Category: Rain

Snow, Sleet and Rain – 27 December 2022

Posted on by Zogman

That’s the short list of our weather today in chronological order.

It was obvious when the snow started that we weren’t going to get that walk today. What we did do instead was rearrange the kitchen and some of the cupboards. We were trying to make space for New Stuff and also use it as an excuse to get rid of old stuff. However, it was unlikely that the council skips would be open today, because today was a Substitute Bank Holiday for Christmas Day. Does that mean that Christmas Day gets a holiday to itself today? I don’t know, but as it came up only on my Samsung calendar, I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. Anyway, I collected some unused or broken small electrical items and they are now sitting in an IKEA bag in the back bedroom. I’m hoping to take them away later in the week.

I did make a loaf in the morning, but it didn’t turn out very well. Oven too low? Yeast too old? I’m not sure, but we’ll try toasting it tomorrow and if that doesn’t improve it, the remainder goes in the bin. I also braved the rain and took some photos in the garden. Abstract images for a change. Today’s PoD is a macro shot of the pea netting after it’s been messed about with in various apps!

It really was a dull day today. It started getting dark just after midday, but to keep our minds off it, Scamp launched into her ‘tidy the kitchen’ project. I’m sure it’s something to do with New Year. My mum, and her mum too were fanatical about having the house tidy for New Year. It was considered bad luck to allow the new year in to a dirty or untidy house. I’m sure it’s in the Scottish genes to continue this tradition. My part in the process was cleaning the extractor fan filter above the cooker. It’s a filthy job and it took me quite a while to get it looking decent and a new filter fitted. It’s done now, but I reckon it may need checked in about six months.

In the evening, we watched the first two episodes of The Crow Road, a Scottish mystery drama by Iain Banks from 1996. It was strange seeing these younger versions of folk who have aged a bit since it was filmed and also remember some who are no longer with us. Hoping to watch the final two episodes on iPlayer tomorrow.

That was a dull day but we got stuff done. We also had a practise at the Quickstep and Foxtrot, just to keep them fresh in our heads.

Tomorrow we may go for a walk, but it all depends on the weather.

 

Shopping – 19 December 2022

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Today we were going out in the wide world, maybe even as far as Stirling.

The rain that started last night had continued all night and into this morning. It had done a good job of removing most of the ice that had held us in its grip for the last week. Today we were driving to Stirling to get some messages, but as Waitrose is posh, we’ll have to call it “Shopping”.

Waitrose was utter madness. There were cars circling the parking area just hoping to get lucky and find a space. I dropped Scamp off near the door and told her I’d pay to park at the council car park just along the road and bring the car round when we were ready to go home. That was the plan, but instead of leaving, I found a space just being exited right in front of me. I took it and said “thank you” to the crazy driver who had reversed out of it at speed and nearly “tee boned” the bloke in front of me. I let Crazy Driver go and slipped into his space.

After almost an hour of wandering round the shop and with a full trolley we loaded everything into the boot of the blue car and drove home. Lunch was the remainder of yesterday’s quiches and they tasted better today, well, mine did anyway. Scamp made no disparaging comments about her’s, so I guess she agreed. By about 2pm it felt like the sun was setting, so it was boots on and out to St Mo’s for a photo before the little photons disappeared entirely. PoD became two Dogwood branches with their very wet berries. The bright red stems do a lot to brighten the landscape.

Back home I got a phone call from what looked like Margaret Kent, but it was her husband, Bill who spoke. Margaret had passed away at the end of June and he was apologising for not telling me about it at the time. The poor man sounded devastated and I felt so sorry for him. Margaret was my second cousin. Her mother and my mum were cousins, but I always knew her as my cousin. Then Billy told me that Maureen, another second cousin had died in September. Both of them had been seriously ill for a couple of years, but we occasionally bumped into each other. That put a bit of a damper on the day.

The snow has now all gone and most of the ice too. We might go in to Glasgow on the bus tomorrow, all being well.

A distinct quiet – 16 December 2022

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There was a distinct quiet about when I woke, almost as if everything was muffled. That probably meant it was snowing or it had snowed during the night.

I took a look outside and indeed, everything was white. Cars, road, trees and paths, everything. It wasn’t actually snowing at the time, but it definitely had been. One poor bloke was clearing his dark red car and getting ready for the morning commute. However, as it was about 6.50 in the am, I went back to bed and slept for another couple of hours before getting up to make breakfast. You can’t rush these things.

When I looked out a two hours later there were only two sets of footprints showing on our path. It must have been Wullie who lives at the corner and works odd hours. Nobody else had moved their cars and the space left by the dark red car was now covered in snow, so there had been another fall of the white stuff when I wasn’t watching. The temperature was a remarkable 0.3ºc when I was making the breakfast, a POSITIVE 0.3ºc. It felt like it had been weeks since the temperature had been above zero, but it was only a few days.

After breakfast I wrote my remaining cards and, dressed for the weather, I walked over to Condorrat to post them. I was hoping against hope that they would arrive on someone’s mat before new year, but I wasn’t confident about their chances.

On my way to Condorrat I took a photo of some leaves that would turn out to be the PoD. Just some warm brown leaves in a bunch without any frost or snow on them, but surrounded by lots of raindrops on the branches, in fact there was a very fine drizzle in the air. On my way back home I took a detour round St Mo’s pond, bit couldn’t see anything that would compete with the leaves. No directional light, you see. You really need directional light to give you shadows and form, to take away the two dimensional look of a photo.

Lunch was a bowl of Slimmers Soup. I don’t know if it is actually slimming, but the recipe came from Slimmers World via June and it’s quick to make and is just what you need when you’ve been out chilled in the snowy wastes. Scamp made it and it always tastes good.

We had already cancelled a dinner date with John and Marion for today because of the weather. Today we got a message to say that dance class tomorrow is also cancelled. One of the teachers is suffering from a cold or flu and doesn’t want to pass on her ‘Lurgy’. That’s a pity, but better safe than sorry in this weather.

Dinner tonight is Salmon fillet and potatoes for Scamp and a tub of stew Scamp discovered in the freezer. Both went down well. A wee glass of wine helped them on their way.

It’s been raining on and off all day and the temperature has been rising. We’re now up to 3.4ºc and the snow is finally receding. No real plans for tomorrow, but we’re hoping to get out somewhere if the roads are still clear.

Dancin’ – 26 November 2022

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Drove through the rain to Brookfield to find an enormous marquee sitting in the car park.

Thought for a minute the class had been cancelled, or that the marquee was for us to dance in. Neither was the case. It appeared that the marquee was for an event later in the day and unfortunately the class hadn’t been cancelled. We filed into the hall to find tables arranged round the hall. More obstacles for us to dance round or collide with, depending on our dancing skill. The class started with a Melody Foxtrot, two tracks of it. Then it was full pelt into the Cameron Quickstep and almost all of the practise we’d done last night went clear out of my head. Gradually it returned after I listened to Scamp’s whispered directions, but it wasn’t the resounding success I’d hoped for. Although, neither was it the disaster that it could have been, so we’ll take that as a positive.

Midnight Jive was next just to give us a chance to clear our heads before the teachers decided to throw in the Jetlag Waltz, which we’ve only danced once or twice, but like most of these dances, consists of dance ‘units’ that are bolted together to form a complete dance. It’s knowing what order the units are in that makes for the level of difficulty. According to Scamp we have that one on video and so should be able to make more sense of it by next week, all being well.

I thought we were going to be forced into the Christmas Pudding Rock to finish with, but instead we did a round of the Sally Anne Cha Cha. I don’t know who Sally Anne was, but this wasn’t a cha-cha. Again it was a series of dance units bolted together in what seemed like random patterns. Noisy and energetic and fairly good fun. Got our blood flowing ready for the drive home.

The actual drive home wasn’t too bad although the weather wasn’t too clever. Still raining and I really need to replace the wiper blades soon. The way they rattle across the windscreen sets my teeth on edge. We stopped at the shops on the way home to get milk and donuts and cakes, because we’d been good and not made a total mess of the morning’s dances.

I took a walk over to St Mo’s in the late afternoon because the rain had stopped and the sky was clearing for a warm looking sunset. Warm looking, yes, but it was getting cold, so only one circuit of the pond. PoD was a shot of a woman walking her dog along the boardwalk with some early evening light.

Dinner tonight came courtesy of Golden Bowl. Chicken Chop Suey and Fried rice for Scamp and Chicken Chow Mein for me. Very nice, if a bit dry.

We watched Hidden Figures on TV. It’s based on the true story of three women of colour in America attempting, and succeeding in working for NASA to make a success of the first American in space. Yes, we’ve seen it before, but the message was still there and the fact that we’d both lived through such ridiculous bigotry shocked both of us, just as it had on our first viewing.

Tomorrow looks a lot better than today according to the weather fairies. I hope they have it right.

Checking out the Humans – 25 November 2022

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Not an early start today, but I got a fair bit of work done once I was up.

Scamp was out at 11am for her FitSteps class and I began my cleanup of the back bedroom, my painting room. I managed to clear most of the chest of drawers. Some of the things I wanted to keep went into a drawer, most of it went into the bin. I even dusted the two bookcases in the room. It’s not nearly finished, but it’s started and that’s the main thing.

After lunch we drove over to The Fort and while Scamp went shopping, I went looking for photos of Provan Hall which I remember sketching about fifty years ago. I’ve still got that wee sketch somewhere. Drawn with a dipper pen in blue shellac based ink. Unfortunately once I’d battled through a rainstorm, I found that the 15th century building was getting a facelift and seemed to be in the middle of a building site. I did get a few photos, but they were more record shots than anything creative.

I walked back to the car in the gathering gloom looking for a last minute photo, then I remembered the three deer who are always ready for a photo opportunity. Instead of the usual face on view or the profile shot, I chose to shoot over their bronze heads as they checked out the Humans, and wondered what the glitz and jingle bells nonsense was all about. I used a wide aperture, meaning that the background of the shops in their festive splendour would be just a warm blur.

We drove home and Scamp wisely used the Hive app to turn the heating on for a half hour ‘boost’ when we were halfway home, ensuring we had a warm welcome when we arrived. It had been a cold, wet day and the house was indeed toasty when we got back.

Dinner tonight was Scamp’s veggie chilli and a baked potato. Like soup, the chilli tastes better the second day, or as was the case here, the third day.

Tonight we had a practise run through of the Cameron Quickstep and ironed out a few problems, then we did the same with the Gershwin Foxtrot, a lot of which had slipped my memory.

Both of these dances will be contenders for further changes and additions tomorrow at Brookfield.

Dancin’ and Camera Misadventures – 17 November 2022

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Today it was raining, miserable wetting rain and then heavier soaking rain, but it didn’t matter, we were going dancing.

In the morning I cancelled our subscription to Which. We’ve been talking about doing it for ages. It used to be totally independent in its reviews, but recently we’ve noticed a tendency to support ’favourites’ like JL and Apple rather than the less expensive shops and brands. The time had come. Since I’ve emailed them I’ve had two pleading emails telling me what I’m missing and inviting me to rethink. Both of them fell on deaf ears.

Drove over to Glenburn and danced what was probably the worst selection of dances we’ve ever done. Both of us made countless mistakes, even in the sequence dances that we both knew. I think it was something to do with our dancing brains being worn out from the nine hours of gracing the ballroom floor in Perth almost a fortnight ago. I have no other excuse for it. Maybe we do need the weekend off to regroup and forget today’s outing. Or maybe we just need more practise. Either way, today was a “disaaaaster, darling”! But we did have a laugh with David and Carol at the table. Plus we almost, just almost, got a handle on the Cameron Quickstep.

Drove back through the unremitting rain and picked up some ‘bake in the oven’ Katsu Chicken and a bottle of Malbec from M&S to wash away the memory of today. Since we arrived home just after 4pm and the car’s headlights had been on for the journey home, there wasn’t much hope of getting an outside photo. I set up a table-top of my jalapeño plant, looking like a little bonsai tree and left it while we had our dinner.

When I went to take the photo, however, one of my usual settings had disappeared from the menu. I won’t bore you with the details, but the camera was telling me some gobbledegook about movie settings. I’ve only taken one movie with this camera, the A7iii and never touched the settings again. I got so confused by what was going on I just did a ‘factory reset’. Now it works normally again, but it’s going to take me most of tomorrow to get all my dials and buttons reconfigured to the way they were before this thing happened, whatever it was.

Tomorrow we’re booked for lunch with June and Ian and before that the plumber is coming to have a look at the kitchen tap which has been dripping on and off for months.

The rain came back – 15 November 2022

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We had two days of glorious sunshine. It was inevitable the rain would return.

It was a “chucking it down” kind of rain. Straight down, no messing rain that wasn’t going off any time soon. In fact it stayed with us until about 4 o’clock.

Scamp was out for coffee with Annette this morning. I was staying in, not just because it was raining, but also because Mr Bezos was sending me a shiny new SSD, yes, another one. This one will be a swapping drive to allow me to make a running copy of my Big Sur operating system, built using the latest method. It looks and feels faster than the first build I made. Also it was half price as Amazon have now extended Black Friday to November. I’d been sent an email to say that it would be delivered today before 9pm. Not a very exact time slot, but Mr Bezos is a busy man! It arrived just after 6pm.

Left to my own devices, I decided it was time to pick all the remaining chilli peppers and prune the plant back a bit. ‘Experts’ opinions vary on how fierce that prune should be. Some say cut about 25% from the bush. Others say cut it right back to the ground, it will regrow next year. I chose the middle ground and cut off about 50% of the green stuff after I’d removed all the ‘fruit’. I was being careful to work around the nettle that has taken root in the pot. The sting I got from it the last time I was removing chillies took a couple of days to go away. It’s done now and I think it looks a lot healthier after its trim. We’ll wait and see if it needs another chop.

The next thing to do was to phone the plumber to come and fix the kitchen tap. He’s promised to come on Friday morning. We’ll wait and hope that he’ll know how to fix it, or just replace it, whichever is easiest … and cheapest!

Lunch today was soup. It’s a long lasting soup that one, and there’s even a splash or two left for tomorrow. With that done I took a walk over to the butcher’s in Condorrat in the rain and on the way back got today’s PoD. It probably looks faked, but the only fakery in it is the removal of a couple of street lights that were spoiling the view. That misty spray from the cars on the motorway and the colour are just as it came out of the camera. It’s the low sun pushing its way through the clouds that colours the spray to the sepia hue. That’s why they call it the hour just before sunset, ‘The Golden Hour’.

I got another couple of photos in St Mo’s, because the clouds lifted, the rain stopped and the sun shone for about half an hour before it dipped back into the clouds again.

We heard from Neil that his check-up today went well with nothing untoward to report. Photo looks good Neil. They haven’t spoiled your good looks with the ’Nose Job!’ 😉. Nurse Hazy must be working hard.

Tomorrow looks like the best day of the week, but we’ll be staying at home waiting for Scamp’s new dance trainers. Hope they come before 9pm!

A calmer day – 2 November 2022

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Thank goodness for that.

A day that stared with a message just after 9am telling me to phone the doctors’ surgery. I had an appointment with the phlebotomist who wanted my blood. I guessed that appointment was going to be cancelled, but when I phoned the surgery I was told that they thought they’d have to cancel the appointment because of lack of staff, but now staff had been found and the appointment would go ahead. An hour later I got a phone call from the surgery to say that although they had initially thought they’d need to cancel my appointment, now it would go ahead. A pause, then she said “Oh, did I speak to you earlier?” When I said “Yes”, she apologised and told me the place was just in chaos today, but to come at the arranged time. Good to know that it was someone else’s turn to have ‘One of those days!’

It was a damp start to the day. Drizzle that gradually turned into proper rain. When I was leaving the surgery after my blood donation, it was torrential and it stayed at that level for a good couple of hours. I went to Tesco to get some messages. Lunch for me was a Ginster’s Cornish pasty while Scamp had requested a Macaroni Pie. The pasty was lovely, but the pie was a decided let-down. It wasn’t a patch on the Greggs style pie she was expecting. Bummer.

It took until about 3pm for the rain clouds to move on and for light to break through the gloom. I didn’t wait for an invitation, but got my boots on and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Hoping that patch of blue above my head would widen and that’s what happened, for once. PoD was a picture looking up a path on my way to St Mo’s. That torrential rain in the morning and most of the afternoon had produced a mini ‘river’ where yesterday there had been a path through the trees. I’m always taken by the random paths water makes through the leaves. I took three images and focus stacked them to get the full depth of field this picture deserved. In St Mo’s I found a wee Christmas Tree, a fir of some kind less than 2m high, growing in the wilderness behind the main path. It had a wee ‘Toorie’, a Tassel sitting on top. It also looked a bit like a thistle. Loved those blue needles. I took its picture.

Today’s dinner was yesterday’s chilli, reheated and with the three ingredients I’d forgotten to add yesterday which added that chilli taste. Cumin, Oregano and Basil were the missing ingredients. The chilli itself had thickened up nicely since yesterday and it tasted much better today.

I’m hoping to get a chance to photograph Cambusnethan Priory tomorrow with Alex. According to the weather fairies the day looks reasonable.

A wild morning – 26 October 2022

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A wild morning and a computing afternoon with a walk in the late afternoon.

Heavy rain in the morning, but by the time Scamp was driving to meet her sister, the worst of the rain had passed and the sun was beginning to shine on the hills. Scamp had put some towels in the washing machine and once they had run their cycle I was in two minds whether to hang them up on the whirly to dry in the breeze. I finally decided to just do it because although the clouds were still massing, the breaks were getting bigger.

I planted a pot of basil after the washing had been hung out. It cost virtually nothing, just a couple of quid for a packet of seeds. There is always some compost in the greenhouse, enough to plant the seeds in and lots of plastic pots. The seeds should germinate in about a week’s time and once they have their second set of leaves they can be divided up into individual pots. They seem to like to live on the window sills of the bedrooms. Not too warm, but plenty of light. Let’s hope they grow well.

<Technospeak>
With that done, I started to carve up the SSD that holds the new operating system for the iMac. I’d initially set up the SSD almost a year ago, before I knew what the APFS was all about and it ended up a confused mixture of partition and APFS filing systems. To get it cleaned out I had to be careful and take one piece out at a time and in the correct order, or I risked screwing the whole 1TB drive. Long story short, after about two hours I had the ‘easy’ stuff done. The next chunk of data was about 250GB in size and I was copying it off to an old spinning disk (scathing called “Spinning Rust by the SSD fanboys). The copy would take about an hour according to the info box. That left time for lunch with Scamp who had just arrived home.
</Technospeak>

After a plate of Scamp’s Just Soup I put a pair of boots on and went out for a walk around St Mo’s for the first time in about a week. Deep in the woods I found some delicate looking fungi growing out of a fallen tree branch. They made PoD. I’d made some changes to the colour balance in the A7 last night, but clean forgot to leave myself a note as to what I’d done. Whatever it was it seemed to have cleared away a green cast that had appeared on everything yesterday. Easily changed in post-processing, but better if it’s done in the camera instead.

Back home the backup was complete and I could continue with the last part of the clean up. I wasn’t entirely sure if the next bit would work, but was pretty sure the Mac would tell me if danger threatened. It went very smoothly in the end. I shut the machine down, then powered it up again and the operating system operated and it now had twice as much space as it had last night. Phew!

Dinner was Carrot & Lentil Curry and Scamp was chef. It was very good, but I just know it will be even better tomorrow. Curries are like that.

Prompt for today was another vague “Ego”. Now, in Latin, Ego means “I” or “Me”. That gave me the germ of an idea. After I looked through Google Images the germ became a reality, this is my interpretation of “Ego”.

No plans for tomorrow, but it looks wet … again.

Making the most of the morning – 23 October 2022

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This morning there was light cloud, but the weather report looked gloomy.

We decided that it would be best to go for a walk in the morning while it was still dry, if not bright. Boots on for both of us, because it was going to be wet underfoot, wherever we went.

It wasn’t a long walk. Just down to Broadwood Loch, over the dam past the exercise machines and back past the shops. Around 6000 steps all told. We didn’t hang around much and I only took two photos, that’s how dull it was. We did stop at the shops to get some veg for dinner and a very nice piece of rump steak for my dinner. Scamp was having salmon instead of meat. By the time we reached home it felt like there was rain in the wind and just after lunch it was definitely raining. I’m glad we decided to go out while it was still dry.

Just before it got too heavy I went out and took a few shots of the fuchsia plants that hang in a basket on the fence. There was just enough sunlight to pick out the raindrops on the flowers. That became PoD.

I spent a while fiddling with the settings on the SSD that was now taking the place of the internal hard disk drive of the iMac. I did one upgrade that brought the version number up from 11.68 to 11.7. That seemed to make a big difference to the stability of the drive. The speed difference from using the hard drive is immense. Lightroom takes between 3 and 4 minutes to boot from the hard drive. Today it took 14 seconds. That’s over a ten fold speed increase. There are lots of other areas where things are working a lot smoother too. Still not totally settled on the new technology, but it’s working well for now.

Today’s prompt was ‘Boogers’.
As another sketcher with the nickname “Mydoghasnno.se” says, different places have different words for the mucus that must be removed from our nostrils. In the US they may be Boogers, but in Scotland they are Bogles and the more liquid varieties are Snotters. The bloke I drew is obviously an expert Bogle hunter.

Spoke to Jamie and heard about the cost of repairing a roof in a listed building. It’s a lot more than I’d have thought, but Jamie seemed to accept it as a reasonable price and with winter coming, it has to be done. Glad to hear they are getting some much needed rain.

I’ve never been much of a political animal, but the events of last week with Liz Truss resigning after 45 days as PM and Boris attempting a comeback are the stuff of pantomime. Unfortunately, it’s real.

Tomorrow we may go and visit Margie … in hospital.