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Still Striving For that Elusive Halo

Still Striving For that Elusive Halo

Category Archives: Weather

Not the Excitement I was Expecting

03 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by Kirstin in Weather

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windy weather

This morning I woke up and thought, first treatment today.  My Hannible Lector mask will clamp me to the table as the multi million pound radio therapy machine whizzes about sorting out my eyes, at last.

So Hubby surprisingly having left for work; the surprised down to last time when it wasn’t as bad he hadn’t gone, but apparently this time there was no one saying – well not at 6am – don’t drive so he went; with Hubby clear of the Rectory, I jumped out of bed – okay maybe not quite jumped – and headed downstairs for have breakfast.  I need to have breakfast before my shower otherwise I don’t have breakfast and if I don’t have breakfast I forget to take my pills which I am supposed to take in the morning with or after food (apart from Wednesday’s extra pill which I have to take 1/2 hour before food, which makes for a complicated morning).  Anyway while making my breakfast, Hubby who you remember had left because there wasn’t a severe weather warning, unsurprisingly returned home because of the weather.  He headed to work in the study as I sat and ate my breakfast, and took my pills, before loading the dishwasher.  Then I thought before putting on the dishwasher I would make the maccaroni cheese for tonight’s dinner to fill it up with the stuff I would dirty making it.

As I sliced, grated, melted, stirred and boiled I was aware of things blowing around the garden out the corner of my eye then as I turned to the sink I saw the shed was trying to take off a jagged piece of it waving at me while remaining attached, just!

I shouted at Hubby through in the snug, I got a grunt in reply – I suppose he wonder what a scream of shed, SHED was supposed to mean – I shouted again and this time heard scrambling as he made his way out that door and I made my way out the other one.  Thankfully although I hadn’t had my shower I had for some unknown reason – maybe a prompting from God who knew exactly what the morning had in store and that both Hubby and I would be needed in the Rectory garden this morning – got dressed.

As the wind whirled round the garden lifting the shed up and then paused to let it plop back down again we both grabbed hold of it.  A panel was hanging off and the door had blown right inside.

For a while we just held on hoping that maybe it would all die down and then we could deal with it, my head was whirring trying to think of how and with what we might be able to tie it down with, but it wasn’t to be.  A gust lifted both the shed and me off the ground and it became clear that intervention was needed.  Hubby started by kicking and pulling at the ragged bit of metal to try to get it out-of-the-way and ensure it didn’t go flying off doing untold damage to property and life.  Then we decided to try to rescue things from inside, so as I held on to the corner and roof for dear life, he ventured inside with me shouting at him every time a big gust began to get out.  Soon it became obvious that dismantling the shed rather than rescuing the items was the priority.  The shed was twisting and tearing in the wind and there was a danger of both more bits being ripped off and one of us getting hurt in trying to stop such an occurance.

Have you ever tried dismantling a metal shed in 90 mile an hour winds?  No neither had we until then and we don’t want to ever have to again either!

For two hours we battled to hold it down and unscrew sections, as each bit was finally successfully removed it was slid under the decking to stop it blowing away.  For a moment we were also concerned that the danger lay not in the slowly disseminating shed but the plane that was doing acrobatics above us as it tried to land at Glasgow Airport.  The corner of the garden which had once been home to the shed was now the mangled remains of shed and some items that had once been in there.

We were able to rescue some stuff, but the shed, its storage shelves and the electric stuff like the lawnmower are a like the parrot in Monty Python, no more!

Hubby dealing with the final bits of debris

A word of caution to anyone out there who has a metal shed, I would never, ever, ever have one again seeing how dangerous they could be should the wind decide to dismantle one.  So please don’t buy one and if you have one, serious consider replacing it.  If Hubby hadn’t headed back home I wouldn’t have been able to deal with it myself and dangerous bits of metal would have been flying around the neighbourhood.

ps – macaroni cheese, well with a half made sauce, pasta left sitting in the water and the cheese gone hard on the chopping board, it was ruined.  At least I remembered to turn off the pans before heading out into the mayhem and we weren’t having to deal with wind and fire in the same day.

pps – the treatment was somewhat of an anti-climax after the mornings excitement, although I did nearly end up with a broken leg, or neck or something when I went to jump out of a bed for the second time in the day not realizing that this one was at least 4 feet off the ground!

Frosty Days

26 Sunday Dec 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Flora and Fauna, Weather

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Nature, Photography

Frost on Frost

Frosty Perch

Brrrrrrr

07 Tuesday Dec 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Weather

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Photography

-12 last night no wonder the snow of the conservatory roof stopped melting.

Weather Widow

07 Tuesday Dec 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Weather

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After the weekend and being lulled into a false sense of security about the snow, Hubby set off for work yesterday morning.  He managed to get to Dalgety Bay on the other side of the country but soon decided that it was time to try to get back over to the west, try being the word.

For most of the day he was stuck on the M9 going nowhere at all, as the morning wore on and the snow continued it became clear that he was going to be there for sometime, so in Advent mode I decided to get prepared.  I hit the interweb and found him a hotel room for the night at Livingston just 7 miles from where he was.  Well it took him the rest of the day to get there and turned out I had definitely done the right thing after a continuous stream of people were turned away with the cry; ‘No room at the inn!’  Not sure if he will make it home today, if the reports of people being stranded on the Motorway all night are anything to go by.  All in all he travelled 16 miles and it took him 9 hours!

Son did eventually manage to get home after walking from Glasgow city center to Partick then getting a train that came part of the way and walking the final 3.5 miles along roads he didn’t know.  It took him 3 hours to do what would usually be a 45 minute journey.  Daughter was stuck in work but unperturbed but she too eventually made it home to put up her Christmas Tree – no mine isn’t up yet nor will it be for a dozen more days at least.

Oh Dear!

06 Monday Dec 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Weather

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Photography

Well after a snow free weekend when roads were cleared enough for us to get ‘Baby’ out and get her hard top on, the snow is back with avengence.  Looks like she might have another week of just sitting there looking pretty.

Sledgehammer to Crack a Nut?

26 Thursday Aug 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Weather

≈ 1 Comment

East Dunbartonshire Council have embarked on a program in Milngavie.  On the surface it seems sensible but the more I think about it the more I wonder.

Last winter – do you remember last winter that one with all the ice and snow? – there were way more falls resulting in broken bones in Milngavie than usual, so much more that the council decided that they would resurface the pavements.  The fact that they decided to do the stretch outside of St Andrew’s on a Sunday morning; is another matter altogether.  They resurfaced the pavements and then decided that they should be resurfaced again with what they are calling a non-slip surface.  The surface is I am sure non-slip as it is rough and very untidy.  It looks like the job hasn’t been done properly, it will cause even the smallest of falls to cause a significant graze, it is uneven and so – in my opinion – will as likely cause more tripping than a smooth pavement would.  I am also pretty sure that if we had had this new surface last winter with the snow and ice hiding the non-slip surface and the salt bins empty, as they were, the number of falls would have been the same.  According to the men doing the work, it is taking them longer than usual because it the surface is difficult to lay, it is also far costlier than the usual surface.

Maybe just maybe supplying salt and employing someone to clear the pavements would have been money better spent.

Weather

06 Friday Aug 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Weather

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Yesterday was glorious it was like the summer had returned.

Today it is chucking it down it is like Autumn is here.

Tomorrow is the Rectory Barbeque so here’s hoping that the weather returns to yesterday offering and somehow Hubby can get the grass cut.

Snowing Again

24 Wednesday Feb 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Lent, Weather

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We knew it was coming, we hoped that they, the weather men that is, had got it wrong and it wouldn’t arrive again, just as it didn’t last week when they said it would, but it is here.  As I watched the delicate white flakes swirll around as they made the way to the already white ground I was struck at how unwelcome that white ground is to us this Lenten time, we look and grumble enough of the snow, it reminded me of this account in the Bible.

The LORD said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.’ “  That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.  When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor.  When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.   Moses said to them, “It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat.”

Each morning everyone gathered as much as he needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away.

~Exodus 16:11-15, 21~

Bored Now

14 Thursday Jan 2010

Posted by Kirstin in Weather

≈ 2 Comments

Of the snow that is.

After a couple of days of thawing and the grass starting to reappear it is back to square one this morning with everything white again and it is still snowing, not heavily but steadily.

It is alright if you don’t have to go anywhere, but my ‘Baby’ doesn’t like the snow and yet again I am going to have to try to get up the hill in her, can you hear the sighing from there?

Favourite Things

10 Thursday Apr 2008

Posted by Kirstin in Films, Music, Weather

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Films

You know the song.  Yes the one from the Sound of Music, well I never fully understood a line from it, until today.  Today there was a tiny flurry of snow while I was outside and a snowflake landed on my eyelashes, it has never happened before, my glasses always used to catch the snowflakes before they could make it as far as my eyelashes, ever since I have been singing about ‘snowflakes that land on my nose and eyelashes’.

Public Information Announcement

03 Monday Mar 2008

Posted by Kirstin in Cars, Weather

≈ 2 Comments

Three tips for driving in snow: 

  1. Don’t think that because a road is usually two lanes but only one lane has traffic is in that it makes any sense whatsoever in your micra – other cars apply – to try and drive in the 4 inches of snow (which probably has a layer of compacted ice like snow at the bottom of it) which is covering the unused lane, chances are you will get as stuck and end up facing in the wrong direction just as the person I saw trying such a feat was.
  2. Don’t think the 3 inches of snow on the roof of your car is going to stay there when you car heats up – it won’t!!!  It will either end up sliding down your windscreen and blocking your vision or falling off the back of your car and causing problems for the person behind you – also witnessed today.
  3. Just because someone isn’t right up the bumper of the car in front but has decided to leave some room don’t think you can suddenly cut in.  Chances are you will end up loosing control and your car will end up auditioning for the Olymipics ice dancing competition like the driver of the Rav4 who obviously thought that because he was in a 4 wheel drive he didn’t need to take any extra care in the snow.

Oh and one final plea from one of the minority of drivers out there who drive rear wheel drive cars.  If we have to stop on the ice we have to start off very gently or we will just wheel spin and either go sideways or nowhere so don’t toot your horn, we are moving off as safely and as quickly as we can.

Here endeth the public information announcement!

Snow

03 Monday Mar 2008

Posted by Kirstin in Lent, Religion, Weather

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This morning we have woken up to snow, not just a light flurry but a couple of inches of it.  It looks lovely while it is all white and soft without footprints or tyre tracks, and invitation to children of all ages to wrap up get out and have some fun.  All too soon however, starting with the road it will get churned up it will become slush and get dirty, it wont be the stuff that can create noises of delight and wonder, produce smiles and happiness, as slush it losses the ability to stop making all the not so good things in life disapear, even if only for a little while, when slush snow becomes something to be avoided to be wished away.

Snow is God made, slush isn’t.  Churches should reflect God, but the question I find myself asking this morning is are they snow or slush?

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