“Lifestyle Adjustments”

As I look out my kitchen window, watching the huge Charlie Brown snowflakes fall – the snow getting deeper and deeper – I ponder… “Should I go out and shovel or not?” 

I don’t like doing chores more often than I have to.  Pulling out the snow blower and clearing the driveway seems really silly when the wind is still blowing and the snow is still coming down.  I’d rather just wait until it stops and then clean it all up when it’s done. 

Still… it’s getting pretty deep.

I don’t have to go anywhere any more today.

But what if something comes up and I do have to go out?

Well, I do have 4-wheel drive…

Look – the snowplow just went by.  Again.

~sigh~

And I guess they aren’t called New Year’s Resolutions anymore – they are now New Year’s Lifestyle Adjustments 

I never did New Year’s Resolutions.  If I was asked, my standard answer was that I was going to stop eating liver and burnt toast.  This year I actually wrote out a list of things that I want to change and/or accomplish this year.  I wasn’t planning on the list – it just happened.

I’m not ready to share my list here – there are a few personal things I’d like to tackle… but I’ll be sure to share any milestones I conquer during the year.

Snowliage

Plans had already been made a month-and-a-half ago to go down to Allegany State Park and spend the day enjoying the fall foliage… Little did we know we would also be enjoying the first snow of the season! Yeah – October 17th and we are playing in the snow already.

Snow + foliage = Snowliage

The whole park wasn’t covered in snow, but the parts that were, *really* were 🙂 We embraced the cold and snow and had a really fun time.

And speaking of snow… The New York State Golden Snowball Contest blog is open for business for the 2009-2010 season! Will Buffalo be able to beat Syracuse and win the trophy this year? I’m sure there are a ton of people who want Buffalo to win and a ton more that want Buffalo to come in last place 🙂

The further south we drove, the more the tree branches were bent over from the weight of the snow – visions of Buffalo’s October Storm flashed before my eyes…

No one shoveled yet 🙂

My sister demonstrating the Perfect Snowball

We still got to see a lot of nice fall colors…

There are more pictures on my Flickr, if anyone is interested…

Snow!

OK – it’s April 6th. Yesterday it was 50 degrees outside. I was outside working in my yard, cleaning up my garden. I was (comfortably) changing the oil in my truck. Life was good.

Right now it’s 31 degrees out (but feels like 13 degrees – yipee.) and it’s snowing.

Um, Yeah.

I can’t think of a good segue here, but does anyone find those glittery pictures you always get in forwarded emails as annoying as I do? I think a lot of people must find them cute, because I seem to see and get a lot of them. I don’t.

That being said, I found out that glitter text is fun to make 🙂

So in honor of the weather and glitter things that I don’t like:

Glitter Text Generator

Here’s the Glitter Text generator, in case anyone wants to play.

This and That

Yesterday the temperature reached 54 degrees.
This is what I woke up to this morning:

The season premier of Survivor was tonight. I think it’s going to be a good season. Spencer has me intrigued. He’s 19 years old. This is Survivor’s 18th season (wow!). He’s a fanatic and has known Survivor practically his whole life. Let’s see if he can play the game smart. I think it would be great to see the youngest player ever win the season.

The Amazing Race starts Sunday. I love that show!

My sister called me.

After I said ‘Hello’, the first thing she said was ‘Guess who’s getting a rooster????!!!!’.

‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.

‘Guess who’s getting a rooster???!!!!’ she said again.

‘I give up, who?’ I replied.

‘YOU!!!!‘ she exclaimed.

Now, I’ve been planning on getting chickens again this spring (and try to keep them safer). I was planning on making sure that I only get hens this time to prevent last year’s surprise when one on my hens went missing only to reappear weeks later with ten little babies.

Evidently two of the four babies I gave my sister turned out to be roosters. Along with Mr. Rooster, three roosters are too many for her to have, sooooooooo guess who’s getting a rooster?

Max

The maximum amount of snow I can allow to accumulate in my driveway before my 4-wheel drive Dakota gets stuck: 20 inches.

Happy Winter

Tomorrow is the first day of winter. Yesterday we got our first real snow of the season. Buffalo broke the snowfall record from 1985, but it wasn’t so much the snow that was bad – it was the wind. Visibility was very poor most of the day. It was slow driving home from work – which took even longer as I had to take a roundabout route because of an accident.

I really don’t mind bad weather once I’m home and don’t have to go anywhere. I didn’t even mind clearing out the nine inches of snow from the driveway today. But it’s weather like we had yesterday that I don’t miss driving a truck for a living 🙂 Coming home from visiting tonight, the Christmas lights on all the houses looked so much prettier with the snow around.

We had a day of quiet today. Tomorrow we’re supposed to get another storm.

I found out today that I may have to get flood insurance. Ugh. Flood insurance is notoriously expensive, and something that I really don’t need on my plate right now. Evidently FEMA is redoing the flood plain maps in our area, and where I live may be affected. I tried to find out for sure, but the links on the FEMA webpage we were given don’t work. I’m going to have to try to get down to the town hall and look at the map they have there. I’m going to keep my fingers crossed, but I’m bracing myself for the worst. Stupid FEMA.

Does anyone know if Robert Forster – the actor who plays Arthur Petrelli on Heroes is the same guy who does the voice for the latest Hyundai commercial? I can almost swear it is, but can’t be 100% positive. I wish IMDb included commercials with the actors’/actresses’ credits.

Channel 4

I’m down to my last five tomatoes. I picked them right before I left for Philadelphia. While I was away we had a really hard frost, and I wasn’t able to cover the plants so they all died. All I have left now is five tomatoes’ worth of vBLT’s. ~sigh~ Maybe the price of tomatoes will come down at the supermarket. Maybe they would even taste good. Probably not. I already can’t wait for fresh tomatoes next year 🙂

The weather guys are saying that we have a chance of a couple feet of snow early next week. I guess it’s a small window of ‘opportunity’, but it’s there. There are still a lot of leaves on the trees, so here’s hoping we don’t have another event of October Storm infamy…

Speaking of snow, the New York State Golden Snowball Award site is back into action for the season 🙂

I think that LIN Television really blew it when they tried to bully Time Warner. The longer I don’t have Channel 4, the more I don’t miss it. The shows they air that I like (The Amazing Race, Survivor, etc.) I can see either on the Canadian channels or online. Plus, while Channel 4 and 23 are off the air, I get free HBO from TW. Channel 4 can stay off the air as long as it likes!

I am curious to see how this is all going to get resolved. LIN Television is probably going to end up begging TW to take them back. Wouldn’t it be ironic if it ended up costing them money, instead of them making the extra they wanted in the first place?

What Storm?

This past week at work was very frustrating. Here it is Sunday night, and I’m still not de-stressed (un-stressed?) yet. I am really not looking forward to going in tomorrow morning. I was hoping that the big snow storm we were supposed to get would have given me another day of reprieve so I could further de-stress (non-stress?)… but it doesn’t look like I’ll be that lucky.

The way the news was hyping up this storm we were supposed to get today, I thought that I was going to be spending my day keeping my house from getting buried. The Weather Channel was calling it a “Monster Storm Watch”. Puh-leeze. I may have gotten seven inches of snow. Big deal. It was windy tho’. I was happy to get back in the house after clearing the driveway. Which begs the question: Why does the snowplow guy wait to come down the street just after you get done with the driveway and you’re back in the house? You think that is a rhetorical question that someone made up to be funny. Well it’s not made up and it’s not funny. And I’m not cleaning it up until tomorrow. So there.

Because I was planning on being snowed in today, I was ready to stay put. I enjoyed a pretty relaxing day, notwithstanding the thought of work nagging the back of my brain. I didn’t do some of the things that I should have, but I still got some good stuff done.

I saw some great news today: The new season of Jericho is coming out February 12th. Wahoo!!! It’s still a long way off, but at least I know it’s coming. I can’t wait.

I’m watching the Survivor finale now. The one thing I don’t like about the finale shows is the whole “let’s-honor-the-past-players” thing. That is one of the most boring parts of the whole season. I also didn’t care for some of the new effects they tried this season either – especially that whole stop-motion thing they were using during some of the competitions. Thank goodness they didn’t over-do it with that stuff.

As for the end – I’m rooting for Todd, but I wouldn’t be sad if Amanda won. I think they both played good, but I think that Todd worked harder at it. I can’t believe that Courtney made it to the final four. Being so skinny, I thought that she would have withered away weeks ago. I can’t get over how anorexic she looks. Yuk.

I’ve also noticed lately that CBS likes to use OK Go when promoting new shows. I love OK Go. Good choice CBS 😀

Puttering around the house today, I was thinking about the subject of meeting new people. Over the past month or so, I’ve had the opportunity to meet quite a few new people. I’ve also had the chance to introduce people to each other. I find it very interesting to see how differently people engage when meeting new people. Out of all the new people I’ve met lately, I’ve only observed one person that comes close to the way I react when meeting someone new. It kind of makes me wonder if my approach isn’t right. But then again maybe not – I’ve gotten to know some pretty amazing people.

Mouse

Good news! I figured out my mouse problem. Thank goodness. I think that the receiver was too close to other electronic junk and that’s why it was all wonky. After moving it, my mouse is back to its regular self. I really didn’t want to have to use a mouse pad. Yay 🙂

Buffalo has already dropped to third place in the New York State Golden Snowball Award Contest. Depending on how you look at it, this could be a good thing or a bad thing. Personally, I’m OK with that for now. I wouldn’t mind hanging back until we get closer to Christmas. I’d like to see snow on Christmas day and then we can get as much snow as it takes to win the contest afterwards. We don’t have to win by an extra twenty feet… just an inch or two over the second place city would be just fine with me. I’m guessing most people don’t, but I would really like to see Buffalo win for once. We already have the reputation. We may as well have a trophy to go along with it.

Buffalo Pundit posted about Complaints Choirs. I found this idea a lot of fun and something that everyone could relate to. Here’s the trailer the Chicago group made. If you look at the related videos on the page, you can see a whole bunch of videos other cities have made. All the ones I watched were pretty entertaining. I can’t sing worth a darn, but I’ll bet that I could come up with a lot of ideas for a song. Especially about stupid drivers.

I have a crazy week ahead of me. The action is going to be pretty much non-stop until Sunday. But it should be all good (I hope). Saturday is going to be kind of a stressful day for me, but I think the toughest part this week is having to be at work two hours earlier than normal twice this week. It’s good in that we’ll get home earlier. However, I think that it’s going to feel like we’re going to lose a lot more than two hours sleep. Kind of like changing back to Standard Time.

Golden Snowball

It looks like it’s a pretty sure thing that we will be getting some snow this week. I was hoping to get my lawn cut one last time before the cold weather settled in for good. I guess it will just have to wait for spring 🙂 Speaking of snow, The New York State Golden Snowball Award Contest web site is up and running again for the new winter season. After the October Surprise last year, I thought we would have at least been in the top two, but no such luck. It will be fun to see how Buffalo does this year. I mean, if we’re going to get the snow anyway, we may as well have fun with it, right? 🙂

I can’t believe what a hard time I am having tonight…. I have so much to say, but can’t come up with anything to write. Is this what it is like to have writer’s block? If it is… Ugh.