Category: Brief Messages or Announcements

Cedar Waxwings Get Cold Breakfast

The morning of December 22, 2022 was one of the most frigid days in recent memory. The winter storm brought 30-40 mph winds and temperatures sometimes to down to 30 or worse.

I didn’t get right out there to shovel. Snow was blowing around until well after noon. This gave me a chance to watch a flock of Cedar Waxwings gather around the winterberry bushes in our backyard.

The berries must have been pretty cold. There was ice on them. One bird couldn’t seem to get a bill bite on them and dropped his breakfast on the ground a couple of times. I don’t think he got a bite to swallow.

And the city plows plugged our driveway as usual.

That means Sena and I had to get out there around 3:30 in the afternoon to shovel our driveway and sidewalks. It took us about an hour and I am considering calling whoever in city government is responsible for ordering up this weather.

Snow Day!

I wrote this post yesterday because I didn’t know whether or not we’d have a power outage because of high winds (up to nearly 50 mph) predicted for the Arctic Blast this week.

When we’re not outside scooping our walkway and driveway, we’ll probably be playing cribbage or, God forbid, Scrabble (which I always lose).

We’ve heard about the renewed interest in board games, one of them being Scrabble. We recently found an old Scrabble game at Old Capitol Town Center (formerly Old Capitol Mall). It’s Super Scrabble and it was on sale for $50 at a hole-in-the-wall shop lacking an entrance sign. The high price is because it’s a collectible relic from the past, although a quick internet search revealed it was made in 2004—hardly an antique. You can find them on eBay for $30. On the other hand, you can find them going for as much as $179 at an on-line store called Mercari.

We’ll also probably take a break by munching on our Christmas cookies.

I’m all set for the freezing weather. I’ve got my thermal underwear out and sweats out, along with my heavy gloves.

The wind will probably make shoveling pointless at times. We’ll probably bag it and then I’ll practice the juggling behind the back trick—another pointless activity.

Blockbuster Sasquatch Cribbage Game Antics!

Brace yourselves! Sena and I are going to break the internet with the never-before-seen YouTube video of our antic-filled cribbage game on our Sasquatch cribbage board—and playing with the Sasquatch cribbage cards!

This had an extremely rare outcome. Wait’ll you see what it is.

I also shared a few nuggets of knowledge about Sasquatch that I learned from the internet. One of them is that the Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) credits the state of Iowa with 76 reports of Bigfoot encounters (not necessarily sighting per se, but so what?).

Bending Amaryllis Staked, Sort of…

This morning we noticed that the Amaryllis was bent almost 90 degrees. We found a zip tie and used an old wooden spoon to stake it. Sure, it looks like amateurs did it-because amateurs did it. But the alternative is to cut the stem and sacrifice the blooms, which are still vibrant.

Amaryllis Star of Christmas

Well, I think all of the blossoms that are going to blow have blown on our Amaryllis, Star of Holland. There are 4 of them. They’re huge and glorious!

I didn’t know how it would turn out at first. It started off as just a little green stub. It soared to about 18 inches and then pushed out flowers in every direction.

It grew a lot quicker than I thought. I doubted it would bloom before Christmas. Now I’m not sure it’ll last until Christmas.

We do have a backup Poinsettia. And today, Sena just added a Zygocactus. I gather it’s a Christmas cactus.

Music creative commons attribution for video music:

Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1100189

Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Announcements!

Today, I almost got a 29-hand playing cribbage with Sena. Almost is kind of like a fish story about the one that got away. I got dealt a Jack of hearts, and 3 fives, the heart, club, and diamond. If the Jack of heart had been in my hand and the 5 of hearts had been the starter card, and the other 5 in my hand had been the spade, I could have been a lucky guy, indeed. As it was, the hand was worth only 20 points. You can get better hands without all those fives, frankly. But it was still exciting. We both won a game and I finally won best two out of three. That’s rare.

There are definitely going to be 4 blossoms on the Amaryllis. They will make a great-looking bouquet. By the way, Sena has been to stores where the bulb kits are sold—some of the plants burst right through the boxes! That means you don’t have to do much to get them to grow—my kind of houseplant.