Unusual sightings at Chenoweth

February 15 was a banner day for odd things around here.  The first occurred as a result of Neil. You family members know Neil — Sarah’s old friend that we have been helping.  He asked to use our dining room for a romantic Valentine meal for his wife, seeing as how he couldn’t afford to take her out to a nice restaurant.  I said o.k., and he made all the arrangements through Serena.  I didn’t think I would need to be involved at all.  (But you know me). Continue reading “Unusual sightings at Chenoweth”

Another Catalpa tree bites the dust

Actually, the dust (driveway) bit the Catalpa.  Catalpa wood isn’t strong, and this one shattered when it hit.  The day, Wed., 2/11, brought high winds(gusting up to 40 mph), and a short but heavy storm.  This is always a bad recipe for old trees.  The ground gets saturated, the wind blows, and the roots come out.  Much of our 1/2 mile front avenue was once bordered by Catalpas, now probably 100 years old.  A wind shear a few years back took out 5 in close proximity to each other, and other storms have claimed a few more.  Continue reading “Another Catalpa tree bites the dust”

The surprise that almost wasn’t

In the midst of Iceland, we had been making surreptitious plans with Rainey (Sarah’s husband), to come down and surprise her for her birthday.  The ice threw a kink into those plans.  Serena volunteered to stay home to look after things, since she had to work Friday, anyway.  But we weren’t comfortable leaving her when it involved kerosene heaters and generators.  Enter our wonderful cousin, John Graham, who lives in Shelbyville.  He agreed to come out and be with Serena during the nights, and help her oversee the mechanical devices that were powering and heating the house.  His wife, Ann, took Serena to work Friday, after Serena hiked down to the end of the avenue.  (By then, we’d had a few more inches of snow over the ice to make the driveway even more treacherous.)  More on that in a minute. Continue reading “The surprise that almost wasn’t”

Encased in ICE

This year has been busy happening, and my posts haven’t, so I’m going to try to catch up today.  The biggest recent happening (and the coldest, most destructive and pestiferous) was the now famous ice storm that swept over 6 states — KY being about in the middle.  I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.  Oh, we’ve had sleet.  It left a beautiful icing on the trees for the sun to set asparkle, and maybe resulted in a lot of small twigs falling to the ground.   We had one of those late in 2004.

Raise that kind of storm several exponential powers! Continue reading “Encased in ICE”

Globally inconvenient- we protest!

Big Fix?  A renowned environmental consultant says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been cooking the Global Warming Protestbooks on global warming. Former University of Winnipeg Climatology Professor Dr. Tim Ball writes in the Canada Free Press, “The only place where CO2 is causing temperature increase is in the IPCC computer models.”

He says the IPCC has a habit of releasing computer model summaries before climate studies are even completed. He says by doing this, “The summary gets maximum media attention and becomes the public understanding of what the scientists said… they create an appearance of certainty about a human cause of [global] warming.”

Adding, “The computer models themselves are completely inadequate to represent global climate… but don’t believe me. The IPCC technical report released in 2007, says so.”

Finally, as if to drive home the point, my buddy Bob in Cincinnati sent this picture of a global warming protest attended by hundreds of … snowmen!

Blizzard

Dear friends and family,

Despite my better judgment, I’m going to write an update this week because so many cool things have happened. Most important and wonderfully exciting is we had a blizzard here in Columbus!!! It started snowing Friday morning, kept going through to Friday night, and by Saturday morning it was blizzarding and it didn’t really stop until Saturday evening. I can’t say what the average snow fall is or anything, but around my dorm it ranges between a foot and a foot and a half deep. The wind was blowing pretty hard the whole time, so the snow got moved around quite a bit.

Snow is so much fun!! and this is the first time I’ve been in so much snow (excluding a big snow we had when I was about 5 which I don’t remember very well). Friday evening I spent an hour sliding down a steep pathway, very very fun, and later that evening after my usual IFI potluck, a few other international students and I Continue reading “Blizzard”

Photojournal of “Christmas in Kentucky”

This is quite a bit late, but by now you family members will be ready to enjoy the memories. For the record, we tried to get all Ted’s family to come here for Christmas, and it worked, more or less. His brother Dan arrived about the 20th, and Stephen came on the 22nd with Emily and Riley, with Beckham flying in on Christmas Eve. Ted’s sister Lucy spent Christmas with her family in England, then came over the water with her sister-in-law, Pauline, on the 27th. Sad to say, there was only about a day and 1/2 overlap when the early and late visitors were here at the same time. But we made the most of it!

Here is Serena, basking in the glow of the Christmas tree, impatient for it to be loaded with presents, and for her cousins to arrive!
Serena basking in Chistmas tree ambiance
Continue reading “Photojournal of “Christmas in Kentucky””

The first week of 2008

Dear Friends and Family,

Wow, it has been an amazing week. I am very glad we started back school on a Thursday and just had two days of school before the weekend, because I don’t think I was ready to just jump back into school for a whole week.

I had a wonderful holiday, thank you, and I hope you did too. My family was here (meaning home in KY) from California, Colorado, and England, and we had a wonderful Christmas week. We ate out almost every night! I am surprised, or rather not suprised, at how tiring eating out can get when you do it all the time. If it was just me I wouldn’t of done it, but the point of eating out was to fellowship with each other, so it was worth it.

New Years Eve some members of my church hosted a Continue reading “The first week of 2008”