I used to love ice storms.
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To be honest, I really like the look of them, even walking after they’re done, but I don’t like driving in them
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Much prefer snow. Not only is it beautiful. You can play in the snow and ski, walk, showshoe and snow-mobile on it. Ice is aesthetically beautiful as it kills trees,
Power lines , and makes things impassable.
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It is interesting that some of the most beautiful creations are also the most deadly.
(How humanity sits in that paradigm I am not certain)
Richard
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yesterday, strong winds whipped up freshly fallen snow into whiteouts, leaving bare earth in some places and peaks that look like waves behind our woodpile. You can’t see them very well but they’re pretty wave-like up close. The driving was horrendous. It has calmed down a bit today.
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Beautiful! but be careful. I saw some of the pics on Facebook of the seiche on Lake Erie where the lakebed was dry in Toledo and the water was 6 ft above normal in Buffalo. Impressive. And reminded me of the parting of the Red or Reed Sea.
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You taught me a new term…”seiche”…thank you!
I’m off this week, and out on a jog. The snow is really beautiful. It looks a bit like there’s a snow snake after all on the top photo of a vine climbing up a tree
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Also reminds me of the times growing up on the plains, where we would get maybe 5 inches of snow, but the wind would drift it over the fences and sometime the cattle would walk over them. Fortunately, most of the time they were huddled up and not moving. It was not unusual to have 5 ft drifts on the north side of our house with a 5 inch snowfall.
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There’s a shark fin among those waves.
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Was practicing using my prosthetics to hold mushrooms. Still kept forgetting to use the tip of the middle prosthetic instead of the tip of the remaining finger. Got so use to using the finger without the prosthetic that now I can’t break the habit. It’s weird trying to switch my mind between where the end is when I’m wearing versus not wearing them.
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Though we do hit 30s and 20s for short bursts I’m glad that we mostly are 50s-70s even now. Though it will be colder and grayer for the next month or so.
Unrelated it’s also kind of crazy we’re just straight up invading countries this week. Admittedly I don’t know anything that’s happening in that nation.
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Rained hard this morning as well as the last few days. So when I went out into glorious sunshine my camera came right out.
These Hakea flowers are such odd looking things. I think they look as though sea urchins crawled out of a tide pool and up into a nearby shrub.
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That is an interesting looking device you have on your right hand. Does it give you back a useful index finger, or at least all except the strength?
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To be honest not really. About all it can help with is holding my phone when it’s palm up. Can’t even help turn a key. Pretty disappointed overall with them. But maybe given time I’ll find more use or maybe they can get tuned up a bit and work better.
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Not surprising. In high school wrestling I almost beat the guy who’d taken 2nd in state the year before, right up until we managed to break my collarbone. This event had the effect of making my typing class weird; I typed with one hand and a thumb – and though I’ve worked at it for decades now I still type primarily with one hand.
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Guess I’ll show some of the mushrooms I’ve been using this week.
The first is lionsmane again. Prepped it into two ways. One for the typical “mock tuna” made with chickpeas, onions and jalapeños, seaweed and apple cider vinegar in a blender and then spread on bread. I’ve not came anywhere near close to making good potato chips and so I just buy them when I want them now.
The other way is to make “fritters” with them. To do that it takes a long time. Like 35 minutes to strip down half a pound into threads. That then gets cooked on low for a while to complete dehydrate. Then chill for an hour. Then pull the clumps back into threads and mix in a flax egg “ flax seed and water”, djon mustard, nutritional yeast, panko and seasoning. I added onions and jalapeños to them. Then chilled them again for about an hour to firm up and form into patties to cook.
Next is Chicken in the Woods mushroom ( COW ) that i knocked off a tree with my dad’s old cane that’s always in my truck now. Cleaned it. Parboiled it just incase. Diced it small and dry heat cooked it to reduce moisture before adding garlic powder, salt and pepper. I’ll probably mix BBQ sauce with it for sandwiches this week.
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Neat! I have had people in the area bring me “chicken in the woods.” I haven’t figured out how to cook it –I need to do that.
We used to make potato chips in Africa with peanut oil and peeling chips with a coarse potato peeler or thin vegetable slicer, but it’s a ton of work. Yams cut lengthwise into long, thin fries are much easier. Most of our potatoes out there were no bigger than a golf ball, but yams were bigger than a football, and tasted good with salt and seasoning.
Good job.
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I like yams and sweet potatoes too. I buy maybe 3-5lbs of yellow potatoes a month but I buy that weight in sweet
Potatoes every week.
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Our very nice and friendly dog, Bucky (from the Marvel character), developed some ice crystals on his facial hair after a run in 12 degree weather today. We both had fun, though, in the beautiful weather!
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My cats were doing the opposite. They all took over the heated blanket lol. But I did actually get it for them. It was on my bed but last night I placed it on the living room floor. Set it to low. Yesterday before I got that out two of them were only heating pad and the gray one passed out so deeply he had his tongue out for like an hour like that lol.
The one in the cat carrier was sick. Took her to the vet yesterday. She started not eating about a week ago. Two weeks ago I noticed she was eating half as much. Thought maybe I got her sick because I was sick. But then she got worse about 4 days ago ago and stopped eating at all. Visibly lost weight. Set up the appointment. They did an X-ray two issues was happenings they are not sure of they are connected or not. One is that her white blood count was super high. Around 40,000 when it should be about 16,000 meaning she had a serious infection. So have her an antibiotic shot and prescribed two antibiotics. On Thursday I take her back for another blood test to see if it’s lowered. If not, then they will do a few different tests like cat leukemia. Which he said is super rare for a kitten that young but it can happen. Or maybe it was somehow caused by the other issue.
The other issue is that she seemed to have injested cat litter which lumped up in her intestines causing blockage. He does not know if the issues are related or which one came first since cats don’t typically ingest litter but said when they are sick, especially with the slimy foamy vomit they may go to the litter box to throw up and some got stuck to her and she ingested it. Or it could have accidentally happened and then she got sick from it. So
I was given cat laxatives and she had an enema.
Yesterday evening and this morning so far she’s back to eating better. But still a lot less. Every few hours I give her a tablespoon of pate food mixed with about 6-8 tablespoons of warm water to make it soupy. She seems to be getting better but going to be a battle to give her the liquid medicine. I was off work yesterday using birthday time. Each year in the month of out birthday you are given an extra 8 hours of personal time but it must be used that month. I’m thinking I may leave at half a day to come back and keep taking care of her.
Outside of that I’ve just been hiking. Hate the winter. Been 20s-30s at night and between 50s-60s at the day. When it’s near 60°f it’s not as bad but still. My hope for enjoying winter was very small lol. Lasted three weeks and was like yeah this sucks.
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