Forgot to put this in my last post: we got our first sprinkling of snow today, early in the morning. It was coming down pretty fast and furious; this is our farm lawn jockey with a dusting, and it covered the grass.

And this my neighbor's lawn, covered in leaves, now getting covered in snow.


But by the time an hour or so went by, the snow had melted. So it was the pretty kind that looks good falling down but doesn't hang around to bother you. :-) I do like a little snow for getting me in the holiday mood.

It's really really really coming down hard now, and the county sheriff is advising people to STAY OFF THE ROADS. So the library is now officially closed all day. I get a Snow Day, yay!

Here is the view out my window right now. In fact, as I look now, there seem to be even MORE flakes and they're coming down even faster and thicker! Amazing! You people in Texas don't know what you're missing, it's gorgeous. :-D

Over the weekend I went on a hike for the first time in ages--I've been wanting to start back up with the local group that I used to hike regularly with until I moved to the farm. (I need the exercise; I'm not going to take a spinning class again this winter, too expensive.)They're now called the "Why Not Adventurers", but they still meet each Sunday at 9am at a different local trailhead, in fall and winter. We have an abundance of parks with hiking trails in my area, some closer than others. I don't plan to go every week--my work schedule won't allow it, for one thing, and for another, it's hard to justify driving an hour to go on a hike, even if it's a 3 hour/several mile-long hike. So it depends on the weather and how much money I want to spend on gas. But this Sunday's hike was in Towner's Woods, the park in Kent, which is so close to me that I could have walked there! (If I had another half hour to spare) There was just a small hardy group assembled to brave the broken frozen trail. We've had a lot of snow but not in the past few days, and so everyone's footprints are frozen solid. Makes for uncomfortable walking and ankle-twisting. But the trail goes along the frozen Lake Rockwell, which is beautiful. I wanted to take a lot more photos, but didn't want to stop so often that I lost track of the group. And also, the sun didn't stay out long.


Here we are walking right along the lakeshore; in summer this is treacherous because you can fall in very easily! It was a nice two-hour brisk walk around the lake and on some cross-country ski trails.


This photo shows a flock of geese huddled in the middle of the lake. I guess the water is not entirely frozen over. I wish I'd had my long lens with me, for it would have been nice to try getting closeups of them. They were determined to stay as close together as possible (birds of a feather flock together, after all :-)


Today's winter activity? This morning I woke up to 3 inches of snow covered by a quarter inch of ICE. Blecch. Even though (thankfully) my 7:30 am computer class at the library was cancelled by 6am, and later I learned that the library won't open til noon today (we're in the middle of a huge storm that is continuing to dump inches of snow as I type this, to last til 4pm), I still needed to a) shovel my way across the yard to get the horses fed, and b) excavate my car so that I could move it out of the way of the owner's driveway plowing efforts. First I had clumped my way through the icy snow all the way down our long driveway to the road to get my morning papers (only to discover that one of them didn't get delivered--I don't blame them), making a very satifyingly loud "SHWUMP!" noise with every footfall breaking through the ice. THEN the snowplow shows up, of course.... Red, I remember you talking about the array of snow-removal implements you have at your disposal, and I could have used one of them this morning. As I cleared my car I felt like I was mountain climbing, because I would FLING my showbrush's squeegee end hard into the ice on my car's roof and CRUNCH into it, breaking up the sheet of ice that came down on me in pieces about a foot square--like I was sticking an icepick into the side of a mountain before pulling myself up. It was different than the usual "brush brush pull snow on top of me" motions. This was like carving ice chunks off the car. And of course, the side windows were all one sheet of ice. After doing my car I cleared my neighbor's car, since she had to try to go into work at her usual time, and it's always fun to do hers after mine because her car seems like a midget's car after I manage to clear off my big Vue. :-) Anyway, now I'm going to enjoy the rest of my morning off by doing the dishes and maybe reading more of my current book (Paper Towns by John Green). Hope everyone is warm and toasty where they are.

Today I had planned to spend an afternoon at Mira's house, playing outside in the nice deep snow (which is always even deeper at her house, being right in the Snow Belt)--but our schedules didn't work out (Nana had her overnight and she ended up staying there too long for me to have any time left). So I was a bit grumbly about this, having been looking forward to it, and having NOT gone out in the woods hiking as I would have otherwise done. I didn't want to tire myself out for snow angels and fort building and whatever we might do together. Ugh. But I had a nice bit of snow fun watching some of our horses frolicking in the white stuff.


I just happened to look out and see a couple in the paddock, in the 8 inches of snow! I can't always hear them when they're being put outside, and I can't see the side paddocks unless I go up to my window, so I was sorry that I missed the first two who went out, and that I only got a few minutes to photograph these three before they were taken back inside. That's the way it always goes for me here, despite sort of being the unofficial Farm Photographer, I have to grab candids when I happen to catch them out of their stalls. I've mentioned it to most of the boarders, everyone knows how I love to take photos of them outside doing things, but today's people didn't think to call me to tell me they were putting theirs out. It's nicest when I have a warning so that I can position myself in the best spots, and so that I am there to capture their initial moments of freedom: that's when they tear across the field and buck and jump and generally "get the wiggles out" as we used to say in storytime. (grin)


By the time I got there to see Cameo, Blaze and Jazz, they had their heads down grazing. Now, granted, it was still a different scene for me because they had to paw away snow to get to any grass, just like wild horses, but, they were pretty much run out and ready to go in.

I did get some shots of Blaze when he was moved from the grass (usually) paddock to the dirt paddock, sort of a holding area while the others were brought in one at a time. And I was there right before Stormy was set free, so I got a lot of him running around, even rolling!


This one is Cameo's nose whiskers covered in snow:


Anyway, so, these aren't all that great but it was fun watching them have fun, and to see them in the falling snow is always pretty.

So I sent a long TextLJ post last night, because my computer wasn't able to turn itself on for hours (yes, I'm going to have that looked at soon). Now I see that the stupid post never made it here. Arrrggh!! (yet my text updates to Facebook went perfectly well; they seem to have a better system) What I said was to the effect that I was enjoying a snow day--we had a blizzard of 4 inches accumulate on Friday and another 6 on Saturday, and my library closed from the beginning of the day (I found out 15 minutes before I was about to get in my car and attempt the commute!). I was irked at first, because it was Anime Club day, my most successful program, and so I had to contact my 35 teens and tell them they couldn't come. And how do I do that? Via the same computer that was not working. Ugh. Luckily I could count on my apt neighbor Sandy to come through in a pinch and so I used hers. I also had to contact my new practicum student to tell her not to come, and our cell phones were not getting good reception either (what the heck?), so I relayed that message thru another friend who could hear me on her phone. (It was like a bad dream--p. student picked up, said "hello? hello?" and I was shouting into the dang phone but she heard nothing) ANYway, I ended up with a nice lazy indoor day, watched the snow falling all day while I finished reading Inkdeath, the third book in the Inkheart trilogy. Couldn't check email or facebook or any of that stuff, but watched a little tv too (anybody see Kevin Kline and Jennifer Garner in "Cyrano" on PBS last week? Very good!). I had already cleared off my car in the wee hours when I still thought I was going to work, so last night I cleared off the other 4 inches of it so that today it won't be a bear when I go visit my niece for some snowplay time. I'm just glad I didn't have to be anywhere yesterday and could just hibernate.

Happy New Year to all of my friends. We're back in the wintry business here where I live--a nice blizzard of snow has been falling all morning, mostly blowing around but there is now a nice drift of 2 inches or so. Yay! It's nice to have a normal December again, after a week that went from single digits on Monday (with a nice round 0 degrees on Monday morning to greet me as I chipped ice out of horse buckets) to warming up to the forties during the week and rain rain rain, yecch, to a high on Saturday of--are you ready for this?--SIXTY-FIVE DEGREES! Sheesh! That is NOT supposed to happen in Ohio in December, home of Lake Effect Snow. Then again, this is Ohio in December, where if you don't like the weather, wait a minute and it will change for you. Sigh. So, I am happy to be getting out my turtlenecks again and bundling up to go out and play. See you later, and Happy 2009!!

Meant to post this Friday as soon as I had the photos, but I ran out of time as I was going out with friends to see Bolt in 3-D (adorable fun movie, I highly recommend it, though you totally can skip the 3D, it doesn't really add much). Then Saturday was our library's special joint private screening of Twilight for our teens (another fun movie! They did the book justice, yay! And we had over a hundred teens come, double yay!) so I got distracted by all of that. But today's a lazy Sunday and I wanted to share my interesting experience from Friday morning.

On Thursday afternoon a CSX coal train derailed as it was zooming through Kent, Ohio, the town where I went to college. No one was injured, thankfully, but 13 cars left the tracks, spilling coal everywhere and slightly damaging the bridge they were passing under. You can read more details from the Akron Beacon Journal and the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier--they had photographers on the scene immediately so they got really dramatic closeups of the spilled coal and etc. Well, I've never seen a train wreck before, and my inner photojournalist was screaming at me to go see what I could see and shoot what I might find interesting. Couldn't go right away, however, because Thursday night after horses I had an invitation to a jewelry party at a friend's house--friends with whom I haven't talked in years and whose new house I hadn't seen before, so I'm hardly gonna skip out on them despite the fact that a) there was a blizzard in progress and b) I'm not really a jewelry shopper. So, argh, had to wait til Friday morning to go stomping about the riverbanks. (Wouldn't have seen much in the dark anyway, though I later saw large lights on poles because, as I learned, they worked throughout the night clearing the tracks.)


This is a bulldozer shoving spilled coal out of the way in order to make room for replacement track to be laid. The Crain Ave. Bridge is in the background, with a worker walking across.

It was quite a little adventure, because the weather was fierce. Beautiful snowstorm, but it was quickly covering up all the train car wreckage, so as I photographed them I was thinking they looked more like stuff you'd find in an old junkyard, sitting neglected for years, than they looked like the results of a fresh accident. It lent a melancholiness to the scene, I guess, and also spoke about the passing of time or something, if you wanna get philosophical about it all. I just wanted to document some of it for myself. By the time I arrived they'd cleared all of the cars off the tracks and were working on laying replacement tracks.


Workers assist as a crane (yellow thing) lifts a section of new track into place.

I couldn't get closeup shots because the Crain Ave. bridge, which they'd been passing under when they messed up, was closed to traffic. So I had to content myself with shooting from the high bank above the tracks. Kent has 2 sets of train tracks going through town, one upper set on the ground level, as it were, that pulls up beside the old 1870's train station (now a restaurant) and the Williams Brothers Mill, a grain mill that still produces a lot of grain that gets shipped around the country. That's where I was. Then there is the lower set of tracks, about 15 feet down, along the Cuyahoga River, where trains pass through that are not stopping in Kent. You can get a better idea from this photo, taken from the other bridge, the Main Street Bridge, facing upstream:


The Cuyahoga River is at far left, then the lower tracks (with the headlight of a train engine visible--it had pulled in a flatbed stacked with new track sections), and then the upper tracks. There is a boxcar barely visible up there, right at the mill. They have this cool funnel to shoot grain down into a traincar, I've always meant to take photos of that sometime. But I digress...


Those lower tracks go underneath two bridges, and this illfated train of 119 cars (yoiks!) was doing just that when it derailed. Luckily the bridge was hardly damaged at all, because 15,000 cars drive over it every day, but it's still closed while they repair the damaged sewer lines underneath it, which the train smashed. And this 40-year old bridge is due to be replaced next year, so I suppose it was a good thing this wreck happened now, to the old bridge, and not to a brand-new span. Anyway, I walked all around town up and down the river, both banks, trying to get shots through all of the trees. We have a lovely wooded riveredge, with a park and trails, but right now it was in my way! :-) Oh well. What started out as a "photojournalist wanna be" trek turned into an Ansel Adams-type landscape photo shoot, as I kept getting distracted by the gorgeous snow covering everything.





Just wished the light had been better--but I can't have it both ways, can I, you either get sunshine or you get falling snow :-) Rarely both!I couldn't shoot with gloves on, however, so I had to stop far sooner than I wanted to or get frostbite. Plus my car was getting buried in snow after only a few minutes! And this is the stuff I like to do in the snow, not ski on it or sled down it, but tramp in it and shoot it....sigh...
As always, if interested you can see more photos at my Flickrstream.

Snow. Oh my, snow. I generally love the stuff, but not when I have to clean four inches of it off my car--not once, but TWICE in the same day. Shivery bookends to a day: busted my butt getting in to Stow for a 7:30am meeting--had to hustle in the barn, lemme tell ya, to get done early enough and then clear off the aforementioned snow--only to find out that the darn meeting had been CANCELLED YESTERDAY. :-( grrrrrrrrr..... (learned bitter lesson about always checking work email even when not at work) Then tonight after working at the library all evening, had to get rid of another load of lake effect powder in the dark in order to drive home at a crawl through a snowstorm. And I always do this to myself, come the first significant snowfall: I forget to bring my snow boots!! Idiot idiot idiot. Just what I like to experience, cold wet ankles. Blecch. The highlight of my day, though, was getting to spend a couple of hours with a dear friend who was in town from North Carolina for a brief visit. It's always fun to see her, she is very funny and tells great stories about the odd people she encounters in her job working fraud protection for a credit card company. I always laugh a lot when I see her and I love listening to her Southern drawl. (Even though she's originally from Ohio!) So that makes up for the annoying white stuff on the ground. And on my socks. And lying in wait to attack me in the morning...Sigh...

I've been literally "under the weather" for a few days now, buried under a blizzard of 18 inches of snow AND suffering from bronchitis. It's been a crappy few days. I blame the illness on Hillary--all that walking door to door in cold wet weather to stump for her certainly didn't do me any good, other than mentally. But Ol' Man Winter is to blame for our lovely blizzard on Friday and Saturday--it was incredible! Snow fell fast and furious all day long, both days; we got 8 inches the first day and another 10 the next! Thankfully I didn't have to go anywhere except out to the barns, and Sandy helped me with those chores, she did all the shovelling and heavy stuff. I wouldn't have been able to go to work on Saturday even if the library had been open, which it wasn't--pretty much our whole state shut down for a day. They're saying now that we've gotten the highest snowfalls in our area in decades. This photo I took from the comfort of my living room, where I pretty much lived for five days, shows the snow drifted on top of my car. It was fascinating to see how the winds tossed it around so that the entire driver's side of my car stayed free of snow, while the other sides got the brunt.

This is a closeup of the snow that stuck to the overhang on the barn roof--I love how it got sculpted by the wind. I took this in the evening as the light was almost all gone, so it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to, but you get the idea. If I'd been feeling 100% I would have loved to go out hiking in all of that snow and take some really great snow pictures, but I had to settle for what I could see within my limited boundaries. I tell ya, I hate being sick in any event, but especially when there is over a foot of beautiful snow lying there for me to play with! Ugh. And I've never had bronchitis before, I must be getting old; it was really scary. (Don't worry, I've been taking antibiotics and tons of meds and I'm well on my way back to good health now, whew.) I read some, and watched a little tv, but probably more listened to than saw, since I kept nodding off at all hours, then waking up every couple of hours too. Very annoying. My parents even came over to bring me, you guessed it, homemade soup! (Plus other food and a humidifier and more meds, bless them) I couldn't even thank them properly because I haven't had a voice for three days! I really hated to miss working on Saturday, odd as that sounds, because it was going to be a busy day for me--in addition to Anime Club, which I love (I have a great group of teens who come faithfully every month and are a lot of fun), I was scheduled to give a talk and a library tour to a library science class from Kent State. I do this same presentation every semester, and it's always so rewarding. They're all enthusiastic future children's and teen librarians, they're excited about what they want to do, and I get to gush about my job and my library to them. We usually get a few new library card registrations out of it, I often get a new practicum student interested as a result, and it's just a really satisfying thing to do. Hard to explain, but I love my library and I love being able to show it off. But university classes were cancelled as well as the library and everyone else shutting down. And of course, had I gone in I was going to have to pantomime or use American Sign Language anyway, so that wouldn't have worked... :-) We'll reschedule it for as soon as possible.


Interesting how the light was tinted blue during this time of day. This shot is of the storm raging around us. Again, shot through the window of course, I am not that big of an idiot. :-) Okay, I guess that's all I have to say about snow and being sick. Enough on those two topics. I have one more entry to make before heading in to work a short shift this evening, now that I'm recovered. Goldie will be glad to have me out of the house, she's been wondering why the heck I haven't left her side in so long! Totally not like me!

Just a little update--we had a snow day yesterday, the library closed at 5pm instead of the usual 9pm due to our blizzard conditions. By 5pm we'd gotten five inches of snow here (more in the northern areas close to the lake) But what made it really really bad was the icy rain that came down on top of the snow, making everything really really slippery. :-( I got home fine, thankfully, and no one I know was in an accident, but there were problems all over. Then I had the joy of shoveling all that snow off my porch; just in case we got more overnight we didn't want to stress the roof too much (the porch floor is a roof, too, because it's a veranda that's about 15 feet off the ground). I don't mind shoveling ordinary snow, but 5 inches of wet heavy snow topped by a hard icy crust is really hard work, whew! And especially when you have to lob it up and over a 3 foot high wrought iron balcony railing to get it off the porch, or, try to shove it through the railing, which is like putting cheese through a dull cheese grater... But we didn't get much more snow, and the roads were crappy but drivable this morning.

Then I read in the local paper that another horse has died in the ongoing saga of a local horse farm that's been the subject of police raids for neglect. :-( You can read the latest article here . This woman is a creep and does not deserve to have a goldfish for a pet, let alone any other animals. When they first found the four dead horses they couldn't remove all of the other 9semi-healthy) animals yet, because she hadn't been officially charged. Then they find another dead horse on a surprise inspection, and she says it died from an accidental blow to the head, but that's BS--the autopsy found no signs of head trauma, but evidence of salmonella poisoning and starvation. Oh. My. Gawd. The poor things. So now thankfully all of the animals have been removed to kinder places. The local sanctuary is very stressed though with all of the extra mouths to feed. We weren't asked to take any of the horses, I'm not sure exactly why but I know that they have strict rules about where they can be placed, and our farm's owner has all he can do to keep ours in hay anyway. In a way I'm sorry, it would be nice to be able to help them out, but mostly I'm glad because I don't think I could handle seeing starved horses. We had one here once for a while, a rescue, and lord it was so sad to see his hip bones sticking out and his every rib...So I'm thinking happy thoughts about those horses moving on to nice pastures now.

Going to go see "No Country For Old Men" tonight with my Wed. Movie Night bunch, in our quest to see all five best picture Oscar nominees before the Oscars. I'm looking forward to it, although I fear I will not like it that much if the serial-killer-aspect is as horrific as I imagine it could be. Hopefully not. Last week was "Charlie Wilson's War" which I highly recommend! Very funny, very interesting film (I knew nothing about the history of Afghanistan's war with the Soviets, plus I learned a lot about Congress) and Tom Hanks is really good in it.

Well, not so cold today, but this weekend was a real humdinger here. It was 6 degrees fahrenheit at 5am when I woke up to feed the horses, and let me tell you that is no picnic to push a wheelbarrow in... It was the first time this winter I've had frozen waterbuckets to deal with in the back barn (see this entry: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-18meP.gyfKNcbpuh1O.aQQ--?cq=1&bid=200&yy=2007&mm=2 from February 2007 for a particularly rough wintry day in the barn. There are two entries that day, see the second one) Thankfully it's warmed up to about freezing temps now, and other than a brief blizzard this morning, we have hardly any snow. The blizzard really was a pain; it hit just as I was preparing to drive 2 hours to a library meeting 150 miles away. Ack! I ended up arriving late, but only 10 minutes late, which was amazing considering we were crawling along at 10 mph for several miles. We got an inch of wet sloppy snow in an hour, it was really incredible. Welcome to real winter, as opposed to the 60 degree temps we had a mere couple of weeks ago!