Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Look What I Did!


I wreaked both our cars! See those right-rear bumpers? See how they match? I did that all by myself.














It was a dark and stormy night. The rain was coming down in buckets. I parked the blue car in the turn-around and forgot about it. Later I hopped into the gold car slapped it in reverse, completely forgetting that I had parked the blue car in the turn-around, and backed right into it. I turned the gold car around so the headlights were shining on the back of the blue car and got out in the pouring rain and stood there wondering how I could be such an idiot.

The blue one is in the shop right now being fixed and the gold one goes in tomorrow. It's the first time I've ever been the cause of an accident. I've never had a ticket or a warning or even a stern look and then I wreak both our cars in our own driveway. I had to explain it to our insurance rep and the guy at the body shop. It was so-o-o embarrassing.

On the plus side, both cars were still drivable and no one was hurt.

On Saturday afternoon I spotted a sundog while Doug and I were out and about and he pulled into a parking lot so I could snap a photo.


At first there was only one on the right or north side of the sun but later one appeared on the south side and though they made a good attempt to connect, they didn't quite make it.

This morning there was another sun pillar. The clouds were just right for a beautiful shot. I went back in the house and got the camera so I could capture this scene. It kind of reminds me of the view of Mount Doom from Minas Tirith.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Adios, 2009!


Boy, am I glad that 2008 and 2009 are over. Those will be remembered as "the cancer years" here at chez Artz. I hope they're the last. I didn't make any New Year's Resolutions. I never do because I'm not good at following through on things like that.

We had a lot of snowy weather here over the holidays and it's been really cold and windy most of the time. I took the photo above Friday morning from the front of our house. There's a scientific term for that bar of light going straight up from the rising (in this case) or setting sun but it escapes me at the moment. I've seen several of them this winter so it must not be a truly rare phenomena.

The photo below shows our driveway on December 17th, the day after we received 16-18 inches of snow. We don't often get such large snow events here in Washington County. In fact we don't often get much precip at all. We refer to this area as the desert of Maryland. The rain and snow usually go east or west of us but seldom make into the Great Hagerstown Valley. Last summer was also an exception and I guess it just carried on into winter.


It was certainly beautiful, both while falling and the day after. This is a cedar along our driveway. I took lots of photos during the storm and the day after. You can see more on Flickr. Fortunately I don't have to go out and work in this kind of weather. I'm sure I'd sing a different song all together if that were the case.


Here's the snow piled on the shrubbery in front of our house the morning after. It was breathtaking. It was a very light and fluffy snow because of the extreme cold and therefore didn't cause any power outages in our area. And it shoveled easily. We don't do a lot of shoveling because we have all-wheel-drive Subarus and don't have much trouble making it up and down our driveway despite the little hill we have to go up to get to the house. So we only shovel paths to the cars.


In knitting news, I joined the 10 Shawls in 2010 group on Ravelry. My first shawl is the India Stole by Sylvie Beez. I'm using Perchance to Knit Lace in the Lagoon colorway.

I'm not going to obsess over getting all 10 done. My queue is pretty ambitious so I'll do what I can and be satisfied with what I get done. I've also been watching "Cranford" and "Return to Cranford" on PBS Masterpeice Classics and enjoying it immensely. What an amazing cast!