Thursday, 8 January 2015

By on January 8th, 2015 in netflix, personal, prepping

08:03 – Our low last night was 7F (-14C) or, as my grandmother would have called it, 25 degrees of frost. Our furnace ran pretty much constantly, but was able to maintain 68F (20C) in the house.

Barbara and I started watching The Great War Diaries on Netflix streaming last night, a reminder of just how quickly things can go from normal to catastrophically bad with little or no warning. Almost no one who woke up that morning at the end of June 1914 and read the newspaper headlines about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in an obscure town in an obscure Balkan country believed much would come of it. And yet within a month essentially all of Europe and Russia was mobilized and armies were on the march. The four years of slaughter that followed would change all of their lives.


26 Comments and discussion on "Thursday, 8 January 2015"

  1. Ray Thompson says:

    Our furnace ran pretty much constantly, but was able to maintain 68F (20C) in the house.

    Our thermostat drops the temperature to 60 starting at 22:00. Then it figures out when to start the furnace to get the house back to 70 by 07:00. Took my furnace about an hour to accomplish the task and it quite easily maintains that temperature. It is a four ton heating and cooling unit. Our temperature this morning was 6F.

  2. OFD says:

    -14 overnight and it’s warmed up now to -4. Chill factuh still around -25. Frost on the laundry room windows for the first time that I’m aware of; that side still has the old windows, to be replaced in another couple of months. The furnace was set to 62 overnight and I’d had the woodstove cranking all day and let that slowly die down overnight. The remaining coals this morning are enough to fire it up again instantly.

    We somehow have overcast of gray clouds yet with a big cold pale yellow and blurry sun.

    Sunsets recently have been spectacular, mostly brilliant coral and red under a dark mass of low clouds.

  3. MrAtoz says:

    Low was about 70 in Vegas. Gonna be in the 80’s today. Brrrr. Climate Ejaculation!!

  4. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    Yeah, but OFD and I both have water and you don’t. Nyah, nyah.

  5. OFD says:

    We also got maple syrup. You guys got maple syrup? I dint think so.

  6. rick says:

    Yeah, but OFD and I both have water and you don’t. Nyah, nyah.

    I have water and, according to Weather Underground, it’s currently 39.7 degrees F and sunny here and supposed to get up to 52 today. I’ll take that over 7 degrees. I am at the top of the hill and there is fog down in the valley. Looks beautiful.

    Rick in Portland

  7. OFD says:

    52 is but a distant memory here, as is 39.7.

    I fear we shall not see their like for quite some time.

    Oh well. Keeps the riff-raff away.

  8. dkreck says:

    We also got maple syrup. You guys got maple syrup? I dint think so,

    Oh heck ya. A mere $13 for 12oz at Trader Joes.

  9. MrAtoz says:

    When the “straw” is finished, I’ll have aqua for 20 years and cheap electricity. Or not and we’ll all be living in a ghost town. Gotta cut others of from my h2o.

  10. rick says:

    We also got maple syrup. You guys got maple syrup? I dint think so.

    We have good beer and legal grow your own pot. I have sworn off sugar of any sort, so I can live without maple syrup. If I want maple syrup, I can buy it or have our friend in Vermont send it to me.

  11. Lynn McGuire says:

    38 F and heading to 43 F here in the Land of Sugar. Whoever left the Artic door open needs to close it right now! We are not forecast to get back into the 60s F for another couple of weeks.

    If I were the Brits, I would know who I was deporting TODAY:
    http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/curtis-kalin/muslim-cleric-defends-paris-terrorist-attack

  12. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I am beginning to believe that all politicians have been castrated.

  13. Lynn McGuire says:

    Yeah, but OFD and I both have water and you don’t. Nyah, nyah.

    I have water

    We have enormous amounts of water here in South Texas. It is called the Gulf of Mexico. Just a little salty though with a TDS of around 35,000 or so.

  14. OFD says:

    “I am beginning to believe that all politicians have been castrated.”

    And lobotomized.

  15. rick says:

    That should be “should be” rather than “have been”.

  16. MrAtoz says:

    We also got maple syrup.

    Hah! We got gambling and legalized prostitution. And dirt, cactus, and some fucking desert tortoise. Did I mention the hos.

  17. Robert Bruce Thompson says:

    I think we actually need some politicians who have balls.

  18. Lynn McGuire says:

    When the “straw” is finished, I’ll have aqua for 20 years and cheap electricity. Or not and we’ll all be living in a ghost town. Gotta cut others of from my h2o.

    http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/water-environment/after-seven-years-digging-vegas-reaches-its-last-straw

    I see the water but I do not see cheap electricity. Is it, is it, it it, … coal? Say it is not so!

    “Once that happens, the only thing separating those workers from roughly 3.4 trillion gallons of water will be the pressurized seal formed by the tunneling machine around them.”

    I am fairly sure that I would observe that breakthrough from the surface.

  19. dkreck says:

    Hah! We got gambling and legalized prostitution. And dirt, cactus, and some fucking desert tortoise. Did I mention the hos.

    Well I don’t care who you’re copulating with I’ll still take the syrup. (cactus, ouch)

  20. OFD says:

    Recent research indicates that the majority of ho’s in Mordor are male.

    Only gambling in the Northeast states is that run by the Northeast states themselves. All other gambling ist verboten.

    I reckon we hit our high temp of today at 11 Farenheit. Might hit 25 tomorrow, and if so, I’ll be out in a tee shirt stacking firewood and loving the cool breeze off the ice.

  21. ech says:

    Only gambling in the Northeast states is that run by the Northeast states themselves. All other gambling ist verboten.

    Except for Foxwoods, biggest casino in the US, possibly the world.

  22. MrAtoz says:

    Supposed to hit 49 tonight! I’m heading for Key West dammit!

  23. OFD says:

    Oh crap, I clean forgot all about Foxwoods and the other casino down in the Nutmeg State, the latter run by a First Nations Tribe, IIRC. Which I apparently do not much, anymore.

    49, MrAtoz? Peeps here would be NUDE. And turning on FANS.

  24. rick says:

    I think we actually need some politicians who have balls.

    We have a lot of politicians with balls. We need ones with integrity, a much rarer commodity among politicians.

  25. OFD says:

    The problem is, that it’s the female pols who have the balls.

    Just watched Episode Six of “Blacklist” and noticed that the painting he just bought or stole or had delivered is Rembrandt’s “Christ in Storm on the Sea of Galilee,” still MIA from the Gardner heist all those years ago.

  26. ech says:

    I enjoy “The Blacklist” quite a bit. It’s totally implausible, but the interplay between Megan Boone and James Spader is what makes the show. I wonder if we will find out the skeletons in Liz’s past this year…..

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