Topless Tuesday in a Blizzard

This is what I'm looking at outside today:

About 15" of snow in southeast Maine by Noon today, a bit more than an inch an hour. More is on the way in the next 12 hours. I really don't like snow. Nope.

This is what I want to be looking at today:

Click to embiggen or see it on Flickr here.

I want to be somewhere tropical with warm ocean water, a nice breeze, and a comfy tub to soak in when I feel like it. Being topless in the snow isn't nearly as much fun, I imagine. Happy Topless Tuesday!!

Welcome to My Blizzard

The Blizzard of 2013, as the current confluence of an off-shore storm with a land-based storm has been called (with full confidence by hype-loving media that there won't be another one any time in the next 10 months), has about another six to 10 hours before it scoots out of my area in southern Maine. As of this moment we are at one of two critical high tides so us coastal folks have to worry about the North Atlantic invading our streets and front yards. One port saw a 26-foot surge in 14 seconds. I live close enough to smell the ocean but not so close that I have to worry about direct damage from the flood. For our part, this is what we're facing:

Our wheelchair ramp is buried, though the blowing snow has the very end (which you can't see) fairly clear.

My neighbor's garage as seen from one of my bedroom windows. Thats about a 4-foot drift.

A view of my neighbors from our front window. This will make them think twice about using their garage for storage instead of for a car. That is one nasty snow drift. The property across the way is owned by a retirement home complex so they've been plowed a couple times over night.

While we wait for our plow guy (none of us are medically cleared to shovel snow) we can watch the drifts pile up from the 50 m.p.h. to 70 m.p.h. wind gusts. Some were stronger last night.

Almost no power outages in our area (thank you, Central Maine Power!) so one of our TVs is always tuned to the NECN, the regional all-news network so we can watch folks that are even worse off than we are in our little town. Welcome to the Blizzard of 2013!

RL Bite: Hurricane Sandy

Outside our living room window. Wind gusts up to about 60 m.p.h. at almost 3:00 p.m. today. Otherwise, it seems like a fairly quite day with overcast skies and intermittent sprinkles here in southern Maine.

This is a mild gust outside my bedroom window. A bit of a power flicker, but nothing serious here. Should start to ease up in a couple hours and then just be rainy. Local power company has reported upwards of 1,700 addresses in my (fairly big) county without power. Most we've had in my town is about 30 last I saw. Numbers go up and down. Thank goodness it's not Winter with snow and freezing temperatures. Plenty of food and water if power goes out. Emergency hand-cranked radio is broken. Ordered a new one Saturday. Should be here after the storm passes on Wednesday.

Following Sandy at Google Crisis is interesting. All our iDevices are charged up and browser tabs I have open on any of them or the desktop can be viewed on any device. But I know if I log into Second Life we'll probably lose power. That's the way luck works. But I am watching the My Second Life feeds.

I Miss Linden Trees & Particle Rain

The tree that is controlling both my lives right now is partly gone. This is a shot from the day it fell. Dunno how tall it is ... 75 feet? One of the oldest trees in the neighborhood I'm told. The base is in the back yard of the house behind ours.

This shot is from the front of the house and shows the part (abut 15 feet) that had to be removed just to patch the roof. Three guys removed the part and patched the roof in under an hour for $400! I wish 400 RL dollars was as cheep as 400 Linden dollars. The rest of the tree is there until Thursday.

Half of the kitchen/dining ceiling needs to be replaced and one of the walls. Maybe not the window but nearly the entire roof was damaged by the tree or the winds over the last couple storms. Some were up to 90 m.p.h. and the recent rains totaled over 6 inches for our area. I miss Linden trees and particle rain.