Aerie Report, December 23, 2009The Oh Cr*p!! Edition

Just as the weather wonks had moved the ice storm to early on Christmas Day and opened a window I could work with the travel to NJ on Christmas Eve and back later on Christmas Day, the Tundra betrays me!

I traveled down to AJ's Power Equipment in Mansfield today to purchase a generator (just in case) and then over to Wally World for some groceries (okay, snack food for the bowl games). On the way back up the hill to the Aerie, the "Check Engine" light comes on. I'm 200 or so miles before my oil change and the time for the Maintenance Required" light, so this is not to be taken lightly. The truck doesn't act any differently than before but a 500 mile round trip to NJ is not to be undertaken without someone more knowledgeable than I looking under the hood. (I did check the oil and coolant fluids and they seem fine. And none of the gauges on the dash indicated a problem in the short trip to town and back.) I did call the serviceman but he said 1) they are closed until Monday, 2) it's probably nothing more than a sensor malfunction since the behavior didn't change, 3) the fact that it's not misbehaving now doesn't mean it won't start acting up in a couple hundred miles. I made an appointment to bring the Tundra in on Tuesday.

So it looks like I'll be home alone for Christmas...again. Just me, the cats and a few hundred small birds.

I still have to get down the hill tomorrow to get the mail and fill up two gas cans...just in case.

******

I figure to cook a venison tenderloin, some string beans and a baked potato for my Christmas dinner. Julie the Cat will help me eat the tenderloin. I'm sure of that. She really likes wild game. She starts salivating as soon as the meat has thawed enough to give off any aroma and, sometimes, even before that. When a friend gave us some moose meat a few years back all we had to do was take it out of the freezer and she was stalking the kitchen waiting for her "taste"--which translated into a good sized tablespoon's worth of finely cut red meat. She'll pick up a piece and give it a good shake to make sure it's dead before chowing down.

She's the only one of the three that eats "human" food. She'll eat chicken, turkey beef and some fish (she doesn't like blackened or cajun style and forget about any rubs or breading), but what she really likes is venison, moose, bison, and squirrel. Looking at those first three, I think she's got an inner cougar in her somewhere. Thank goodness she's the smallest of the three cats!

******

I mentioned the ice we're supposed to be getting on Friday. They now say the ice could accumulate to 0.4 inches before the whole thing switches to rain. Looking at the maps it seems the storm center is actually going to pass a bit further west than they thought earlier this week which is why points west of the Great Lakes will be hit hardest with the snow and wind. Here, warm air will be pulled up from the south and run over the cold air that's been entrenched for a week or more. (At the Aerie, we haven't see the temperature get above 31 degrees in more than a week.) The moisture in the warm southern air will fall through the cold lower layers and freeze either on the way down or on the surface. Eventually, the warm air will push the cold air back to the north and we'll get all rain...maybe. At 2100 feet, I don't really know if that's going to happen.

After two days (Friday and Saturday) of slightly warming temperatures, we'll get back to below freezing again. And that's for the high temperatures. We'll be a few degrees below the average highs and, upon those clear nights, almost 10 degrees below the average lows through New Year's Eve.

I better pull some more firewood in to the garage...just in case.