...back in Sick Bay, back failed with lumbar spasms again. Flat on butt in bed on heating pads and bags of frozen peas.
Damn inconvenient, I may not be able to boat in the Opening Day Parade this weekend, and I also have to shoot to qualify for my HR218 card next week....
More of AlGore's Revenge:
Yep, that's a warning for snow, a foot in the mountains and a few inches in the foothills. Excuse me, but isn't the Merry Month of May just two days away?
...ANOTHER ROUND OF SNOW COMING TO THE MOUNTAINS OF SOUTHWEST
WASHINGTON AND NORTHWEST OREGON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THIS
WEEK..
COLD SPRING WEATHER IS TAKING HOLD OVER SOUTHWEST WASHINGTON AND
NORTHWEST OREGON AGAIN DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THIS WEEK.
ANOTHER RATHER COLD SYSTEM IN THE EASTERN PACIFIC WILL LOWER SNOW
LEVELS TO BELOW CASCADE PASS ELEVATIONS TONIGHT...THEN DOWN TO
AROUND 2000 FEET TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY.
SNOW ACCUMULATIONS IN THE CASCADES COULD REACH 6 TO 12 INCHES
BEGINNING LATE TONIGHT AND CONTINUING TUESDAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY.
SNOW ACCUMULATIONS ABOVE ABOUT 2000 FEET IN THE COASTAL
MOUNTAINS...THE CASCADE FOOTHILLS...AND THE UPPER HOOD RIVER
VALLEY COULD REACH A COUPLE OF INCHES AS WELL.
IF YOU ARE PLANNING TRAVEL THROUGH THE MOUNTAINS OF SOUTHWEST
WASHINGTON AND NORTHWEST OREGON DURING THE FIRST HALF OF THE
WEEK...BE PREPARED FOR WINTER LIKE DRIVING CONDITIONS AGAIN.
It won't be fun boating in this slop on Saturday. It also won't be as much fun breaking in my new gas BBQ pit. Oh, well, at least the brewskis stay cold longer.
...I've quoted it dozens of times, but I can't remember who said that bit about "messing around in boats"...but good on him!
It's time (according to the calendar), that the boating season start, and in fact, the Columbia River Yachting Association Opening Day boat parade is a scarce week away. I sit at the marina, and eyeball the snowpack at a bare thousand feet in the Coast Range, and was in this snow last week. It doesn't LOOK like boating season, but looks can be deceiving...
Last night, my old war buddy David S blew in from Phoenix, and I had his yacht ready for him, WITH TWO ELECTRIC HEATERS RUNNING TO WARM IT UP TO SURVIVAL TEMPERATURE! Yep, that's what we are facing here, and it is a microcosm of what the rest of the Northern Hemisphere faces this year...no summer (and you DIDN'T hear it here first if you have been following the TRUTH in climate change).
Nope, next weekend, I will dress in my formal yachting uniform, but I will have long johns and gore-tex under the Blue Blazer and White Duck pants as I sit on the flying bridge to anchor the fleet of Multnomah Channel Yacht Club past the review vessels. On the stern of "Lofoten Girl" will be the orange safety sign that indicates I am the rescue vessel for my yacht club, and not 45 minutes ago, I finished preparing my 50-meter floating tow-line, to be capable of taking a yacht up to 48 feet (our club's largest) in tow and returning it the twenty miles of windy Columbia, Willamette and little Multnomah Channel rivers to the yacht club if there is a propulsion failure. I'm better prepared for this duty than most, having a powerful twin-engine yacht and 8 years of experience in the Marine Patrol doing this work for a Marine Deputy's wages.
I just finished commissioning my new VHF-Marine walkie-talkie, a Uniden MHS350, and it checks out, along with the two fixed-installation VHFs aboard. I also just finished renewing ALL the ships' batteries ($$$$$!!!), and checked out the engines while moored in my berth, and they and their transmissions are ready for duty. I've de-winterized, so there better not be any more damn Arctic Outbreaks (the last one was last weekend!). The shore boat is on a temporary berth, the better to work the aft deck for any necessary rescue and towing work. As I write, the river rolls by my yacht at a bare 51 degrees, barely out of the winter-instant-death immersion temperature regime. Anyone falling overboard during the parade will have to be out of the river within 5 minutes, or rescue swimmers will be required to save lives. I have checked out my rescue throw bag/line and the three throwable livesaving devices I carry (only one is required, but I'll be damned to Hell if I'll be forced to choose who I throw my life ring to, so I have several).
I refuse to think about what this little 40-mile parade will cost me an my 1.7 mpg yacht at $4.00/gallon for fuel...but DAMN, I wish she was powered by steam and all I had to worry about was having enough cordwood aboard and the strong backs to muscle it down from the decks to the fire room...
The weather turned winter/sucky here in the PacNorWest on Friday, with a back-door cold front and a close-coupled Low (sounds faintly queer, doesn't it?) dealing snow, rain and hail on the Pacific Northwest.
Ahem, Weather God: it's MID-APRIL! This weather isn't too unusual around these parts, FROM LATE DECEMBER TO EARLY FEBRUARY, but it's APRIL!
Got to talking with the RivrSis down in the RivrCottage in Cottage Grove, OR about the weather about lunchtime on Friday, and she allowed as how it was gong to be mizzable down by the Coast Fork, since she was almost out of heating firewood.
Hmmmm, can't let that happen, thinks I. Loaded the CAB of the Little Black Truck with sawdust logs and bricks, 540# of them (had to put them in the CAB because compressed sawdust fuel can't take ANY rain) just after getting the RivrFrau off to Seattle with the Rivr(almostDoc)Dau, then shoved off for Cottage Grove as it was starting to snow at my place near Portland. Had the Winter Box of snow-survival goodies aboard, and had Carhartts and boots and my snowboarder's parka. Paid !@#$%^)(*&^%$ (3.45/gallon) for sucky E10 fuel and hit the I-205 and I-5 freeway.
Parking lot for 25 miles. One look at a snow cloud was all it took to clench all those thousands of anuses in front of me...
Finally got to Cottage Grove about 1830, just in time to unload and stack the fuel, then hie off to the local car wash for a cab-vacuuming. The RivrFrau called to tell me she was probably snowed in in North Seattle. Back to the RivrCottage for a bracing shot of brandy, a warm fire that could be read as R.E.L.I.E.F. in the eyes of the four cats now encircling the wood stove, and finally a late supper of sub sandwich and BED!
Up early to a skiff of snow Saturday, and off for a brisk walk downtown to a new French bakery (Patisserie) for a croissant and coffee. Basically kicked back all day, watching the sky for advance warning of the snow/hail showers which pelted down frequently, then off for an early supper to Creswell, some 13 miles north, to hunt for a wood-yard (found it, but no one available to sell any), then had a fine Mexican seafood supper of "Siete Mares" (Seafood stew) and Negra Modello dark ale, then back to the RivrCottage to watch an old Toshiro Mifune samurai epic, sip more brandy (Greek 5-star Metaxa) and off to bed at midnight. Yeah, yeah, long sentences. Well, it was a long day.
A fine weekend, with a fine purpose and it proved to me I can STILL change horses in mid-stream...
There's a photo album to go with this post. See the right sidebar (scroll a looooong way down) for "April Snow".
Well, my abused and FUBAR lower spine finally decided to call a General Strike, and it also snared this Major. I'm down for the count, anyway, with ice/heat therapy, serious drugs and BED-REST. So far, I can't even manage to sit up in bed (where I could run a laptop) for longer than a half-hour, and that's pushing it.
I'll recover from this, I always have before, but recovery might take another week.
Bear with me, please.
What, there's no category of PAIN in this useless blog?
The lower back wasn't up to the first cutting of my lawn this spring. First there was the usual commissioning of the ancient but honorable Honda HR21 mower, all of 26 years old (never overhauled). Then the grass was so high and so thick that even the 5.5hp overhead valve engine couldn't swing the 21" blade through it, even after I sharpened the blade.
So, half-swaths made for a LOOOOOOONG job, 3 1/2 hours to cut 6,000 square feet of lawn. The clippings filled up the bed of the LBT, so now I have to go dump THAT (before the winter rains come back tomorrow).
Pain will be my companion for the next few days. fortunately, there is BOOZE in quantity (Just got back from AZ, remember?), and if the Scotch doesn't hack it, there is Flexeril. Already did the ice thing, need that again, I'd guess.
Or, I could have whistled up a willing worker from south of de border and gotten this done for about $100.
PAIN is patriotic, if idiotic.
Someone recently boasted, on a blog, about acquiring a new food processor. I allowed as how (in comments) that for the average home-maker, such equipment is a null set, no gain, due to the lengthy cleaning necessary after each use. So, I got yelled at for my trouble.
Well, now please allow me to strengthen my position against such equipment. I just got back from Urgent Care, where the Mrs. had to have a finger sewed up after lacerating herself badly on the blade of a food processor. She was going to chop up a couple of apples to make muffins, and decided to use the roto-knife to do it. She forgot she needed to install the blades first, so, after putting the partially-chopped apples in, she thought she could put in the blade afterwards. Result, a bad stab wound to a fingertip. She has stitches and I am now captain of the kitchen whether I had such plans or not, for the next ten days or so.
Food processors have their place, and that is in the hands of TRAINED kitchen help in COMMERCIAL kitchens, where a supervisor may have to enforce kitchen safety rules by actually firing someone. I can't do that here, and couldn't supervise all the time anyway, so these dangerous types of equipment have no place in my safety-conscious home.
Just sayin' but there may be a wheelbarrow full of this equipment for the junkman to haul away from Schloss Rivrdog soon. Holler if you want to put YOUR family at risk, and I can reserve you a set of the roto-manglers, we have about 5 of them.
Bah! (again)
Back on St. Paddy's Day, I wrote about an email I'd gotten (along with the 30,000 other trainers in the NRA) that all shipments of training materials had been shut down.
At the time, the NRA declined to tell us why this had happened. Today, three weeks later, they finally 'fess up: it was their drop-shipper that quit in the middle of the contract. Quit on some other spendy companies, too, such as the Olympic Committee and the Smithsonian Institution, to name only two.
OK, that explains why we can't get materials.
It does NOT explain why the NRA couldn't have told us about the drop-shipper in the first place.
So, there's still something amiss at the NRA: Communications. Why they didn't see fit to inform us that their drop-shipper had gone out of business is a mystery that remains unexplained with their second email on the subject:
Program Materials Statement
After a disruption in the availability of all training materials and other NRA products ordered from the NRA Program Materials Center, NRA is now accepting orders from its program materials online via the web site http://materials.nrahq.org.
The disruption in service was due to the sudden closure of AB&C Group, a contracted facility in West Virginia that served as a warehouse and fulfillment center for NRA and other organizations, including the Smithsonian, Paragon and the United States Olympic Committee, among others. This closure came without warning to all of AB&C's customers, including NRA.
To learn more about the circumstances surrounding the closure of AB&C Group's West Virginia operations, please visit the Hagerstown (MD) Herald-Mail at www.herald-mail.com/?cmd=displaystory&story_id=188761&format=html or the Martinsburg (WV) Journal at journal-news.net/page/content.detail/id/504903.html.
NRA thanks you for your patience and apologizes for any inconvenience.
The NRA, as I've said before, spares no expense or expertise when it wants us to buy something from them that will net them a tidy profit. They don't seem to have the smarts to hire a smart high-school graduate when it comes to everyday communications, though, and that's a shame.
A word to the NRA: I presume you subscribe to normal business models, and if you do, you have someone in charge of exterior communications. That person is a dummy, and should be terminated immediately. See to it.
When you hire this nurse, you get a chef as well.
I dropped off the 1RivrDaughter at 0500 for surgery, did a few chores around her place, went grocery shopping, and then picked her up from Day Surgery at 1030 or so.
She was doing all right in the pain department, so I prepared a light lunch of Arrugula salad with Pomegranate, White beans and Stilton cheese, with an oil and vinegar dressing, followed by Bratwurst on country buns with Russian-style mustard.
For dinner, I got a larger whole-body fryer chicken, split it down the middle, dredged the halves in fresh garlic juice and Tony Cachere's Cajun Spice plus lemon pepper, and roasted them in a moderate oven. As the chicken got done, I made a little reduction of olive oil, corn starch, garlic and Jalapeño sauce, fired up the rice cooker and steamed some brown rice, and served all the above with fire-roasted red peppers and a fresh craft-baked sourdough bread. To accompany that, the 1RivrDaughter's cellar provided a nice 2004 Cabernet from the Columbia Valley, the Dusted Valley Vintners of Walla Walla, WA. The cab, not a traditional choice for a poultry meal, nonetheless set off the peppers and the jalapeño sauce perfectly, and since both of us have French heritage, the plain bread, eaten with wine as the sole condiment, was perfect.
After dinner, we watched the low-budget parody "Thank You for Smoking", a fine commentary on political correctness.
All in all, not a bad way to recover from surgery, eh?
******************************************************************************
UPDATE: 032808 1413 PDT: What did YOU have for lunch? Here is a fine chicken soup, scratch-made, with SOURDOUGH DUMPLINGS!!!
Yummmmmmmmmmmmmm!
*******************************************************************************I've got my Medic hat back on again (although my EMT1 cert lapsed 4 years ago).
The 1RivrDaughter (the ex-Marine one) is now in surgery to have the steel parts of her injured leg removed. It's only six weeks short of a year since this happened, so she is on schedule in her recovery.
Her surgery today will be performed by the same super-surgeon, Dr. T. Scott Woll, who saved her badly mangled leg last year. She selected his team of assistants herself, since that is what she does every day as manager of the Neuro and Ortho surgical practices at Southwest Medical Center in Vancouver, WA. She has the best of the best going for her today. This is the same practice that takes care of knees for the NBA Portland Trailblazers. Believe it or not, this is a day surgery. I'll probably get the call to go and pick her up in about three hours and bring her back to her home, where I'll be on duty taking care of her until she's up and about enough to do for herself.
She is supremely confident about her recovery, and should be, having managed it well to this point.
Now do you understand why I don't like socialized medicine?
