ems - Hope you feel better soon! And who, nowadays, lives in a zero-stress environment? Seriously.
There is some pretty cool stuff in the area to go tourist on, let me know when you’re heading this way, I can point you out to some of them. But not a huge tourist attraction, if it weren’t for Notre Dame, most people probably wouldn’t know anything about SB at all. (Not that I’m a fan of the football or the college, just sayin’.)
I’ll do my best for the snow, this week is looking properly spring like here. 
I need to take my van for some maintenance, but I did read the OP and I had to toss in my driving miscellany.
I got my license at 17 because that’s when I had a job and could afford the gas and insurance. Not that I got use of the car very often, being the 3rd driver in a 1-car household. Plus the car was a 10-passenger station wagon - oh yeah, fun for a teen! :rolleyes: But still…
I learned to drive in Baltimore, and from then until I went to college at age 22, I never drove in snow or ice.
Which brings us to West Lafayette, Indiana, for the winters of 76-77, 77-78, and 78-79. All three were doozies. Enough snow and enough wind chill that they actually closed the university. Twice! My little Datsun B210 didn’t do too badly, and the one time I got really stuck, a couple of guys passing by were able to lift the trunk end and skootch it over to get me more traction. Good times.
Worst driving adventure was when I was back living in Baltimore and commuting to the Pentagon. We had an ice storm following the summer when the BW Parkway had been resurfaced so it was nice and smooth. The coating of ice turned it into slick city. Being the dedicated professional, I left for work, driving cautiously. I got on to the Parkway and realized my folly. I crept along ever-so-gently, and I still ended up doing a slo-mo 360. Fortunately, the nearest vehicle was several hundred yards away. So I just sat there, didn’t touch any controls, and once my vehicle was pointed the way I wanted to go, I accelerated gently to the shoulder for a bit of purchase, and took the next exit. I returned home on surface roads which were slightly less slick. I called my boss and stayed inside that day.
I still don’t like driving in ick, but I’m a little better at it.
And on that note, I’m off to Leonardtown. Laterz, dudez!!! 
Rosie, please pick, because I am about to blow up in the pit.
LiLi, I’m about 3 hours away from Ames, IA. Though I am in MN, not IA, but it’s not that far away.
I hate driving in the winter and I’m in MN. Though I can do it, I just choose to be chauffered around.
Okay, I did a bad thing. I went out hunting for rubber boots, and somehow ended up buying a pair of adorable blue heels instead (they look very much like these, only with a strap across the top).
It’s not my fault, though… I swear I was forced into it.
You see, every single pair of rubber boots I found were either in the wrong colours or just too bloody expensive. I am NOT spending $70 + tax for a pair of rubber boots, not matter how cute they are. What’s a girl to do?
If anyone happens to know a good source for cute and affordable rubber boots in Toronto, I’d be ever so grateful.
The snow here is now melting into very cold, very wet, very icky slush… which very malevolently found its way into my shoes as I was walking back to the office, just so it could mock me for my failure to find appropriate footwear.
I’m married to my online-dating experience. I met him here (here=Dope, not here=MMP) though, not on a dating service. But it, obviously, was a very good experience and almost 3 years later we’re married and very happy!
Winter driving… well, I grew up in Upstate NY and now live in MN so I’m familiar with the concept. Apparently, though, no one else around here is. :rolleyes: As someone else said, even when you live in snow country, people forget from one snow fall to the next how to handle it. So the roads all get backed up with fender benders and it’s just a mess. It’s really hard to get into trouble on the roads when the speed of traffic is 5 mph. Ugh.
I do have a I-shouldn’t-have-done-that, it’s-lucky-I’m-still-alive type driving story, but it’ll have to wait until later.
Good weekend here. I went to a Prayer Shawl Retreat at my church on Saturday. We sat around knitting for 4 hours and talked about what our church and one other does with the shawls and other stuff that people knit for them. And people liked my baby blanket that I made up the pattern for… so much that they asked me to write up the pattern so other people could make ones like it! Yay!
We had company for dinner on Sat night. Keith grilled pork loins and asparagus, and he made oven-fried sweet potato fries. I baked homemade peasant bread and apple pie. It was all goooooooood.
Yesterday we bought a washer & dryer. GE front loader washer and matching dryer. We saved about $400 on the pair by buying scratch 'n dent ones, which, since they’re going to be hidden away in a closet and the dent was on the side, seemed totally worth it. They’ll be delivered in 2 weeks. Yay! (We have a W/D, but they’re really small so I have to do way more loads of laundry than I should have to. Plus, we’ll save on water with the front loader, and we get a rebate from the city for buying a high-efficiency washer.)
Glad DH got the license stuff fixed, gotti. That’s a pain though. Hope the test goes well tomorrow!
Busy work again… gotta run!
Urg, Iit’s March, isn’t it? Yesterday the temp climbed all the way up to 40F and all the snow (except for the places where the plows pile it) was gone. Now it’s back down to 34F and it’s snowing. And sticking.
Thanks ** snowbunny** for 'splaining how to pronounce Snoqualmie. Now I’ll try to describe banya. Before the Russians showed up, the native people in Alaska (at least Southeast, Southcentral and the Aleutian Islands) lived in barabras, (a sod covered dwelling built into the side of a slope) and washed in banyas, or steam houses which were built for bathing and to some extent socializing. The modern banya is a small building with two chambers, a small dressing room for changing in and out of clothing, and a larger chamber for the actual washing. Ours has the stove outside and underneath, (it’s a modifies 50 gallon drum) which makes for less smoke inside the banya, which is a good thing. Skiffman will begin a fire in the stove no later than noon in cold weather. Inside the washing room in the corner over the stove there is an enclosure of wire and 2x4’s filled with a pile of rocks (they are special rocks, round, from the river beds, although we do still have some concrete blocks which need to be replaced) and on top of the rocks is a galvanized steel washtub. He fills that with fresh water, and also fills two large tubs in another corner with fresh water as well. In the washing room there is also a bench to sit on. As the day goes on he keeps the fire hot, and by dinnertime it’s ready. One goes out and strips down in the changing room and, in this weather, hurries to get into the wash room. Our banya is nice and hot, generally the temperature is 180F when he and I go in, and then I splash the rocks with some of the hot water to make steam, and the temperature climbs to over 190F. We sit and let the steam make us sweat until we are ready to wash. There are some dish tubs and an old pot we use for washing, a dipperful of hot water to two or three of cold into each dish tub, repeat as necessary. We gather wainiks and tahicks (spelled phonetically, although the h in tahicks is guttural. I don’t know how to spell them in Alutiq) in the spring and summer. Wainiks are the whippy thin ends of branches of the black alder, picked at their greenest (usually in July) and hung upside down to dry. Then when you wash, if you have sore muscles you take a small bunch of dried wainiks and, well, get them wet and smack the sore areas repeatedly. I know, it sounds weird, but there is something in the alder that takes out the soreness. Tahicks are the roots of beach grass which become exposed during the winter storms. They are gathered in the spring, cleaned and boiled, and wrapped around one’s hand to make tidy circlets and left to dry. There are the Alutiq people’s version of a loofah, and when you have scrubbed with one you have truly been exfoliated. After rinsing it’s back to the dressing room to cool off, drink a beer (or soda, water, whatever), dry and dress. It’s nice to kick the outside door open and look at the stars, and if lucky, the northern lights. Skiffman and I usually take somewhere between one and two hours in the banya, it is quiet, although sometimes we take music out there, and it’s a place where we are able to relax and spend some time together without kids, dogs, cats, phones, etc.
So there you go! Any questions, feel free to ask. I’ll take some photos inside and out when the weather gets a little nicer.
In other news, I have stuffy sinuses, and have taken some benedryl and I think I will go lie down and finish reading an S.K. short story I want to comment on on another message board. I hope you all have a good day/evening/night!
mmmm glad they were able to find out your problem. I’m lucky in that my bp stays well within normal range but I know a lot of people (including ACBG) who take bp meds and say it helps keep their bp down. So, see it’s a good thing you know that now.
gotti glad DH got the license thing fixed.
Howdy Y’all I’m Home! I decided to not stay later today. I’s tahred! I’m also bein’ taken out to dindin. YAY! I think we’re goin’ for the bad Chinese hog trough just cause it’s easy. I’ll be glad when ol’ y’all know who gets here cause I’m hongry as well as tahred.
Cuuuuuute!
Wallflower, I’ve been on three on-line dates from OkCupid and met one guy that was practically The Perfect Man: Ivy League grad, two advanced degrees, rich, funny, had a nice car and shared a lot of interests with me as well. One out of three ain’t bad. Fingers crossed for you!
Meant to say - glad you’ve been around more this week, kai. Good to see you, and glad you’re sounding less stressed out!
I’ve had my share of internet dating adventures. Some turned out better than others… but I’ll tell you the bad ones another day, since right now you need to hear about the good ones.
I met The Boy through Friendster nearly 3 yrs ago. His profile claimed he could dance, my profile said I was in search of the perfect Montreal bagel… we liked the same bands, liked the same authors, and agreed on just about everything except the best place to get a smoked meat sandwich.
We didn’t kill each other after two weeks of trekking around Spain, didn’t kill each other while living in my tiny 1 bedroom apartment for 6 months, and didn’t even kill each other when my mother and sister stayed with us for the holidays (I very nearly killed my mother and sister, though).
Nearly two years to the day from our first “date”, we bought a house together, and we survived that very stressful experience too. We still can’t agree on the best place to get smoked meat, but I figure every relationship has to have a little bit of conflict to survive.
Haze, somehow, I just knew you’d approve of the shoes.
Homeward bound. I need to figure out what I’m making for din-din… hopefully inspiration will strike somewhere along the way home.
I think my oven died. More later.
Thanks, but it was **Ellen ** who asked. (-2 for reading comprehension) 
Almost caught up - but I need to get back to making supper. More later…
Wow, thanks for the story of the banya, Kaiwik! That’s very interesting about the wainiks; there definitely must be something in the black elder that is healing/medicating. And the tahicks do sound loofah-like.
{{{{{{Ems}}}}}}; glad to hear that you went to Urgent Care and found out about the BP. Hopefully the meds will bring it down.
So glad to be winding down today; I actually made a bit of credit time too!
Thanks for the reassurance about dating people from online. We actually talked on the phone earlier today! What I thought had been 45 minutes turned out to be over 4 hours once I actually looked at the clock. We really click. I’m buzzed with this weird mixture of a kid-on-Christmas-morning excitement, :eek: queasy fear, and deep happiness. Who needs drugs, when this feeling exists?
Ok, so now I’ve cleaned out from underneath the stove (ugh) and we reset the gas intake valvey thingie. Nothing. So, I called The Husband and told him what we (#1 son and I) had done. He says we should get a new range. I’m all for it, but it’s $$$. A small snapshot as to why we don’t really get along: he says we probably need a new oven, but he will take a look at it once he’s home. I say that’s great, but perhaps it could be the oven trying to tell me to stop making the same 6 meals over and over? He says in an exasperated voice: “ovens don’t talk”.
Well, slap me silly and call me home–I never. My whole worldview is shattered.
mac and cheese is in the toaster/convection oven. Never used convection part of it before.
:eek: in my rush to post and get going to work I just assumed rigs had posted it (it seemed a very rigs-ish sort of post.) beebs - please don’t put me on the list. 
Our snow is melting rapidly. It was supposed to be 35 today. Instead, it got close to 50, apparently.
Thanks for the banya explanation, kai. Nice to see you around!
Glad you went to the urgent care mmmmmmmmm. High bp is nothing to play with.
Glad DH got the driver’s license straightened out. I recently took a look at mine to make sure it hadn’t expired.
Reading through everyone’s stories reminded me of more bad-weather driving stories.
First there was the time back 5 million years ago when Far-Away Best Friend and I were roommates. One of our friends came down for the weekend and it turned out to be incredibly cold AND snowy. He tried to go home Sunday night, but his car broke down about 2 hours north of Columbus. He left the car overnight so that they could fix it and we went to collect him. On the way back into town when we went to get on the freeway, we did a lovely 180 on the entrance ramp. We were very very very grateful that no one was behind us…or in front of us. I’ve always hated that ramp and do everything I can to avoid it.
Second there was the time that I had a speaking engagement in Cincinnati. We already knew the weather was going to be bad, so I went down the night before. Like swampy, I am a loyal employee. Also, sometimes I’m dumb. Should just have canceled it. Instead, I did the train thing down much of I-71. I drove around 30 mph in other drivers’ tracks. Even better, I wasn’t even in my own car; I was driving a station wagon that belonged to my employer. That trip was not fun.
I’m waiting for the little brother to get back from Kinko’s. We’re having chicken and green beans and rice. Quite exciting, I know.
Back later…
GT
I am partial to
for obvious reasons, but given your SDMB personality, this seems more you
However - I think the winning entry is gardentraveler’s unintentional contribution:
Perhaps you could rotate between the 3 of them.