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Post by moonglum on Nov 2, 2019 1:57:29 GMT -6
It rained all day yesterday. This morning at 5.30 it was dry, dark and mild (12C). I woke up at 5.00, someones car alarm was going off down the street, could not get back to sleep. Grrrrr.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 2, 2019 7:29:15 GMT -6
Irritating for sure! You know what can be just as irritating? When you're jolted out of sleep by the sound of your dog barking on the first floor at 3:30 in the morning, and then you hear her nails clicking on the hardwood floor as she paces back and forth between the windows, growling and snorting the entire time, for like five minutes straight. And you lay there in bed on the second story of the house, wondering if you should get up and investigate....is there someone trying to break in? Is it just the 20-year old neighbor boy coming home late after a party, and the noise of his truck jolted her awake? A cat? A possum? A leaf blowing down the sidewalk? It's cold though, you are comfy under the covers, and decide to ignore whatever is going on downstairs. And then she abruptly stops pacing and all is quiet, but you still lay in bed awake, listening for the sound of footsteps that aren't the dog's, start to ascend the stairs.
Of course, during all this your spouse remains asleep.
First Saturday off work; the nursery closed for the season yesterday. My hours are now a typical work-week for most people - Monday through Friday - until everything on the property is all tucked in and put to bed for the winter. I had planned on doing the same in my gardens today....but, drat, it's raining. Of course.
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Post by moonglum on Nov 8, 2019 1:14:24 GMT -6
Up at 5.00 this morning, I could not sleep. The temperature outside was -2C. Both mine and Vox backs have been playing up lately. We came to the conclusion it was because our mattress is worn out. It's about 10 years old and needs replacing. So we went out yesterday and spent some plastic money on a new one. Jeez, the price of them was eye-watering.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 8, 2019 2:58:58 GMT -6
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Post by Phalon on Nov 9, 2019 8:39:53 GMT -6
It's been cold here for early November the last couple of days - highs in the low to mid-30s, with snow on the ground in the mornings. Yesterday morning, drinking my coffee on the porch, it was absolutely magical looking - the snow falling in big, fluffy flakes lit by the street light was a backdrop peeking through the golden and reds of the leaves on the trees.
Yep, snow and cold, and there are still leaves on the trees - more on them, then on the ground even. In fact, we were just talking about this Thursday - we've had some of the worst late October/early November weather in recent memory, but Wednesday and Thursday were peak fall color. You'd imagine with all the rain, cold, wind, sleet, and now snow, that color would all be gone, but it was amazingly brilliant.
Still got a ton of work to do in the yard, now to include raking what was just raked a couple of days ago, and pretty much have the weekend to get everything done. It's suppose to be bitter cold next weekend, and some of the forecasts are mentioning snow-by-the-foot.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 10, 2019 16:41:33 GMT -6
Supposed to get snow mixed with rain tomorrow. And I have a colonoscopy. Gotta go ... start drinking the poop juice soon.
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Post by stepper on Nov 10, 2019 19:31:16 GMT -6
Today: 61-73 Tomorrow: 70 - then in the afternoon around 3PM a front comes through and the temps start dropping to 32! Tuesday: 29!! - mixed precipitation which means ice - warming all the way to 48. No snow - the ground is too warm for that - but still...BRRR!!!
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Post by stepper on Nov 10, 2019 19:44:38 GMT -6
Steppet did that last year - she just chugged the goo down. The guy I work with did it a couple years ago and he flavored the stuff you have to drink with Crystal lite - lemon lime IIRC. Steppet's routine took longer than expected because they found 18 polyps - fortunately none were cancerous. She's supposed to go in for a follow-up and I have to call that in for her pretty soon.
My diabetic doctor said she wanted me to go get one done and she'd be glad to schedule it for me. I told her sure, just make sure it's three days after my autopsy.
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Post by moonglum on Nov 12, 2019 0:45:56 GMT -6
It was 3C this morning at 5am. We've had a couple of mornings when it's been below zero and there has been a frost but it's now back to the cold and wet. Not as wet as they've had it in the Midlands though. Our eldest daughter lives in Barnsley and they've just missed the worst of the floods up there. Doncaster area has been very badly hit.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 12, 2019 7:46:44 GMT -6
Joxie, I hope your colonoscopy went well.
Hubs opted not to get a colonoscopy when he turned 50, and every time he goes to the doctor, she brings it up again. This last time, he relented....sort of. He did that mail-in thing - noninvasive, and no goo to drink.
My brother called last night; he's still in Texas for at least a few more weeks. He said that where he is, it was 78 degrees on Sunday, and it dropped to a low of 28 degrees yesterday.
We didn't have that big of a drop here - it's already been cold, though the weekend warmed up into the 40s. I was in a mad-rush to get stuff done in the yard - Hubs had his own winterizing projects to do, and then we took a nice break Sunday afternoon to meet LX and the Boyfriend at a restaurant halfway between here and there for an early dinner.
Most importantly, I got all my glazed and terracotta pots emptied, and stored (neatly!) in the shed! Emptying one of them, I found a toad buried in the center of it, about halfway down! The poor guy was in deep hibernation - he barely moved when I prodded him to see if he was still alive, and opened just one eye slightly to give me the "WTF?! I'm sleeping!" glare. I felt bad, and buried him in the soil I'd just dumped from the pot.
Got all the leaves either mulched or raked to the curb. It wasn't the leaf-sucker truck that came around yesterday morning though - it was the tandem snowplows! And the b!tch of it all, is that the trees in my yard are still covered in leaves. I don't know what was falling faster yesterday - the snow or frozen leaves from the trees. The ground is like lasagna - a layer of snow, a layer of leaves, more snow, more leaves.
We had about 6 inches of snow yesterday, and close to an additional foot last night. It's 22 degrees outside now. Work has been cancelled for probably the remainder of the week.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 13, 2019 2:26:09 GMT -6
One polyp was found. Don't have to do it again until five years.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 14, 2019 8:16:36 GMT -6
Did they remove the polyp?
OMG, I walked errands downtown yesterday, and my feet were so numb, they hurt - my boots, of course, are at work. Still wintry weather here today, but at 31F, it's already six degrees warmer than the high temperature yesterday! I saw that the town just a couple miles next to us made the national weather news - almost two feet of snow in less than 24 hours.
It's supposed to warm up to above freezing this weekend, and it's going to be a mess. Shoot, it's already a mess - there are soooo many leaves that fell during and since it snowed, that if you were to make a snowman, it'd look like it was covered in fur.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 14, 2019 14:07:58 GMT -6
Yes. They’ll let me know what they find. My dad’s dad had colon cancer. I remember grandmother running us out of the living room whenever granddaddy had to poop. She’d hold a basin to his side. They didn’t have an inside bathroom at that time. And granddaddy had severe arthritis in his hands. Probably his whole body. He moved slow and hunched over.
Our days are warmer than the nights. One or two nights will be above freezing though.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 19, 2019 22:33:52 GMT -6
A lot of the snow we had melted over the weekend - just a thin layer, maybe about an inch deep, was left yesterday morning. I got to work though, and was surprised to see that I was the only one there...and to see that there was still almost a foot of snow covering everything!!! I live the furthest south - by only 15 minutes, and while the temperatures at home got into the high 30s over the weekend, they barely got above freezing at the nursery. I stayed until about 12:30, getting whatever I could do done in that much snow (which included getting a John Deere Gator stuck!!!)
Stayed home today. The snow here was almost completely gone; only the piles at the sides of the driveway, and what the plows left at the curbs are left. I raked leaves. Twenty-five tarp-fuls of them!!! Twenty-five! Five tarps in the side yard, and 20 tarps in the ravine. I dragged each tarp to the curb for whenever the leaf-sucker truck gets around to sucking them up. Twenty times I walked up the hill to the ravine, dragging a tarp full of heavy wet leaves, and dang, I felt pretty good until about tarp #22 out of the 25. Those last three were pure hell.
And guess what. There are about that much left to rake! I was going for quantity, not quality; bulk, not beauty. The layers of leaves are so compacted from the weight of the snow, it was impossible to get them all. Not to mention, two of the five maples still have full crowns of leaves.
Going to work tomorrow, no matter if there is snow still on the ground - I really need to be done at the end of this week. Next week is too busy - too much going on during the week with Thanksgiving coming up, and the Holiday Market that weekend.
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 20, 2019 0:12:28 GMT -6
The weather is finally getting fairly back to normal for this time of year. Much warmer days. I've set the night temps for the inside pretty low, and have been sleeping underneath the comforter. Loving it ... until I have to trot to the restroom.
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Post by Phalon on Nov 24, 2019 8:40:53 GMT -6
Same! What is it about sleeping with a comforter pulled up to your neck that is so...so...comforting? It makes a person not want to get up for anything. For me, it's not to use the restroom, but it's the alarm going off that's an annoying interruption to my comforter bliss. I've basically been ignoring it, and snuggling deeper under the covers!
No matter - I've been going into work about an hour and a half late every morning. It wasn't because I was too lazy to get out of bed, though. The boss's cousin has been deer hunting on the property at work, and though he was concerned I'd scare away the deer, I was more concerned I'd get shot!
I went in around 10am after the hunter left every day this past week (except Tuesday, when I stayed home due to the snow). And what a helluva week it was!!! I was the only one there working my @ss off in the cold, the snow, and one entire day of rain. I absolutely needed to be done at the end of the week. Two of the guys on the landscape crew came in Friday (the crew still have weeks of work left to complete), and though they were off site all day at a landscape job, they stayed for about a half-hour at the end of their day to help me finish moving the bigger evergreens I couldn't lift myself into one of the unheated hoop houses (we keep the stuff the deer eat under cover in the winter. If they're left out, they look like huge lollipops in the spring - the deer eat all the branches, except the ones on top!) I'm sooo thankful they stayed to help; while they did that, I was able to get the roses pruned, which was the last thing on my mental list of stuff I wanted to get done.
I finished just before it started getting dark! And just as the hunter pulled in again!
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Post by Phalon on Nov 27, 2019 10:31:42 GMT -6
Perfect timing. Soooo not true!!! No electricity, no heat, and a million and two things to do before Thanksgiving tomorrow and the Holiday Market this weekend. And the carburetor seal on the generator busted. Hubs and neighbor guy are running cords to his generator to our furnace so at least we'll have heat. Fingers crossed!
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Post by stepper on Nov 27, 2019 18:40:56 GMT -6
I signed on to wish every one a very Happy Thanksgiving. Wowzers! Sorry for the especially bad timing! I hope "they" get the power back quickly for you or hubs is going to end up experimenting with smoked turkey done on the grill. I mean, it's T-Day - you gotta have turkey!
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Post by Mini Mia on Nov 27, 2019 20:34:40 GMT -6
Polyp wasn't cancerous, and although it could have turned cancerous, it wasn't the kind that _will_ turn cancerous. My kidney levels are back to normal. I just have to remember that I can't take aspirin. I've got two unopened boxes of low dose chewables to give away.
The outside weather has been warm enough that the sun has been baking me inside the house. Me and the dog sit and roast, but I haven't broken down and turned on the a/c. We're not having Thanksgiving until Saturday. We only had a couple of trees here and there show their beautiful fall colors. The Winter weather from a few weeks ago has ruined the beauty for us this year ... so no more fall colors.
I can't recall if I mentioned this. My lights went out a few weeks ago. Turned out to be just my house without lights. And now they flicker quite a bit ... but I called my sister, and hers are too, so it isn't just me. I've been fairly quiet of late. Mostly reading ... and just not much of interest online anymore.
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Post by moonglum on Nov 28, 2019 1:46:09 GMT -6
It's been raining virtually non-stop for nearly a week now. Mostly light rain with the odd heavy downfall every now and again. Temps are around the 8-9C mark. It looks like it's going to be the usual wet dreary christmas here in our corner of blighty. I woke this morning determined to be positive and look on the bright side, but apparently due to cutbacks the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned off!
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Post by Phalon on Nov 28, 2019 7:53:23 GMT -6
We were without power for four, maybe five hours...but not without heat, thankfully. Hooking up the furnace and the fridge to the neighbor's generator worked. He had his generator up and running not even 20 minutes into the outage - it was essential because we got so much rain Tuesday night, his sump pump was running nonstop. We were lucky - there were 20,000 people without power in SW Michigan and Northern Indiana, and for some, it won't be back on until Friday. The winds here were at 40mph, and they can't get up in the buckets to fix the lines if its above 35mph; other places it was clocked at 60mph. I saw pictures taken at the beach - the light on the lighthouse was on, and with the waves beating the pier, I couldn't help but think of the "gales of November" and the "wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald". The 44th anniversary of its sinking was earlier this month. Here are the photos, and check out the short video - you have to wonder if these are the type of waters the ship was trying to navigate that fateful day. www.mlive.com/news/g66l-2019/11/9b84d7d22b7496/high-winds-batter-lake-michigan-shoreline-result-in-flooding-and-power-outages.htmlI feel bad for the people who don't have electricity and had Thanksgiving planned at their house. That wasn't an issue for us - LX is hosting Thanksgiving this year, and they didn't lose power. I'd better get moving - got lots to do to get ready (I'm bringing the appetizers, which I was able to make once the electricity came back on). She wants us there at 11, and it's a little more than an hour drive. That's much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving!! Same to you, yours, and everyone here!
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Post by moonglum on Nov 30, 2019 1:30:48 GMT -6
Happy belated Thanksgiving. Hope your power problems have been sorted Phalon. Well it has finally stopped raining and the temperature has plummeted to -3C this morning. There is a white rime of frost everywhere, on the ground and the cars. Christmas shopping today for some last few presents and then that's all done.
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Post by moonglum on Nov 30, 2019 8:29:58 GMT -6
I should have kept my mouth shut. A couple of hours after I posted the above, it started raining again!
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Post by stepper on Dec 1, 2019 13:31:52 GMT -6
Polyp wasn't cancerous, and although it could have turned cancerous, it wasn't the kind that _will_ turn cancerous. My kidney levels are back to normal. I should have responded sooner, but I'm really glad for the good news Joxcee. And hopefully your delayed Thanksgiving feast was fun and memorable.
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Post by stepper on Dec 1, 2019 14:59:17 GMT -6
I should have kept my mouth shut. A couple of hours after I posted the above, it started raining again! I suspect you're tired of it raining so much, but I sure wouldn't mind having it move our way. Instead, we had another reminder of this past summer and set a record high temperature for the day at 85F (29.44c) - and here I thought we were done with all that for the season. (Today is better - it was just one day.) We have a few trees with a bit of color in them but in this area we went from green to brown and the leaves fell that way. Even my red maple didn't turn red. It was odd seeing leaves that were half green and half brown still on the tree but that's the way it goes for some of us. Perhaps next year we'll get back to normal colors - or more rain so the trees aren't so stressed.
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Post by Phalon on Dec 3, 2019 6:59:30 GMT -6
Seriously?? Not you too! Stepper is probably already done shopping also.
We got a lot of rain here on Sunday, and with temperatures hovering in the mid-30s, I'm surprised it wasn't snow. I did see snow though - quite a bit of it, driving BP back to college. The further north we got, the rain changed to sleet, and then snow - there was maybe a foot or so of fresh snow. The drive was picturesque (and a bit nerve-wracking) with all the trees - both bare and evergreen - covered in snow. The roads were fairly clear though; the plows and salt trucks had already been out, and the drive wasn't as bad as it could have been.
Gotta run - got my text saying we're walking this morning. I joined a group of ladies who walk a few times a week....and after all the food I ate during the Thanksgiving weekend, I definitely could do with a good walk!
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Post by Phalon on Dec 4, 2019 16:36:30 GMT -6
URGH!!!!
The furnace guys just left....and we are left with about $10,000 less than we had before they came!!!!
The furnace has been making kind of a funny noise lately when it kicked on, which was only audible from the outside where it's vented; I only noticed because I was dragging greens in all last Friday to do the table arrangements to sell at market and kept hearing the noise whenever I went outside to get more greenery. Kinda sounded like maybe a belt needed to be replaced or something - it was kind of a strained whirring sound. Turns out there were cracks in the heating coils (I think that's what he called them). It could have been leaking carbon monoxide in very little amounts (our detectors never went off), but they condemned it, and shut it off.
New furnace is supposed to be installed tomorrow morning. Keeping fingers crossed!
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Post by stepper on Dec 4, 2019 19:55:42 GMT -6
I thought the imp liked it warm - I don't get why she'd do that to you. Honestly - I think that's rather steep for heating. You can completely replace central heat and A/C units including new duct work for a touch less than the price you mentioned. I know prices vary depending on which area of the country you are in but still - at least do some on-line shopping for manufacturers and installers. The same company condemned the unit and wants $10,000 to replace it? Unless you've got a working relationship with these people I'd be skeptical at least. And how long is the warranty? It needs to be comparatively long and all inclusive for the price.
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Post by stepper on Dec 4, 2019 20:02:56 GMT -6
Seriously?? Not you too! Stepper is probably already done shopping also. Alas, no. Steppet is harder to shop for than getting the IMP a wedding dress. (I suspect that would be a tuffy.) And I still have the problem of wrapping and getting everything mailed. And time is getting short!
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Post by Mini Mia on Dec 5, 2019 0:02:18 GMT -6
Polyp wasn't cancerous, and although it could have turned cancerous, it wasn't the kind that _will_ turn cancerous. My kidney levels are back to normal.
I should have responded sooner, but I'm really glad for the good news Joxcee. And hopefully your delayed Thanksgiving feast was fun and memorable.
Thanks. It went well. My sister gets these mystery solving games, and we all tried to figure out who the serial killer was.
Dang, Phalon. But what are you going to do? You can't go without heat.
The weather here can't seem to make up its mind what season it is. The trees ugliness doesn't help it any.
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