Category: Home

First Snow

December 10, 2017

We had our first significant snowfall overnight; 4 inches according to the local weather.

It’s very light snow – almost intangible – and therefore sticking to everything prettily.

It’s very cold out as well, which gives me hope this may not melt quickly. Walking around taking these photos was an uncomfortable experience 🙂

That’s one of our old squirrel feeders. It’s useless now – you can see where the squirrels chewed through the plastic – but I leave it up because it’s become part of the backyard.

It’s rare we get a snowfall like this before I leave for Oz. Even though it’s just a little snow, this was a pleasant surprise.

Before and After

August 27, 2017

Our AC developed a bad leak and it was time to replace it. Due to the work that had to be done, it was a good time to replace the water heater as well.

That’s the old equipment above. The AC was about 35+ years old, and the water heater 15-20. Both of them had lived long past their natural lifespans 🙂

The new systems are much more energy efficient and much quieter. It took two guys about ten hours to install everything and they did an incredible amount of work in that time. The lead installer (who resembled Santa!) told me he’s been doing 5 installs a week for 27 years!

We’ve now replaced every appliance we got with this house except the oven and the mower. The latter is over 40 years old now and I actively neglect it yet it fires up every year and does it’s job. I wonder how many more years it has in it?

Cracker Night 2017

July 5, 2017

Yesterday was July 4, which meant fireworks! Of course we’d already had a pretty good ‘show’ last Sunday, not to mention letting the odd ‘cracker’ off here and there over the last few weeks. In short: a fortnight of fireworks!

We drove to NH a couple of weeks ago to buy some since they are cheaper there and you can get ‘launchers’ which aren’t legal in NY state, and between than trip and the ones we had bought locally we had a couple of hundred dollars worth to set off. This was 60+ fireworks, most that look like this pre-firing:

Some are slightly exotic, like those that ‘light up’ via cellophane ‘windows’ at the front:

Or the hand ones, very creatively named:

We even got – for the first time – some ‘smoke’ fireworks. We learned that in Vermont these are all that is legal!

As I said we had a great time setting these off the past few days. Lots of sparks and pretty colours and loud noises! Cracker night is every bit as good as it ever was!

As I have the past few years I’ve made a video of some highlights. I hope you enjoy it 🙂

Robot Claw