Ice storm '09 pics

[Finally got around to posting pics of the ice storm... what, almost a month later? : ) ]

So there was snow and ice, and before it could melt off there was more snow and ice. It wasn't that much -- I think we only got three to five inches total around here -- but the weight of it all accumulated on the smaller twigs at the end of limbs and around 1:30 in the morning on Jan. 28th we heard a few big breaks and the power went off. The power stayed off for seven days, and we had record low temperatures in those seven days. And it was cold.



This is what I woke to in my front yard on Wednesday. We have two beautiful flower producing trees out front and now they just look sad. This picture doesn't do it justice. You couldn't walk anywhere without having to step over branches. See that big clump by the front door? That wasn't there when Tracie walked out the first time. She stepped outside on the front porch, came back in, said it was bad, then BOOM! and the whole front porch was covered. She missed it coming down on her head by five seconds, at most.



The dog loved it, though.



Everything was covered in snow and ice. This is our back deck. As you can see, most of our yard is covered in trees. We thought it was charming. Don't tell the neighbors, but I think it was the trees in our yard that knocked all the power out in the neighborhood. Oops.



It was cold. I'm not that chubby. That's five layers of clothes. We spent most of the time under a mountain of clothes and blankets, but I get antsy if I'm idle too long, something about the amount of coffee I drink.



Exactly one day was halfway decent. The temperature got up to the upper '50s, so we spent the day out on the deck soaking up the sun, just relaxing. This actually made the whole experience worthwhile. I have a pretty busy life and forget to take the time every now and then to just... relax. When forced into that situation, it doesn't escape my notice that it's different, and special. I grilled up some of the meat from the freezer before it went bad and just enjoyed nature for a few hours, at a time when any sane person would be bemoaning it. The sun really does replenish the soul.



See? That's a Jeremy squinting in the sun, but at peace with everything.



The dog loved it.



And even the cats were happy for awhile (of course the particular cat pictured here is the most spoiled cat in the entire world anyway).

Most of the days weren't this nice, though, and it was a bit of a struggle. It's not like I'm a landscaper who makes his money off grinding falling limbs. I'm a techie who sorta needs power to get things done. So I spend a lot of time running around borrowing wi-fi connections from coffee shops, the parking lots of hotels, and the library.

Now that's actually interesting, and worthy of comment. I was an early adopter of wi-fi and bought one of the first laptops to come equipped with a wi-fi antenna. I set up my house with a wireless router, had fun moving from room to room without breaking connection, and loved the freedom it gave to work anywhere around the house. The first day I got it, I went wardriving, looking for open connections around the neighborhood. Eventually, though, it lost its novelty and I stopped carrying my laptop with me everywhere I go. When I'm out, the last thing I want to do is work, so I don't spend much time surfing the web when I'm away from the home or office. I'm probably one of the few who don't bother getting a data package for his mobile phone. I don't really need it.

So anyway, forced to rely on wi-fi after the ice storm, rather than recreationally wardriving out of curiosity, I'm amazed at how far the adoption has come in just a few years. I mean, it used to be that you had to creepily park out in front of people's homes or offices, or maybe hop a few fences to get a decent connection. Nowadays we're permeated with Internet signals. They're everywhere. If you can't find a public, open, and free connection today, you really are off the map. I guess it's always been that invisible radio signals were passing through us carrying the voices of talk show hosts and Elvis, but it's weird to think that spam, porn, and this guy are now out there microwaving the cells in our brain. *shivers*

Back to the ice storm...

We shouldn't bitch. Across the state of Kentucky, at least a half a million homes were without power and the storm is blamed for at least 36 deaths. We had some resources at our disposal, and I was like a friggin' Boy Scout as a kid and went camping all the time in winter, so we didn't do too bad.

Every day the news was talking about how many houses had their power turned back on that day. It was a lot, but I knew we were towards the bottom of the list. Towards the end, you could sort of guess when they would have yours back on (there weren't many left). When we figured there was only a day or two without power left, we sprung for a hotel room with a hot tub in it.



Why the hot tub in the room? Well, 'cause that's how we roll.

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After the power came back on, things pretty much went back to normal, but we had a lot more debris in our yard than most of my neighbors. I didn't want to waste the opportunity, so last weekend we had a big bonfire, a couple of beers, and some marshmallows to toast it all.



My dad came down for our little party. He's drunk.



It was fun. I guess I could of dragged all this stuff out to the side of the road and someone would have picked it up eventually, but what better way to celebrate ice than with fire?

Viral video, passing along

Posted per request, mostly out of respect for the sincerity of the request. For the record, I support the police and have several friends who are police officers, though of course I'm not always on the right side of the whole lawful citizen thing. I don't, however, support the shooting of an unarmed man for any reason. Abuse of the position happens, probably often. The account of the incident published in the Herald News, from the sole perspective of the officer who shot the man in the back, twice, sounds dubious at best. To me it sounds like convenient bull shit to say he reached for the officer's gun. But regardless of what actually happened, it is out of sincerity for the request that I pass this along.