Seems like I should have titled this one: Same stuff…different day. Perhaps I will just save that one for another entry in which little has changed since I last wrote. Unfortunately my fun little surgical sites gave me more problems this week. I won’t get into the gory details, just suffice to say I made 2 more trips to the hospital and had to wake poor Nora up in the middle of the night to help me a few times. It does seem like things are finally getting better in the past 24-36 hours, but I was put under some pretty strong physical restrictions this week, so I did not do a lot of exciting things and thus do not have a lot of exciting things to share.
Except for the past 24-36 hours, the weather was rather unremarkable. I will get to the past 24-36 hours in a bit, but most of the week was spent in pretty typical April weather. Some sun, some clouds, some rain and even a bit of snow. Basically, the weather did not exactly support much outdoor activity this week, which is pretty typical for April. Had my health allowed, I would have spent a lot of time in the shop this past week. Perhaps this coming week.
As mentioned, we did have a mix of weather, including rain that changed to snow on Thursday. It never really accumulated much at our place, but just down the road a few miles, a few inches fell. Here is a shot of things on Thursday afternoon. I was unable to do any of the loading of the wood into the wood boiler for the second half of this week. So on Thursday, I asked my brother if he could come over and help, which he was happy to do. We somewhat rewarded him with a meal of leftovers from the night before.
Gracie then asked him if he wanted to play a game. I can’t remember if Jim asked Gracie what the game was or not, but in either case, it involved Gracie going upstairs with her Nerf bow and arrow and uncle Jim being the target. A great sport he was, as he walked back and forth, holding the cover to a plastic storage bin and allowed Gracie to shoot Nerf arrows at him. She is actually a pretty good shot and was able to hit the plastic cover several times.
The snow kept up for a bit during the night on Thursday and with the sun setting, it did accumulate a bit more. By Friday morning, most of the ground was covered. It did not stay covered for too long, as the sun came out around mid-morning and we even hit 50 degrees for a daytime high. Saturday was even nicer, with sunshine all day and a high temp just shy of 65. That did not last too long, as just as the sun was setting, a cold front came through and dropped the temps around 20 degrees. Then some rains hit and the temps continued to drop, with the rain changing to snow early this morning. By daybreak, a solid 3″ had accumulated on everything and put us right back into looking like a winter wonderland. It has been slowly melting, but much of the woods are still coated in white.
The snows will fully melt, as temps are suppose to rise into the low 50’s. However, it looks like more is on its way for later this week. As things stand right now, it looks to be enough to make everything white again. If the low tracks just a bit more to the east, it could be more than just enough to whiten things up, but probably not enough to consider playing in. Might even be some more snow up this way early next week. Old Mother Nature sure does like to try the patience of all the poor folks that live up here. A 10-14 day thaw at the end of Jan and again Feb and now snows in late April and early May. No wonder there are so many bars and churches up here!
Yesterday evening the family was sitting in the living room watching some TV. A dog show came on, so we decided to watch it. Does anyone else have a dog that will watch TV? Our sweet Millie will show some interest in most programming, but when a show about dogs comes on, she is WAY into it! Her tail wags and her head will even move to follow the action. It just cracks me up. I have never had, or known, a dog that got into watching TV. Huck will casually watch such dog shows, but is much more content to just lay on the couch and be the pillow for his sister.
So that just about does it for this one. The weather kept Eagle 1 grounded for most of the week. Even yesterday when we had the sunshine and temps in the 60’s, the winds were blowing 20-30 mph. I do have a few ideas I want to do with the drone, so keep checking back!
Good night from the Keweenaw..
–JD
