Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts

Sunday, February 6, 2011

Snow in Texas!

We went up to Corsicana for a medical function (that ended up cancelled). 1 inch of snow was predicted; we got 7! Here's a few shots of the snow, the little snowman I made outside of Gander Mountain (so glad they were open! Gloves were purchased!), and the big snowman outside Collin Street Bakery.  I can't get the snowman photo to be right side up on my phone... sorry!



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Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Softness

A few years ago, I typed up all the letters my grandparents wrote each other in the early 1940s (when he was at West Point, she was in Houston or NYC, and they were dating/engaged).  (More on that at some other time.)  One of the more entertaining bits to me was when she wrote of her excitement that her office had purchased air conditioning, and that it would be turned on between 1 and 4 pm in the summer. 

I have a few coworkers who don't have air conditioning.  (I live in Houston, if you've missed that.)  I've lived in India, where air conditioning is rare and it's often 90 degrees at night and humid, but with good ventilation and a fan it's not bad, except when there's a power cut and your fan gives out.  (I've also lived in England, where there was once a news story on TV on how possibly one could manage to sleep when the temperature only got down to 70 degrees at night -- however, they mostly don't have fans and mostly don't/can't open their windows, so I can imagine it might be a bit suffocating at times.)  Last September, after the hurricane, most of us went two weeks or so with no electricity.  Not bad, inconvenient, but not bad.  (Yes, if you depend for your life on electronic medical equipment, bad.  For most of us, not bad.) 

Why am I thinking of this?  Someone was just yammering on about how it should be mandatory for the City to provide free air conditioning to everyone in town, because it's a necessity of life and it's a basic human right. 

When did we get so soft?

There was one interview on TV after Hurricane Rita a few years back, where the reporter asked a fellow how he was managing to survive with no air conditioning.  His response?  "I haven't got it anyhow, so it doesn't bother me!"

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Lookit!

Remember this?


I moved it inside because it was dying from our overwhelming dry heat. It then went into suspended animation because of the air conditioning. So, I moved it upstairs into our unused bathtub, where our zoned a/c sets it at 85 in the daytime (coincidentally, apparently the optimum temperature for tomatoes). This morning I have this:



Isn't it beautiful? Ok, one tomato, but I've never had any at all before, and at $1 for the seedling, it's given me more than $1 of excitement! The little flower beneath it may be producing another one as well.



Isn't it so pretty? This afternoon, I'll find out how it tastes.... so happy!
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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Projects

Finally the camera card is back! Here are two of the projects I'm currently working on:

I like this little Roma tomato plant. The lovely tomato you see in the middle has been that size and that color for some time now, and the internet suggested that perhaps cooler temperatures might encourage it, as it's been over 85 every day; it hasn't changed much in three days inside, but we'll see. It was a dollar at the grocery store as a little 4" seedling, and it's done pretty well so far!

My other plants aren't doing as well... the City was doing water main work, and tearing up our street, and roped off all trees and shrubs along their way, including a little pear tree I've been loving and nourishing for several months. I come home one day and they've torn out my little tree (but none of the neighbors' roped-off shrubs, just my little tree and a scrubby bush next to it) and put it in a pile of dirt off to the side. I asked a fellow about it the next day, and he said, "we'll put it back." A week later, they still hadn't put it back, and the bush had been thrown away, so I gave up and put my little tree in a pot my mother brought around... it really doesn't look too good, and I don't think it'll make it. Very sad. I'll put in a complaint with the City if it dies, asking them to replace my tree (and my bush, and my grass, etc.), but I don't have much hope -- I'm still fighting them for charging me $400 for a leak they caused and didn't report, when we had no water for two days while their nicked water line was flooding the street. Meh.


In other news, though, I've finally got back out my rigid heddle loom -- hadn't touched it since high school. Thanks to Linda S. for helping me refresh my memory of how to warp it up! You can vaguely see my attempts at a plaid, but, as I've now learned, my warp threads are too thin for it to show well, so I'd either need to make this a very loose weave (which I can't manage, especially around the edges), or try again with thicker warp. This shadow-plaid will be a runner for the guest bedroom / craft room, which is in a blue-pink-purple color scheme (Himself doesn't go in there, so he doesn't mind!). It's been fun, and I'm getting better -- what you can't see rolled up on the beam at the front (besides the ripped-up plastic bags I used as waste strips) is all the wobbly-edged-ness and failed attempts at a twill weave from the beginning part. But onward and upward!

In more "other news," the pigeons are gone -- up and left one day -- I know it's probably wishful thinking, but I'm pretending the mother took the babies to a nest nearer the ground. There aren't any cats or other predators that can get into our yard, so far as I know, so I'm telling myself they're safe somewhere.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Helvetica

Just watched Helvetica. Entertaining to see all the perspectives, from people loving it because they don't think typefaces should say anything, to people hating it because it doesn't say anything, to an ... interesting ... woman who connects it to militarism and admittedly without any evidence except her own animosity towards both typeface and ideology correlates its usage with voting for Reagan. I think I come down mostly on the side of the fellow who says it's fine, useful for things where readability is the goal (like road signs), but basically boring.

And I got to teach Himself about the difference between serif and sans serif ... twice ... and I don't think he paid attention the second time either. But he is very good to me and does pretend to be interested in the things that interest me (at the time, at least), and is entertained that I'm interested, so I can't complain.

Why didn't I read much in October? We were sleeping on a matress in the living room, post Ike, with no lamps, and I had to be even quieter than normal, and what spare daytime hours I had were spent laying a new laminate floor in our water-damaged bedroom. So, only got away with a few novels for teenage girls and one dear little story for small children. Oh, well!