A large portion of Chile has been devastated by a series of major earthquakes. My heart goes out to the survivors and my prayers go out to those who have lost family members or their homes. The earthquakes were scattered along the west coast of South America, and Chile’s second largest city was particularly hard hit. We are waiting to hear news reports of the damages and I’m sure the United States will send humanitarian aid right away.
The political race for governor has begun. The commercials started with the Super Bowl, and now they are on every night. None of the candidates are worth a hoot, but this is a very powerful position in the state, with a chance for presidential nod one day. I have to find one worth supporting, from a field of post turtles.
My sympathies naturally go out to the people in Washington DC and the surrounding states for the problems they are encountering as a result of two record setting snowstorms this past week. They are dealing with 3, 4 and even 5 feet of snow in an area that normally only sees 1 or 2 inches at a time.
I have family and friends scattered throughout the region and all of them are sharing stories of having lost their electricity, missing work, not being able to get their cars out of their driveways or garages, and many more nuisances and inconveniences. Thankfully, no one has suffered a life threatening emergency and no one was without electricity for longer than 36 hours.
In fact, my immediate family members are so resourceful and so well prepared for emergencies, that they all have generators, fireplaces and well stocked pantries and could ride out a storm for over a week, if needed. Most have utility vehicles with tires chains, bumper mounted winches and a trunk load of tools and equipment to make sure they can safely arrive at any destination once they get out on the roads.
My heart goes out to the people who are not able to be as well prepared. Some of them are due to complete denial and naivety, others are financially unable to prepare, and many just have no real experience with this type of weather and road conditions. They are just going to have to experience the problems for themselves and learn the hard way, which is why we have insurance and major regional hospital systems to take care of the fools and the unfortunates.
One of the benefits of living in Northern California was the close proximity to dozens of highly rated California vineyards. So I made the most of the six months out there by visiting a different vineyard every month. Every time I went to a vineyard I bought at least 3 or 4 bottles of their wines, and brought back a nice collection of wines when I came back to Tennessee.
Of course, I did not have any wine glass racks here, nor any storage system for the bottles of wine. So I had to research the different types of glass racks and figure out what would be the best solution for this house.
I looked at under cabinet mounts, wall mounts, ceiling mounts, and even free standing furniture. I decided on a wooden stemware rackthat mounts under a cabinet, and I modified the shelving in the kitchen pantry to store the wine bottles.
All this fuss about groundhogs today. The big one lives in Pennsylvania and has seen his shadow. So we are all supposed to get 6 more weeks of winter. Yeah, right.
Pennsylvania weather has absolutely nothing to do with the weather in Tennessee, Texas, North Dakota or anywhere more than a few hours drive from the Mid Atlantic area. So, Georgia decided to get their own groundhog and let him predict the arrival of spring for the southeast. And this groundhog did not see his shadow. So we are all supposed to enjoy an early spring.
Well, the first day of spring on the calendar is exactly 6 weeks and 4 days following groundhog day. So, in my opinion, we only have 4 days to quibble about anyways! Four days is certainly not worth all this fuss.
The weather forecast is pretty certain that Nashville will be getting a big snow storm sometime Thursday night or Friday morning. They are predicting at least 2 inches – maybe more – for all of middle Tennessee. That is a lot of snow for us – we don’t usually have an accumulation of snow. Most years we have a few days with flurries and it melts within hours or the next day. It will e interesting to see if we really get 2 inches from this storm or if the weatherman turns out to be wrong again.
When we moved into this house, we had to put light bulbs into every single light fixture and appliance. The people who had moved out took every thing with them. Even the light bulb in the oven. It was a bit of a nuisance, but it gave us the chance to buy energy-saving bulbs for the whole house.
Now we have even better lightbulbs to buy – the new compact fluorescent bulbs are available at Sams Club. These are not the same as fluorescent bulbs, they can be used in regular sockets and fixtures.
The only bulbs that I have not had to switch out yet are the floodlight bulbs on each corner of the house. I know that one of these days they will all burn out within a few days of each other, since I installed them all at the same time. So I went ahead and bought a four pack of those at Sam’s today. I’m ready to replace them as soon as the first one burns out.
The news is covered with stories about the tragedy in Haiti. And there are dozens of organizations pleading for donations to help. I am really suspicious of some of these messages I am getting, about texting to different numbers to donate cash via cell phone, sending Paypal donations to people who claim to be missionaries. It bothers me that there are always this lower element of humans ready to take advantage of a natural disaster or catastrophic event for their own personal gain and cheating others out of what was intended to be rightfully theirs.
If you feel compelled to donate to the Haiti victims, check out the organization and make sure they are legitimate. There are lists of these on the white house web site.