Oops, I almost forgot to post today

We got about a foot of snow over the past 24 hours and I've been busy shoveling and watching it fall.  Everything here at Monkey Central is fine, we had plenty of food and drink and our power didn't go out, so don't worry about us.

Just sit back and enjoy this photo of the lovely Nathalie Emmanuel.  I know I will.

Shitty day

We had another blast of winter weather, and yes, we get winter weather in the mountains of Tennessee. We got a couple inches of snow on top of the snow we got the other day which hadn't melted yet because it's been colder than Christian charity here lately. Here's a shot I took while driving earlier today:
And here's another I took of the fog and snow on the mountains:
I love how the fog masks the top of the mountains so that it looks like they go onward and upward forever.

Sparky had the day off due to the weather so we planned a nice quiet day at home, she decided to bake various breads and I was going go scan some stuff, read some of the graphic novels I got at my local library yesterday, and just chill. However things didn't turn out like I had planned.

As I was dressing after my shower Sparky said that the toilet down on the main floor of our house was flooding. I ran down to see that it was indeed flooding. It was spewing brown water that was mixed with shit, toilet paper, and gawd knows what else. I tried plunging it to dislodge any blockage but the plumbing gods laughed at me and it spewed on and off for another hour before I finally called our plumber. He got to our place, while the snow was falling faster than Paris Hilton can spread an STD to a room full of drunken frat boys, a half hour later and he pulled the toilet, snaked the drain out to the street, and fixed the problem. It was the best $195 we ever spent.

Then we were left with the clean up. Not only had nasty shitty germy water poured onto the bathroom floor, it also got into our kitchen floor, the basement bathroom, and we then tracked all over our house while we ran around like chickens with our heads cut off. So once the plumber was finished, paid, and gone, I went and bought some Pine Sol and sanitary wipes. We cleaned the floors, the walls, the doorknobs, and anything else we could think of that the bad nasty no good water may have touched. The toilet crisis began at about 1 PM and by the time we got done cleaning up after the plumber was finished it was nearly 6 PM.

Some relaxing snowy day huh. At least our toilet drain is snaked clean and this shit didn't go down on New Years Day when we had a house full of people.

Now if we can just keep our pipes from freezing when the real cold hits on Wed. and Thursday. The highs on those days are supposed to hit the mid 20's and the lows may dip below zero, so wish us luck.

I'm ready for Snow-mageddon 2010!

A study in beige.

Happy Boxing Day!

Lucy and I wish each and every one of you a happy Boxing Day.

We got around 6 to 8 inches of fluffy powdery snow over the past three days. It's a good thing she's not my doggie because I might lose her out in all that snow. Arf!

Ice age

Here's some pictures I took after last week's ice storm:

Chilly scenes of winter

The good news is it finally got above freezing here in Johnson City today. The bad news is we got his with snow, single digit temps, and freezing rain before it got above freezing. And it's not even officially winter yet.

The view outside my window

I like the snow, however I hate the bitter cold temps.

The snow, she fall all the night long

As of 9:00 AM we had 5" of icy snow here in and around Monkey Central.
It's alternating between spitting big flakes of snow and sleet for the rest of this morning.
We won't be driving anywhere until maybe tomorrow afternoon.

Thankfully, winter will be over in a few weeks and I'll be able to taunt you people who live north of me.

Tsnow-nami 2010

We're expecting to be hit with a big snow storm later today. They say we could get as much as 11 inches of heavy wet snow before it's all said and done. We went to the grocery store and stocked up a bit and I'll go out again around noon to get a few more things, which means the snow will pass us by. Either way we'll be vigilant.

Here's hoping you will be as well.

Storm of the century of the week

It started out as rain yesterday morning and then by noonish yesterday big wet flakes began mixing in. By three o'clock it had changed to all snow and it started to stick. By three thirty it was evident that things were going down hill weather wise. It snowed all night and many highways were closed.

Thank goodness our power only went off a time or two and only for a moment or two. Some of our friends in out lying counties will be without power for a few days.

I got out yesterday afternoon and went to the grocery store and I laid in the necessary provisions so we're good to go. I hope all of you in the path of this storm are safe and warm. We ended up with about 11 inches of snow and it's still spitting as I write this.

Here's some photos I took while out and about earlier this afternoon:

The Sparky mobile in the snow.

Dusted shrub.

Snow covered wildlife.

Snowman family built by some local kids.

By the way, if any of you decide to leave me a comment telling me something along the lines of 11 inches of snow is nothing or that the weather where you live is worse, then I'm going to delete it and I'm going to seriously consider revoking your comment privileges for good. When you leave comments saying shit like that what you are saying, whether you realize it or not is, "Your experience is shit compared to mine." I had to put up with that shit growing up and I'm not about to put up with it on my blog.

Snow Days

We're actually having a winter this year here in my corner of Tennessee. For the first time in years it's cold for several days at once and we've had a few snow events which were bad enough to have most of the local school systems cancel classes for a few days in a row. Even Sparky's employer has called off classes and closed their offices due to the inclement weather a couple of times this winter.

For the past four or five years we've had no winter to speak of. It's been warmish from December right through to February. Yes, we had a cold day once in awhile but no string of them and we had hardly any snow. But it wasn't always like that around here.

It started snowing on Christmas day in 1976 when I was living at Aunt Rageaholic and Uncle Adultery's farm in Lee County VA and it snowed on and off for the next four weeks. About four inches of snow fell that Christmas day and we were all so excited because we had the next week off to play in it. As the snow fell so did the temperatures, it did not get above freezing for weeks at a time.

Most cities and counties north of the Mason Dixon line know how to do adequate snow removal but in the rural mountainous counties of southwest Virgina/northeast TN the county road crews were not prepared for what hit us that year. The snows fell fast and furious the last week of December and for most of January. And because the road crews could not plow and salt all the roads to a degree that allowed school buses to travel safely on them, when it came time to go back to school after the holidays, school was cancelled.

We lived out in the middle of nowhere there in Lee County on a road that got plowed and salted maybe once a week if we were lucky. I was too young to have my drivers license so I was stuck at home and at the mercy of others when it came to going places. About all I could do was watch the snow fall, watch TV, read, or do chores.

Those were the dark ages back then late 1976/early 1977 entertainment wise. Cable TV was something fancy la dee daa people in big cities had, we had four over the air channels on our TV, NBC out of Bristol, ABC out of Knoxville, CBS out of Johnson City, and PBS out of a phone booth in Sneedville TN. And our TV had no remote, you had to get up and change the channel and if the reception was bad you had to go outside and turn a huge antenna, which we had to have because we lived so far out in the middle of nowhere, until the picture came in decently. VCR's were not big back in 1977 either, they weighed something like 900 pounds and they cost about a million dollars, okay I exaggerate but I'm not too far off. If you wanted to see movies you went to a movie theatre, which meant driving over the mountain to Kingsport, TN, the nearest 'big' town near us at that time. So basically for fun and entertainment we watched shitty 1970's TV, read books, I remember I re-read The Hobbit and the first book and a half of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, read comic books that we had read a million times already, and listen to albums by Yes, Rick Wakeman, Alan Parsons, and other bloated bombastic schlock and roll groups.

At first being off from school was kind of fun. We'd go out and make snowmen, sled down the mountain, go cave exploring, build bonfires, have snowball fights, and hike around the farm. But as the days wore on boredom over took us. I hadn't started smoking cigarettes yet, let alone pot, and I hadn't begun my life long love affair with beer at that point so I couldn't self medicate my way out of the boredom. So we began to pick at one another. You know what I mean, all of us teens would start fights over petty things and soon they would escalate in to shouting matches and then Aunt Rageaholic would step in punish me or my sister, even if her kids were at fault. By the end of the second week of January I felt like I was stuck in a hellish stage play by Jean Paul Sartre.

Outside the snow kept piling up, the cold kept coming, and they kept cancelling school. Then just as things were really bleak, unsettling, and at their worst, something happened that almost drove us all over the edge, Aunt Rageaholic's menopausal rages began. Imagine being trapped in a cage with a mountain lion that is pissed off and hasn't eaten for weeks. Being trapped in that cage would have been a picnic compared with life with my menopausal aunt. She'd fly into a rage if you breathed too loudly, laughed at something she did not find funny, or wore clashing plaids. Anything and everything we did pissed her off more than usual. It was then and there that I learned the meaning of the phrase 'walking on eggshells.'

We got a three day reprieve from her madness when she had to drive my cousin back to college in Berea KY. The snow was falling faster than stock values are falling in today's shitty economy when they set out for Berea College that day. She brushed aside suggestions that she wait a day before driving up there, she was master of the elements she insisted and a little snow didn't scare her, so she made all of us kids, all 6 of us, pack the car for her trip. I was secretly praying that she would not cancel and when she pulled out of the driveway and onto the main road we stood at the window and cheered like the people of Paris cheered when the Allies took it back from the Nazi's. About three hours later she called and said they got as far as Jonesville, which was about 15 miles from the farm, and they were going to have to stay in a motel over night before setting out again the next day.

We had a three day party without her. We stayed up late, played board games, stayed on the phone for hours, ate pounds of bacon, scores of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, drank gallons of orange Kool Aid, and we scarfed down our body weights in cold cereal. Somehow she knew we had too much fun while she was gone so when she got back she made our lives a living hell once more, but nothing she could do could take back the fun we had while she was away.

Towards the end of the third week of being off from school the temperature suddenly shot up one night and a warm wind kicked up. It was almost eerie walking outside and being almost knee deep in snow while a 60 degree wind flew down the valley at us. When we woke up the next day there were hundreds of snow wheels on the ground. They looked like this except for the fact that they were laying flat. They were all over our farm and in town as well. People freaked out and some said it was a sign that the end of times was at hand, which made me laugh.

The snow wheels did turn out to be a sign though, they were a sign that the snow and cold had been broken and a week later we were all back in school and I was never so happy to be free from my crazy menopausal aunt and her psycho kids. Our high school tried like hell to cram in all the stuff we missed over January but it was to no avail because at the end of February/early March the rains started to fall, the creeks and rivers began to rise, and we were out of school for another two weeks due to flooding.

Snow Daze

The snow flakes are falling faster here than Republicant Jim Boner's tears. Happy Groundhog Day everybody!

My snow prayers were finally answered

The bitter cold left the area over the past few days and snow has moved in. That's right kids, we finally had a measurable snow fall here in my fair city. This was the view out our front door this morning:

The Sparkymobile was covered as well:

But thankfully even though we had about two inches of snow the roads were only a bit slushy and I got out to the pharmacy and to the grocery store where I procured not only milk but also a 12 pack of Beck's and some other things.

With the snow came strange visitors. Here's a couple pictures of them:

I made neither of those because I was far too busy with more important endeavors such as reading your blogs, playing spades on Yahoo, and shoveling the driveway and sidewalk. Sparky, who had the day off in observance of the MLK holiday, hates the cold, she complains when the temperature outside drops below 70, and she hates the snow but I managed to get her out for an invigorating walk in the weather earlier this afternoon. Some of the sights we saw were these:

A lion in winter:

A victim of cabin fever or changing taste:
Stately homes:And snow covered trees:

The snow continues to fall and we may get another inch out of it which will mean that all the schools around here will be closed tomorrow and that means that the school children can watch the Bush era end with a whimper and the Obama era begin with a huge sigh of relief. I know I'll break my rule against watching day time TV through the week and I'll keep my TV tuned to Obama's historic inauguration. Hopefully the snow will continue to fall as a competent adult finally takes the reins of power.

Better late than never

These pictures of last week's minor snowfall are for you Phydeaux. It didn't last very long,

but as is so often the case with this area and snowfalls,

it was beautiful while it lasted.

We're looking at the business end of single digit temps for the lows for the next couple of nights. I realize that those kind of temps are bikini weather for most of you in the upper Midwest and parts of Canada so no need to leave me any comments telling me how single digit temps are nothing for you folks.

It's snowing!

Yay snow!*













*In moderation of course.

Somebody got some snow last night

And if you guessed that that somebody was me, you'd be correct. It snowed about a quarter inch here last night. It'll probably be all melted off by 10 AM but it looked nice while it lasted.

I'm hoping we get some more measurable snow falls here this year. It used to snow four or five times a winter here but for the past 4 or 5 years it hasn't hardly snowed a bit. I like a little snow and a little cold and then by the middle of February I like it to be all gone. That's just how I rolls my peeps.

Yesterday...

...it was sunny and in the mid 60's here in east Tennessee.Today it's cloudy, in the mid 20's, and the snow is blowing in sideways. Brrrr.

Check it out

SNOW! It finally freakin' snowed a measureable amount here! Yay!

Quest for snow

It began snowing here at around 1 AM last night. The flakes looked so nice as they fell in the inky blackness of early morning. By the time the sun rose most schools in the area announced they were closing. I was pumped about the snow fall and I decided to get out and take some pictures because anymore snow around here is rare thanks to the climate change were going through.

By the time I got out and about the snow had long since stopped falling and drizzle had taken it's place. I had to act fast if I was going to get any decent shots of the white stuff.
There was a some snow on the front of our neighbors place.

Snow had fallen on the Monkey Mobile. Thanks goodness people could still see my window stickers though. Since Sparky's work was closed today I took her car and I drove to the park.
I bravely faced the elements dressed only in my fleece stocking hat. Since I did not want to be featured on one of Bub's weenie waver Wednesday posts and since the temperature was a nippy 36 degrees I decided to put on some more clothes. I stepped back in the car and I put on my sweat pants, a long sleeve t shirt, my shoes and socks, and a fleece pull over. I looked damn sexy in my winter get up and I went off to see some more snow.
It was melting quickly! So I walked fast.This shot reminds me of winters over in Lee County, VA. I love the way snow falls on cedars but oddly enough I hated the book Snow Falling on Cedars.

This is an older house on a hill near the park. I love the way this place looks and if they'd ever put it on the market at a price we could afford we'd snap it up in a heart beat. It's an older home which means it's probably outgassed all it's going to, which is a good thing.

Since the lake is just a few hundred yards from the park I went down and took this shot. I love how the stone reflects off the water. I was the only person out there today and it was nice and quiet. While I hate some asshole threw that piece of plastic ribbon away I liked the effect of it blowing in the breeze when it got stuck in that tree.

All around me I could hear the snow melting and despite my fleece clothing I started to get cold so I went home. Hopefully the next snow event here will dump a good amount of snow on us. If it does, then rest assured I'll take more photos.

It's snowing!

And wouldn't you know it, I left my camera in my truck and if I go outside now I'll wake Sparky up and she'll be pissed. So you'll have to settle for this picture I got off Google.
I'm taking some snow photos in the morning though, if it doesn't all melt off that is. Snow all night you crazy snow!