SkyWatch Friday 012425

Got a bunch of pictures today! 

I didn’t post yesterday because I was traveling from Michigan to visit the Spouse who is currently working remotely from his Mom’s house in Arkansas.  (he’s spent each January there since Covid, since this is his busy time at work and our house is crazy with the grandkids)

Above - this was leaving my neighborhood.  I stupidly didn’t check the weather so I was surprised by just enough snow to make a mess. 2-3 inches. 

Btw - my flight was leaving at 7:30 am and the airport is normally close to an hour drive.  Even the highways were awful and I saw a lot of cars in the ditch.  One section was even closed by State Troopers and I had to exit.

Luckily I’d already checked in for my flight and didn’t need to check a bag so I made it with just minutes to spare.

However - the plane needed to be deiced!

We sat there while another plane was done first.  Then the truck ran out of fluid so they had to go refill it and finish them before they got to us.

I’ve never experienced deicing before so it was interesting.  First they sprayed this orange liquid all over. 

Then this thick green stuff.

I sent this pic to the Spouse and commented that it didn’t look like his proton pack didn’t have much power!

We ended up leaving 1 1/2 hours late, so I missed my connecting flight in Chicago.

Approaching O’Hare over a Lake Michigan margarita.

I really like the United Airlines app, they really kept me up to date with what was going on.  I could let them rebook my flight or I could choose my own.  Since I arrived in Chicago at 9am, I really didn’t want to wait until 7pm to get on a direct flight to Little Rock.  So I opted for one leaving at 10:30am with a very short layover in Houston.  

I was happy they have trains in Houston since I didn’t have very long to get between my gates.  And had another small delay because they only had one person on the plane’s cleaning crew.

The flight between Houston & Little Rock was very rough. 

But pretty!

I was amused to see a “dollop” of snow in Little Rock!  The Spouse sent me pictures back on the 10th showing 8 1/2 inches of snow on his Mom’s deck so it’s not surprising that it’s mostly gone.

So it was a very long and stressful day, even tho we got back to the MIL’s house well before dark.

Then we went and got BBQ for dinner!

The “Spud Supreme” from Stubby’s BBQ in Hot Springs.  There’s a giant potato under a pile of brisket, beans and cole slaw.

OMG - so good!

SkyWatch Friday

 

Brrrrrr!

Of course, it looks like most of the country is feeling the same way right now!

I grabbed this screenshot of WhatTheForecast shortly before noon today. 

The sun is actually peeking out once in a while, so that's a plus. 

So this past weekend - Friday night we had a SARtopo refresher course.  

It's basically mapping software for search & rescue.  

That's me in the orange with the pony tail. 

I enjoy these refresher classes, since if you don't use the information, you forget it!  So either I learn something new every time, or they're reminding me of something I totally forgot every time! 

Sherlock Bones supervised the class. 

We usually have our meetings/training at the County EMS Admin building so an anatomically correct skeleton hanging out isn't much of a surprise.  

Saturday, was the Statewide SAR Skills Day.

45ish people representing 7 teams were there. 

And since we're technically under the Sheriff's department - the guy we call "our" sergeant stopped in to visit Friday and a Lieutenant from the State Police who is in charge of all the SAR teams in the state paid us a visit Saturday.  

First we had a guy who dabbles in trapping show us some animal traps, how they work and more importantly - how to open them!  A lot of people in the room were K9 handlers and their dogs are a very important resource.  I think this freaked a lot of them out!   While we do train in urban searching, most of the searches we actually get called out on are rural areas - so traps are a good possibility.

Then we trooped outside and learned how to build a fire in the adverse conditions.  

We had snow & wind. 

We got into small groups and made our own fires. 

Then we stayed in our little groups and were given 3 sets of coordinates and had to use our GPSs to find points out in the woods.  

I "C" you!!

My team of 6 ended up splitting up (due to impatience) and I went out with Bill from my team and Mike who is the emergency manager for a couple counties up in NE Michigan.  We were the last ones to come back in and everyone else had already started working on tying people into stokes baskets. 

I took a screen shot of the weather at 3pm Saturday to send to the Spouse (he's in Arkansas right now) - it was 27* with a Real Feel of 12* - and I was sweating!  I ended up taking my gloves off after we found the first point and just carried my GPS in my bare hand.  The sun had come out, the wind died down and we were in the woods anyway.  So it felt pretty nice.  Except for the 4-5 inches of snow with a crust of ice on top.  My boots ended up soaked!  But the socks I had still kept my feel warm as long as I was moving - once I stopped, they got cold. 

New actual winter boots have been ordered!  

I spent Friday night at Sis1's house since it's way closer to where we had to be both days.  

Before we left that morning, we had to take care of Sis1's horses - I sat down and her barn cat hopped on up my lap and demanded attention.  He had muddy paws and left a perfect footprint on my shirt!

Leroy, the culprit!

When I got home, I was feeling all the aches & pains.  Surprisingly it wasn't my knees like usual, it was my ankles and lower back.  Oh the joys of age creeping up.  Thankfully the aches worked out and I was fine midway thru Sunday.

One of my cats is getting older and can't take care of herself well anymore - so I brushed a cat out of her coat.  Baby Maddie!  Thankfully she's not very strong anymore so she didn't do any damage when she tried to bite me!  

The Spawn takes the Granddaughter to gymnastics on Mondays so I had a dinner date with the Grandson. 

He's also a great helper in the grocery store!

Gratuitous goofy shot of Daisy & Rusty. 

I've been really bad - I skipped going to Weight Watchers last week and this week is iffy, too!  

I'm just in a real bad mindset right now and just can't get back into the groove!  I've gained all I ever lost thru WW plus a few more pounds for good measure.  Of course it doesn't help that I have 2 picky young people and their picky mom in my house that adversely affect what I can make for dinner.  It's insane how much food they waste.  I bet that'll change once they finally get their own place and she has to pay for her own groceries.  

Anyhoo. I don't ~feel~ as enormous as I look when I see myself in pictures.  So when I do see pics, I'm appalled!  See above - I'm a high-vis pumpkin! 

But now I need to get back to work - stay warm ya'll! 

"Hobo in the Snow"

Artistic shot of Sis1's barn / house cat on a rock.

Skywatch Friday 011725

I'm a little late to the party this week! 

I took this from a moving car (I wasn't driving!) somewhere in Ohio when 

I went with my sisters to visit our brother.

Ooops, almost forgot to link back! 

SkyWatch linkup

 

Skywatch Friday

Wow !  I just posted about not seeing any bloghops anymore, and one popped up in my blogs-to-read feed!  

I haven't done a SkyWatch Friday post since 2018!!!

Hi, new visitors.  My name's Lisa and I live in Southeast Michigan (near Detroit) in the US.

Someone at this diner is a big Detroit Lions fan!

HaPpY NeW yEaR !

I think my word of the year shall actually be a phrase....

DO IT NOW. 

Prime example - I check emails on my phone, with the intention of answering later on my desktop.... and then don't.  So something that should take less than a minute to do, can drag out for days.  This really applies to my VFW stuff. 

I also want to attend the weekly (optional) training with the search & rescue team at least once every month or two.  They are tentatively planning training K9s at cool places like the Detroit Zoo (but I'll be in Kalamazoo that weekend - SOB!) and Greenfield Village so those would be cool to go to.  I don't have a K9 and don't ever plan to, but those of us non-K9 peoples go to help them train, either as flankers (to watch out for danger) or as victims for the dogs to find.  It also gives us a chance to get familiar with our GPS and radios. 

Anyhoo. 

New Years Eve was fun.  I went out to dinner with Sis1, Sis2, the Brother-In-Law and some of their friends, then we went to a comedy show.  After that, we went back to Sis2/BIL's house and we played board games until about 1:30am (with a brief stop for the countdown to midnight).

Last Thursday was the Grandson's 5th birthday!  I almost had heart failure when the Spawn pointed out that soon she will be registering him for Kindergarten in the fall - how is he that big???

Construction Cake!

Since it hasn't been that long since Christmas, I opted to get us tickets to the Reptarium which isn't too far away from home.  This was really cool and we can't wait until the Aquarium opens up across the street. 

I wish you could see the oil-slick sheen on this snake!  

So pretty!

They have a Fish Spa, where you can sit and put your feet in these tanks and let the fish nibble on you. 

They were covering my hand!

We could hold, pet and feed all sorts of critters. 

They also have a capybara and a sloth!

And they have a 2 headed turtle to go with the 2 headed snake!

Each enclosure had the animal's name and species posted on it. 

And the employees were going around with various critters asking if we wanted to hold or pet.  

Fabulous Iguana!

It was a lot of fun.  We got an hour time slot and that's about the perfect amount of time.  Of course, they keep it very warm & humid in there so I was sweating pretty good and was ready to leave.  Otherwise, 2 thumbs up!

So work's been pretty slow - the company I work for hauls a lot of freight for the Big 3 and they've been on shut down over the holidays - so the last 2 weeks have been brutal!  And dumb me - for the last 2 years I've realized at like Thanksgiving that I have a lot of vacation time I needed to take!  Our days don't carry over, so in 2023 most of December was half days.  I should have done the same in 2024, but I still ended up losing 1 1/2 days since I was concerned about getting things done.  Oh well.  Since I'm coming up on 25 years (GASP!!!!) with the company in June, I get quite a bit of vacation time.  I will plan better! 

I'm starting out with 2 days here in a couple weeks to fly down to Arkansas and visit the Spouse since he works remotely from his Mom's house for a while in the winter.  I haven't been there in 5 or 6 years (thanks, Covid!!) so I'm looking forward to going to the Buckstaff Bathhouse in Hot Springs.  I absolutely love going there.  I've posted about it before, but the link is pretty explanatory.   

So I somehow got suckered into taking over as the VFW newsletter editor.  Which in theory seemed fine, but then I found out that the previous editor used an Apple computer which is not something I'm familiar with!  So I had to fight & cuss while trying to get it into a format I could edit and then figure out appropriate formatting and margins, etc. I thought I had it looking tolerable but then one of the old guys from the post messed with it and made it look awful.  And of course it was while I was at work and he submitted it before I could fix it again.  I just emailed the printer to get him to send me a copy of it so I can put it on the post website.  The printer was supposed to do some tweaks, too but he only did some stuff with the ads so it looks as horrible as I feared.  I'm pretty embarrassed to have my name on it. 

Oh well!  Better luck with the next one.  

I was lazy!

CVS photo Christmas cards for the win! 

However it'll be a more wonderful year when it's just me, the Spouse & the cats! 

Fingers crossed that one day we'll become empty-nesters! 

I was looking thru some old posts to find my last post about the bathhouse and realized I used to do a lot of bloghops - wonder what happened to them?  Most of the links don't work and a lot of the blogs haven't been active for years.  Guess people are using easier forms of social media nowadays. 

Signing off for now! 

I thought they were being cute - Daisy looks pretty annoyed at me!