Bogieblog

Color Me Surprised

Your Linguistic Profile::

65% General American English

15% Dixie

10% Yankee

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Considering I spent 20+ years in Kansas (Midwest) and have been in New Hampshire (Yankee) for 19 years, one would think that I would have more than 0% Midwestern and 10% Yankee speech!

Thanks to Deb, over at Accidental Verbosity for pointing out this quiz.

Spoilers below:

CoTV

The Carnival of the Vanities is up over at Jay and Deb's place. Go take a look, there is usually something for everyone. I'm not likely to be writing too much stuff for the next several days since I picked up another pet-sitting customer for the weekend (brings the customers to 3, visits to 6, and time alloted to 3 hours - that certainly takes up my blogging time). The customer wanted me to continue pet-sitting thu part of next week, but I am at my limit of customers I can take care of during work days.

No Arks Needed Yet

When all was said and done, we got just under 8" of rain at the Bogie household. I had to go thru Concord,  20 miles out of my way, to get to work. I had to do the same coming home last night. The return trip was the worst as I-293, next to the Merrimack River in Manchester, was down to 1 lane.

The road is once again flooded at the High Tide Restaurant, but it is passable. Picture from flood of 2005 - looked the same last night as I was passing by.

The Edwater Farm stand is now in the river (still standing though). There was a mudslide at the other Hillsboro exit (off the bypass), but they were cleaning it up and it was also passable. I am unsure if I will be able to get to work by my usual route. I will try it, but I may hvat to detour around New Boston. If so, I will have to backtrack quite a ways as I know that Goffstown is closed except to Emergency vehicles (and has been closed since Sunday - they were really hit hard).

Addison Road in Goffstown - a lot of roads in that area look like that, or worse.

Update to Flooding

It started raining again a couple of hours ago. We are up to 6 1/2" of rain since Friday night.

Here is an update to the flooding in NH and Mass - released 1 hour ago:

It's a very serious situation," said New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, adding that forecasters were predicting 12 to 15 inches of rain by the end of the storm in parts of southern New Hampshire. "It continues to change and the situation continues to worsen." [emphasis mine - Bogie]

The Contoocook river has once again swamped the High Tide restaurant. The Edgewater Farm stand is at the edge of the River too. I expect that in the morning I will have to go the long way around to get to Henniker as the lower part of Main Street will probably be flooded. It remains to be seen if I can actually get to work.

 

Rush Road in Henniker 5-14-06 Courtesy WMUR.com

1st Floods of 2006

I can finally get on the Internet - this morning it was a no-go. Probably something to do with the weather.

Monday it started raining/drizzling. It continued with the cold (high was 55 one day - most days it has been in the 40's), dark, damp and drizzly weather all week. Even though it drizzled the whole time, we only ended up with about 1/2 inch of moisture. We really needed more as once again NH had wildfires that weekend (3rd time this spring) - one of them was in Deering.

So, the weather Gods deciding to get a good laugh, sent a rain-making system, and stalled it over the region. Since Friday evening, when I emptied the rain gauge, we have gotten 5 3/4" rain. Actually, until the last 2", the ground was soaking it up. It has just been since late this morning that we have had puddling on the roads, and ditches running fast and furious (in our little portion of NH anyway - other parts were flooded yesterday).

Right now, we are getting a break; it has drizzled for the last couple of hours, but nothing more. However, we are under a flood watch until Monday night (which originally was only for Saturday, then extended to Sunday, and now extended again). Fear not though, the heavy rain is supposed to start up again a little later. Then, we are supposed to have rain showers all week.

While I was writing this, I checked the newpaper sites for the previous link and found that Gov. Lynch has declared a state of emergency.

-- "Significant and serious" flooding is expected on the Merrimack River. It is expected to flood this morning and tomorrow from Goffstown and Manchester through Litchfield, Merrimack and Nashua into Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill, Mass. By 8 a.m. Monday, the river is likely to be nine feet over flood stage in Goffs Falls.

-- "Major" flooding is predicted on the Souhegan River in Merrimack, which is likely to be five feet over flood stage by tomorrow morning.

-- The Piscataquog River in Weare, New Boston and Goffstown is likely to see "major" flooding, rising five feet above flood stage by 2 a.m. Monday.

-- The Warner River at Davisville is flooded and likely to rise almost three feet over flood stage after midnight.

-- The Saco River in Conway is expected to reach flood stage this afternoon, peaking almost three feet higher tomorrow morning.

-- The Baker River in Rumney is expected to rise more than a foot above flood stage this morning, then recede.

-- Minor flooding is expected in Methuen and Lawrence, Mass., on the Spicket River, which flows south from Salem, N.H.

-- Minor flooding is predicted in West Claremont on the Sugar River and along the Connecticut in West Lebanon

Most of the state, except the northernmost counties are experiencing flooding. Some towns have already closed schools for tomorrow because of washed out roads. I'll see how much the Contoocook River has risen when I go take care of the cat in Henniker a couple of hours from now.

This seems to be a continuation of last fall when we had two different floods.

At least I don't have to water the outdoor plants anymore!

MD Greetings

Happy Mother's Day to Cop Car!

A Step Back in Time

Let us step back in time a few years to a time shortly after WS and I had moved to New Hampshire. We had been renting apartments, but hadn’t found anywhere that we could keep the dogs. BIL and his wife were kind enough to keep them for us, but we needed to do something.

We went house and/or land hunting. We looked at a 30 acre parcel that we thought could afford. Unfortunately, we couldn’t afford the $15,000 that it would have taken to bring electricity to the land. And that was only IF we could get a deeded right-of-way from a neighbor for a driveway (the parcel was land-locked). We looked at a trailer on 10 acres of land. It didn’t give us the warm fuzzies when they said they had never had the septic tank pumped (after 20+ years). The trailer was old, short and a singlewide; very cramped. On top of that, the driveway was almost straight up and down. It would be almost impossible to get out in the winter, even with 4WD. Getting in would be no problem – except, of course, that stopping part.

Then WS heard from a co-worker, of a place being sold cheap (our price) and that had a couple of acres of land. We went to look and immediately understood the cheapness – it was a shell of a house with only framing and subflooring installed. The basement floor wasn’t even poured and the leach field was washed out. The bonuses were that the Audubon Society held land on two sides of the property, it was in a small, rural town, and it was possibly something we could actually afford.

WS was convinced (as was his best buddy at the time) that we could do the work to make it a home, so we went to the bank. The bank would not finance the house, even under a construction loan because it didn’t have enough work completed.

We went back to the sellers with an offer of a down payment along with renting it to us for 4 months so we had time to get enough work done to satisfy the bank. The sellers took a chance on us and agreed to the proposal. We paid 10% interest of the asking price as monthly rental (the interest rate was reasonable for that time period).

Ch-ch-changes

Yesterday I got several things done. The green beans were transplanted into the garden. and perennial sweet peas were transplanted next to the oil tank so they can climb the tank's shelter.

WS dug up a Rhododendron that hasn't been happy. I dug a hole elsewhere and plopped it in (actually WS plopped it in as the darn thing was too heavy for me to lift - drag yes, but not lift over the stone walls). Then I dug a hole next to it and planted a Ruby Spice Summersweet in it. I bought the Summersweet last fall at a 75% off sale, but didn't have time to plant it, so it spent all winter in its pot.

I took care of my pet-sitting duties. I made the momentous decision to have all the fruit trees taken down; WS will do that after they are done blooming.

The fruit trees have been there about 15 years. Most of them have a useful life of 20-25 years. All of them have heavy scarring and some of them have split trunks (we were already going to take out the plum and pear tress for that reason). I figured that if others were going to have to come down in the next 5 years or so, I should just take them all down so I can do the landscaping (terracing) properly. Since I don't (and won't) spray the trees, we never get any useful fruit out of them anyway.

I will replace them (eventually) with flowering trees and bushes - some of which will produce berries for birds. This will be an extended project - taking at least a couple of years if not longer.

We just can't leave well enough alone, can we?

Critter Cam

Here is another Eagle Cam. This is one I can actually access without any problem. They report intermittent problem with the feed, but when I clicked on it, I got to see nestlings.

Pretty cool!

Thanks to ToddSpace for the link.

3 For 1

Went for my annual checkup yesterday. Actually it was more like a 15 month checkup, but close enough. So far, so good, BP was 112/60 and everything else looked ok. I still have to go for my annual boob-smashing and blood tests before the final determination as to whether I'm good for another year or they should just shoot me now.

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Yesterday, while I was repotting some vegetable seedlings (another month before the little deeries can be planted in the ground), I saw the first hummingbird of the season. I had put out a feeder last weekend just in case we had some early arrivals (late may is more usual for our area), and this guy was happy that I had thought of him. I put another feeder out front so he could eat in peace (I was going to be on the deck, right next to the original feeder, for quite a while). I just have to make sure to bring the feeders in on the nights we are supposed to get a freeze.

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We've been having wacky weather. it was in the 60's over the weekend, then it was in the 40's Monday -Wednesday (at least we got rain, which we desperately needed), then it was in the high 70's on Thursday. Yesterday, while I was in Manchester picking up my truck, the thermometer reached 80. I don't know what temp we actually got to at home - but it was pretty warm there for a while.

Then we got a cooling breeze, which was nice as WS and I were raking up all the straw, grass clippings and leaves from the half of the garden I am using this year. WS then rototilled that area, so I can get the green beens transplated, plant carrots and other cool weather crops today.