Tikatu's Travels Through Time

Yeah, for the first time this winter, it's snowing here in SC. We've had rain for the past three days; good steady rain, the kind that soaks deep into the ground and sticks. Today, though some of that rain was mixed with sleet, leaving little grains of ice on our "new" side porch (the old fort from the backyard, almost gutted and moved to the side door). Then it began to mix with snow, and turn over to snow completely around 5 p.m.. So very good to see after such a snowless winter. We've even had thunder with this: thundersnow is pretty rare no matter where you go.

Looks like about an inch so far, with an accumlation of 3 to 6 inches possible by the time the storm pulls out - a least, that's what the weather authorities say. And since this is evening, and the temperature will only go down, it shouldn't melt right away, as it did for my friend from Alabama. She says that her snow is all gone. The kids are looking forward to having a day off from school. It's Hubby's first week of annual leave, so he doesn't have to worry about work at all.

Yikes! Something just hit the roof. The Girl is going out to check, taking Lacey out with her so the dog can do her business - if she will. Sometimes she's a really prissy dog about doing her business in the weather. She's been growling and giving little "woofs" at the kids next door playing in the snow. The noise of whatever it was scared Cotton, who hid under my desk. She has now come out and is watching the snow fall through my door. I offered to let her out, but she took a couple of sniffs and decided that warm and dry was better than cold and wet.

The Girl is back now; says she didn't see anything, even with a flashlight. Things that fall on the roof tend to sound louder than they should. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a clump of mistletoe from our oak tree.

I have to admit, I really miss the snow at times. But the fact that we don't have it very often makes it easier to appreciate when it does arrive.

( picspam! )

I guess I'm living in them.

It's been an interesting past few days. We got the notice over the weekend that Boy #1 has been invited to go to the Arts Awakening weekend again. It'll be over his dad's birthday, but that's okay. We'll celebrate at some other point. The weekend camp is sp onsored by the YMCA for the public schools, is by invitation only, and this is the second year that he's been tapped for the honor. He's already said he doesn't want to go up into the high ropes like last year - and I hope he doesn't get sick like last year either.

Last night we had an interesting visitor. I had taken Lacey out for a constitutional and heard a scrabbling on the bark of one of the pecan trees between our yard and the neighbors'. The scrabbling turned out to be something climbing said tree. At first I thought it was Tika, with her tail all puffed out, but once I got the back yard spotlights on, I could see it was a raccoon! It got up into the first split of the pecan tree's branches, 15+ feet up, and stayed there as long as Lacey was outside. So, I tied her out and went looking for the camera. The Girl was still awake, so we grabbed a flashlight and the digital camera and headed out to take pictures. At one point, we disturbed the neighbors, who came out and asked what was going on. He was rather impressed that Lacey had treed a 'coon!

The new dishwasher is very good! It really cleans the dishes well, and has a disposal portion, too. It seems to take longer than the old one did, but it dries the dishes and everything gets really clean. It even works with the solid detergent tabs that I'd bought before the old one went completely.

We finally got Hubby a much-needed cell phone. He doesn't like it, but admits it makes his life on the road a lot easier. We've also used some of the tax refund to buy the rest of the fencing - not including gates. It came this past Thursday, and I'm looking forward to Hubby being able to get it all up.

I was featured on the FanLib carousel today - with my drabble "Green", excerpted from Mosaic. I'd entered it into a drabble contest, but hadn't won. This is a better reward, I think. I'm working hard on finishing one or more WIPs; new chapters up for The White Winds and Resolutions: Redux, with a second TWW chapter halfway done. The RP has picked up tremendously over the past couple of weeks and it looks like we may have another player - this time from Australia. We'll have to really shuffle things around for her to make it to brainstorming sessions!

More later!