Bogieblog

Nap Disturber

Disturbed the kitties taking a nap on the bed when I put the laundry basket up there. Their look is of the "How dare you interupt?" variety

 

Car Miles 1100+ and Milage is Up

On January 12, 2019, I wrote that the care may make it to the 1,000 mile mark in 2 weeks. Well, due to plenty of early morning snows and icy roads, it took until this past week to make that mark. I was able to drive the car to work the first 3 days of the week and apparently hit 1k on Tuesday, but didn't notice until Wednesday.

I also wrote that I was averaging about 30 mph but expected it to go up, which it did. for a couple of days after the last post, it started getting 32-33. Then, at about 900 miles it shot up dramatically. Driving the same routes, in the same conditions and at the same speeds, I am getting 37 mpg. Picture taken on my way home on 2/6/19.

Top left is miles that have been driven since last gas stop (at around 900 miles +/-)

Top right is average mileage (it is close to what I calculate off the miles and gallons to fill)

Bottom left is real-time mpg (obviously I was stopped at the time I took the picture)

Bottom right is expected miles to go until empty (so with the miles driven and mile to go, get about 440 miles per 12-13 gallon tank)

The thing that absolutely fascinates me, and I was warned about during the test drive so I wouldn't freak out, is that the engine will shut itself down at a stop. Now, the battery has to be fully charged - it won't shut down at the stop sign at the end of my road if I have just started it for the day. It also doesn't shut down if I have been driving a while, then stop (such as the 13 miles from my road to my first stop sign in Weare). But if it senses I am in city driving, at a stoplight, it will shut down. The second I take my foot off the brake, it starts back up and is ready to go. It will also do this if I am in slow traffic on the highway and then come to a stop. Whomever wrote the algorithm that tells the car how to tell traffic conditions really put some thought into it.

Today I was driving in very windy conditions and the mileage dropped to the high 35's - but that is still better than the old Focus did and I was more interested in seeing how much the conditions would affect the car than worried about the actual mileage.

Yeah, I'm kind of geeked out :)

Cats Hate Boxes :)

Well, we all know about cats and boxes. I hardly got turned around from breaking down some boxes Friday night before Spot proved she could still get into one of them - thus the meme expression "if it fits, I sits"

Then this morning, I broke down an even smaller box and Spot was once again in that one. This time Rainey seems to be jealous.

NH Ice Runway

For Cop Car - a cool little place to put a plane down

 

A Bit of Ice

I had forgotten that I had stopped to take pictures of Grimes Field, here in my town, on my way to a meeting last Saturday. Then I read Ruth's comment on a previous post where she commented, "Yah, we tried to take the dogs to the park yesterday, but the entire area was ice under snow." I'll bet the dog owners that use the park for exercising their dogs could feel her pain:

It was just plain luck that I went by that field as it is a way to get around backed up traffic on the main road. Not any faster, in fact many times will still get stuck behind the vehicles you were trying to avoid at the light, so I rarely use that road.

Cold, Work and Bikes

We had some cold and windy conditions for about 3 days. Not too much snow at about 7" and very dry, so it was easy to snow blow. I worked from home for a while on Wednesday as the roads hadn't been touched and I wanted to snow blow the berm as soon as I could so I didn't have to fight any refreeze from road salt. I got all the driving areas taken care of that morning but didn't get to the pathways until Thursday evening as I wasn't about to fight the wind (I have enough lessons in futility, don't need to invite more) During the cold wave the lowest temp it got to was -9. Today is the first day it got above single digits for a high. Pellet stoves have been chugging away keeping it nice and warm. I changed the P43, main floor stove, to continuous running so it could battle wind infiltration more easily than if it was on the thermostat. Today I put it back on the thermostat after the sun rose and we got into the high 20's.

Work is going well and I'm getting used to having to lug a laptop and iPhone home. It was much easier at my last job where I could log in from my home computer, but the job before that I had to bring home a laptop so it's not a totally new concept. My biggest gripe is that I can't plug in my home monitor since the newer laptops don't have the regular monitor connectors and my monitor is too old to have the HDMI port. Ah, 1st world problems :)

I'm not impressed with the Apple product (phone), it doesn't seem as easy as the Androids that I have used. But I'm sure people that have to go the other way also have that complaint.

I'm sure people have seen the footage of the giant ice disk that formed on the Maine river

and NH had a smaller one on the  Soucook River.

 

I have my own "ice disk" in the back yard.

That is the bottom of the bird bath turned upside down. Weird how the wind shaped the disk and then pushed it off to one side by about 1/2".

First Chapter HOG meeting of this year is tomorrow. This year I am the Membership officer so I will be inundated by people signing their yearly waivers and paying their  yearly dues. As long as I can keep everything organized, I'll be good. I'm also helping the new LOH Officer figure out her new role. When I took it on I got zero direction or help, so I'm trying to make sure that her initial experience is much more positive.

I've stayed warm, the cats are cozy and the birds feisty, so life is good.