Weather Armageddon?

The snow that fell a little over a week ago is just about gone, except in the shady areas and a few mounds at the ends of driveways.  Over the weekend the temperatures were in the mid-40s, and Tony and I took the opportunity to get out for a walk and enjoy the relative warmth.  We weren't alone; I saw people jogging, strolling, and walking their dogs.  However, according to the forecast a change in the weather is coming.

Twenty nine years ago today we had a massive storm that dropped more than a foot of snow on the area.  If things play out as predicted by the National Weather Service, a storm that's on the way could rival that one.  According to the forecast, tomorrow will start out with sleet and freezing rain.  After we get a good layer of ice, the precipitation will change over to snow, and keep going until the middle of the day on Wednesday.  All the news outlets are leading with stories of icy roads, falling power lines, and general chaos.

Since it's the end of the month I had already planned to do my "big" grocery shopping today, so I got to shop alongside the people were stocking up just in case they got stranded in their houses.  The store parking lot was full, and it was tricky maneuvering through the shopping cart-filled aisles. There were long lines at the checkouts, but for the most part people were polite.

I've looked at the Websites for the local news channels several times this afternoon to see if anything's changed, weather-wise.  So far it hasn't.  It sounds like I'll be checking tomorrow to see if I have a snow day, but I wouldn't be too sad if the Weather Service gets this one wrong and we end up with nothing...

What Are The Chances?

St. Louis is a good-sized city, but sometimes it feels like a small town.

Tony and I went to an event tonight that drew a couple of hundred people from all over the metropolitan area.  The room was quite full when we got there, but we saw a friend sitting at a table across the room and took seats next to her.  Once we got situated I introduced myself to the other people sitting at the table.  The woman across from me said I looked familiar and we started trying to figure out a connection:

• Had we crossed paths through the organization that was sponsoring tonight's event?  No.

• Did she have children the same ages as mine?  No.

• Did she live in my community?  No, but she had lived in a neighboring city 15 years ago.  Aha!

• When she lived there, did she go to my church?  No, but she had friends who lived close to it.

She mentioned the friend's names. It turns out it was Tony's brother and his family, who used to have an annual Fourth of July party that we'd both attended.  Who would have figured!

Handsfree

Back before Christmas my chiropractor sent me a coupon for a hydromassage for "Liking" them on Facebook. In an effort to clean the house before the holidays I stuck the coupon in my January tickler folder. When January came I took it out, then misplaced it in a stack of papers on my desk. I found the coupon again earlier in the week, and today I redeemed it.

I didn't even know what a hydromassage was, so I had no idea what to expect. The receptionist led me to the back of the office, where a corner of the room was blocked off with sheer curtains. Behind the curtains was a tall table covered with a sheet. Half of the table was firm, but the other half jiggled like a water bed. She instructed me to lie face up on the table with my head at the water-filled end. When I was settled she pushed a button; water jets inside turned on and the table began to get warm. After adjusting the strength of the jets, she left.

I was in heaven! I think the best part of using a hot tub is the pressure of the water jets against my back. That's what the table felt like, except the jets covered my entire back at once! They rotated and pulsed up and down. They were quite loud, but after a couple of minutes it became a nice white noise which drowned out the other office sounds.

 For a long time I lay flat with my arms at my side and let the jets do their thing, but .eventually I discovered that by moving around I could target different parts of my body. Putting my arms above my head sent water pulsing against my upper shoulders. Putting my feet flat on the table with my knees bent moved the pressure directly on my lower back.

 Way too soon the jets stopped and the table got cool.  My time was up. I gathered my things and left.

There were two minor issues with today's hydromassage experience. First, after a half hour of laying face up on a warm, moist surface the hair at the nape of my neck had developed a bit of a cowlick. That was easily solved with a spritz of water and a comb. The second? It's hard to jump back into my To Do list because I'm so relaxed!

Interlude

Perhaps I am a bear, or some hibernating animal underneath, for the instinct to be half asleep all winter is so strong in me~~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Have Paint, Will Redecorate

Over the last few months I've painted the kitchen, and chosen a color scheme  for decorating the rest of the room.  Slowly but surely I'm making progress on the job.  With a bit of revamping, some of the artwork and knickknacks now fit the new look of the room.  All it took was some acrylic paint from the craft store.

This painting is one of my favorite pieces.  It's by Bro.Cletus Behlmann, a Marianist Brother who grew up here and went to college in the area. I bought the painting for a good price at a charity auction in the mid 1990s, probably because it was surrounded by an avocado-green mat that was't "in" at the time.

Back then my kitchen was country yellow and blue, so my first mat renovation was a medium blue which mirrored the color of the border.  Several years later when the walls became a soft peach, I repainted the mat the color you see here.  Doesn't it look out of place leaning against my new khaki walls?  It was time for another change.

Here's the same painting with a new mat color.  Ironically, now it's probably close to the original avocado!

The first step in picking a new shade was to take a photo of the painting with my cell phone camera.  At the craft store, I was able to compare that photo to the bottles of acrylic on the shelf.  Because the paint aisle was at the very back of the store, with no natural light available, I picked the two bottles that I thought were the closest in color.

Back home, I brushed out samples of both colors and chose the one that looked the best.  Carefully taking the picture out of the frame, I used a craft brush to apply a coat of paint to the mat.  After it dried I applied a second coat, let it dry again, and put everything back together.

Here's another example of what a difference a coat of paint can make.  The rattan mirror that Pepper is enjoying has also been in the kitchen for quite some time, leaning against the wall on top of the cabinets.   I believe it was white when I bought it at a garage sale. It got painted a bright blue, which really stood out against the light colored wall. In it's next incarnation, it changed to the light moss green color you see here.  Now that color is gone, too.

I 

I think this basil color is much more sophisticated, don't you?  I used the bottle of acrylic paint that didn't make the cut for the mat project.  The frame was dirty from being above the cabinets, so I gave it a good wash and let it dry before I started painting. I didn't have to take anything apart for this job, but since I'm a messy painter I put a piece of blue painter's tape around the perimeter of the mirror to keep paint off of it.


Now that these projects are done, I can turn my attention to all the others that await.

A Pie By Any Other Name

I heard on the radio this morning that today was National Pie Day. Created by the American Pie Council, the day is "dedicated to the celebration of pie".  The Pie Council recommends commemorating the day by eating, making, and sharing pies.

Of course I was going to participate!  I love pie, but it can be calorie-laden and doesn't fit into my eating plan right now. Since a good portion of the calories comes from the pie crust, I figured that with a tiny modification I could indulge. What's another name for a crustless pumpkin pie?  A custard!

I beat eggs, sugar, and spices in a large bowl, added pumpkin puree and milk, then poured the mixture into greased custard cups arranged in a large baking dish. Next, I put the dish in the oven and poured boiling water in the dish to make a water bath and baked the custards until they were set (which took about 40 minutes).  When the custard was done, I removed the cups from the water bath, set them on a rack to cool, then chilled them in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

Hubby Tony was in charge of dinner tonight, with Son Donald as sous chef.  After the table was cleared I brought out dessert.  Sadly, there wasn't any whipped cream in the house to top the custard with, but it was still cold, creamy, and wonderful.  And the best part?  There's plenty of leftovers.

This Made Me Smile!

When I'm writing, I use Thesaurus.com to to find just the right word.  Yesterday's post about weather and snow days had me searching for synonyms for meteorologist.  The site is usually pretty straightforward, but my search turned up some strange results.  This was the first:

Main Entry: prophet 

Part of Speech: noun 

Definition: person, thing that predicts future 

Synonyms: astrologer, augur, auspex, bard, clairvoyant, diviner, druid, evocator, forecaster, fortuneteller, haruspex, horoscopist, magus, medium, meteorologist, oracle, ovate, palmist, predictor, prognosticator, prophesier, reader, seer, seeress, sibyl, soothsayer, sorcerer, tea-leaf reader, witch, wizard

The other entries were in the same vein, listing words like nostradamus, prophetess, and vaticinator.  At Thesaurus.com they mustn't be crazy about the people that forecast the weather!

It Might Be....

                          It Could Be.....


                                                   It Is!

     A SNOW DAY

Last week when our areas got a couple of inches of snow, the school where I work was one of the few in my part of the county not to close. So when the meteorologists started calling for a big storm for this week, I was cautiously optimistic.  However, I think by going public with my desire last time I jinxed things; the first rule of Snow Day is: you do not talk about Snow Day.

Last night the news was gleefully full of gloom and doom stories, predicting six inches of snow for the area.  We started getting a bit of white stuff shortly after dinner last night, and I went to bed with visions of snow blankets and drifts.  This morning I had to get up and check the Internet to see what the school's status was.  I scrolled past all the other updates, and there it was in black and white.  Yippee!

The day is especially sweet since it came on a Thursday (which is the last day of our school week), giving me a four-day weekend.  I tried to go back to bed, but I was hungry so I got up and started the day, putting on my "wear around the house" jeans, an old shirt that's not acceptable for public anymore, and a pair of fluffy socks.

Tony shoveled the driveway before he left for work and reported there was between five and six inches of snow on the ground.  Since I didn't have anywhere to go today, I dawdled over breakfast with the newspaper, then let the dishes sit in the sink while I read everything waiting for me in my Inbox and Blogland instead of just skimming though them.  I'm looking forward to a day full of lounging round, reading, and TV watching.  If I get ambitious, I'll go out and shovel the new snow that's fallen and call that my exercise for the day.

Now if you'll excuse me, the couch in the family room is waiting for me...

Keeping Warm

Back in the fall I made yogurt using a crock pot.  Although it turned out runny, it was quite tasty.  I made the recipe a couple more times.  Each batch turned out a little bit better, but after a month or so my yogurt making fell by the wayside.

The hardest part of the process was keeping the milk mixture warm so it could ferment properly.  The first time I wrapped the crock pot in beach towels, which worked well, but at that time the weather was still balmy.  When the temperature started to drop outside the kitchen got chilly. It was hard to keep the crock warm; the last time I made yogurt I had to drag out my largest cooler, line it with towels, and put in several jars of hot water along with the crock.  Too much work!

I thought about buying a yogurt maker, but none of the stores around here carried them. The project got put on the back burner until I found this in my local Goodwill over the weekend:

For the princely sum of nine dollars I'm now the proud owner of a Family Size Yogurt Maker!

The ratty-looking box contained a pristine thermostat-controlled heater base, plastic cover, six 12-ounce glass jars with sturdy-looking plastic lids, and a thermometer stirrer. The only thing missing was the user manual.  I thought it would be easy to find one on the Internet, but when I couldn't find one for my model I settled for a similar one from the same company, and hoped the directions were close enough.

I made my first batch of yogurt with the Yogurt Maker last night.  The process was quite easy. First I heated milk in a saucepan, checking it occasionally with the thermometer stirrer.  When it reached the correct temperature I stirred in dry milk powder and a cup of store-bought active culture yogurt.  I poured the mixture into the cups, snapped the lids on tight, put the cups into the base, and plugged in the machine. This morning I had five containers of yogurt waiting for me.

One of the five containers is already gone.  I had half of it for breakfast and the rest with my lunch.  I'm not exactly sure how I'll use the rest, but I suspect it won't be around too long!

The Winter Zoo

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In honor of the holiday my preschool didn't hold classes, and Tony had the day off work, although he went in for a half day to get caught up on paperwork and got home right before lunch.

I knew I wanted to do something special today.  After lunch a headache that had been present all morning kicked into full gear, making it hard to think.  Thankfully Tony was there to help me figure things out.  After a bit of discussion, we decided to get bundled up and go to the St. Louis Zoo.

St. Louis has one of the best zoos in the world, and there's no admission charge!  We pay taxes to support it and several other cultural institutions, so it's not completely free, but it sure feels like it when you don't have to get out your wallet to walk inside.  I've been to the Zoo in the winter once, many years ago, and had fond memories of that visit.  It was great to see everything without a lot of people in the way.

When we got to Forest Park, where the zoo is located, we parked on the street on the south side of the zoo complex. I was surprised to see quite a few cars there, but when we got inside the gates those other people were nowhere to be found.  The lack of people was a real advantage; we were able to walk around easily and see things up close.  Many of the outdoor enclosures were empty, or the animals were hiding and couldn't be found, but quite a few could be seen in indoor viewing areas.  I enjoyed my entire visit, but the highlights were watching the orangutans and penguins, and visiting the Insectarium.

The orangutans, along with the chimpanzees and gorillas, winter in the same building.  Each group had its own large environment, separated from observers by floor to ceiling windows.  When we were there two of the zoo's three orangutans were out. One of them seemed to know there was a crowd; he (she?) tossed a ball up a slight incline several times and watched it roll back while everyone oohed and aahed.

The penguins share a building with the puffins not too far from the apes.  In the summer, this area is very popular but today we were able to walk right up. Our first stop was the outside home area of the Humboldt  penguins.  They were very much enjoying the brisk weather!  Inside the building there were two large penguin exhibits and one for puffins.  Again, we were able to get quite close; Tony even got splashed by a swimming penguin!

Even though it's been open for more than a decade, I had never been to the  Insectarium before.  The whole building is devoted to bugs!  There were dozens of insects on display, along with spiders and scorpions.  I stood mesmerized watching a colony of leaf cutting ants walking along a aerial walkway made of bamboo, cutting and carrying pieces of leaves and flowers back to their nest area.

Tony and I spent more than an hour walking around the Zoo before our feet started to get cold and we decided it was time to go. Although we didn't make it to all of the sections, we saw everything we wanted to see and we had a great time.