Since my last post we've had another bout of deep-below-zero weather ( 30 F below) and about two feet of new snow. Between all that and a particularly vicious cold I'm sharing with Suzie I've been a might distracted. Add to all that fun a failed hard drive on the computer I use primarily for writing -- it's been a rather difficult period in which to keep one's muse employed.
About that cold and snow. A neighbor related to us that this is by far the hardest winter she's seen since she and her family moved to Ryan Park in 1983. I can well believe it. Usually February is the month when we look about and allow ourselves to think that this particular winter isn't so bad. In a normal year, our home is surrounded by paths we cut through the snow, and the two driveways we maintain have two to three foot berms where the snow gets thrown by my invaluable Honda snow thrower (we call it Wall-e). This year the paths have become deep trenches --canyons actually -- over which Wall-e struggles to eject the aforementioned new accumulations of snow. The road which serves our property (as well as four other homes that see frequent visitation in winter) is a narrow and deep near-tunnel through which only one vehicle at a time can pass. It is kept clear for us and our neighbors by two stout-hearted men each driving their own tractors with industrial-strength snow throwers affixed to rear drive ports. These fine men drive their machines backward over all the miles of road that must be cleared in Ryan Park. We do pay them, but they don't ask much. In return they make it possible for us to live here without spending upwards of $40K for our own snow-clearing machines and then doing all that work on our own. They have been hard at work this year in brutal conditions. All of this is more or less what they and we take in stride in the normal winters. This year there is a whole lot more of winter than we've had in the past. We're managing. Maybe we'll even manage to keep our sanity until spring finally appears -- in late May.
As for that hard-drive issue. I am a loyal Linux user. I taught the basics of that operating system and it's implementation on PC's for over four years. In that time I became something of an evangelist for open source software and try to use it whenever possible (which is most of the time). One of the beauties of Linux, in particular the Ubuntu version of that OS, is it's ability to run very nicely and flexibly on older equipment. Old gear is what we have up here. It's what works and it's what I can mostly repair if things go awry in a blizzard. But. Old hard drives are what they are and I lost one two days ago. It resides on an old ATX-standard PC that I can -- or could -- dual boot into either Windows XP or Linux. Now it's an XP machine only-- or at least for now. I can live with Window$ for a while. But pulling the XP system out of mothballs and getting it current again took me the better part of two days. Another hit to the writing life.
All is well for now; a reasonably long (a week or so?) break in the winter seems on the way. NOAA is confident (whatever that means) that a high-pressure ridge is settling in over the western U.S. that will give us sunny days and above normal temperatures into next week. Forty-degree highs! That should help pack and reduce this snow somewhat which is important as we usually get our deepest and heaviest snows in March and April. Last year we received over seven feet between the 20th of March and the first week in May. If we don't get some melting before all that, well, we won't have windows to see out of on our ground floor. That's not fun. Here's to some melting!
Hopefully the weather will warm, the computers won't die, and I'll have time for some more enlightened writing.
More to follow.
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