Too Much Snow

  • December 17, 2020

Woke to this:

That’s a shot of my driveway and the neighbors tree. You can’t see the driveway? Neither could I!

We knew we were getting a big storm, but even when we went to bed last night the forecasts said the worst would be south of here (around NYC) and we’d only get about 6 inches. We got a lot more than that!

You know you’ve got hard work ahead of you when the snow is deeper than your giant-sized snowthrower! Luckily it was light enough the machine could clear it, but it was very slow going. Here’s my view heading to the end of the driveway:

After one pass:

And after some progress:

It was terribly difficult work and took a long time – over 90 minutes – but it was made all the more difficult by the fact it was damn cold! When I started it was 15 F (-9 C) and even with three hats and two pairs of gloves on I was cold. I started to feel my fingers freeze and for the first time ever ended up putting ‘hot hands’ (chemical heat packets) into my gloves, which helped a lot.

Here’s before and afters on the driveway and front steps:

And a shot of the edge of the driveway with a normal sized soap bar box for scale:

The officially tally as of 7 am was 17.5 inches. It’s still falling now as I write (around 10 am) but will taper off soon. We’ll probably end up with about 20 inches, which is a colossal fall for less than 24 hours.

As you can imagine the world seems to have stopped. Everything is closed and there’s a ‘state of emergency’ in effect keeping vehicles off the road. Not that there needs to be: our street hasn’t been plowed yet and it would be virtually impossible to drive through this:

The good news of the forecast is for frigid conditions to continue for at least the next two weeks. It seems 2020 will be a white Christmas 🙂

  • Posted in Home
  • Robert

Ramen 1: Triple Chicken

  • December 13, 2020

I ate three different packet chicken ramen on three consecutive days. All were prepared the same way (boil water, add ramen then flavor when noodles cooked). Here’s my review of each.

Top Ramen (380 Calories, 14g fat, 1600 mg sodium)

I bought a pack of these months ago due to a Gudetama promotion but didn’t get around to trying any until this past week. The noodles are fatter than other ramens, but the flavor was light and didn’t taste anything like chicken soup. Not terrible for the price (about $0.25), and I’ll eat the ones I have but I won’t be buying them again.

Maruchan (370 Calories, 14g fat, 1520 mg sodium)

An old favorite of mine, this one didn’t disappoint. The noodles are thin and delicious, and the flavor is stronger and more chickeny than Top Ramen. Afterwards I felt satisfied and regretted I hadn’t been wearing my Maruchan t-shirt whilst eating. Overall a solid chicken ramen, especially for the low price ($0.16).

Sapporo Ichiban (460 Calories, 20g fat, 1810 mg sodium)

The undisputed winner of this comparison! The noodles seem identical to maruchan so the difference must be in the flavor packet. I’m guessing it’s the extra fat and sodium that makes this one better. Each mouthful is like a chicken injection into your soul, and this is a ramen you could eat over and over without ever getting tired of it. They cost more ($1 apiece) but are absolutely worth it!

This was a fun thing to do, but I wished I had more types to include. If I can get my mitts on any other types of plain chicken packet ramen I’ll do a follow up!

Mushroom Stamps

  • December 6, 2020

I had fun with those Dinosaur stamps a few months back, and decided to dip my toes back into the world of ‘topical collecting’. So I made an order at a stamp shop for a few inexpensive packets of stamps in various categories, and over the next few months I’ll go through them here on the blog.

Let’s start right now with… mushroom stamps!

100 stamps cost me about $5. I chose mushrooms because they were cheap and I was amused that they existed as a category (“Why mushrooms?”). It wasn’t clear if the packet was 100 unique stamps or whether there would be doubles. Let’s see:

There were no doubles! In total there were 104 unique stamps from 14 countries: Mongolia, Afghanistan, Benin, Paraguay, Romania, Burkana Faso, North Korea, São Tomé and Principe, Kampuchea (Cambodia), Guyana, Guinea, Nicaragua, Hungary and the Soviet Union (Russia). The country from which I had the most was North Korea, with 12 stamps.

The stamps spanned 28 years from 1968 to 2006. The above example is one of the two oldest stamps and is North Korean. It’s also one of only a small handful that have been actually used, since (as with the dinosaur stamps) almost all of these are CTO stamps made for collectors and machine canceled. Most are therefore still gummed.

There’s a bewildering variety! The above (from Mongolia in 1985) are diagonally printed and very large and some of the prettiest in the packet.

Quite a few were still attached, like these Romanian ones from 1985. Most were illustrations, but there were some photographic stamps as well.

My favourites are probably the stamps from Hungary. Not only do they feature lovely line art, but they are actually textured and the ink seems slightly iridescent. This series contains stamps in two sizes as well, and these bigger ones must have looked lovely on a letter back in 1984!

Incidentally just because these are (mostly) CTO stamps doesn’t mean they weren’t also used for mail. Researching these stamps I found examples of some of them that had gone through the post, so unlike most of the dinosaur stamps it’s likely some of these were used by postal customers when they were released.

So why so many mushroom stamps?!? I’ve learned this is one of the most popular categories for topical stamps, and a catalogue printed only few months ago lists 6144 unique mushroom stamps! So my 104 is only 1.7% of those that exist. It’s a good thing I hate mushrooms else I may be tempted to chase them all 🙂

And so they’ve gone into my album, which still has lots of space left to fill. It’s a good thing I have several packets left to open…