“It’s a sign of mediocrity when you demonstrate gratitude with moderation.” – Roberto Benigni, in Newsweek
Sunday, January 01, 2006
Christmas at the Cabin, Day 10, New Years Eve
Here we are at day 10. We had planned to go home tomorrow, New Years Day, but have decided to spend all of tomorrow here and then go home early on Monday.
It was a pretty normal day (I’m actually writing this on the next morning). Partly cloudy, windy. We took the dogs “around” and recreated the trail with snow shoes. It is amazing how fast even a little bit of snow can obliterate the trail. Bart and Millennia stayed behind, but all others had a great time. I marked several landmarks on the trail on my new GPS. When we got back from the walk, I shoveled what little snow had accumulated in the driveway. Then, I got the toboggan out and made a few runs down the driveway. The dogs love it. Lynne joined me and we had a fun time.
I’ve posted some addition photos in the Christmas Photo Gallery.
We worked on a new puzzle—a hard one. It is of a large pirate ship, a “cross sectional” view. Lots of activity, lots of detail. I don’t think we’ll finish it this trip, but we will make good progress.
We had left-over chili with some hot dogs for lunch. It tasted great with lots of onion and cheese on it. I watched the Denver football game while Lynne made another batch of Christmas cookies. She made so many that at lunch time I ran a few over to Dave and Deb because they seemed to like them a lot and because we used their sour cream to make them!
We tried a new recipe for dinner—a spaghetti squash recipe that is not in the recipe database yet. It was really good, but made about 2X what we could eat. So many leftovers! I prepared the marinade for tomorrow’s Beef Bourguignon and got the beef marinading. It is sealed in a ziplock in the cooler on the porch. I’ll start cooking it around noon on New Years Day.
After dinner we made the sofa down into a bed in front of the fireplace and (along with various dogs) watched a movie. We decided not to stay up till midnight. (What is the point?) It was midnight somewhere. So, we had a bottle of Prosecco (our cheap substitute for champagne) and a cookie to celebrate.
The wind had calmed by the time we went to bed and we slept great!
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 01/01/2006 at 08:59 AM
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Saturday, December 31, 2005
Christmas at the Cabin, Day 9
Not much to say about today. Plenty of wind again overnight—this is getting really tiring. We’d love to have a day where we could strap on cross-country skis and go for an outing.
I shoveled snow out of the driveway to open it back up again. Luckily the snow is very dry and powdery, so a shovell-full is pretty light and easy to move around. If this were wet, sticky snow it would not be possible to shovel the driveway so easily. I also took Beastie and used the plow to move a few drifts in the local area. Actually, once you get out of the sheltered areas (like where the cabin is), there isn’t much snow left. It has blown to Kansas.
We went over to Dave and Deb’s for lunch. She had a great chicken noodle soup. We spent a couple of hours eating and chatting. It was fun.
The dog walk today was just to the “bottom”. I think they are starting to get cabin fever. Alex thinks Hailey smells good so he is being a pain following her around and jumping on her constantly. Sam is also getting cabin fever. He walks around the cabin knocking things onto the floor. He torments the other cats and attacks them when they are sleeping.
Dinner was a great burrito recipe from the South Beach Diet which is not posted to our recipe web site yet. We watched a long movie on TV then went to bed a little early and read. Lynne made us some coffee laced with bourbon, so that was a great nightcap.
The weather report is not good—continued wind, cold and maybe some snow. We’ve tenatively planned to head home on Monday instead of Sunday. I know, that sounds weird given the weather up here and the cabin fever that is setting in, but the weather is not a whole lot better at home, and the cabin IS cozy.
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 12/31/2005 at 08:36 AM
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Thursday, December 29, 2005
Christmas at the Cabin, Day 8, Part 2
A quick update. The snow stopped mid-day, but the wind really howled. We are now “snowed in”. The drifts in the driveway would not allow us to get out in the Suburban. Beastie is parked above the driveway and I might be able to move the snow with it, but I think I’ll just borrow Dave’s snow blower tomorrow and open the driveway up. Otherwise, I suspect we are okay to get out of SCP, even if we have to do some cross-country driving.
According to the weather service, the winds in Laramie today were sustained at 39 mph with gusts to 51 mph.
We finished the puzzle. It was really hard.
Split pea soup is on the stove and it really smells good!
The wind has stopped and it is the stillest it has been the whole trip.
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 12/29/2005 at 04:58 PM
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Christmas at the Cabin, Day 8 (Thursday)
Today’s post will likely be in two parts. I just wanted to post this morning and tell everyone that we have a very wintery scene outside. Overnight the wind stopped and starting sometime after midnight the snow started. It is not heavy, we’ve had about 2 inches as of 8:00 a.m. It is still coming down lightly. So, it is very pretty outside (and warm inside!) If the wind starts to blow, we’ll get drifted in for sure.
I moved Beastie to the top of the driveway just in case we need the snowplow later.
Update (11:30 a.m.): We took a long walk with 5 of the dogs this morning. It required snow shoes and poles. The wind had started blowing and it was about 23° outside. Still, it was a fun walk and we are all tired out now. Here are a couple of photos. Plus, I’ve added some more photos to the Christmas Gallery.
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 12/29/2005 at 08:34 AM
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Christmas at the Cabin, Day 7 (Wednesday)
It is really scary when I sit down to write about an entire day’s activities and I can’t really think of anything to write! Time really flies up here.
Last night it was as windy as I have ever personally experienced up here. The background roar of the constant wind was very loud, and the gusts would cause the wind generator to furl making a loud humming noise that sounds like a helicopter landing on the roof. I would guess the steady winds at close to 40 mph and gusts much higher than that. I know it can blow up here, but that is the biggest blow I can recall experiencing. So, it was a restless night.
Our morning routine was, well, routine. We had grapefruit that Dave had brought us on Tuesday and it was delicious. It was Lynne’s birthday, so she opened cards and gifts and then talked to her Mom on the phone for a while. We had a light crab cobb salad for lunch.
We took the dogs to the bottom rather than “around” and they seemed satisfied with that. I started up “Beastie” (our 1984 Ford F150 pickup truck with a snow plow attached) and moved some snow around. The objective was to run the truck for a while and exercise the hydraulics. We started a jig-saw puzzle that Lynne’s Mom sent us for Christmas. It is a puzzle shaped like an old Victrola record player with a theme of a Victorian music room—very challenging. After all that hard work, a short afternoon nap was well deserved.
It continued to be windy throughout the day, so it was a good day to be indoors.
Larry and Donna Martin invited us over to their cabin for dinner. So, went over there around 4:00 and had a great meal of home-made chili and fry-bread along with
an apricot
a peach pie for dessert. Yum. After a great meal and great conversation, we came home well after dark and let the dogs out to run around a little bit. After that, we settled in and watch a movie on TV.
There was a 50% chance of snow overnight.
Speaking of snow, that reminds me to tell you about something I learned on this trip. One of the first days we were up here we were walking through fresh, pristine, undisturbed snow on our snow shoes. I saw a patch of what looked like very fine black ash on the top of the snow. I thought that was strange and bent down to get a closer look curious about where the ash had come from. What I observed where thousands of very tiny black bugs jumping around. They looked just like tiny black fleas. Lynne thought I was crazy until she also saw them hopping about.
So, when we got back to the cabin, I googled “snow fleas”, and sure enough found several references to the very critters I had seen. Here is one of the references. It is a story similar to mine. Turns out the critters are not really fleas but springtails and may be the most common creature on Earth! They are everywhere, but so tiny we don’t see them. They eat decomposing leaves and stuff and are sometimes found on snow under a tree or bush. They are harmless, so we don’t have to worry about them bothering us or the dogs.
Posted under: Cabin News • by Rick on 12/29/2005 at 08:12 AM
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