Playing the piano with no fingers

Next time you're inclined to whine about not being able to do something, watch this video. It's a Chinese talent competition feature a young woman whose right hand is missing all its fingers. It's a magnificent performance guaranteed to make your eyes sting.

And to top it off, she's only been playing the piano for three years.

A friend sent this. Made my day.

Winter wonderland

Well, it looks like the storm finally blew itself out. What a week it's been!

While Wednesday morning was calm, the wind blew hard Tuesday night and drifted snow across the road to about two feet deep. For some reason there's a sort of vortex at the end of our driveway which often makes the snow even deeper. Sure enough, here's a neighbor, stuck in the snow.

So Don and I grabbed shovels and went over to help.

Another neighbor with a snow plow attachment on her truck managed to make a little headway in the vicinity, which finally freed the stuck neighbor.

Then off went the truck in an attempt to make headway on the road with the plow. Got, oh, about a quarter mile and bottomed out. Boom, stuck.

Tools of the trade in this weather.

The first stuck neighbor backed his vehicle up all the way home, then returned to help free the second vehicle. He came with his dog sled. Well, why not?

It took five of us three hours to clear the truck to the point where it could be slowly backed up. Most of that was accomplished on our bellies, scooping snow out from under the truck chassis. Guess this means we're really and truly snowed in!

Or at least we were until late Wednesday afternoon when a fellow who lives nearby ran his grader up and down our road. Thanks!

For the next two days, it snowed and snowed and snowed. The plowed road quickly became unplowed again, undoing the work of the grader. However, our neighbor with the plow attachment was able to keep up after that, so long as there wasn't wind and drifts.

We got about a foot of snow above and beyond whatever we got on Blizzard Tuesday. Here's a tire sporting a jaunty cap.

The chickens aren't terribly happy. It's been much too snowy for them to wander far from the coop. They mostly stay huddled inside, the wimps.

Here's how to move hay bales in snowy weather.

The temperatures haven't been terribly cold, especially since the wind died. The beasties don't especially like the deep snow, but they beat down paths and so can get around fairly easily.

Pitched metal roofs are such an advantage in heavy snow. They accumulate snow up to a point...

...and then it all comes sliding down. Piles up underneath, but oh well -- better than a crushed roof.

Snow on the barn roof, which isn't pitched as steep as the house but still sheds snow nicely from its metal surface.

Snowy landscapes.

I like the way this photo turned out.

One of the dirt piles from the pond construction.

Quail in the garden.

"What??"

A tentative moment of sun.

Older Daughter and some neighbor kids sledding into the pond hole.

They spent hours sledding. See? The pond isn't even finished and it's already providing recreational opportunities.

Here Older Daughter made a crash test dummy to see how steep a certain slope is.

Test result: too steep. The dummy died.

The temp actually rose barely above freezing today, and the worst is over. A neighbor and I even managed to get into town this afternoon to get our mail. Now we'll see how much, if any, of the snow melts.

The death of ambition

I've written about it before, but here's a cartoon that beautifully encapsulates an age-old point: government incentives destroy ambition.

Snowstorm

Well, yesterday was pretty wild as far as weather. I don't think it fit the technical definition of "blizzard," but it was still pretty durned crazy.

The wind blew hard all day, between 40 and 50 mph. I made an early-morning dash to town to mail some packages and cancel our mail delivery until Friday (our mailbox is two miles from our house, and I didn't want mail sitting for days at a time).

This is the plowed portion of the road leading to our house. It wasn't this part I was worried about; it was the two miles of unplowed road that we knew would be drifted shut by the end of the day.

This sight made me so thankful we homeschool. I wouldn't want to entrust my children to a bus on slippery icy roads!

The snowplows were out in full force! Our neighbor, who drives for the county, was roused from his bed at 4:30 am yesterday morning to keep the highways clear. Never underestimate how hard these drivers work to keep the lanes of traffic open.

Don made a futile attempt to shovel a path to the shop. I say "futile" because the wind drifted his efforts shut within minutes.

This photo was taken through a rather dirty kitchen window. I was trying to capture the drama of the whipping snow but wasn't really able to. By the way, do you see the path Don tried to shovel? Neither do I.

Ice crystals on our bedroom window.

Weeds bent over in the wind.

Here's Major, after an outdoor excursion. Needless to say, both dogs preferred to stay huddled by the fire all day, the wimps.

Toward the afternoon, the house became unusually dark because many of the windows were covered with snow.

Needless to say, our evening livestock chores were just a barrel of laughs under these conditions. Here I'm pulling the hay sled and it's being lifted off the ground into the air by the wind. I had to wedge it into the doorway of Matilda's stall to keep the door open so I could clean the stall.

The livestock huddled in the corral for shelter, since it's more protected from the wind. The dominant animals took over the barn, the less dominant animals were stuck outside.

Everyone's milling about, waiting to be fed.

The feedboxes were full of snow and far too exposed to the elements...

...so we fed in the corral, which made everyone happy.

We kept the woodstove well stoked all day long, and the girls did their schoolwork around it.

Toward evening the lights started to flicker, so I lit an oil lamp to provide illumination in case the power went out. It didn't, which surprised the heck out of me considering the strength of the wind.

Today things are much calmer. We're still getting snow, but the infernal wind has died, making conditions much more pleasant.

We have lots more snow coming in today and tomorrow, but nothing like the windy conditions of yesterday.