Busy

I am terribly, terribly behind on making a new post here. However, I've posted a couple stories / incidents from the past week on Perfect Duluth Day. So, for now, as I continue to finish Christmas cards and gift acquisition, these will have to do:

Blizzard

Crushed mailbox

Lesson learned, Vol. 1

Do not create a Facebook page for your dog, and absent-mindedly type the same e-mail address and password as your personal Facebook account. It will overwrite and eliminate your personal Facebook account. Then you will have to sign up again, try to remember all your Facebook friends and re-create your page from scratch. And you will lose your cherished high status in Scramble (college president, I think?).

Lesson learned.

Trained spotter

We had the first decent snowfall of the season yesterday - about 4 inches total.

That meant I was able to return to action as an official National Weather Service snowfall spotter. I sent in my first report of the season a little before 6 p.m., and a little after 7 p.m. my report appeared on the weather service Web site:

0556 PM SNOW 1 N DULUTH 46.80N 92.12W
12/07/2008 M3.0 INCH ST. LOUIS MN TRAINED SPOTTER

RICE LAKE TOWNSHIP - REPORT FROM MARTIN ROAD.

I like the sound of being a "trained spotter." I didn't receive a ton of training - I just got a packet of info in the mail when I signed up - but I'm well aware of how to take a proper snowfall measurement, so I think I deserve the designation.

Stuck on the roof

The roof repair set-up, December 2008

I have discovered a lot of quirks about my house over the past year. One of the first, and most enduring, is the "whirly" vent atop the highest part of the roof, and the difficulty in dealing with it.

Soon after I moved in, on a windy winter day, I heard a high-pitched shrieking noise while upstairs in the house. I went outside, and discovered that the whirly vent was squealing like crazy, audible well down the road from my house.

It was winter, and cold and snowy, so I thought I'd try living with it. But one night in the upstairs bedroom with that vent shrieking all night long was enough - I had to fix it.

That's when I discovered the difficulty in accessing the vent. The problem could not be fixed from inside, and there was no attic access anyway. The front pitch of the roof was far too steep to climb, so the only other place to place a ladder on the ground and get to the top was on the east side of my house. That involved taking the extending ladder I inherited with the house (i.e. an unfamiliar item), extending it to its full double length, and going up more than two stories.

On a bitter cold winter day - temps in the double digits below zero - I found myself with time and energy, and I couldn't take the howling any more. I bundled up, got the ladder set up, and went for it.

As I got to the top of the ladder - like 20 feet up - I tried to make the swing from ladder to roof. My bulky overcoat got caught, so I took it off and threw it to the ground. The ladder kind of slid from side to side, but I got up on the upper roof. I had a can of WD-40 and sprayed around the various moving parts of the vent, but I soon found that did no good. I just could not access the needed areas without taking the vent off - and I didn't have the tools.

I went back to the ladder to start the climb down, and in the course of kind of testing its stability, it shifted and the "locks" bracing the upper part of the extending ladder disengaged. It was not safe to climb down - I had no idea if the upper portion would support me, or collapse when I put my weight on it. I was stuck - and I had discarded my wind-breaking overcoat.

I assessed my options. One was to jump to the lower roof about where the ladder is in the photo above. But there was limited room for error - if I slipped (the roof was icy then), I risked tumbling off that roof and to the cement sidewalk below.

Option two involved jumping off to a larger area of the lower roof where there was a thick blanket of snow - to the left in the photo - but I had to clear the main power line to the house. But I worried - would I electrocute myself if I brushed against the power line?

Right before heading out, I had for some reason decided to grab my cell phone, and I got it out and called my dad, 400 miles away. He assured me that the line was insulated, and I would be fine if I brushed it.

So, I psyched myself up for a few minutes. I had to jump - there was no other option. Well, I guess I could have called the sheriff - but I imagined that call getting heard by the local media, and me being featured on that night's TV news.

So, I took a few steps and leaped - and emerged unscathed. The snow cushioned my fall. I crawled under the wires and got into the house through the upstairs window.

-----------------------------------------

Well, I was back down - but the vent was not fixed. A few months later, when it was a bit warmer, I bought a new whirly vent - which meant I had to get back up on the roof. This time, I tried the approach pictured in the photo:

- Single ladder set (precariously, given the roof pitch) from lower roof to upper roof - stable enough for me to climb up, but not to get down; no extending ladder issues. 

- All tools pre-placed on the upper roof, so I don't have to carry anything with me up the ladder.

- In the absence of snow, a big pile of foam, quilts, blankets, insulation, etc. placed in the "landing zone" to cushion my jump.

It worked - the vent was replaced, and no injury to me.

I had hoped that would be the end of my roof adventures for a while, but recently I noticed that the new vent wasn't spinning - which, from what I know about whirly vents, means it isn't venting the attic properly. So, I got the old vent, which I had saved, doused it with WD-40, made the epic climb up to the roof and did yet another switch.

It's spinning fine, now - and no squeaking.

The end. Wow, that was a really long story about roofs.

Dreaming, Vol. 2

Last night's dream: My dog was infested with fleas. My house was infested with fleas. Fleas, fleas everywhere.

Possible inspiration: My dog has been scratching a lot - audible at night - but, thankfully, the vet declared her flea-free. I think it's just the dry air in my house.

Oh cripes, what do I do now?

I just got back from a walk with Yukon. We went up and down the back road, and were about to head back inside when some gunshots started in the distance. She flinched a bit, and I didn't want to take her in right then to reinforce her fear, so we circled the yard for a bit.

As we got down to one of the front corners of the property, in an area where I had cleared some brush over the summer, something odd caught my eye:

It's right in the middle, just a little below center - a white form on the ground. Funny, I thought, I don't remember a big rock being there.

The dog was interested, so I walked up and....

What must have been a beautiful buck - maybe even the one that scraped up a bunch of trees in my yard - crumpled in a heap, dead for at least a few days from either car or bullet. On my land. As noted in the title of this post, my thought: "Oh cripes, what do I do now?"

This happened on my family's land while growing up, but there were big, open spaces around us where the deer carcass could be dropped - and my dad was there to do it. I don't think he'll be willing to drive 400 miles to take care of this one - and there really isn't anywhere to go with it without loading it in the back of my car. I wonder what my garbage man would think if I dragged it down for next week's pickup.

For now, the thin layer of snow actually makes the situation a bit more bearable - it's almost serene. Everything is frozen, so I don't have to worry about decomposition right away. I think it's a 10-point buck - I didn't lift the head to check the antlers on the other side - and I may just leave it, and let nature take its course (no brush cutting in that area next spring). I'd like to harvest the antlers - they're really nice. I'll just have to keep the dog away from the scene.

A side note - my dad's dog, Daisy, stumbled upon one of those deer carcasses in the woods back home a few years ago. It was desiccated corpse, but she still found it irresistible - to the point that she'd wander up into the woods every chance she got to gnaw on it. Finally, one Christmas morning after presents, the whole family helped load the thing up on a sled and skid it to a distant, inaccessible location. To this day, years later, the dog still goes back to the original spot where the deer was, looking for her long-lost snack bar.

Just shoot the buffalo already!

Cape buffalo (image from Wikipedia)

When I got my dog earlier this week, I felt I needed to make a financial tradeoff. So, I canceled my cable TV.

Yukon has been taking up much of my time these first few days, but late at night, between work and bed, I still find myself with a half-hour or so when I need to just wind down. I can't watch late-night cable offerings, so I've been getting reacquainted with late-night local TV. Tonight I was introduced to a show that started out benignly, then became progressively more horrifying. The show? "The American Huntress."

The show started, and seemed mildly better than infomercials, so I decided to stick it out. It is sponsored by the likes of bullet manufacturers and a clothing line called "She Safari." The premise is something along the lines of two women from Texas who like to hunt, and they bring along cameras to film their exploits in hopes of encouraging more women to hunt. Tonight's episode involved one of the women - her name was Linda, but I'll call her "Shotgun" - and her husband ("Second Fiddle") going on an African safari.

They arrived in Africa, and filmed the interior of their luxury tents to show their female viewers how posh things can be, so they won't be so darn hesitant to join their husbands on their next weeklong trip to hunt game in Africa.

Then they headed out into the game reserve to find a big male cape buffalo, the shooting of which seemed to be Shotgun's all-encompassing desire. But then the group spotted a herd of elephants, and Second Fiddle just had to shoot one, so they stalked and took out a big elephant bull.

I was starting to feel weird at this point. I have nothing against hunting deer, or any other kind of game that is put to use as food, or clothing, or some other practical application. But it was quite clear that they weren't going to be frying up elephant steaks outside their four-star tent that night.

So then they went out the next day, in search of Shotgun's cape buffalo, when they instead spotted some kind of wildebeest that Shotgun just had to shoot. So she did.

I started thinking, for God's sake, for the sake of all these animals, let some dumb cape buffalo stumble out in front of their LandCruiser so they can shoot it and be done with all this. But no.

Then, if memory serves me correctly, they went out again and found not a cape buffalo, but leopard tracks - and Second Fiddle had to shoot a leopard. So they hung the wildebeest carcass up and waited for the leopard to come along. He did, and yet another majestic African animal fell. And we were only like two-thirds of the way through the show.

Another day, and Shotgun finally, FINALLY got her cape buffalo. But then she decided she HAD to shoot a lion. Which, using the logic of the safari, meant she first had to shoot a hippo to get bait for the lion. Which she did. Ultra-condensed version, the lions never showed, so, oops, that hippo was shot for... nothing. Oh, well. End of hunt for them. Sigh of relief for me.

Other than the wildebeest and hippo used as bait, the show never mentioned what happened to all these animals that were shot. I assume they probably were mounted as trophies to sit in Shotgun and Second Fiddle's living room. What a waste.

But all is not lost. Thanks to the ads, I've got a hot tip on the most destructive bullet on the market, and I got a good look at the She Safari line. Tailored camo never looked so good.