SnowBlog

I love my semi-rural life and sometimes it provides for some interesting juxtapositions; particularly since I’ve started this internet-only business!
So I went to bed early last night with the idea of getting up full of piss and vinegar and plowing through the final stages of an exciting project that I’ve been working on for some time now.  I woke up before daylight wondering why the heck it was so light outside…snow.  Not just snow, but SNOW!!!  Here in the Southern Willamette Valley of Oregon we get snow on the valley floor most years, and sometimes it actually accumulates.  And I’ve never seen a late March snow like this one.  We had 6 inches on my deck rail before I finished my first coffee and at least 8 inches by the time I was pouring my second cup.  But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Well before the coffee happened, as I was lying in bed listening to the radio for school updates to see if I had to think about getting my daughter to school today, the power went off.  No flicker, no bump back on, just dead.  OK, been here before…it’s part of the rural experience and we’re pretty much prepared for it.  Wood stove is still warm from last night’s fire,

stoke it up and prepare for the back part of my house to get pretty cool as the warming effect from my heat pump wans. The main living area will stay nice and toasty.  Go find the generator.

With that plugged into the pump house we will have all the running water we need, albeit cold.  We may be taking what my mom called PTA baths for a while.  Note: possibly offensive explanation coming up…(PTA means, in my mom’s terms, Puss, Tits and Armpits.)  I love my mom and miss her a lot some days; she passed on some years back but keeps passing on her humor and wisdom.

---

And so here’s the very interesting, multi-level juxtaposition…I’m sitting here in my warm living room, starting to smell a little ripe, (no PTA bath yet today) listening to Freekradio, my favorite weird internet radio station based in Austin Texas, and building a blog for my site, (Gary Dawson Designs, duh) on a laptop that’s wirelessly connected to the world through my cellular phone which can provide a 3G mobile hotspot.  Since my laptop is charging my phone (via usb port while the laptop is plugged into the generator) I’m pondering the notion of this being the perpetual motion machine that has been eluding science since people began wondering about these things.
Based on what I saw driving (carefully, at 20 mph) into town today to deposit all the money that y’all so lovingly send to Gary Dawson Designs for making you cool jewelry, I’m thinking that we may be without power for a while.  Trees down everywhere!  More snow or freezing rain is expected tonight so you may get another blog post fairly soon.  I’m sort of dead-in-the-water as far as production goes until power is restored out here…
One thing will keep us warm for the duration is my habañero sauce made from flame roasted habaneros, lime juice and copious quantities of salt.  Will have that with the roast slow cooking on top of the wood stove.
​

---