Slip Sliding Away

Oddly enough, I was listening to that song this morning as I was navigating our somewhat frozen streets, while attempting to get home in one piece. Yesterday, around 2 in the afternoon, we got a surprise. Snow. I had just pulled in the driveway, and as I got out of the car, I noticed lots of tiny white things in the air. Tiny snowflakes. By the time I got in the house and said "Hey, it's snowing", they had changed into big fat fluffy flakes. They covered everything pretty quickly. It snowed for about an hour, and then stopped, and then started again, and then stopped for good around 5 in the evening. Just in time for me to go to work. The ride to work was better than I thought, and I got there uneventfully. I did notice that the town I work in had less snow than we had. However, around 6 this morning, when I looked out the window, I could see the streets below had some snow cover, and traffic was moving slowly. Uh-oh. People coming in for the 7 am shift were reporting that roads were slippery, and depending on which direction you were going in, downright treacherous. So, feeling a bit nervous, I got in my car, and drove out of the parking garage. Right off the bat, I noticed a problem. The exit from the garage is a slight incline. I slid down that incline and landed in the street. The car behind me seemed to have the same problem, but managed not to hit me. Crap. This is going to be some ride home. It really wasn't that bad. The salt trucks had been out, and except for one or two spots, wasn't bad at all. But, as we all know, even one spot can be bad. I was coming up to a stop sign, and stopped slowly, because the road looked like glass, and did do a slide to the right. I managed to right my car, and get home with only a few new grey hairs. The picture at the top is what things looked like after a few minutes of snow.


One thing I've noticed over the years is that whenever it snows, my birdfeeders do a booming business. I usually have a lot of birds, but they tend to come in spurts during the day. When it snows, the first birds show up right away, and more and more keep coming. They do this until it gets dark, or stops snowing, whichever comes first. I had about three dozen juncos, several woodpeckers, a dozen doves, a couple dozen purple and gold finches, and several cardinals and bluejays, plus the usual assortment of chickadees, titmice, and woodpeckers. Add in some rowdy squirrels, and it was a fun time out there. I had refilled the feeders the day before, so there was plenty to go around. The picture is taken through my family room window, and is what my cats see from their vantage point. You can see at the bottom of the picture, a window feeder attached to the window (it feeds birds, not windows!), and an assortment of pole feeders, suet cages, nyjer bags, and a cage feeder to keep small birds safe from the big birds.

I'm moving right along on the Cherry Tree Hill Socks in River Run. I took nearly two dozen pictures of them, both indoors and outdoors, and felt kind of frustrated because I cannot capture the true colors of this yarn. It looks very blue in the picture, but it is a beautiful mix of teal, purple, medium blue, green and a bronzy-brown color. I know it's expensive, but these colors and the feel of these socks when they're on your feet are a real treat. These are not going to be mine, because I'm making them for someone, but it's going to be hard to part with them. In the pictures, they look very similar to the pair I made for myself in October, but the colors are distinctly different. In real life, at least.


Gremlin deals with the whole snow thing by parking his body on the nearest heat vent, in this case, the one near the sliding glass door, where he could watch the bird circus outside. Unfortunately for him, I seem to have taken this picture at a rather odd angle. When Dave saw it, he said, "why does Grem look like he has such a big butt?" Ahem. While Grem is somewhat chubby, he is more in proportion than this picture shows. It kind of makes him look like a furry termite. Good thing he doesn't understand pictures.