Snow Day at the Love Shack

So here we are with another weekend snow day!  I have to say I was a bit skeptical about this forecast, as it was "bands of snow here or there" and early on the precipitation wasn't pushing this far west towards us.  But there was a shift sure enough and "I'll believe it when I see it" became "wow, I can really see it!"

We made sure our birds were fed, and there were just so many there on the back deck, including some new arrivals we haven't seen in a while:  we had a thrasher or two, and also a rufous sided towhee (which is just fun to say!).  But the other usual rabble was there too, including numerous bluebirds, cardinals, mockingbirds, chickadees, tufted titmouse, sparrows, mourning doves, finches, downy woodpeckers, hairy downy woodpeckers, our yellow-bellied woodpecker, nuthatches, and those annoying grackles.  I didn't get to see any blue jays today, which I thought was odd - we usually do.  Hopefully they're being well-fed elsewhere.  Anyway, it was quite a bit of activity back there, especially at the table around our "Love Shack" birdhouse!

And we were fairly active too, of course.  To begin with, we had a magnificent skillet breakfast that Mom prepared.  

Afterwards, I was out there making our traditional "bird feeder snowman," or in this case a "snow person."  The snow was not the packing kind at all, so as you would expect, this project took a very long time to complete.  I had a big pile of snow there, and couldn't figure out how to get it any higher when suddenly the though occurred to me that I could take the frozen disc of water inside the bird bath, and use that as a flat surface to put on top of the snow pile, and then add another pile on top of that sheet of ice.  The head just took some time to get into shape because again, it's just not packing snow.  

We'll call this snow person Helga.  She looks like a Helga!

But eventually we got the hat on and eyes and of course the carrot that I just got yesterday at the grocery store.  Unlike last time, the birds flew to it right away to get some of the bird seed the snow person was holding.

Next I was out there with a snow shovel, which is a tool I don't use that often!  But I got the driveway and the sidewalk cleared.  

Maddie was out there doing some taekwondo moves, and posing with her plush friends out there.  Here she is on Riverstone Drive.  We were just ice skating here a week ago!

Georgia's state bird, the Thrasher!

It's pretty cold outside.  The temperature will be below freezing for another day, never going above 32 for I think about sixty hours straight or something like that.  And tomorrow morning it'll feel like negative five degrees with the wind chill, or something like that.  So it was cold and windy out there, so we weren't out there for a terribly long time more... although Maddie was out there committed to some martial arts practice in the snow!

 

We worked on the puzzle some, and then we watched the stage version of "Frozen" that's on television now.  Maddie just saw the high school play, and of course we saw the City Springs Theater version of "Frozen" back in 2024.  This version here was incredible.  There's a costume change that happens - if you know "Frozen," you know the one - and it's so fast it feels like digitally enhanced effects.  But the sets and costumes and talent are amazing on this one.  Now we're all singing "Let it Go" again...

It's cold and windy out there, just the very definition of inhospitable.  We're glad to be indoors.  Time to get some reading in, and then it's time for prayers and a long winter's nap.  No church tomorrow again - second weekend in a row for that.  We're hearing reports of terrible, terrible conditions of roads in Hall County, and the stories from North Carolina on the highway - and a train collision too - all of it sounds terrible.  Glad to be inside tonight.

Frozen Before the Storm

 

Maddie and Nate were off to Lanier Christian Academy's theater to see a version of "Frozen," which is terribly ironic, given the forecast for later this evening, isn't it?

They had a good time though - this is Nate's school and his friends on stage, and of course Maddie knows some of them as well.  She enjoyed the performance for what it was - the plan was to see it tomorrow, but that performance was cancelled because of Queen Elsa's little craziness.  Of course, the cold doesn't bother her anyway, but I imagine it will bother a lot of us down here where the temperature is typically a little warmer.

So while Hans was gathering up supplies to help the people of Arendelle, I was over at the grocery stores doing the same thing.  I went to Aldi's and found pretty much everything, but made a trip over to Publix to get one or two items, plus a prescription.  Both grocery stores were madhouses.  Both have these corrals for grocery carts in the front, and Aldi's had two left, and Publix had this one that I grabbed. 

Everyone had their carts, and the places were mobbed.  I think that Publix had just one gallon of milk left, and I got there early!  I'm not sure what the thinking is behind "milk and eggs," but ironically, I was out there to get both, just like Christmas Eve shopping for that last-minute gift.  Crazy out there!

Maddie got home and said goodbye to Nate here.  We read tonight, and we said our prayers.  The wind is picking up a little, but the snow isn't supposed to arrive until much later when it's much colder.  It's going to be another interesting weekend, for sure!

Goat Rock

Occasionally I check out an online site to look for obscure places to stop by on our travels.  For example, we're probably going back to Grovetown in a months, and I didn't see anything necessarily on the way there (that we haven't seen already!), but when surfing online, I did spot this new entry that happened to be literally less than a mile from Maddie's taekwondo.  What?  So yes, tonight, I dropped Maddie off at taekwondo, and went straight there ...to Goat Rock! 

I've literally walked by this place or parked near it, and of course we drive by it all the time, and just not noticed what this rock actually is.  Well, the placard tells you the reason for Goat Rock's existence, and how the word "goat" used to have a completely different meaning when describing someone.  Apparently, this was a thing you did when you had to go through a grieving process about a loss, in this case an election.  I'm not sure what you did once you got to the rock.  Do you talk to it and share your pain?  Do you scream at it?  Do you abuse it?  This only furthers the mystery!  Anyway, it's been a slow news week so I was glad to see this, easily the most exciting Georgia landmark since Bob the Turkey.

Okay, so as I said the rest of the day was a slow news day.  Maddie was at taekwondo, of course.  Nate was not feeling well again, but Maddie had fun with her friends, helping the class of younger students first, and then joining in with the leadership class and doing a bit of training for the upcoming competition.  We went straight home after that, and Mom was showing me the forecast for snow on Friday night, which looks to be a little stronger than we originally thought.  We were thinking flurries and slight dusting, and it could still be that.  But there's potential for something bigger, as the precipitation has shifted west and put us more in a zone for snowfall.  We'll see how things turn out, but regardless of precipitation, one thing is clear:  it's going to be the coldest we've felt in a long time on Sunday.  It's been several years or more since the temperature was down close to zero.  Windchill will make it feel less than zero.  Wow.

Tonight we finished up "Wonder Man," which is easily the best thing Marvel has put out on television in a long, long time.  It's so fantastic to see Trevor Slatterly back, but Simon Williams is also an incredible new character - there is so much heart in this series, and we binged this series this week, and honestly might binge it again.  Great stuff!

Maddie had chapel this morning, and shared a coffee with Emma this morning on the way in to church.  We rode home together for a bit, but I turned around to get back to the office to get a few things done - we had a guest ministry wanting to see how we did children's ministry, and there were preparations to be made for a new Daddy Daughter event at the church.  Sniff-sniff, because gone are those days of the Daddy Daughter events for me:  we saw the Chick-Fil-A event this year, but passed on it - Maddie's just a little too old for that now!

We worked on our puzzle some today, although we have a good ways to go on it.  I'm enjoying it though.  Mom had some worship music playing on her phone as we sat there putting pieces in place.  It was nice.

Tonight we read from the Discworld, of course.  And we said our prayers, and got to sleep.  We'll be able to sleep in a bit tomorrow.  Sort of - we're still on this schedule with detox pills that require us to set the alarm for crazy times like 3am.  But we'll still manage to get some extra sleep in this weekend for sure.

Moses Up to Bat

The last two years have seen this explosion of our usage of AI for various purposes musically and artistically.  It's a super useful tool for various things, even for some script writing prompts.  You can see our baseball card above for the upcoming baseball series - we were thinking about making actual baseball cards here.  And below, you can see the coloring sheet I asked it to make for the upcoming Daddy Daughter Date night.

It's a pretty amazing tool!    The prompts for skits have been pretty handy lately too, something I've never done before but lately it's been an interesting tool for actually writing things too.

 

Nate was here to watch an episode or two of "Wonder Man" with us tonight, amongst other things.  He brought along his big honkin' board game, and Maddie joined him for some fun playing around.  When I got home from KidPak, we all had dinner together, some delicious spaghetti that Mom made for us.  It was a good day - we had some KidPak meetings, and of course Maddie had a good day at school and afterwards with Nate.  Mom was working on taxes today, which might not be as fun, but will certainly needing to be done.

Also walking - still on the virtual path to Memphis while watching Elvis movies!  I'm currently watching "Blue Hawaii" lately as I march along.  That's currently my favorite Elvis movie, just a lot of fun.  I've watched a lot of them as I walk here, and that's just added to the fun of this marathon.

We closed out the day with some Discworld reading, and then prayers.  It was a good day today! 

Ice is Still Here

Good grief.  Political situations as they are, I need to clarify that I'm talking about literal ice, which is something that happens when water freezes.  It just so happens that there's a government agency set up twenty four years ago with the same acronym.  It has been in the news lately because the state of Minnesota decided to hit the self-destruct button, and as much as I enjoyed visiting that state a few years ago, the images coming from Minneapolis not exactly helping the "Explore Minnesota" tourism campaign.

No, in fact I'm talking about actual frozen water.  Ice.  And yes, that ice is solid, thick, and still out there all over the place.  We had it in front of the garage, and in that shady spot where we were skating on the road yesterday.  It's in the parking lots, along the roads, and on the roads in curvy spots in the shade, and pretty much everywhere the sun doesn't touch much.  It's so solid and stuck there, and you certainly can't walk on some of it.  Apparently, the temperatures are going to be frequently freezing here, which means that ice will be with us probably tomorrow too.  We were driving a little more carefully today, the ice skating rink is still in front of us on Riverstone Drive here, but there are other places where the ice is prevalent too.  Even though the sun is deceptively shining, it's still cold enough that the ice is still there. 

It's funny how quickly we can get acclimated to colder temperatures.  We're all sitting here, looking forward to that time upcoming where the temperatures will surge to a warm and sunny fifty degrees!  

Maddie was back at Free Chapel College today, and of course their retreat was cancelled up in White County.  One reason for this is that much of White County is still without electricity currently.  Despite this, the students still had some celebrating to do with a little gathering this afternoon after classes.  I picked her up a little later, and we went home to stay.  Nothing going on tonight, and really I prefer that we not drive anywhere.  There's no further precipitation, but the ground is just so frozen and refreezing and so on - it's just safer to stay home.  

We have our puzzle to work on at home - it's a Christmas gift I got for Mom, or at least one of three puzzles I picked up for her.  These are called "Odd Pieces," and it's a unique puzzle that the three of us started recently, and got to work on some more today.  It's a unique puzzle, and we'll let you know how things end up.  But right now I'm enjoying it.

Tonight we started to watch a show called "Wonder Man," which premiered tonight.  It's the latest Marvel release, and the first episodes are really good.  That will probably be our viewing for the week.  Tonight's reading continues from "The Fifth Elephant" as well, which has been great to re-visit.  I remember very little of this one, but we're down underground with the dwarfs right now, and soon to go off and visit the vampires.  Vimes and his team are far from Ankh-Morpork on this mystery, and it's been fun to visit this neighboring country in the Discworld.

We said our prayers, and it was time for some other reading.  Lately I've been in the book of Isaiah, and also reading Pastor Franklin's latest book, "The Power of Short Prayers."  It's a good read, easy to get through one chapter at a time here before bed.  

It's been a good day.  Quiet, but that's okay!

Ice Skating on Riverstone Drive

 

Well, here's a new thing!  That's in fact me, literally ice skating on Riverstone Drive.  This morning I spotted our neighbor across the street giving it a try - he's a young kid who can skate really well, and he too had some ice skates at home.  So I thought to give it a try myself, because I've had these ice skates at the house for years, picked up from a thrift store a good while ago.  I've used them once at a rink, but never here at the house!  Anyway, as you can see above I was a little rusty on the skates, but this new friend (a kid who actually plays on an ice hockey team) gave me some tips and showed me how to skate a little better.  I got a lot better than what you see above, I promise!  I wasn't flying down the road at all, but still it was pretty unique to say here in Georgia that I was skating down my own street. 

This is Hardman, the other young man across the street next door.  He was doing a good bit of sledding yesterday and today, but I passed on that for now.  It's chilly out there and I was ready to be inside!  Here's our ice hockey neighbor moving around much better on the ice: 

Other than getting the mail and feeding the birds, this was pretty much it for the outdoor activities for the day.  It dried out, but it was chilly.  There's going to be ice on the roads still tonight, simply because so much water came down last night.

In fact, tonight as I type this we're hearing the occasional THUNK!  It's all these chunks of frozen snow sliding off the rooftop and hitting the ground or deck below.  Anyway, today was definitely a good day to be inside - it's cold and getting colder out there.  

We did our usual chores today, including walking - here's the latest post card with Elvis I earned today.  We were cleaning up a bit today too.  Maddie was drawing a lot today as well, working on a pretty big creation throughout the day.  At one point, we opened one of our Christmas gifts,  a jigsaw puzzle by a company called Odd Pieces.  

This is the "before" image that you see on the box (and posters provided).  There's a very short comic book that sets up the story being told here, and then you put this puzzle together.  As you do so, you discover that the actual puzzle is different in many different ways than the image above.  On top of that, you have a list of things to look for which represent clues that help reveal the story.  Finally, there's an envelope that you open when done, and that envelope explains the solution to the mystery of this puzzle.  It sounds intriguing!  We started this one above called "Silver Linings," and we're almost done with the four edges.  Darn it, I have one more edge piece to find!  But the three of us were working on this puzzle for a little bit today, getting started on it.  We'll all work on it here and there for the next week or so.  We'll let you know how it goes!

Today is Australia Day, so in honor of that I had the AI tool create a fantastic version of Psalm 79, one that  features the didgeridoo.  It's a different Psalm with some bleak imagery, and it was interesting coming up with an idea for a music style for it.  But this one came out pretty fun!

Tonight's movie was "The Sound of Music," the version with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.  It's so good.  We were inspired to watch this one after seeing the live production version the other night.  I forgot how long this movie is, but at the same time it doesn't actually feel that long at all.

We did our reading tonight afterwards, and then said our prayers.  It was a nice day together!  Goodnight!

Loud Snow

We got up this morning, and first things first, we went to church.  Of course, with a morning like this, it was online service!  We weren't going anywhere today.  The warnings were out there, and the ice was still falling, and of course all church services in the Northeast Georgia area were pretty much cancelled with an abundance of caution and so on.  We sat together and watched Free Chapel's service, which had a great message rooted in Micah 7:8.  And then after that we sat and watched our own KidPak online services, which was a lot of fun as always.  Sitting and watching church on a television always brings me back to 2020 and that whole season.  Even though in this case we were physically restrained by the elements.  Our Miracle Prayer Service will be next week so we'll all meet again in person shortly.

We had a delicious post-fasting breakfast this morning.  Mom treated us to some really delicious pancakes!  

In the meantime, I was sneaking out to see what the ground covering was like out there on the back deck, and it was snow-covered, but with this thick layer of ice on top.  Translation:  this is the loudest snow!

I went out there a few times today because we were taking care of all those birds.  Each time things would freeze over, I'd sneak out there with more and more seeds - there were so many birds out there on that back porch, more than I've ever seen out there.  For a good bit today, I was just sitting there with the camera snapping solo portraits of various birds.  Here are just a few of our visitors:

These poor mourning doves have lost feathers literally frozen to their bodies!

It was a quiet day of course.  We all stayed in - there was rain throughout the day, which basically meant there was no point in going out there.  Some of the neighborhood kids could be heard sledding out there.  But it was kind of unlike any other winter storm, because it was raining.  And then that rain all immediately froze, and the end result is us being stuck until maybe tomorrow afternoon.  And that's okay, because we still have power here.  It was far from catastrophic, which of course was warned of us earlier.  Not to say other areas did not see catastrophe:  we've seen pictures from Mississippi that were truly awful.  The ice there was just crazy damaging.  Here, the power flickered maybe once, but no outage.

I was walking on the treadmill watching "Blue Hawaii," yet another Elvis movie on my marathon.  I'm approaching 60% completion on this virtual marathon from Tupelo to Memphis, and it's been great fun watching all these old Elvis movies, most of them for the first time.  This one here, "Blue Hawaii," I've seen twice, because it might be my favorite Elvis movie at this point.  I've only seen eight or so, which means there are plenty to go!

Tonight's movie was "Night at the Museum 3," which closed out our trilogy and cemented a future trip to an actual museum maybe this spring.  We might go to Tellus, or it could be Fernbank.  But it'll be fun to go visit a museum.  Nate hasn't been to either, so we could make a day of it and have some fun!

We read tonight, briefly.  I wasn't feeling well tonight - it's been a weekend of fluttering heart for me.  Might be dietary, but I'm not too sure.  What I do know is that I went to bed tonight after reading with Maddie from the Discworld for a bit.  We can all sleep in tomorrow, because everything is closed or opening late.  I don't plan on driving.  The road is so thick with ice in front of our house that you can skate on it!