10 posts tagged “ice”

Here is a tiny bit of advice for anyone that cares. Do not use your washing machine if the laundry room has been at or below freezing for several days.

Our laundry room is actually more like what many people would call a mud room. It is not a well insulated room and with the most recent temperatures of the last few days being at and around 0'F, so the room was around the freezing temp. for multiple days.
Well my roommate tried to do wash today and ended up burning up the belt and the pulley on the washer because the water in the pump and drain hose was frozen and the washer could not drain when it tried too.
So much fun, I had to bail out the tub and she had to take her wet clothes next door to our best friends place to finish washing them.

I have already gone on line and order a new pulley wheel, new water pump, and new belt. Now I have to wait for it to be delivered. My roommate is actually the one paying for all of this because I am officially unemployed now.

So learn from our mistake, make sure to check your washer to make sure nothing it frozen in it before using it.

Well we got Maggie's car home. Fortunately the roads have thawed just enough that I was able to call the tow truck again and they came and picked me up so that I could drive her car home when he got it out of the ditch. That is another thing that I like about living out here in a rural area. Local companies are so much more courteous.

It was a good thing that the roads thawed as much as they did because the amount of cinders that the roads dept. put down was pitiful to non-existent in places. It almost looked like someone had been walking along tossing out bird seeds it was so sparse.  The  tow truck guy joked and said it looked like they just had someone in a back of a pick up tossing out cinders by hand instead of a truck with a spreader going through.

At least now my roommate can come home wrap all her presents and then we both can get out tomorrow to go to each of our different family Christmases.

Well I have talked to the tow truck guys and they are going to check out the location to see if they can get Maggie's car out of the ditch, but it is not looking promising. Even if he gets the car out of the ditch it is not a for sure thing that he will be able to get it to our house. If he is able to get the car all the way back here to the house, it does not mean that our little cars will be able to travel where his big tow truck could. Maggie has already called her family to let them know that she may not be able to come in tonight for their usual Christmas Eve get together. I have called my family to let them know that I may not be able to get out of here for Christmas.

I have also called the county roads dept. to let them know that they definitely need to get out to this area and get something down for traction out here. They already have us on the list because apparently I am not the first to call. This did not surprise me since Maggie's car is not the only one off the road because of the ice.

I tried to catch Maggie before she headed home yesterday to let her know that she would probably want to stay at her sister's place, but she had left early from work and as usual once she is in the car she does not take her cell phone out of her purse and her radio is too loud to hear the phone.

I was able to let my roommate know about the ice before she left work and she stayed at her mom's place last night. I have already talked to her today to let her know that she may not be able to get home tonight. That is not so bad for her as far as Christmas with her family is concerned, except all her gifts are still here and not even wrapped.

Oh well it is better to be safe than trying to rush around for an over commercialized holiday anyway.

I knew it was getting bad out but I got to find out just how bad. Our friend that has a mobile home on our property, called me to let me know that she was stuck in the ditch on the hill where the pavement ends and the gravel begins. I was able to go and get her and get home, but it was very iffy at several points. There is just enough ice everywhere to eliminate traction, especially since the temp is fluctuating at the freezing point. The ice is damp from the rain and this makes it even slipperier.

I just checked the forecast that I am not so sure if I will be getting out of here for Christmas. The temperature is not supposed to get very much lower tonight, and it is supposed to drop during the day tomorrow so there is little chance that the ice will be going away any time soon. As I have mentioned before we are so far out at the edge of the county that we are one of the last areas the county's trucks get to. I am not even sure we will be able to get Maggie's car out of the ditch tomorrow, I am not sure that the tow truck would be able to get enough traction to get her out.

I have been downloading photos from my camera and playing around with editing them. I have also started a new Flickr account (still trying to get the hang of it). I also have uploaded to my vox photos (still having problems with my dial-up connection causing problems with the upload). So to have some fun with the photos to balance out the stress of technical problems, I played around with the colors of one particular photo and thought I would share them.

Hope they are as much fun to look at as they were to make.

I really am getting frustrated with the water line. The little heater does not seem to be of any help. I am to the point that I am thinking of opening the line up at the well house and put a little salt in the line. I figure it can not really hurt the line and if it does not all wash out when we first use the water it will only be salty not chemically. I just am not sure that I will get enough salt in the line to work its way to the actual frozen section where ever that may be. I probably will just end up with such a weak dilution of salt water that it would not have any effect on the frozen spot. Hey at least it is something to do besides sitting here waiting for ice to melt. rrrrrr

We got a lot of rain yesterday that melted most of the ice on the ground. Notice I say most not all.
Well there is still enough ice on the ground (rural roads included) to be dangerous. To top it off we got a dusting of snow over the top of the ice, just enough to give some people a false sense of security. Not me I made sure to be prepared to fall on my back side while out walking around in the winter wonderland. I used some extra dog collars that we never use to give my boots more traction. I just downloaded the pictures so I will have to show my traction contraption when I get done uploading the pictures that are decent enough.

Now off to make some hot cocoa I am so chilled from my walk. Mostly just my legs though because I did not have on my heavy insulated bibs this time (they are still drying from all the back and forth to my best friends house, in the rain. (I have been letting her dogs out while her and my roommate have been semi stranded in St. Louis. They carpool)

This ice storm needs to end soon!! I am almost out of Pepsi. LOL! I have one Pepsi and one Dr. Pepper left. I do not even have very much juice left. I may have to go cold turkey and drink plain water. Good thing I like water.

Even my doggies and kitties want the storm to end soon. Oh wait maybe they don't; I just gave them all canned food, because we are low on dry food and I wanted to stretch it so that I will not run completely out. So I imagine they are really happy that we are stuck here. Canned food is only a treat for my critters.

Well I probably should call it a night. I need to get back in the habit of going to bed at a reasonable hour, so that I will be ready for work. It looks like I may have a shot at work next week. I am up near the top of the list at my hiring hall. I went ahead and applied for one of my weeks of vacation (turns out I actually worked enough last year to earn 2 weeks). I did this so that I can stay at home and finish a few more home improvement projects before going back to work. By taking a vacation I do not loose my place on the hiring hall list and I do not get any 'turn downs'. It is important not to get 'turn downs' because 3 of those kicks you to the bottom of the hiring list and it is over 200 right now. So with a vacation I am safe from turn downs and still stay near the top of the list allowing me the opportunity to go back to work after I get off of vacation.

Another reason I need to get to bed at a decent hour tonight is because I have to take care of all of our pets and our best friend's 2 dogs, because she rides to work with my roommate. Since they are both staying in town because of the ice, I am left to take care of alllllll the critters. Thank goodness her mobile home is on our property and only a little over a hundred feet away.

I am tired and ready to sleep but I am kind of like a kid wondering just how much snow or ice we will have by morning; I just want to stay up and keep checking outside every so often. Silly I know but I like the look of fresh snow fall and always enjoy seeing it when it is undisturbed. I am not sure that we will get very much snow though because the weather people keep talking more about ice than snow, but that can look really cool too. Of course after the first few minutes of enjoying the looks of it, the snow and/or ice becomes old news and just a hassle, lol. Maybe if I get in my PJs and go right to bed I will wake up to a pristine view that I can take a few shots of before it all quickly melts away. I know kind of a childlike wish but hey whats the use of living if you can not have childlike thoughts every so often. LOL

(I do not know how to link to someone else's blog so I am sorry that I will mention it with out linking it)

Recently Webcruiser posted about not liking to be alone, and that he would be for a couple of days while Myke was out of town. I empathize with him and commented to the effect. My best friend is also the co-owner of my home. I have been lucky to know her since 3rd grade. Well right now we are getting hit with a winter storm and she works an hour away from home in the St. Louis metropolitan area. We live north west of St. Louis and that is where the storm is tracking from, so I am able to let her know how bad the storm is before she heads home from work. Well she is going to stay at her mother's house now because I have let her know that we already have 1/8th to a 1/4 of an inch of sleet on the ground out here. The most recent forecasts are predicting about 1" of freezing rain during the wee hours of the morning so it is doubtful that she will be coming home tomorrow either. So I will be alone for most of the weekend.

The irony of this is the fact that we are solitary people when we are home and spend most of our time in our own rooms watching different favorite tv shows or in my case playing on the computer, but when I know that she will not be able to come home it bugs me. I like having the presence of another person in the house. We do not always spend all of our time in separate ends of the house and that is what I already miss, the spontaneity of being able to speak to each other, even though she would only just be getting home about now!

The awareness is what makes the concern different. When I do not know I will be alone, or if I choose it (rather than have it chosen for me), then I am okay with it, but when I am not the one in control of the situation, well it bugs me.