I took this screen shot at about noon. That was two hours ago.
It is currently -17C, with a “RealFeel” of -31C.
I’m glad I thought to check the temperatures before I headed out this morning, as the beautiful sunny day made it seem deceptively pleasant out there. And it was – on the south side of the house. As soon as I came around the corner to put out deer and bird feed, I got blasted with the wind from the north. It was blowing the deer feed away, as I poured it out of my bucket! At that time, it was -16C with a wind chill of -30C.
You know, I’m really looking forward to being able to just pop outside at a whim. Although temperatures have become relatively mild lately (we’re at -7C right now, with a wind chill of -12C), when you have to spend several minutes just to bundle up in layers and heave on the snow boots, going in tends to involve more planning for efficiency. ;-D
I had a couple of visitors while doing my rounds this morning.
It’s been quite a while since I’ve heard one of these guys, and even longer since I’ve seen one.
What I found interesting is that, when it saw me coming, it just walked away, then stayed to watch me for a while, before finally flying off. Usually, I don’t even know one’s been around until I hear it flying away.
At one point, I was under a tree when some bits of bark and debris began falling on my head.
Why?
Because of this little lady.
Who was not at all happy to see our other visitor.
My brother’s dog came by, and even came over to let me pet him, without doing the “sneaking up from behind” shyness he usually displays. He still played a bit shy, but he seemed more interested in getting pets, instead. :-D
The temperature outside is not the only thing was was warming up today. This is what I saw when I looked out our bathroom window this morning.
Pretty sure that’s Big Jim in the empty water bowl. :-D
Also, they are absolutely shredding the piece of Styrofoam I’ve got partially holding up their cat cave roof! :-D
We’ve taken advantage of the warming temperatures with a quick trip into the city last night, and a trip to finally do our bigger shopping today. We’re skipping our usual monthly Costco shop this month, because of how things worked out for the holidays, but it was still worth driving into the city to get at least a modestly large shopping trip in.
Among the things we picked up today was 5 large bags of kibble for the outside cats. Going to the city to buy those alone saved us about $50-$75, if we’d bought it locally. The price range is because the stores are often out of stock of the lower priced varieties. The savings in cat food alone more than makes up for the cost of gas to drive to the city.
I had to buy a memory card. A 16 Gig card in the city cost me just under $16. A comparable card locally? Almost $25.
So it was worth the drive in, even as messy as it was out there. We were above freezing today, and everything was melting like crazy on the roads. It’s going to cool down again, starting tomorrow, so I’m glad to get the hours of driving out of the way, before everything freezes up again. Temperatures are expected to drop again, starting tomorrow, though not the deep freeze we recently had.
It should be interesting to see how the deep freeze will affect our electricity bill. Our billing cycle is mid-month, so there is a calendar overlap. Our first bill, just over a year ago, was over $300, going up almost $100 each cycle over the next few months, topping out at just under $600. During this time, the hot water tank had finally died and we were heating water every day for washing. Comparing the costs of our energy usage a year later, the bill only went up about $25 in the same time period. It should be interesting to compare the time period after we got the new hot water tank, and were no longer boiling water for hours, every day!
One of the things I love about digital photography, and especially with the use of various lenses, is that when the photos are uploaded, we often see more in the photo, than what we saw at the moment. Like the incredible colour of Big Jim’s eyes.
Or… hold on… Is that blood on his lip???
Jim was hiding behind the base of the bird feeder, watching the birds eating the deer feed on the ground. Every now and then, he would make a leap for a bird.
A very clumsy leap, what with the base of the feeder in his way and all…
Maybe that’s how he hurt his lip?
Edit: I had to go back and fix this post. When I first wrote it, I thought I was looking at Bob, because of the white under his chin. Bob, however, has more white, plus a bit of a white splash on his nose, too. A few months ago, I would never have had this problem, as they were so different in size!
The Re-Farmer 