Progress ...

Mother Nature sure is strange. For a couple of days she is a savage beast. Pouring ice, bitter cold temperatures and destruction down on us. Then, suddenly she changes her mind and gives us a weekend full of sunshine and temps in the upper 50s and 60s. You just never know what that bitch is going to do next.

Oh, and you might remember back this summer when we had all those big storms and tornadoes here? Well, I might have mocked Mother Nature in one of my posts after that. Our fence around the parking lot fell, but the section in front of my car stayed up. So, I teased Mother Nature that she missed out on a chance to take out my car.

Well this time she took another swing. The top part of a big Evergreen Tree snapped and fell right NEXT to my car…


CLOSE! But, no cigar sweetheart. ;-)



So the recovery is moving along at a pretty good pace. The power is back on for most of the town and all the stores and gas stations are back up and running. I’m very surprised that the local oil companies and gas stations didn’t use this as an opportunity to jack the prices up. They normally do. Anyway, it was Sunday before we finally had more than two gas stations open and pumping fuel.

Must of the rural areas outside of town are still in the dark though. Progress comes much slower to those folks. Of course, here in town there are still a couple of spots that don’t have power either. Scenes like this one can still be found …


Can you see that the only thing keeping that tree from falling across the road is the power line? That’s kind of scary.


Oh and I need to take a moment to remind some people of a couple of things …

1. I understand that the task of cleaning up all the debris is daunting, but don’t you think you could at least pull some of YOUR tree limbs off the road?

2. When the power goes out, the street lights go out too. This means that all intersections are 4-way stops. Please observe this very simple rule. Also, flashing red lights mean STOP.

3. Also, while driving down the street, if there is an obstruction in YOUR lane, and another car (say, ME) coming in the other direction, it is YOU who should stop and let the other car (ME) pass. Asshole.

4. I realize that standing in line at the checkout at Wal-Mart is boring and frustrating, but if you have a cart overflowing with stuff, you just can’t get into the 10 Items or Less express isle. Sorry about that.


*I was going to respond to an email I got this weekend here, but decided against it. Maybe another time.


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As you probably know, February is Black History Month in the United States and Canada. The staff here at the Cynical Bastard would like to help everyone celebrate Black History Month with Aisha Tyler …


Not only is this long-legged goddess ridiculously gorgeous, funny and talented, but she’s ridiculously smart too. Aisha graduated form Dartmouth with a degree in Political Science. AND, as if that isn’t enough, she is also an avid home brewer.

She makes her own beer!

Long legs, smart and makes her own beer? My God! She’s perfect!

What an Ordeal ...

My long national nightmare is over. (I hope). On Monday afternoon and evening, with temperatures well below the freezing mark, it began to rain, sleet and snow. This gave over to sleet Monday night. It sleeted most of the night. By Tuesday morning we had around an inch of ice on the ground.

Then on Tuesday, it started to rain. The problem with this was that the temps were still well below freezing. So, all the rain that fell all day Tuesday and Tuesday night was freezing rain. It started building up on the trees and power lines very quickly. It wasn’t too long before it looked like this.

*Remember that you can click on the pics and see the bigger versions on my Flickr page.





Needless to say this resulted in power lines coming down and tree limbs snapping and coming down. Many times those limbs took power lines with them. And, more than 600 power poles came down too. Underground utilities would be a wonderful thing. Maybe they can put something as sensible and useful as that in the NEXT stimulus bill? I doubt it.

Anyhoodle here’s what it looked like by Wednesday …






On Tuesday morning the lights went out for a couple of hours. Then they came back on for a couple more hours. Then off, then on. Rinse, repeat, wipe hands on pants.

Finally Tuesday night the power went out and stayed out. It didn’t come back on until Wednesday night at around 10ish. Then after a little more than an hour the power went out again! I think that little hour or so tease made things worse, because on Thursday morning it was the coldest it had been. I was seriously starting to whine. But, a little after 10 am the lights finally came back on. They did go off just for a short period of time this afternoon, but came back on again. Now the lights are blinking every once in a while, but have stayed on. I’m one of the lucky ones though. Most of the town and practically nobody in the rest of the county have power now. And many of them won’t until next week!

Electricity is soooo awesome.



So, here’s my vlog that I put together during my long ordeal during the Great Ice Storm of 2009.


Okay, so screw the vlog. Can’t get the videos uploaded. I’ll try again some other time. It wasn’t that great anyway.


I was able to get out today and go to Wal-Mart. It was freaking pandemonium there. Nobody in town has any red meat, chicken or pork products. They also don’t have any frozen dinners or frozen veggies or anything like that. Wal-Mart did have ONE little container of chicken breast and one container of roast beef lunch meat. And some cheddar and swiss cheese packages. They did have canned goods and bread though. So, it’s soups and sandwiches this weekend! But, at least I’ll be able to heat the soup up. I hope.

Also, since there was still no power in most of the town, that meant no stop lights were working. Now, a normal person would assume that this means all intersections are 4-way stops. But, not everyone out there is normal. So, people were just blowing through the intersections from all directions. I saw four near misses just on my way to Wal-Mart. It was crazy. It’s like everybody has just lost it and they can’t deal with anything right now.

Anyway, I’m back. I think.

Here’s a couple more pics of the mess …




And here I am all bundled up to STAY INSIDE AND FREEZE.



Also, I want to wish a Happy Birthday to Tink!
And to Hope!
And Songbird!

And, it’s Rockdog’s birthday sometime soon. I don’t know exactly when cause he doesn’t have it on his Facebook page.



BTW ... Obviously I'll never be abel to catch up on everyone's blogs. I'm sooooo far behind. But, I'll do the best I can to go back and read everything.