  We were one question ahead of them until the fifth round when we got nine answers correct and we had selected this as our double point round.  We felt good about our answers and didn't want to risk doubling on the sixth round.  That was a good decision as the SOL team also doubled on the fifth round and they had got three questions wrong.

The sixth round was to name the top ten cities in the world based on population in 2006.  We only got 4 cities right and the top team that round only got six cities right.  The SOL team also only got four cities correct.  Cities we were sure were in the top ten, such as Tokyo and Mexico City, were not.  Our correct guesses were Shanghai, Beijing, Moscow and Sao Paulo, Brazil.    I would link to the list of the top ten but it seems to vary based on years and criteria (city itself or the metro area).  It seems as if the trivia question called for the city itself as this list comes closest to the top ten we were told: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762524.html   A city metro list can be found at http://www.worldatlas.com/citypops.htm  so you can see how we thought Tokyo and Mexico City should be on the list.   On our team I argued for Shanghai, Beijing and Moscow as the other team members were not for them.  I was surprised to learn that Seoul, South Korea are on the lists.

North Dakota still allows smoking in bars, and while the bar was nowhere near full, my clothes reeked of smoke by night's end.  Yuck.

MN to ND

Monday night I caught the train from Minnesota to North Dakota.  The estimated arrival time into Red Wing was on time at 8:52 pm.  Tammy said it took 45 minutes to drive there and we left at 8:01 pm.  No sense getting there before we had to.

Well... it may take 45 minutes in good weather but it was snowing lightly and the road was slippery in spots even though the Minnesota highway department trucks were out in force salting the roads.

Tammy said it takes 20 minutes to reach Zumbrota where her friend lives.  This night it took us 27 minutes.  Not good.  We had 23 miles left and 24 minutes, a 55 mph speed limit in the country and less in the half of Red Wing we had to cross to reach the train station.

The stress level began to rise, especially when we came up upon vehicles taking it slow in this weather.  Even with her vehicle's high beams we saw more black (night) and white (snow) that we wanted to and not enough of the road ahead of us.

In the dark I fiddled with Tammy's cell phone and eventually was able to call Amtrak and "Julie" and found the train was estimated to be late 10 minutes.  *whew!*   We can make it!  Still we didn't let up.   Behind another slow car I called "Julie" again and found the train gained time and was now only 6 minute late.  *augh!*

It took forever to drive through Red Wing and we arrived at the train station at 8:55 pm.  No train was at the station.  Had it come and gone, or not yet arrived?  At Red Wing the train only stops long enough to load people on board.  There is no train station personnel and no baggage service so this is a quick stop as not too many people use this station.

Inside I found a half dozen people waiting for the train.  *whew*  We made it.

A few minutes after I got my bags from Tammy's car and placed in front of the station the train arrived.  I never have been so glad the train was late.

It was a whirlwind to get on the train, and once everyone was on board, the train left and I never got to give Tammy a proper goodbye.

The train ride was better than I expected as I expected the train to be full. It wasn't.  However the other people who boarded the train got upstairs to the seats just before I did and got the last pair of open seats. It seemed as if my only choice was to sit by other people who were sprawled across pairs of seats and sleeping or pretending to sleep.  I found that the reserved seats for couples were mostly empty and I took a pair of those seats.  When the train attendant came I explained I was in those seats only to Minneapolis and that I would move back to the correct seats when the Minneapolis people got off the train.  And that is what I did as three pairs of seats opened up at Minneapolis.

While waiting for Minneapolis I struck up a conversation with a woman across the aisle.  She and a few friends and family were on their way home to Winnipeg, Canada after spending the holidays in New York City.  This NYC visit was something on her bucket list.  She had a great time and talked about New Years Eve near Times Square: how she and the others got separated and reunited, how the large crowds were managed by the police, and how friendly people were.  She also talked about the snowstorm and standing outside the Today show studio when they were broadcasting one day.

While there were lots of people at the Minneapolis station waiting to board the train I never got anyone sitting by me.  At the later stops I was curled up asleep or pretending to sleep and no one sat by me.  By the time I woke up the next morning the train had only a little over an hour left to Minot, and, while full, was uncrowded.  Many people had gotten off at Grand Forks, ND earlier that morning: mainly what looked to be university students returning to school.

So, surprisingly I had two seats to myself the whole journey.

I chose the seats just in front of the stairwell area.  No seats were across from me but I was still ahead of the stairwell area and none of the stairwell lights shone on me.  And everyone around me was quiet and no one snored.  At one time I heard a baby cry in the back part of the train and was glad I didn't choose one of the seats near there.

I believe the train was an hour late into Minot at around 9:30 am (I had accidentally packed my watch away and didn't know the exact time).  The neighbor was there to get me as my brother had to work.  She had been there since 8:45 am as Amtrak said that was when the train would arrive when she initially called.  I forgot to tell her to call again closer to the arrival time as Amtrak is overly optimistic they will make up time when they are behind schedule.

As usual plenty of people were getting off or on the train at Minot.  Some people has been away for a while as their cars were snowed under in the Amtrak parking lot. I saw a few people around their cars shoveling the snow away.

A day delay

I was supposed to be in North Dakota right now but Amtrak canceled train service over the weekend between Minneapolis and Montana due to the blizzard that hit eastern North Dakota and western Minnesota over the New Years weekend.  So I am delayed one day in traveling.  The train is running today so I'll be in ND tomorrow.  I got the last seat on tonight's train so it will be a very crowded train.

Sunday Tammy and I hung frames around some of the wall art on her walls.  Here is what it looks like.

We also temporarily fixed her fence.  The strong winds this weekend blew it over.  Bungee cords are a good thing.

Here is another Homade Gourmet supper Tammy made for us last night. Lemon Garlic Chicken.

IKEA

Tuesday Tammy and I drove to Minneapolis near the Mall of America where the IKEA store is located.  I never had been in an IKEA store.  It is huge.  The store has everything you would need for your house or apartment, from appliances to towels to utensils.  Everything but food, though one could buy some Scandinavian crackers, cookies, jams, and meatballs.

The store had a marked path on each floor directing people on where to go.  Naturally I wasn't paying attention when we first got there and we ended going against the flow for a while.

What I found confusing was the Scandinavian words on all the display signs.  I kept thinking that was the name of the item, rather than the Scandinavian word for the English word.

Here is a neat wall hanging that I liked.  These wall hangings are a material that is closer to canvas than a solid board.  Another item to build after you get it home, though it would be easy to carry it home.

New Year

Happy New Year!  I hope you had a nice time last night.

Last night Tammy and I went out with her friend Becky, and Becky's boyfriend, to the Jenpachi Japanese style steakhouse.  The afternoon had light freezing rain so the roads and sidewalks were slick.  I had to hold Tammy's hand so she didn't slip on the ice and fall when walking in and out of the restaurant.

The restaurant cooks your meal in front of you and nine other people.  The cooking is part of a show as the cook juggles his cooking utensils before beginning (with a lot of clanking and noise), starts the cooking with a large flash fire, tosses a small pieces of food in the air to some of the customers to catch with their mouth (I caught my piece of food), and juggles the rice bowls before giving them to the customers.

Maybe because it was New Years Eve but our cook let some people drink some of his Sake.  You had to open your mouth and he held the bottle above your mouth and poured it in.  Yum!   Tammy and the others got drinks, some of which were in porcelain pandas and Buddhas which one got to keep. 

Tammy has been to this restaurant a number of times and our cook recognized her.  My New Years Eve meal was a shrimp, steak and chicken combo and it was very good.

Below is a link to a video showing the cooking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-swXkYd7Vc

Rice bowl juggling

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esu1amCBz0k&feature=related

Light rail

Here are few photos from when Tammy and I took the light rail train from the Mall of America to downtown Minneapolis.  This was the first time I have ridden the train as it was built after I moved from Minnesota.  The ride lasted 39 minutes and had stops every two or three minutes.  The train is only two to three cars long, which was plenty to hold everyone wanting to ride.

The train passed by the snow deflated Metrodome, home to the Minnesota Vikings football team.

Downtown Minneapolis buildings on Nicolette Mall.  I don't see tall buildings where I live now.

We also walked a few blocks around downtown.  I wanted to see if the 1st Avenue club was still there.  Yup.  It did have a fresh coat of black paint.

We walked around some of the other stores and skyways along Nicolette Mall.  Not much going on in the stores.

A few of the stores Christmas displays.

One place had a life sized art sculpture.

Lego Land at the Mall

The Mall of America also has Lego Land. It was a busy place.  Here are a few large Lego structures around the store.

At the Mall

Last Thursday when Tammy and I visited Macy's Christmas display, we also visited the Mall of America.  It was cold and snowy outside so spending time inside was the better thing to do.

It has been many, many years years since I lasted visited the Mall.  The Campy Snoopy rides have been replaced by Nickelodeon.  The rides have been improved as from the upper floors I could see a number of new rides that are more scary and exciting.  I didn't get a chance to see all the Nickelodeon changes as by the time we got down to the lower level we had been in the Mall almost three and a half hours.  By then we called it quits as we had worked our way down from the 4th floor to the 1st floor.

The Mall is like most other malls: lots of clothing stores, jewelery stores, chocolate stores, and other stores with stuff that isn't really needed.  We didn't find anything to buy - even at the "As Seen on TV" store.

Macy's Christmas display

Last Thursday Tammy and I drove to Minneapolis to see the Christmas display on the 8th floor of Macy's downtown Minneapolis store.

From the Mall of America we took the light rail train to downtown Minneapolis.  A train station stop was several blocks from the Macy store on Nicolette Mall.

In front of the Macy store is a statue of Mary Tyler Moore.

Tammy and I rode the escalators to the fifth floor where we had to go to another part of the floor to find the escalators to the eight floor.

The fifth floor was eerily empty except signs directing us to the escalators.  No one else was around.

On the eight floor we found people.  A line.  A kind of long line.  A line with lots of mothers and kids.  The good part was the line kept moving and the wait wasn't as long as it could have been.

The display had moving parts as seen in the two short videos below:

Dance competiton

Last Saturday Tammy and I watched the dance competition at the Lake City High School that her youngest daughter,  Emily, participated in with her high school dance team.  There were about six to eight high schools competing depending on the category.

The competition went from noon to 5 pm.  There were lots of families in the stands supporting their daughters.  Some of the mothers yelled and shrieked when their daughter's team competed.  I think I lost more of my hearing.

The dance competition consisted of two routines: high kick and jazz. For high kick dancing think of the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes.  The girls would do high kicks in one big line and also in various combinations of smaller groups along with other dance steps as they changed combinations.

The various songs in the high kick dancing was techno music with a fast tempo and strong beat, even if the original song was some 1980s style of song.  Even so, most songs would kick it into high gear with the beat at some point in the song and the girls would get in a line and kick harder and faster.

Here is a video of a short part of another team's high kick routine.

For jazz dances there was more variety of moves and the music didn't always have a strong techno beat.  One routine was danced to Sugarland's song "Stuck on You".

Emily is one of the team captains on both of her school's junior varsity dance teams: the high kick and jazz teams.  I was busy videotaping her routines so I don't have any photos of her dancing.  I did get a couple photos below of other teams.  The dances seen are jazz dances.  I thought the high kick dances were more entertaining but those dances were faster so the photos came out blurry.

 

At the end, while the judges finished scoring the teams, all the teams came out and waited on the gym's floor for the results.

It took a half hour for the judges to total the results and then announce them and hand out trophies to the top two or three teams in each category.  While waiting, more music was played and often the kids would dance around.  I think this was all a plan to wear the kids out before the bus ride home.  For us spectators it was a long wait.

Train to Minnesota

Thursday I took the train from Montana to Minnesota.  The train was on time so that meant an early start to my day.  Still, I was ready when Patti came to give me a ride to the train station.  Or I thought I was. Halfway across Montana I realized I had left the bag of fruit at home.  At least I had left it in the refrigerator so I might have something edible when I return next month.  Or maybe not.

Since the train had not run on Wednesday those people were taking Thursday's train.  This close to the holiday season the train normally has a lot of passengers, today the train was close to full with all the extra people.

It was still kind of dark when the train arrived.  Inside the train the interior lights has not been turned yet for the day so it was difficult to find an open seat.  Many people were still sleeping and spread over two seats.  Several other people were in the same situation as me and we went up and down the car looking for the right seat.  I avoided sitting next to people going to Chicago.  Not all people going to Chicago are crazy, but enough of them are that the odds aren't good, and in the dark I couldn't tell the crazies from the normal people.

I chose a seat next to a woman going to Winona, Minnesota.  Once I woke her to get her to move off the second seat I discovered she was quite large.  She was nice - though attending college in another state (Oregon) and not really going off campus in over three years to exploring this new city and state showed a lack of depth, and she didn't have much of an outgoing personality.

A number of people got off the train several hours later at Shelby, Montana.  A pair of seats together opened up and I moved over to them so as not to be crowded in my own seat by a person who couldn't quite fit in her own seat.

That worked for a few minutes until just before the train left the station when a father and daughter got on the train.  No two seats were open together so the train car attendant went up and down the car until she decided to ask me to move and sit next to another guy in order to open the two seats.

*sigh*

I sat in that seat all the way across the rest of Montana and until we reached Williston, ND when the guy across the aisle left and two seats together opened up.  These seats were in the first row and near the door so they were not the best seats.  But I figured they would be the last seats to be filled so I took the seats.  That lasted until Minot when a huge number of people got on the train.  So many people wanted to get on that the train attendant had to move eight or so people to another car to find seats for them.

I got a seatmate.  A high school kid for whom this was the first time he had every ridden the train.  He later asked me if it was ok to go downstairs to get something from his luggage.  Yes, this is not an airplane.  You can move around the train.  And the bathrooms are also downstairs.

He rode the train all the way to Minneapolis so I had only one seat to sit in overnight.  And as I was in the first row I couldn't stretch my legs out completely as I couldn't slip them under a seat in front of me.  Still, I can sleep about anywhere so I made it through the night fine.

I had two seats from Minneapolis to almost Red Wing when the train attendant moved a young woman to the seat next to me.  Oh well, it was for only the last 15 minutes of the trip.

Also increasing as I went from Montana to Minnesota was the amount of snow.  During the night as the train went through Fargo, ND I looked out to see, under the lights, trucks dumping snow near the Red River.

While the train was on time when I started my trip it steadily lost time.  By the time I arrived in Red Wing the train was over two hours late after 11 am.  Tammy was there to meet me.

The Amtrak train was 14 cars long: three locomotives, a luggage car, the dining car, observation car, four sleeper cars and four passenger cars.

If the train runs

In the morning I plan to be on the Amtrak train to Minnesota to spend the holidays with Tammy.  So far it looks promising.  Since Sunday the train has not run due to flooding in Washington state and the bad winter weather in the Midwest.  The lack of Amtrak service has been on the local news today.  But Amtrak says they will be re-starting service tomorrow.  Good.  However I imagine the train will now be full as Amtrak needs to carry the people who were suppose to travel on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.  Oh joy.  A jam-packed train.

I am pretty much ready to leave.   I need to go over my list of what I packed, what I have left to pack, and what I have to do around the house to lock doors, unplug appliances, etc.   Usually I am in the middle of packing at this point and do not get to bed until 1 or 2 in the morning.  The past few days I have leisurely packed.  One afternoon clothes, another time magazines to read, yet another time food, and so on.  I feel disjointed and wonder what I have forgotten as it appears I am almost done and it is not even midnight.

Tracks

My friend Darrel thinks he knows what animal made these tracks.  He thinks it was either a mink or a weasel.

Here is where the animal came through the snow.

For those of you interested, here is Darrel's reasoning.  (Darrel is an excellent tracker as he has studied with the best).

Here's how I approach track identification.

First, I count the toes.

On the first 2 photos (which I assume are of the same 2 tracks) I count 5 toes.
(Note:  Some animals have a different number of toes on the front feet compared to the rear feet.)

Canines and felines have 4 toes on both front and back, as do rabbits, so 5 toes rule out all of these.  (Darn.)  The tracks also rule out hoofed animals, so that rules out deer, antelope, elk, moose, bison, horse, cow,  goat, and sheep.  It also rules out all birds.

The 1st photo shows 2 consecutive sets of tracks, and I think I count 5 toes on each.  The 5th toe is not as far forward and is held closer to the side of the heel pad, almost like a thumb.

This rules out mice, shrews, voles, squirrels, chipmunks, and woodchucks.

As you can see, much of track identification is a process of elimination.  This leaves us with ...

A. Bear (black or grizzly)
B. Beaver
C. Fisher
D. Mink
E. Muskrat
F. Opossum
G. Otter
H. Porcupine
I. Raccoon
J. Skunk
K. Weasel

... all of which have 5 toes both front and back.

The tracks look to be 2" long (give or take 1/2") so that rules out Bears, Beaver, Otter, and muskrat which have larger feet and thus larger tracks. Beaver and otter also have webbed feet, and I don't see any sign of webbed feet.

This leaves us with ...

a. Fisher
b. Mink
c. Opossum
d. Porcupine
e. Raccoon
f. Skunk
g. Weasel

Raccoon prints look like miniature human hands, as do opossum front tracks.  Opossum also have a
rear track that has a distinctive thumb-like toe that projects off to the inside and back, and I don't see either of these in the photos.

A porcupine has a very large heel pad, about 3 times longer than what the photoed tracks have, and they have longer toes.

This leaves ...

1. Fisher
2. Mink
3. Skunk
4. Weasel

I'll have to defer any further narrowing of the list based on size.  There are subtle differences in track size, but if my guess on size has an error range of + or - 1/2", it would be very hard to eliminate any of these based on size alone.

It would help to know the exact length and width of the tracks, as well as the straddle (inside distance between left and right tracks) as well as the stride (distance between the heel of one foot and the next heel track of the SAME foot).

At this point, it's pretty clear that these tracks were made by a member of the weasel family, which includes all 4 of the above.

My final best guess requires that I look at the exact shape of the heel pad.  This eliminates a skunk.  I also think it eliminates the fisher.

I can't decide whether its a mink or a weasel. Both have a heel pad like those in the first 2 photos.

Feathers

Monday morning I found this south of the house.  I don't know if this used to be the Flicker I had seen last week, but it is in the same area.

A few days ago when it last snowed I found interesting animal tracks that went along the top of these concrete blocks.  I don't know what kind of animal made the tracks, but I never have seen tracks like this before.  Hopefully my friend can decipher the tracks soon based on my photos.

Snow and bird

While I shoveled snow again today I noticed a Flicker in the box elder tree by the house.  I guess Flickers don't fly south for the winter.

 
The bird came out of a hole in the tree.  Last year I boarded up the prior holes in the tree only to have the birds create new holes this year.

Also today I noticed a pine tree branch leaning against the top of three power lines that go to my well.  The snow weighed the branch down.  We have had no wind since the cold weather blew in early last week and each day the snow stacks up higher and higher on everything: branches, fences, roofs, etc.  You can see that in the photo with the bird.

To prevent a problem I carefully knocked the snow from the pine branch then got a ladder and a pole saw and began trimming the branch back. The problem is I had to cut the branch in sections to try to prevent it from falling on and breaking the line.  Still some small sections fell on a line or two and got hung up.  I carefully removed those branch segments.   Here is the branch after I cut half of it back.

I also trimmed a few other branches near the power line.  With all the snow on the branches I ended up soaking wet by the time I was done.  The temperature was just above freezing and the snow was wet.  It was also snowing (of course!) and the flakes were big, wet, and many.

With the warm temperatures the snow slid off the buildings' metal roofs.  Not all at once as sections of snow would break off and fall with a "thump" to the ground.  I had to shovel away the fallen snow on the side of the pole shed I use else I would have a frozen mound of snow once the temperature dropped.

Snow and box elder trees

I'll give you three guesses as to what I did all day today. It shouldn't be too hard to guess if you've read my recent blog posts. I'll give you a hint... it has something to do with snow... and a shovel.

Yup.  Another 2+ inches.  We had 13.8 inches of snow during November.  Winter is off to a fast start.  And of course snow is in the weather forecast each day for the next week.

When I was shoveling the snow at the end of my driveway today a woman walked by on the road.  She asked - with an amazed look on her face - if I shoveled my entire driveway by hand all winter.

Yup.  Guilty as charged.

She kept walking.  I think she didn't want to linger near a crazy person.

I'm going to go to bed early tonight as I am a bit tired.  And I probably will have to shovel snow again tomorrow.

You've seen photos of snow and pine trees. Here a few photos of snow and the box elder trees next to the house.

The first photo is of a female box elder tree. She doesn't release her seeds until Spring.  Seed pods on a female box elder tree are a favorite food source for box elder bugs.  I didn't have near as many box elder bugs this Fall on the house walls near this tree.  I think our cool wet Spring may have had something to do with that.

The next photo is of the male box elder tree that I had cut back last year around this time as the upper parts were dying.  The tree was in much better health this year.  Last year's photos can be seen here and here.

More curved snow

Another day of shoveling snow.

Here are more photos of snow that curves off the metal roofs of the barn and the pole shed.