a new coat

A new coat of snow that is. The rain turned to ice and then snow and this morning nice white layer over everything. I snapped a few shots while I stepped out briefly this morning.

Northish.

Southish.

Tonite, winds gusting to 40mph, lows around zero. Stay tuned, they're predicting a New Year's storm of 'historical significance'. Someone on the radio said something about 48 inches of snow in the mountains. We're talking about the right state here, Maine, not northern California, right? No I heard them right. I just hope we can make it Boston and back for New Year's Eve.

Next post, the Vehicular year in Review, a must read for the numerically inclined.

The Occasional Moose

Sometimes you're driving down a lonely dirt road in central Maine in the Winter and you spy a moose. Even more rare is that you're going slow enough and happen to have the camera in the truck, so you take a few terrible photos of said moose. This happened to me last week.




This was a particularly young gangly moose (not unlike myself) just hangin around looking for things too eat. My truck scared it just enough to make it amble away with a moose-like gait. The other guys I'm working with said they saw the moose again a few days later in the same area.

We're getting a small respite from the bitter cold of last week. For a few days it was right around zero during the day and very windy. Not good days to be working outside, but outside we worked anyway. I've learned an important lesson, that if the torso stays warm so do the hands and feet.

Three more days of work, then Christmas weekend, four days of glorious celebrating, sleeping and eating.

Another thing.

Another thing is that I love Fedex tracking. Love it. When I buy a tool online I can see exactly where it is and when it will get here.........perfect for the obsessive online tool purchaser.

The different thing I get to do today is demolish moldy sheetrock and install new. 20 inches of Blown-in fiberglass insulation = FUN for days of itching.

One thing.

One thing that I like about my vocation (house carpenter), is that I do something different just about every day, or at least every week.

Today I hung new wooden gutters with wrought iron brackets on a 150+ year old house. Yesterday I stripped old clapboards and did some roof framing. Tomorrow I'll watch the snow fall (5-8 inches followed by 1/4 inch of rain), plow some of it, and give an estimate on removing a leaky skylight. Always something different to do; always something new to learn.

We're headed toward the blue-print drafting stage of the house planning. More decisions to make.

And, tomorrow is my birthday.....I've passed all the childhood milestones into the obscurity of 'adulthood'.

First Snow

Well its not technically the first snow for us here on the Country Estate, but its the first snow to stick. Amidst all the busy-ness I had time to take stroll in the woods on the land on the Egypt Road this afternoon after church:

View looking Southish along Egypt Road towards Ben Brook

A spot near the northwest corner of the property.

a stream about 300' in from the road near the northeasterly property line

Wags, himself walking amongst the trees.

Largish rocks.

Can you see the photographer's shadow?

Well, I've been all alone here at the Country Estate (boo hoo :( whilst KT is in Dallas for a conference relating to home visiting and parenting education. It was a consolation to know that it was cold there too. No sunny warm vacation for her!