April 11th 2008: Residents of Central Minnesota had a nasty view in the morning. Overnight we got nailed with a nasty April snowstorm. In Sauk Centre we received around 18 inches of new snow. Previously most of the snow had melted, I woke up to 3 foot snow drifts in my driveway.
This snow was wet and very heavy, this in combination with high winds cause multiple large branches to come crashing down. Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure.
April 10th
April 11th
So I mentioned in the post Winter 2008 Turning Point that I was thinking February 20th was the last day this winter that was going to get below -15 degree F. I was wrong, it is March 7th and it was -19 degrees F with wind chills in the -20s. Winter is not letting its death grip on Minnesota go.
Hopefully soon
Well it is February 20th and it is the coldest morning yet this winter at my house. The coldest morning before this morning was -20.8 degrees F. This morning when I left for work it bottomed out at -23.4 degrees F, that is air tempurature by the way not wind chill which is in the -40s. I am hoping this is the last morning that is colder than -15 degrees F. This weekend we are looking for 30s and hopefully a continuing upward trend in temps going into March.
Last night's super bowl was one of the best I have ever seen. Some years the only thing worth watching are the commercials but this year the game was great. Everyone was expecting the Pats to continue with their out of control scoring. But instead the game was close the whole way through. Even in the 4th quarter I was waiting for the Pats to start rolling, touchdown after touchdown. You have to give most of the credit for the Giants win to the defense. No-one has been able to shut down Brady's offensive as year.
Eli Manning did a great job when it counted on that final drive but without the great Giant's defensive they wouldn't have had a prayer. I think the outcome was perfect, not just because I don't like Tom Brady but I don't think the Pats deserved to win the Super Bowl. Any team that is caught cheating doesn't deserve the Super Bowl or a perfect season, they got what they deserved.
Giants win 17-14
On the commercial note I was not that impressed this year, I mean there were some commercials that were ok but nothing that really blew me away this year. The game action made up for it though.
So even though I wasn't planning on it I had to get a new water heater. My old one wasn't heating that well, which I was just ignoring, and it decided to spring a pretty good leak in the tank. So I had to pony up some money to get a new one. I try to go green when I can, mostly to save monthly energy expenses, if it help the environment great but I want to pay less every month.
So I went with a tankless water heater instead of a regular water heater. They are about twice as expensive but they never run out of hot water, which is good because I like hot showers and tend you use all the hot water, and they are supposed to have double the life of a regular water heater. They say they should last about 20 years.
Well after getting it installed it was great, I could take a piping hot shower and my wife could take a bath right after without waiting. We did run into a problem with it though. I went to Florida for a business trip and wouldn't you know it, it breaks. I am thinking WTF I just bought this thing. Turns our the installers that put it in didn't do a very good job. They hooked it up with a 1/2" gas line instead of the recommended 3/4" gas line and there was a venting issue as well. Anyway it is working great now and I would recommend one to anyone who's family uses a lot of hot water.
So it is almost finished finally. What started out as a nasty little cold turned into a terrible family infection. My wife, my daughter and myself all got colds which turned into a sinus infection and double eye infection for me. My wife got a sinus infection and one eye got infected, my daughter also got a sinus infection. The only one who seemed unaffected was my son until overnight he came down with a sinus infection, an ear infection and a double eye infection.
We are all still on a ton of antibiotics but things seem to be getting better. I don't know what was in the cold we got but it took all of us for a ride. What a horrible week. I actually read that there is a new type of cold spreading throughout the US this year that in known for causing upper respiratory infections. It has caused at least 10 deaths since last year. Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come.
So I posted this summer about our outdoor cat that had adopted us. He hung out with us all summer and into the fall. He started to live in our garage and was clearly an abandoned cat. He was the nicest outdoor cat we had ever met. My daughter named him Flower and when we were outside he was always there.
It has started to get cold out and winter is on its way. We didn't want to leave him out in the cold over the winter so it was either we bring him to the humane society or we bring him in the house. If we brought him in he would need to be fixed and declawed but if we brought him to the humane society you don't know what would happen. We felt it was worth it to bring him in so we got him fixed and declawed last week.
