The Day After

The snow around our building was nearly waist deep in spaces today. This is what my library looked like this morning:

Front of building. (Shoveled out by Deb--another staffperson--and me.)

Looking up the front walk.

Looking out the front door.


Looking up the back walk. (Shoveled out by Sean and Michele, our cleaning lady!)
The gray pipe on your right is almost 4' tall.

Looking out the back door.

Then the snowplow went through and cleared up some snow and left us with:

Sean and The Big Snow Pile

Marie's Car and The Big Snow Pile

The Big Snow Pile

And we are supposed to get another 8-12" of lake effect snow overnight. (For those of you who don't know, Lake Effect is apparently one of the Great Lakes that specializes in producing heavy snows in this area. [Did a librarian really just give us false information???? Your assignment: look up "lake effect snow" and see what it is for yourself.] )

Singing: Snow, snow go away, don't come back another day!

Happy Valentines' Day

How's your Valentines' Day?

I woke up at 6am and got 9"...

of snow that is. This is the first "real" snow we've gotten so far this season. (Which doesn't mean we haven't had snow so far; we have 69.5" as of last night.) But this was the most snow we'd gotten at one time this winter. The photo above was taken at noon.

And as of noon we measured:

almost 18" and it is still coming down.

We don't have a snow blower so we shoveled the driveway out by hand--well, by shovel...

And another 5" is forecast by 7pm with an additional 5" expected on top of that overnight.

UPDATE: The snow slowed down a bit and by 6pm, we had a total of 21". But it IS still falling!

How to calculate Pi...

This is just stupid. But it made me laugh. And I just had to share with all you geeky types...and you know who you are!

http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Pi-by-Throwing-Frozen-Hot-Dogs

According to the directions, those of you who are vegetarians COULD use celery since you aren't likely to have frozen hot dogs lying around.

Laughing at myself

One of my wonderful friends, T, is a larger-than-life man who (I think) resembles Ernest Hemingway, not just physically but in spirit (without the self-destructive tendencies).

T just let me know that on my next birthday he will be cycling from Casablanca through Marrakech to Timbuktu, including 100 miles through the Sahara Desert.

*I*, OTOH, am worried about driving by myself 165 miles down the Thruway to Bennington to visit some friends!

:-)

Green Lakes in November

Green Lakes is a pair of meromictic lakes in a State Park near Syracuse. (Meromictic lakes are ones which do not experience turn over or mixing of upper and lower levels of water.) This is one of my most favorite places to walk as the trail is fairly level. The water is the most exquisite Caribbean blue-green I have ever seen.

On Sunday, I walked the front lake to test out how well my knee was doing. (I hyper-extended my leg a few days before and I was hobbling around.) Sean went with me in case I needed to be carried back to the car.

I am happy to announce: I made the entire 2 miles under my own steam. Oh, all right, so it took me an hour! At least I did it on my own!

Green Lake near the trail to Round Lake

I loved the way the red of this tree played against the teal of the water. (The colors were more incredible in real life.--Sorry!)

Looking across to the west shore of Green Lake

During the walk, Sean found a pair of reading glasses. It was my suggestion to hang them on a tree. He picked this one because it had a little nub (technical term, I'm sure!) that stuck out far enough for him to hang the glasses on. I call this tree "TreeBeard". :-)

TreeBeard

I do NOT have an accent!

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have?

Happy Halloween!

I was in a cemetery in Rochester two years ago at this time of year and I took this photo. The only thing that I have done to it is crop it. It was taken at 9:30 in the morning and I love the way the sunshine came through the trees to hit this sad little tombstone.

It is my most favorite photo with an appropriately Halloween feel to it and the way the Mama and Papa headstones hover over it in the background just speaks to me.