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That’s the view outside my bedroom window this morning… and it is NOT rain. Grrrr.
The other image is the weather radar from my OSX Desktop Widget. Note that the area around my house is the ONLY lowland part of the sound getting snowed on… all the rest of the snow is up in the mountains (where it belongs!)
Still waiting for Spring.
After our brief bit of intense sunshine yesterday I thought this little last gasp of winter was done. Nope. This is what I wake up to this morning. Still coming down.
Really weird weather here the past few days. It seemed as if Spring had sprung (as you can see by the flowers and buds on the trees above), then Friday Winter came back for a last gasp. Friday night brought about 3″ of snow. Saturday it went from rain, to snow, then rain, snow, etc. I went out to the barn to work on the Jag’s exhaust and it was coming down pretty hard. A while later I opened the barn door to find the clouds all gone and the sky filled with brilliant sunshine. About that time my friend John showed up with a barrel of WVO to make into BioDiesel. While we were unloading that from his trailer my driveway was turning into a lake! The snow was melting so fast the water had nowhere to go!
Then a few hours later the clouds came back. It is snowing again now. Go figure.
On my way home Friday I saw the car above on the I-5 Express lanes. It had “Super Bee” graphics on the sides. What is wrong with this picture?
Then later on, in the midst of the never-ending I-5 construction in Everett, my car stalled and would not restart. Thankfully I was in the right lane and pointed downhill. I was able to coast over to the side and onto a wide section of median just north of the “Boeing Freeway” on-ramp onto I-5 as you head down the hill past Everett Mall. I immediately knew the cause, or at least had a strong suspicion – my fuel filter.
The car had stalled the night before while ascending a VERY steep hill near my office, so I figured it was clogging again. I was able to restart it the night before. I figured I’d change the filter once I got home… but of course it conked out about 25 miles from my tools. Ironically I had a spare filter in the trunk, just no tools. I called home and described the tools that I needed (a brake bleeder and either a pair of vise grips or pliers) and told them to come rescue me. Traffic was its usual Friday night disaster. I was visited by no fewer than two State Troopers and one DOT truck while I waited. I told them what was going on and that help was on the way. My family arrived about 40 minutes after I called them, with my brake bleeder…. and a Crescent Wrench!
Sigh.
Undaunted I had the filter swapped in about 20 minutes (would have been 5 if I had a pair of pliers!) The car roared back to life and I was able to make it home without further incident.
I’ve figured out what was causing my fuel problems. The bottom barrel in my final filtering setup has contaminated the fuel. So instead of being the final resting place of my home brew fuel at its cleanest… it was getting clean right up to that step where it would get dirty again. I’m fixing that as we speak… more details later.
Today we went to Everett Mall to watch Chris participate in the semi-finals of Hi-Q. Hi-Q is the geek equivalent of sports. It is a team event with a range of difficult questions in several subjects presented in a quiz show format. He’s been competing all year and has done very well with his team from Arlington High School.
Today was the first time I was able to attend a contest. Arlington dominated the competition. Here’s the final score:
The Finals will be this coming Tuesday.
Sorry for the crappy cell-cam shots. My real digicam was out of reach both in the car and at the mall.
Check out the first line of this article.
Actually we Goolsbee’s excel at creating international incidents. We’re just pretty low-key about it.
Oh wait, now we’ve been granted the ne plus ultra of American political scandal terminology – it is now “Goolsbee-gate”
I feel… special.
I’m on vacation this week, so now you know why I haven’t written or posted much lately… nor should you expect much for a few more days. 🙂
My parents had the good sense to retire to a ski town in Colorado, so every year we try to make time in the winter to visit them. We’re there now and though we have Internet access here (finally!) I’m too busy having fun to post daily as usual.
Things should be back to normal again next week.
Above: The boys at Tannenbaum Tree Farm circa 2002. Our home is off beyond the treeline behind them.
We moved out to the boonies 10 years ago not long after our return from the UK. We were pleasantly surprised to find many tree farms around our house. The first few years we just walked to the nearest of them, Tannenbaum Tree Farm to pick and cut our holiday tree. For several years we’d walk a path through a 44 acre wood that existed behind our property and exit right at the tree farm. The family that ran Tannenbaum had created an ideal world for the acquisition of Christmas trees. A log shelter with a warm fire in a cast-iron stove. Hot cider. Candy canes. Some small decorative gifts for sale. Custom-built tree-netting stands between the shelter and the parking area. Just grab your saw and go pick your tree. They had a great assortment of VERY nice trees. Like I said in the beginning we would walk over and cut our tree and carry it home. One year we even did it while it was snowing. It was sort of magical.
It was obvious that they treated their customers like family and many people would drive from as far away as Seattle every year to pick their tree. People there were always smiling and happy, even if it was wet, or cold, or snowing. Magical.
Above: Sue & Nick at Tannenbaum Tree Farm circa 2002
Then the 44 acre wood was clear cut and some developer built a housing development on it. So we would all just pile into the old pickup truck and go drive ‘around the block’ (though that is about a 2 mile drive) to Tannenbaum and select our tree. They would always ask if we needed it netted, and we always answered with “No, we live just over there” (pointing east towards the mountains).
This year we received a post card just before Thanksgiving from the Tannenbaum Tree farm that said they were no longer selling trees, and thanked us for our years of patronage. One of our little family traditions was lost!
This weekend the family decided that we had to get our tree now, so they pulled me away from my computer and we went off in search of a tree. All the Christmas Tree Farms that littered the neighborhood have all vanished! Every last one has been replaced with housing developments. We saw a sign advertising one on the road down to Granite Falls, so Nick & I went there. Boy were we disappointed. Scraggly little trees that only Charlie Brown could love, and all of them outrageously priced. I can’t recall paying more than about $40 for a tree and Tannenbaum, and in fact most years it was less than $30. Not a single tree at this other place was less than $35 and all the reasonably good looking or tall ones were priced between $75 & $150! Not only that but it was all out in a muddy field behind a travel trailer. Not what I would remotely call “magical”.
We gave up on tree farms… ok tree farm.. and drove into town and grabbed a tree at the grocery store. A fine looking and quite tall Douglas Fir. (Logical since one fell over in our yard exactly one year ago!) I paid $20 for it.
On our way home Nick & I drove past Tannenbaum, and their trees are there, but they are closed. Out in front is a Snohomish County Land Use Permit application sign. Obviously the site of another housing development, coming soon.
It is official: The Boonies have devolved into the Suburbs.