Trickle Down Palm

Last week, my sister wrote and asked if I wanted her Tungsten T3 Palm, which had been superseded by a machine one of her clients had given her. Since I guessed the T3 would be miles better than my ancient Palm III, not to mention being in color instead of green and black, I wrote back “Yes!” My sister is one of those incredibly organized types who mails the same day she promises to do something, so it was delivered today.

I used the Palm OS Desktop HOWTO to find out how to sync the a USB Palm to my Linux desktop. It is much quicker than the serial sync process I was used to: in fact, I thought at first the sync must have failed it took so little time.

I was hoping that the screen of the T3 would be easier on my middle-aged eyes, and it is. I was also delighted to see what Bejeweled looks like in color, as I was not sure if my registered copy would install on the T3. Bejeweled comes in very hand when I am stuck waiting for the train to pass, or am standing in a long line at the store.

The Crud

After four days of suffering from some low level respiratory bug, I seem to be well this morning. Lody will be pleased: she has been trying to tell me that even middle-aged, sedentary Collies need an occasional walk. Every morning I have promised her walkies, and then thought better of the idea while doing barn chores and realizing that Colorado suffers from a serious lack of oxygen. My must-do list of barn chores is quite short, and if I can’t get through them without feeling winded and exhausted, then I figure I must be sick. I don’t respond well to cold medicines, so I am limited to whining a lot and feeling sorry for myself when I get cold symptoms.

Freecycle

I had heard about Freecycle some time ago, but there didn’t seem to be an active local group. A few days ago, I checked again, and found that the Freecycle yahoogroup for our area had grown to 800 members.

Freecycle started as a way to exchange goods that were no longer wanted and keep them out of landfills. In our abundant society, people frequently discard things that are still useful, or would be to someone else. I take a lot of our discards to Goodwill, but I didn’t think Goodwill would welcome a short cord of firewood.

Since we hadn’t used our wood stove for several years, and finally sold it last summer, we didn’t need the firewood. Worse still, the firewood was stacked along our dog run fence, and two of the local dogs had discovered that it made a perfect ramp allowing them to jump in and join our dogs, which also gave them access through a dog door to the mudroom. (This was especially annoying since these dogs were chewers, and we didn’t have the mud room policed for dogs that chew. I try to keep the chemicals in the mud room secure, but don’t normally have to worry about the rest of the room.) We put up some mesh to keep the dogs off the wood, which worked but made the area even more of an eyesore. I had thought about putting a sign offering the firewood out on our road, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

Freecycle asks that your first post to the list be an offer, so I offered the firewood on Wednesday afternoon. I had over ten responses in twenty minutes. After a little correspondence with the first responder, I had arranged for her to come and pick up the firewood on Thursday afternoon. She and her two children arrived promptly at the arranged time, and it took us less than an hour to load the wood into her cargo van. I had no idea you could fit so much into one of those big vans.

Freecycle accepts posts about almost any legal item except for firearms, alcohol and tobacco. You are also allowed to post an occasional “wanted” item, and the one that amused me most was someone requesting a size 10 blue evening gown. The request was fulfilled the same day.

Soggy

Although we still have some large drifts and most of the ground is still covered with snow, everything looks distinctly soggy. The road by our house was plowed at 11:00 am yesterday. Once again I was happy that not only did we find a place on a school bus route, but it is a school bus route that seems to be early on the schedule of places to plow.

I did have to dig the Suburu out of the garage. (We have a huge drift that forms right outside our garage door when we have storms with lots of wind.) Every few years we will have a big storm and I resolve to park the cars at the end of the driveway when a big storm is forecast. Then we get a few overhyped storms and I decide it’s not worth doing so, and leave the cars in the garage so they get snowed in.

April 2005 Blizzard Aftermath

April 2005 Blizzard - Mudroom Door

This is the mud room door which I used when I was feeding the horses during the storm. Good thing it opens inward. The stockade fence to the side of the photo is five feet high. The dog door is buried beneath the drift beside the door. Lody, our Smooth Collie, always uses the dog door, and it took me a while to convince her that there was no way she was going to be able to burrow her way out and that she had to use the regular door. She is one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever known, but not necessarily the brightest.

I dug around the barn enough to let Lily and Rags out of their stalls. Smoke was already out of the barn, since one of this little eccentricities is that he cannot be shut in a stall. He will batter his way out in what is apparently a panic attack. He doesn’t mind being in a small area like the hay aisle where he spent the storm, as long as he has a way out. Fortunately, the winds were blowing from the north and west, so the hay aisle door which faces east was sheltered.

I had to open Rags’ stall first, and Lily became sufficiently frantic to get out that I decided it would be safest to lead her out through the hay aisle since it took me about thirty minutes to clear the outside gate to her stall. Both horses celebrated by galloping around and then rolling in the fresh snow before settling to eat some hay.

April Blizzard

They said the storm would be over by 6:00 am this morning. They lied. But the horses were okay when I tossed them their breakfast, and not even as peevish as I would have expected.

I thought I would be able take some cool photos of drifts this morning, but the wind chill is about 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and not conducive to fooling around outside with a camera.

Worst Day of the Winter Award

The Worst Day of the Winter award goes to this morning with its blizzard conditions. Lily was visibly shivering and wet when I went out to the barn to feed. I felt more exasperation than pity since she was standing out in the storm, but had to find a wool cooler and blanket for her anyway after I chased Smoke out of her stall and put her in it. (The barn stalls are open except for when I actually feed the horses their concentrate.) She looked much more comfortable once I got her blanket on her, using the cooler as a liner.

The storm is blowing from the north, so Smoke’s stall in the old shed was useless as shelter. I ended by putting him in the hay aisle in the new barn to eat his pellets, but had to spend some time first arranging things so he couldn’t get into too much trouble. I left him with plenty of hay, even though he can’t really eat it, in hopes he will be entertained by the hay instead of getting bored and demolishing the hay aisle once he gets done with his concentrate. I decided not to blanket Smoke because, although he was plastered with snow, he looked comfortable and his coat is a lot denser than Lily’s.

It looks like the storm is due to last until tomorrow, unfortunately.