Our Middle Name Is Nail

I've just spent about an hour Spackling again today.  I am sore from my chiropractic treatment yesterday, but my back muscles aren't in rigor, so it was effective and it has been more pleasant to work. 

I think I probably have done all the Spackling I intend to.  If I proceed with my plan to close off the door on the west and put a door in the south instead of the existing window, much of what I'm doing will get destroyed anyway.  I'm not sure I'll do that at all--I won't if my name comes up on the senior housing list for an apartment in Boulder--but if I do, I may not get it done before my sister and her husband come out for vacation in July.  I think I'm going to proceed as if I'm not going to move the door and go ahead and paint so things look nice when they arrive.  Since this is a family vacation home, I've felt obligated to vacate it when they want to vacation here.  I did so last year...left it absolutely spotless and empty of all my belongings and drove three days to my brother's in Tacoma...only to find out the day of my arrival that my brother-in-law was going to have to have a heart valve transplant and they weren't coming after all.  Well, I came back to a very tidy cabin.

This one section of wall has always been the only place to hang clothes. 

The abundance of my clothing--most of which is not even here-- is embarrassing when I realize how few clothes my folks probably had during the Great Depression when they were living here.  Of course, I started university with two homemade dresses,  two skirts and two sweaters so...

There were three of these hooks screwed into the wall...

 and, of course....nails. 

 
I think my family's middle name is Nail.  Need someplace to hang another towel?  Drive in a nail.  The entire family is here and you need a place to hang all those wet wash cloths?  Drive in some more nails.  I think some of these nails I pulled out today probably have been in place since 1939.

I'm planning to substitute this...

I've had this for probably a couple of years.  It appears from the tag that I purchased it at Savers for $4.99.  It's expandable and had sixteen hooks.  I may need to spray it with a clear fixative to prevent rust transfer.

I've run out of Spackle anyway and I'm not ready to start sanding.  I've had my eye on a little electric sander that has a container to hold the dust.  Sounds like just the ticket.  So I may let this Spackle continue drying and go out in search of the sander.  I had seen one at Ace, but I want to do some comparison shopping.


It's about 42F degrees at 2:15 p.m. and it has struggled to get that high.  I don't know if there is any way our high is going to reach the predicted 47F degrees.  It had been quite windy....we had gusts as high as 55 mph last night according to NOAA....but it has just grown absolutely still in the last few minutes...so maybe.  It is sunny,  and Easter Sunday should be beautiful with a high of 54F degrees, winds only gusting to 17 mph and sunny.

Are you doing projects this weekend or just celebrating?  Teddee

Unintended Birthday Hiatus

Where to start?  Yesterday was my birthday and I spent part of it here:

Saturday I had launched myself out of bed at 6:30 a.m. intent on being first in line at the University of Colorado Business School where, I'd been told in a phone conversation Wednesday, they would be able to do my taxes for free including an EZ Schedule C. 

I got the wood stove going to heat my water so I could wash up. Finally about 7:30 a.m. the water was warm enough to wash in.  I cleaned  up, dressed and, using my ski pole, climbed over the deck railing and made my way to the car fighting wind gusts.  The snow had drifted deeper south of the cabin but was still preferable to that on the west and the car was totally free of snow so I got out without shoveling. 

I drove to Boulder, made my way to the campus and found a free parking place which seemed like a good omen since parking is at a premium and most of the lots are parking by permit only.  It was also cold and windy in Boulder and I had to walk what seemed a quarter of a mile to the correct building..

I found the room in which the free tax services were being offered and after showing Susan, the supervisor, my paperwork was told, despite our phone conversation earlier in the week, that they could not do my taxes because I would be filing a business loss on my Schedule C.  I suggested I claim the income and forgo the expenses and was told that no way, no how were they going to enter into that arrangement and I really needed to find a CPA and do my taxes correctly.  I took an  instant dislike to Susan.

BUT Goodwill, which was having a 50% off Saturday, is just a block south of the Business School.  So I went to McDonald's, got take-out breakfast and swung back around to Goodwill and got that parking spot right in front of the front door again. I ran into a "junqueing" acquaintance I hadn't seen since last June and he told me where H&R Block was located. I drove there and dropped off all my income tax materials and made an appointment to return Sunday at noon.  It was so cold and windy, both in Eldora and Boulder, but, in addition to this spectacular view of the Flatirons, a Boulder landmark...

...I got good news.  A very sizable sizable refund and even though it cost me $225.50, and that included a $20-off coupon the preparer was nice enough to provide, she is also reviewing my 2010 tax return at no additional cost. 

Spring had sprung while I was having my taxes done, the wind had died down and it was sunny and warm and I celebrated my refund and my birthday by going to Aspen Leaf Yogurt in the same shopping center where numerous self-serve flavors of yogurt and a smorgasbord of toppings are available for 45 cents an ounce.  I got by for $3.39

When I got back to the cabin, the weather was equally pleasant here so I smoothed a little path from the south deck to the wood pile and brought in enough wood to fill the wood box and emptied the ashes, which just isn't something you want to try to do when it's as windy as it had been.

 

Started to blog but discovered I was unable to log onto my computer.  More about that tomorrow.  How did you spend your weekend?  Teddee

Freezing Live Gal

I heard through the grapevine while I was in Boulder today that the Frozen Dead Guy Festival was canceled because of high winds.  I can believe it.  This place has its own micro-climate. 

Last night was probably one of the coldest we've had all winter and here it is March.  I fell asleep reading with the lights on, my favorite jazz station KUVO streaming and the winds pounding.  Woke up about 1:30 p.m. and it was around 5F degrees outside.  The wind blew all night and my forehead and nose got so cold I had to put the covers over my head.  At 6:30 a.m. the outdoor thermometer was still showing 5F degrees so I don't know what the actual low was, but it was exactly 32F degrees inside the cabin.


I took these shots of blowing snow between Nederland and Eldora late this afternoon on my return trip from Boulder.  NOAA predicted winds as high as 50 mph but I think that's conservative:
 

 Sky full of blowing snow.

You can also see blowing snow in the air above and behind this, one of the few remaining, but abandoned, commercial buildings in Eldora. It was still open for business when I was a child.

The snow had really drifted into the cabin while I was gone.

This time my leftover coffee was frozen.  The temperature in the cabin was 27F degrees when I returned, and an hour later, having had the wood stove cranking the whole time, the water in the wash basin was still frozen as well.

NOAA says a low of 20F degrees tonight, but I have only about 17F degrees showing on my outdoor thermometer at 6 p.m.  Hopefully it's going to warm up during the night.

Are you living where coping with the weather is a major part of your life?  Teddee

Sisyphus Complex

I'm starting to get a Sisyphus complex about this snow drift just off the opening on the west side of the deck:

I just get it cleared, then the wind comes up and it closes right up again.  As you can see, it is all the way to the top of the deck railing.

Unlike the Greek king condemned to a lifetime of rolling a rock up a hill, I decided to go with the flow.  For some reason, the snow does not drift over here directly south of the cabin:

I've decided it's easier to climb over the deck railing and make my way out through this snow, which is not nearly as deep.  I still use the ski pole which makes me feel a little like this:

Can you imagine doing this in a skirt, and look at that pack!  This is what Wikipedia has to say about Elizabeth Le Blond:

Elizabeth Hawkins-Whitshed (1860 - July 27, 1934) was a British pioneer of mountaineering in a time when it was almost unheard of for a woman to climb mountains. She was also an author and a photographer of mountain scenery.
She came from an upper class background, being the daughter of Captain Sir St Vincent Hawkins-Whitshed, 3rd Baronet (1837-1871) (see Hawkins-Whitshed Baronets) by his wife Anne Alicia (née Handcock) (1837-1908), and further back was descended from the aristocratic Bentinck family, and was therefore related to the Dukes of Portland.
She was born in London, but grew up in Greystones, County Wicklow in the south-east of Ireland, where her father owned quite a bit of land. However, her father then died, leaving no other children, while she was still a minor, and the Lord Chancellor took her on as his ward.
Elizabeth moved to Switzerland, where she climbed mountains in her skirt. In 1907, she became the first president of the Ladies Alpine Club. She wrote seven books on mountain climbing and over her lifetime climbed twenty peaks that no one had climbed before.
As Mrs Aubrey Le Blond she made at least 10 films of alpine activities in the Engadine Valley of Switzerland, including ice hockey at St Moritz and tobogganing on the Cresta Run. She is probably among the world's first three female film-makers, after Alice Guy and contemporary with Laura Bayley. Her films were shown by James Williamson at Hove Town Hall in November 1900, being included in his catalogue in 1902, and were praised by the film pioneer Cecil Hepworth and the writer E. F. Benson.
She married three times: firstly, in 1879, to Frederick Gustavus Burnaby (1842-1885); secondly, in 1886, to John Frederick Main (died 1892); and thirdly, in 1900, to Francis Bernard Aubrey Le Blond. From her first marriage, she had a son Harry Burnaby, in 1880. Despite her second and third marriages, the lands at Greystones that she had inherited from her father (before marriage) were to be known as the Burnaby Estate. This part of Greystones (The Burnaby) was developed after 1900. It includes Burnaby Road, Somerby Road, as well as Whitshed, St. Vincent's, and Portland Roads, and Hawkins Lane. She published accounts of her climbing under the names Mrs. Fred Burnaby, Mrs. Main, and Mrs. Aubrey Le Blond.
She published her autobiography Day In, Day Out in 1928.

These photos are from The Elizabeth Main LeBlond Photographic Collection as seen on The Martin and Osa Johnson Safari Museum web site.

Omg.  Is she going to cross this or is she just looking?

Now this looks like a lot more fun!  I don't know if she's second from the front or second from the back, but that guy on the end definitely looks as if he'd been caught having wrong thoughts. 

What a woman!  I guess after reading this and looking at these photos, getting from the cabin to the car won't seem quite such a challenge.  What challenged you today?  Teddee

Me and Ahab

Ahab and his white whale obsession have nothing on me.  If I had a harpoon I would have used it long ago on this bunk I sleep in.  It's attached to two walls of the cabin, so not only does it shudder and shift when the cabin shudders and shifts in the high winds we have here in the Rockies, but the fact that the mattress is butt up against two walls and one of the two too many hide-a-beds we have in this one room cabin for use by family members when they visit, makes changing the sheets a nightmare.  Getting a fitted sheet on the first corner, the northeast corner, is not too difficult although I have to lift up the mattress to get it on.

But getting a fitted sheet on this southeast corner is exhausting.

I usually eventually end up getting on the mattress on my knees in frustration but that actually makes things worse.

It rarely gets much better than this...

...which is a pet peeve because I like really taut sheets.

Then there are the two west corners.  Many years ago our neighbor installed these bunks and added a couple of clever rustic touches.  This tree trunk on the northwest corner...

...and this slab on the southwest corner:

But mattresses were thinner then and the mattress I'm using now gets stuck under the slab...

 and in the notch he made in the log....

This not only makes changing the bedding more difficult, but occasionally I'll realize in the night that the mattress has got caught and my sleeping surface is listing lower on the west, so if I want to turn over on my right side, I'm turning uphill. 

Then there's the top sheet.  I like to miter the bottom corners of my top sheet, so I must lift the northwest corner up and out of this slot in the tree trunk to do that.  Forget the northeast corner.  And I can't tuck in my electric blanket for fear of fire.

I eventually succeed...folding up the bedding on the wall side...but it usually takes me at least half an hour and I'm ready to get in the bed by that time..


and the white whale always wins in the end....I broke another fingernail today off below the flesh.

Ukh!  Not very many things make me queasy, but my stomach turns when I do this.

If you read yesterday's blog, you'll probably realize I did not go to Boulder today as planned.  It was 9F degrees when I got up and the winds were blowing about 38 mph, according to NOAA, and whipping all that new snow we got yesterday into a frenzy.  I had to cancel my hair appointment because I wasn't sure, even if I could convince myself to go out in those conditions to try to dig out, that I could prevail over the wind.  If NOAA is correct, we might have several more days of this. 

This was my last set of sheets and I'm down to one wash cloth, so eventually I'll be forced to gird myself and trek all of this laundry I bundled up today out to the car in the wind and through the snow drifts whether I want to or not.

Do you allow your weather to dictate your activities?  Teddee

How Wrong Was That?

When I signed off yesterday evening, the dreaded 85 mph winds had not arrived, in fact in was eerily quiet, and I went to sleep expecting them to come up in the night.  Woke up this morning, still no wind and I could tell from the nacreous light coming through the curtains that we'd had snow.  NOAA had said we might get one to two inches.  This was the view from my front door at about 8:30 a.m.:

It snowed lightly all morning, not adding much to the total, then quit, but it started again about 4 p.m and is falling steadily and straight down like rain.  NOAA says maybe 3 inches today with another .5 tonight.  I don't know when NOAA's day ends and night begins, but I'd say they are going to be wrong again.

I did determine, when I read the Denver and Boulder papers on line this morning that those high winds were wreaking havoc at lower elevations all day yesterday or at least yesterday afternoon--18,000 Xcel customers without power and trees uprooted by 93 mph winds, according to the Boulder Camera.

The denverpost.com shows Denver receiving 3.6 inches of snow and Nederland 4.5 inches.  I measured 7 inches this morning on my deck railing.  Eldora Mountain Resort is reporting 12 inches of new snow.  I heard them setting off charges this morning.  I think I counted seven or eight to head off avalanches.  On February 17, 2012, denverpost.com said "Colorado avalanche danger worst in 30 years..."  I believe six people, most expert skiers from what I can determine from the news coverage, have been killed in Colorado avalanches this winter.  This is attributed, in this same denverpost.com article, to "...abundant snowfall...piled atop a very weak foundation.  High winds have built slabs on the older layers, which have created an unstable snowpack."

When we got that really big snow back at the beginning of February, the ski area had to turn skiers away because they couldn't accommodate any more cars in the parking lot.  I expect this weekend is going to be crazy in Nederland.  I'll try not to have a reason to go down there.


Big black dog is loving it and his skillet.  I feed him when his owners come home from work and let him out and then wait 'til he's back inside to put out food for the fox.  With this much snow on the ground I'd think most of the voles and other fox food would be hard to come by.

I have to be dug out and on my way to Boulder tomorrow by 11 a.m. Have to stop at the library, drop off one book and pick up two others they are holding for me then on to a hair appointment.  I'll be advising my hair dresser that I'm going to start letting my hair grow with an eye on the budget so we'll see what she comes up with to get me through the awful stages other than a hat.  After the hair cut it's on to do laundry.  What have you got planned for your Friday?  Teddee

85 mph Winds

It has been deceptively mild so far today and right now it is almost too quiet.  It had been windy this morning, but not intolerable because the temperature is almost 40F degrees (64F degrees in Denver).  But when I pulled up the NOAA forecast at about 8:30 a.m., I stopped everything--didn't even have my coffee--and immediately set about doing my outside chores.  We are supposed to get winds as high as 70 mph later today and 85 mph tonight.  If you hadn't had access to the forecast, the western sky might have been an indication:

 
Something happening up there on the Divide.

Tomorrow the temperature is forecast to drop precipitously (NOAA always slips in that little down arrow as a clue) from a high of 20 F degrees, which is supposed to be the overnight low tonight, to a low of 9F degrees with a wind chill Thursday night of -13. 

So I bundled up and got out and filled the wood box, emptied the slop bucket, the stale dishwater, some vegetable peels and the pot (You can see I'm using binder clips to keep the lid from blowing away)...

...and this is why you need a pot de chambre:

Brrrr!

After I'd cleaned up a bit, I got my sister's hiking ski pole and made my way out to the car through the snow drifts with the water jugs, three library books I had finished and an envelope containing a letter and some clippings for my brother. 

Stopped at the post office, where I think it was actually windier than it was here and the parking lot was an ice rink.  Waited behind a man who was picking up what must have been a pair of skis and a pair of boots based on the shape of the boxes and the REI logo.  Mailed the envelope to my brother, picked up my mail, skated back out to the car, made my way to the library, returned the three books I'd read and picked up three more. 

Drove from there up Caribou Canyon to the spring, another skating rink, and filled my water jugs...

...then stopped back by the supermarket where I bought a few things including a container of light sour cream to mix with some chipotle blue cheese dip I had purchased last week that is so hot I had to mix it half and half with something in order to eat it. 

I unloaded the car, four trips using the ski pole each trip, and put the meat in the cooler in the wood house, along with a very large piece of icicle...

...even though with these temperatures I probably don't need to worry.  Some country style pork ribs I'd had stored out there for at least two weeks are like a rock.

Fed this neighborhood dog, which I am having a lot of trouble befriending.

After all these months, he still will not allow me to touch him.  I think he is having a bad tail life.


So, I've got the fire going again and am finally having my coffee with some veggie chips and diluted chipotle blue cheese dip for lunch...[Those hot peppers sure are making the coffee taste odd]...and I'm just waiting for the winds.  The western sky is getting more and more menacing:

What are you waiting for?  Teddee

Same Old, Same Old

We are still having very high winds and blowing snow.  We actually had a little new snow today, but it's long gone, blown down the canyon to Nederland.  The snow that's blowing is just being scoured from that big snow we got February 2-3.  According to various articles in the Mountain-Ear, the Nederland weekly, that snow totaled anywhere from 30 to 34 inches although it was what they call an upslope storm that came in from the plains, so perhaps they got more in Nederland than we did here in Eldora.  I only measured 22 inches after the first day and maybe another 4 the next.

The NOAA forecast for tonight is for Blowing Snow with gusts as high as 60 mph (they were as high as 65 mph today).  This is what it looked like:

I captured some ghostly images of snow devils:

 

And used the camera setting to capture movement and got the driven snow:

 

I stepped out on the deck to put out food for the fox and it was like getting hit in the side of the head with a snowball.  The winds will be 55 mph tomorrow, then 38 mph on Thursday.  I have to go to Boulder for a hair cut on Friday anyway so I may just wait it out and do laundry at the same time considering the price of gas, although I see in a February 20 denverpost.com article that Colorado is somewhat protected because "five major pipelines carrying refined gasoline end up in metro-Denver storage facilities."  According to that article, "The average retail gasoline price in Denver..[was] $3.02."  I don't recall what I paid when I filled up in Nederland last week, but it was enough that it does make one try to consolidate trips down the canyon.

Are you curtailing your driving?  Teddee