Frizzled!

For the last week or so, we've gotten wave after wave of thick, freezing fog. The first few days weren't too bad - each day it got warm enough to melt the ice that had formed all over every non-moving thing.

Now, I don't know for sure, but I suspect what made this so much worse was the lack of wind. See, most every time before, the ice would form thickly in town, where things are more sheltered, but out on the prairie, there would be only a thin coating that didn't last long.

Here I must inject a brief apology, much as I loathe such sorry explanations. My computer is dead. The internal piece that connects to the power cord is broken off inside, and having been there, done that, and gotten the t-shirt, I already know it means an entire motherboard replacement for a lot more than I want to spend right now. This affects my blog quite directly, since my handy little photo editing program was on my computer. It galls me to put out such colorly unbalanced photos, but it would gall me even more to not put them on here. You've gotta see this! So look anyway, knowing that it's not really that color here. Blue, yes, but not that blue.

Oh, I can't crop, either, but that's a whole nuther problem.

So.....as the foggy days wore on, the ice began to build up on the power lines, and on the trees and bushes of the prairie. In fact, you would hardly recognize my tree from A Year in the Life of. Thus the power outages began. Big ones, little ones, in between ones. Thursday we had several long ones, starting about 5:30 am. School was nearly canceled, but ended up starting late. After several more short outages, it went out and stayed out for several hours. At 1:45 the kids were all sent home.

About 1:47, the power came back on and stayed, and I arrived home to find Clancy a nervous wreck, while my vacuum ran all by itself. Did I ever mention he doesn't like vacuums, even when wielded by the people he loves? Well, when they turn on by themselves and won't stop...

Shortly after midnight, the power went off for the rest of the night. We stayed quite comfortable, thanks to the emergency heater Dad installed while he was out here. That was the last of the long outages, but we have had several bazillion smaller ones. None yet today, though it's not over yet.

During all my trips to Plentywood this week - at least one a day, and four on Wednesday - I had ample opportunity to observe the waxing and waning of the ice on the lines. You just can't have that kind of fun in California!


My sister-in-law told me of the worst outage this area had in recent memory, the year before they moved out here. The ice buildup was so bad that it took out about 30 miles of power poles, and the town was without power or running water for a month. It hasn't happened since, and won't, either, not till Mom gets out here to enjoy it.

Staying warm and having fun,
Noni Beth