DAVID & MICK

THE WOOD BUTCHER

We have a visitor this week from Indiana.

When we asked him yesterday what he calls himself, professionally, he responded "I'm a carpenter. A wood butcher."

He is much, much more than that.

He runs his own contracting company in the Indianapolis area and does jobs on restaurants, offices and private homes throughout the state.

He loves his work and he sometimes has to stand to explain a technique.

He has followed in the footsteps of his grandfather and become a very well-known and respected success.

Oh, yes, and he's Judy's oldest offspring.

There's amusement there but also pride in that mother's eyes for her son, Scott Bolton.

BLACK AND WHITE

Just a few miles northeast of where I sit are the Black Hills of Arizona.

No, really.

Everyone knows about the Black Hills of South Dakota, home of Mount Rushmore.

But fewer know that Arizona has its' own Black Hills.

Most locals just refer to it as Mingus Mountain, which is just one of the peaks in the hills.

And it's not even the highest.

That title goes to Woodchute Mountain, four miles away, at 7,840 feet.

Mingus is 22 feet lower, at 7,818 feet.

It's better known, probably because the peak can be reached by a road, there is a hang-glider launching pad, as well as a number of campgrounds and summer camps up there.

All of this leads up to an anomaly this week.

The Black Hills have turned white!

There wasn't a lot of snow but enough to alter the view of the hills.*

SWMBO said yesterday "Sitting at my desk and looking out the window it's as if I'm living near the Alps!"

That may be an overstatement but I can understand the feeling.

Somehow when the hills are covered in white snow they seem to come into view and appear to be much closer and more rugged than they normally do.

By the way the photos are better if you click on them to expand them.

*I've said this before but my friend Tim, who lives in Colorado, once told me "Those aren't mountains . . they're just hills!"

SNOW DAY

Amid dire predictions of a terrible winter storm with up to a foot of snow coming out way, here's what we got.

The pictures are from Friday morning.

There's your foot of snow. 

Looks more like maybe half an inch, at most, to me.

The only one who might have been bothered by the snowfall was this quiet Buddha.

But then he's trained to accept whatever comes along, isn't he?

FRIDAY FUNNIES

The Weather Gods sought to amuse me this morning with a light coating of white.

As Queen Vickie is reputed to have said: "We are not amused."

Let me see if I can amuse you.

A short list today but thanks to my contributors (theft victims), have a fabulous weekend and keep laughing.

Here, kitty-kitty.

THROWBACK THURSDAY

The Weather Gods have proven themselves to have feet of clay.

Rising from the Arms of Morpheus this morning I opened the blinds expecting to see a blinding white snowscape.

But what did I see?

Nothing.

Nil.

Nada.

Just a wet ground from rain during the night and a light - - very light - - dust of white on rooftops and a few places on the ground.

We had been promised 5 to 9 inches of snow!

For this disappointing Throwback Thursday, here's a photo of a place where it really snowed.

That is my mother and I in front of our house in Stanley, North Dakota, sometime probably in the 1940's.

That is snow covering the ground.

And who left the door open??!!!

Well, the insulted Weather Gods are still saying we may get snow today but I think they've pulled back to 1 to 3 inches.

Or less.

Probably less, I'll bet.

And just to warm you back up, here's a photo from the 1980's either just before or just after SWMBO and I had moved to Mexico.

Those two wild men are Big Brent Bogdanski and Terrible Terry Taylor.

And you can bet neither of them was drinking straight Pepsi.

Terry lived on his sailboat and was thus known as a "yachtie". 

(By the way he is not related to me, in spite of his last name.)

Brent lived on dry land in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, and ran an amateur radio net.

He, thus, called himself a "terrestrial".

Good guys but hard partiers, as were most of the ex-pats we met in Mexico.

But it beat shoveling snow.

GODZILLA EL NIÑO

The first of a lineup of storms has moved through California, dumping much needed rain and snow, and more is on the way.

It's been misting or raining for a couple of days here in Arizona.

Yesterday's early morning view of the fog was foreboding.

One expects to see Poe.

Or worse yet, Moriarty.

Or Sherlock and Watson striding through the streets.

"Come, Watson, the game is afoot!"

When I turned on my television set this morning a message on the screen told me service was interrupted.

Probably that means there is snow on the dish.

Sure enough, this was the view out my den window.

But the temperature is now at 34 and climbing so the snow has already begun to melt.

I see drops falling and splashing in the bird bath.

(Judy's invention is still working, by the way. Not a tad of ice in the basin.)

I've been busy in the kitchen the past couple of days, baking bread.

Actually all I do is put the ingredients in our bread machine.

It does all the work.

Nevertheless, the results are nice.

That's our standby - whole wheat studded with Craisins (cranberry & raisin).

But yesterday I tried a new one - a Parmesan pepper bread.  Tasty.

For tonight's dinner I'll prepare another Smitten Kitchen recipe - Mushroom Marsala Pasta Bake.

We'll see how that turns out.

Being retired means one can just stay inside a warm house and wait these storms out.

Having grown up in North Dakota means I can say "Oh, pshaw, you don't know what a snow storm is!"

As I told my friend, Tom, in an email this morning, my biggest irritation will be having to climb up on a ladder to sweep snow off the satellite dish so we can watch television and see how folks in truly beleagured parts of the world are doing with their ice and snow and cold and floods.

Fortunately all I have to deal with is snowfall that comes infrequently and goes just as fast.