Bogieblog

Mt Washington

And because I haven't even mentioned Mt. Washington in a long time (too long), here are a couple of pictures taken from their website:

These are by Brian Yeaton:

 

The sign is a reminder to hikers that Mt. Washington has claimed numerous lives - not because of height (less than 7,000 ft tall), but because of the nasty weather. We hear about numerous rescues and several deaths per year because people are not prepared for the weather extremes presented by our mountain. The other picture is of a beautiful sunrise from the summit.

A sunset from Crawford Pass by Ed O'Malley:

 

Take this virtual tour of the summit - in which you can see the tractor that is the only transportation during winter.

I'm not brave enough to visit during the winter, but it is a place we have gone several times in the summer (it's cold even then)

And, lets not forget, WS did the Mt. Washington autoroad on his bike in 2009, during bike week in June - it was in the 30's.

 

 Hope everyone enjoyed the little break with these pictures.

Clean Up

I've done some long needed cleanup of my blog links; I've added some (Sassy and TN Triker) and deleted a bunch that have either been static for at least 6 months or have completely disappeared. If you are the owner of a blog that I de-linked, and believe that I did so in error, please let me know and I will reinstate the linkage.

Groups of 3's

 They say bad luck happens in groups of 3's. Around here, we have had a couple of groups of 3's in the last month.

1. The toaster oven died. The prevous toaster oven was not that old; perhaps 6 or 7 years and was fairly expensive. Not the biggest tragedy but it is used on a constant basis. We don't have a regular toaster so our weekend breakfast toast depends on the toaster oven. Too this time of year and in the deep of summer, we try to keep the regular oven use to a minimum so as not to overheat the house (the woodstove keeps it toasty warm in winter), so we use the toaster oven for smaller item. This time I replaced it with a fairly cheap Kenmore toaster oven.
2. Both fillings fell out of a tooth and I went in to have it repaired. After drilling around in preparation of putting a crown on it, it was discovered that the root was marginally still alive, so I needed a root canal. The dentist doing the crown does not do root canals, last week I went to see the dentist that does the RC's (first time root canal - didn't want to rush it; plus, have to take time off work). While doing the root canal, there were complications and they had to take more X-rays. When they finally were able to get the right angel (I have a small mouth an the plates don't fit so they have to be hand held), the machine froze up. After re-booting, they had to go thru the whole rigamarole again to get the picture. The 2 hour root canal turned into an almost 3 hour ordeal.
3. WS has had a tooth bothering him lately. That has always meant root canal time for him. He goes in next week. .
4. WS's sled brokeand what he thought would be a cheap fix, turns out to be a rebuild of unknown quantity. Not the hugest tragedy in the world, but if we had known that it would break, we could have saved ourselves the registration fee becuase it certainly wasn't worh it for a whole 3 hours of riding this year!
5. While vacuuming yesterday, the hadle crashed into the glass of one of the stereo cabinets, making quite a big hole. There is some special order stuff.



6. While doing the taxes, I got online to look at a bank statement from last spring. I discovered that the last time I set up a transfer to pay the mortgage, I must have clicked on "weekly" instead of "once". The mortgage has been paid 5 times in 5 weeks (plus the extra $50 I add to it each month). The checking account was barely in positive numbers, so I transfered our savings into checking (the checking account requires a high balance or it triggers a service charge and quits paying interest - which is higher than the savings account interest). The good news is that we had enough in savings to cover the glut, and the next house payment isn't due until June.

7. This happened earlier in the year, but just now becomes important. The FSA card, at the beginning of the year, is now only good for use at drugstores (previously, it could be used at healthcare providers just like a credit card). This means that we must pay the dentist (at time of service) then get reimbursed at a later date. So, I will be postponing getting the crown put into place, instead of doing it next week. Postponing it one week will make a huge difference as far as timing for our cash flow.

As far as cash flow timing goes, WS needed new tires (badly), so he had a set put on Friday. We will also have to put oil in the tank next week. The good news is, that we have jobs and we are in good health. We are also fortunate enough to be in a position where this is not catastrophic, just stressfull and extremely inconvenient.

I'm hoping the last group of 3's ends up just mildly annoying!

Coldest Day of the Year (so far)

^{It got a little chilly last night. Here is the temp reading just before 9 PM Sunday night:}

 

-8 is pretty chilly, but we have seen that on a couple of mornings already.

This morning, shortly before 6 AM, I snapped this picture:

 

-22 is pretty darn cold by anyone's standards. It may have cooled off a little more, but I left for work shortly after taking the picture. We left the dogs in today (a big shout out to Chris for letting them out during his lunch) and of course the cats didn't even think about going outside.

A neightbor up on Tubbs Hill Road (just off of our road) has a weather station that reports to Wunderground (link takes you to weather history for this location). I checked and the high today for our ridge was -4 (negative 4).

When I got to work, it was -10 in Manchester and it was at zero degrees when I went for my walk at lunchtime. I did cut the walk back to about a mile as the cheeks were getting pretty icy by then.

It won't be so cold tonight, should stay in the negative single digits and then it will warm up tomorrow so it will be warm enough to snow.

Tonight we're keeping warm by the woodstove, tomorrow we will keep warm by the shovel!

Meme-ry

I'll take the meme from Cop Car and run (type) with it. We had done this one a little over 5 years ago, and CC thought it was time to revisit it. After I finished up with my answers, I went to my original post and compared answers - comments about that are in parenthesis.

What I was doing fifty years ago:  Not 50 yet.

What I was doing twenty-five years ago:  Lived in Wichita and was grooming dogs for a living.

What I was doing twenty years ago:  WS and I had moved to NH and I was working for S Inc growing sapphire crystals.

What I was doing fifteen years ago:  Working at S Inc. and taking classes to get my Associate's Degree.

What I was doing ten years ago: Working at S inc. and taking classes towards my Bachelor's Degree.

5 years ago: Having been laid off from two different companies, I was working in Hollis.

1 year ago: Working in Hollis.

Yesterday: Shoveling snow, after working all day in Manchester.

5 snacks I enjoy:
Salsa and chips, beef jerky, cheese and crackers, chocolate covered raisins, GS Thin Mints. (looking back, only one of those is on both lists)

5 songs I know all the words to: Row, Row, Row Your Boat. Seriously, I probably can't rattle off all the words to any other songs. (OMG - almost the same exact answer).

5 Things I would do with $100 million:
Set up trusts that would allow all of our families to live in relative comfort, help out friends who are struggling (one time gifts - annonymous), trusts for gifting to charities, Establish trusts for town emergency services (fire/ambulance, police).

5 locations I would like to run away to:
A few places I would like to visit, but run away to? Don't think so.

5 bad habits I have:
Swearing, ignoring built-up dust, procrastinating, snacking, loafing (hey, I come by it honestly)

5 things I like doing:
Reading, bird watching, seeing relatives and friends, riding motorcycle, gardening

5 things I would never wear:
Men's underwear, Nose ring, evening gown, cocktail dress, anything in the color of lime green.

5 TV shows I like:
CSI (original), NCIS (original), S%& My Dad Says, Cougar Town, Sons of Anarchy (CSI is still running strong)

5 Biggest joys of the moment:
WS, our pets, our friends, our families, the woodstove

5 Favorite toys:
Motorcycle, Sig, Computer. Holy crap, other people have 5 toys? MUST GET MORE TOYS :) (I concluded I neede more toys the last time too)

Snow Fun?

With all the snow we have received lately, WS finally got to go snowmobiling. He left this morning to meet up with Jimmy, Gabe and several other guys, and headed out amongst the local trails.

Good thing they stayed local; I got a call about 3:30 to bring the truck and go get WS. Seems the sled died on him while they were riding a lake. Jimmy used his sled to tow WS's sled to a place accessible by 4-wheeled vehicle. It was easy to get the sled into WS's truck as there were 5 guys lifting it up to the bed while  WS guided the nose and skies.

WS and neighbor Chris worked on it a bit before it got dark. The general concensus is there is either a carburator problem or a fuel pump problem. Either way, WS is done riding until someone can look at it.

Poor WS, he finally gets enough snow to go sledding, works hard to make sure he has all his chores and snow clean up done so he has time to go have fun, then he breaks down.

Bummer!

Winter - It Really Means It This Time

Got to shovel after two different storms hit this week. First it was 8" of snow, followed by a couple inches of ice (the joys of trying to get into an ice-encrusted vehicle were just boundless - not). Then we had another 5-6" of snow on Friday.

Add that together with the close to 22" of snow last week and we quickly went from having an almost bare yard two weeks ago, with only 3-4" of crusted snow, to having a respsectable winter's worth of snow in the yard. A couple more storms and we will be struggling with finding someplace to put all the snow.

This coming week we will have bone chilling temps, with the night time temps heading down into the negative double digits. At those temps the wood stove cannot keep the upstairs warm, but it does take quite a bit of the load off the boiler. I'll just have to make sure that we have enough oil.

Helicopters in Flight

If you want some whirlybird armed forces goodness (along with my fave AC/DC of all time), check out this link to Utube.

Thanks to Jay G for the link.

Winter Storage Party

During the winter, WS stores his motorcycle at the dealer where he bought it (which, conveniently, is only a couple of miles from where he works). Every year, the dealership has a party for everyone that has their bike stored there and each person get to bring a guest.

We usually go, and this year was no different. Saturday, after WS went into work for several hours (I shopped for a new toaster oven since ours died the day before Christmas), we went to the party and spent a couple of hours browsing. They open up the shop portion of the building and we can talk to the different people (painters, detailers, dyno-tuners, etc.) They also have bikes there in various aspects of custom building or painting.

Anyway, while we were there, we looked at all the bikes and trikes in storage, and saw that WS's bike was in good company:

 

WS's bike is in the middle. It is kind of plain looking being between two bikes with fancy paint jobs, but that's okay. WS's bike is an Electra Glide and the two bikes that bracket it are Street Glides.

Here is a closeup of the kerchief (blue above the fairing) that he uses to protect the windshield from being scuffed by his windshield bags (3 black objects that peek just above the kerchief):

 

The dealer provides a chili cook-off between the employees (we usually get there too late for chili) as well as snacks (meats, cheeses, crackers, fruits and chips) and 2 drinks per person (soda, beer or wine). There is a "poker run", in which you have to visit each of the 5 main disciplines of the dealership (sales, parts, service, detailing and clothing) and draw a card from a deck. The object is to acquire the best hand. The person with the best hand wins a prize. This year someone drew 4 aces - which beat our pair of 5's all to heck and back.

At the end of the day, there are drawings for door prizes which range from shirt to cleaning product to $10 gift cards to the grand prize of a $500 gift card to spend at the dealer. This year I "won" a shirt from one of their painting services. Since it is a large, WS gets it by default.

We had a good time, as did everyone at the Storage Party. It was a good way to break up the winter blahs!

On Being Stuck in a Parking Lot

So in my previous post about getting stuck in the parking lot at work, Cop Car had the following (partial) comment: "A parking lot isn't a bad place to be stuck, usually, because there are usually lots of other people around."

Well, yeah, except when the city is shut down, the school that the parking lot is behind cancelled all classes, and all businesses around are shut down.

This parking lot:

 

became a desert of snow and 5 cars (one of them mine). 2 of the cars had been there since the night before, so I'm willing to bet they were from people that lived in Manchester who had to park in the street. Since there was a snow emergency declared, street parking was not allowed, so they left their car at school/work.

The reason I had to trudge the couple of blocks back to work, was because there wasn't going to be anyone coming to the rescue from anyplace other than those I work with. And, if I didn't go find them, they would be gone home and I would still be stuck until they decided to plow the parking lot again (probably in the middle of the night).

And, of course, I was stuck on the far side of the lot (I had driven most of the way toward the exit, which is way over under the bridge in this picture:

 

Those few souls, who made it in to work, have worked there long enough to get to use the company parking spots. I have to use public parking (they aren't being mean, they are allotted only so many spaces near the building). So, those people never would have known I had gotten myself into a jam if I didn't go inform them.

So, although normally a parking lot may not be a bad place to be stuck, in this instance, it wasn't the best of times or places to do so.