Saturday Events

The WVHS football team played for the AA State title today, so my husband and his friend, Jon, went on a road trip to the Tacoma Dome to watch them play. They left at 4:30am, watched the game, stopped for lunch and got home about 7pm. The Eagles played Lynden but lost 16-6. John said he had a great time anyway and was glad he could go to root for his school.
Meanwhile, mom and I went to the Spokane Symphony Holiday Pops with Ronan Tynan as the guest artist. He was part of the original Irish Tenors group and had a very interesting history. He did not start to perform until he was 33 (he was a medical doctor prior to that), had both legs amputated when he was 20 and won 18 gold medals and 14 world records in the Paralympics. In addition, he had a wonderful voice.

And then it snowed...

It's April people!!!

Heard in the Carter Home

A: Can I turn the heat up?
M: What is it at now?
A: 58 degrees
M: You may turn it up, 2 degrees
A: Sweet!

John told me that they featured this family on the NATIONAL news this week. They had made a decision to turn down their heat in their home to 68 degrees. And they were featured on the news? C'mon! Where is your adventure?? We keep our house at 60 degrees and have for pretty much our entire marriage (20 years). Reminds me of the fireside chats when President Carter was in the White House and we were in the midst of the energy crisis. He'd sit in a chair in front of the fire place urging Americans to wear a sweater and turn down the heat. I have to plan on wearing short sleeve shirts when I go visit some folks' house so I don't just melt from the heat. I don't keep my heat at 60 degrees to necessarily save energy (though that is a by-product), it's always been about cutting costs and living within our means.

Snow

Just a few funnies to get through this crazy weather!

Snow - Record in Spokane

I figure when Spokane makes the MSN.com page with a title "Cities Dig Out from Record Snow" that it really must be pretty bad here. Ok, I really did not need to be told. The 59.7 inches that we got in December was enough for me! We broke the previous record of 56.9 inches in one month set in January 1950. Of course, we also broke the record with the most snowfall in a 24 hour period earlier this month (new record set 12/17-18 with 19.4 inches in a 24 hour period absolutely blew away the old record of 13 inches set 1/6-1/7 in 1950).
These pictures were taken after some of the snow had melted, but I think you get the idea? The helping-neighbors has been very evident this season. We need to send out a shout to Jon Gordon who helped with a snow blower. Thanks!! And then the neatest thing happened last Saturday. I was getting my mail (standing on the berm leaning DOWN to get into my mailbox) when this big Caterpillar tractor with a plow on the front drove down the street. It was Josh Works. He offered to dig us out of our driveway. He went down our 150 foot driveway and cleared it off in about 10 minutes. What a life saver! Of course it has snowed since (another 8.3 inches on Monday) and it is snowing now. That's the part that is frustrating. You can hardly keep up! (and you cannot find or buy a shovel or snow blower in this town). But I am quite thankful for all those who have helped us out this season!

Snow - part 2

Some snOw, SNoW, sNOw, SnoW, SNOW pictures! (please sing the "Snow" song from "White Christmas" right here...)

This picture shows how high the snow is in comparison to our chain link fence. Note that this area does not get any extra snow coming off the roof or being a spot that we throw the snow when shoveling, so this is pretty much the snow accumulation on the ground as of this morning. The next picture is Audrey changing the tires on my car. I had all-weather, but decided that the studs might be better now. Thanks Audrey! And thanks John! (he was there teaching but did not make this photo).

Snow!

The Spokane area had a record snowfall in a 24 hour period. I believe it was 24+ inches, depending on exactly where you were located. Here is a picture of the amount of snow that accumulated just overnight on my car. This was about 6:30am and it continued to snow the entire day. Even though the 24+ inches were the record for the 24-hr period, there already was snow on the ground too, so moving all that snow was difficult for the plows to keep up with. We got up on Thursday and found out that the schools were closed, so that meant John and Audrey had the day off. But since I had never had a snow day, I headed off to work. None of the roads I went on were plowed and my little car is very low to the ground when there are 24 inches of snow. My poor car had to be a snow plow itself. It was one of those days when you just keep driving and do not stop for fear of never being able to go again. Well, I got to work and then was told that I could head on home and work remotely. Thanks bosses!! THREE times I got stuck on the way home and had to have someone push me - this was not stuck in the snow bank stuff, but stuck while driving along the regular roadway! WOW!

PS - they closed all the malls in this area by 1pm Thursday. We NEVER close malls here!

Vote

WaMu

Kind of nerve wracking week in the financial world. Much of the woes on Wall Street were self-inflicted by a combination of greed and stupidity. None-the-less, now I have a new bank as of Friday morning. Kind of interesting to hear the news this morning stating that the government had seized the assets of Washington Mutual in the largest bank failure in US history and that JP Morgan Chase had purchased them. Just very interesting.

Olympics 2008

Though we did not catch many events during the August 6-24th Summer Olympics, it seemed every time we had the TV on, we caught Michael Phelps winning a gold medal. I guess when someone earns 8 in one Olympics, we were bound to see a few (without even trying)!