February started pleasantly enough. We carried on with our daily walks to the north edge of the property and bring back two pieces of firewood. We’ll split it in the spring. Then the temperatures plummeted. The cold came out of the artic and washed over us and kept going as far south as Texas.
Every second February we have been volunteering as SOWERS at Victory Camp in Alvin, just outside of Houston, Texas. We have been there when temperatures reached freezing and the city ground to a halt. This month they went much lower for longer. The green illusion bit them and wind energy dropped to negligible amounts. The natural gas distribution was disrupted by temperatures much lower than it was designed for. That’s fair from a design standard perspective. If we designed everything for once in a hundred year events we’d have a lot less stuff built because of cost of construction. It still bites when that once in a hundred year event hits. There were also some outages at power plants while they thawed some things. That much cold with disrupted electricity supply was disastrous for Texas. If we had been there our rig would have not been the place to be. You can exist in it at those temperatures if you have power and propane. Pretty iffy if you don’t.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch…
The temperatures stayed in the minus thirty Celsius and went below minus forty in both Celsius of Fahrenheit. The coldest it got, according to the Weather Channel app was – 43 C. (-45 F.). We hunkered down by the woodstove and read a lot.
Not everything went perfectly. Our smart washing machine is not smart enough to know that the drain trap froze. It happily pumped the water anyway and the drain pipe overflowed. One of the reasons we chose this washing machine was it uses very little water. It is still more water than we want pumped out onto the floor. Time for the wet mode of the wet/dry shop vac.
In moving the washer out from the wall to get that last little bit of moisture under it, I discover a soggy sheet of newspaper that I had left under the machine when we installed it. We threw it out the door. About twenty minutes later on my way past to dump the shop vac I kicked the piece of paper because it had not been thrown far enough. It shattered. Oh. Don’t think I want to hang outside much.
Finally after almost a year’s hiatus I got active again on this web site and started updating it. This month’s update is being done before the next month is done. Not quite real time, but better than the last eleven month’s updates. I issued the Christmas newsletter just before St. Patrick’s Day. Covid supply issues. Or sloth. Take your pick. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.
Everything is relative. A month ago minus 22 seemed cold. When it warmed up to minus twenty-eight one morning after the cold snap we headed to Edmonton. Out of over seventy stores in Edmonton that sell Unbun products only one sells Unbread. We went there and I braved the Covid shopping experience and the masktapo and bought three loaves. At $8.99 a loaf it isn’t something you’d use to make sandwiches for a crowd but for a low carb slice of bread once in a while treat it might be okay. The cashier is shocked at the price and double checks. I don’t tell her my geezer story of buying bread at the corner store and getting a dime change from a quarter. I just want to get out of there. Not used to crowds. Not used to being barked at by the line Nazi. I get back in the car and we eat the cold cuts I had bought for a low carb lunch. Then we headed to Millwoods to see Becky and the grandkids.
We stood around in the backyard visiting until it was time to head back home. We loaded the boxes of our Costco on-line orders that had piled up there and drove east. In Lloydminster we shopped at Home Depot and Princess Auto for stuff not available locally and after buying and eating more cold cuts we drove home to arrive after dark. A long day of around elven hours of driving and being around people. Glad to be home and waiting for the woodstove to catch up.
