Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

I had some store credits that were about to expire, and Lisa had some grocery shopping she wanted to do, so this afternoon as soon as I could get clear from Day Jobbe, we drove to Reno, where we made stops at USFoods, Staples, Raley's, and Chase Bank. The days are of course getting longer, but we were also pretty efficient and got home before dark.

After putting away the groceries, we tried to clear ice that has been accumulating in places that aren't getting direct sunlight.

( Clearing the Ice )

The weather trend is for slowly warming days through the weekend, but there is apparently a new storm that may arrive late Saturday night.

As I wrote yesterday, we had a day of rain that turned to slushy, high-water-content snow. Lisa and I spent time in the evening clearing snow from the front porch and the sidewalk. We then spent a quiet evening with a nice ground venison-based "Salisbury steak" and rice dinner, and we watched a variety of videos.

Later in the evening, Lisa wanted to go out to collect something out of the travel trailer, but after briefly going outside she came in to announce a small problem.

( Tree Trouble )

After clearing the snow from the walk again near midnight, We poured ourselves a couple of glasses of Martinelli's sparkling apple-grape and toasted in the New Year as people around Fernley shot off fireworks. I'm unsure if any of these were licensed exhibitions, but given the cold, wet conditions, I wasn't that concerned about someone setting the town on fire.

This morning, as expected, we had a break in the snow, but not in all of the ice.

( Sunny New Year )

Later in the day, I came up with a solution for the ice problem on the north porch. While the press-wood firelogs are pretty efficient, they do leave some ash buildup, and this afternoon the fire had died down to the point where I could dig some ashes. I put on one of my N95 masks to keep from inhaling ask and got the ash bucket.

As is generally the way of things, the ash I dug from the fireplace was warm and included enough hot coals that the bucket got hot. Not dangerously hot, but enough so that I wouldn't want to touch it bare handed. I took the bucket out on the porch and set it on the icy areas. This applied just enough heat that I was able to break up the ice with the snow shovel and scrape it off. Unfortunately, as I expected, this also took some paint with the ice. We're going to need to repaint the porch this spring, but at least for now I don't expect to wipe out trying to go down the porch steps.

This is the break before another series of storms, probably colder and with more snow, comes through in the next few days. I took this opportunity to once again move more logs into the living room and the porch wood box. After this next set of storms passes, I will inquire at Big R about getting more firewood.