Nature, beer, the coming holidays, or whatever.

[ThatOwlWoman]

It is, until you have to drive in it. Tuesday and Wednesday night took me 2 1/2 hours to drive home from work. Should've been about an hour and fifteen minutes. :/
But it is beautiful if you don't have anywhere to go.
On a bright note, the older four wheeler I bought this summer plows snow like a champ.

Ugh, that's a long commute. Sometimes it isn't the road conditions as much as it is the other drivers, eh?

How much do you guys have on the ground now?

[countryboy]

Up in Michigan they have some seriously dedicated road crew for winter. Most my family lives around Dayton, OH. They never come up this way for winter, until they had to. They were actually amazed by how clear everything was, despite having a Blizzard a few days earlier. On the other hand, back in 2000, we were down in Ohio, and they got a decent amount of snow. It was nuts. People sliding around, crawling along. No one was prepared.

I don't know what the deal is. We'll have road crews out putting brine down when there's no snow, then it's like they go into hiding when the storm hits. And people here act like they have never driven in the snow. You have people doing 15 with their flashers on, and others trying to drive 50. I finally got off the freeway Wed night after a little car spun out right in front of me. Side roads were faster, lol.

[countryboy]

Ugh, that's a long commute. Sometimes it isn't the road conditions as much as it is the other drivers, eh?

How much do you guys have on the ground now?

Up North where I'm working, maybe 8 inches, down home about 4. Figures I have a job far away when winter finally hits, lol.

[ThatOwlWoman]

Up North where I'm working, maybe 8 inches, down home about 4. Figures I have a job far away when winter finally hits, lol.

That's just not right!

On the local weather tonight they said the official total so far is 46.5 inches. We're not sure where they're measuring that though... we've had about 13 inches so far here, but half of that was in early Nov. and melted since then. We've got 6-7" now, more coming this weekend.

[ThatOwlWoman]

Lake effect snow is a new and different thing for us lower Midwesterners. We have a 145 degree view of Lake Superior in the winter. So strange to have a partly cloudy day, the sun is out, and you watch a band of snow march across the Lake towards you. The snow comes in, there's a white-out lasting from 10 minutes to as long as an hour, then it marches off and the Lake reappears, often along with the sun. This morning was interesting.... the band came from the SE rather than the NW. I like the way the light looks in this photo, as the sun begins to emerge even while the snow blows by.

[Cypress]

This is a discussion started by a former Amazon poster, but is for all that can behave. If your name is banned it's because you rarely behave. Talk about anything pleasant

Just wrapped up this Great Courses video lecture series on the Vikings. It is really quite unbelievable the skill these people had in warfare, ship building, seamanship, navigation, exploration, trade, and even an impressive literary tradition. Their reach extended from central Asia, to Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, to Western Europe, to Iceland, to Greenland, and even eastern North America. Their influence on the arc of western history is no less astonishing. I was most keenly interested in learning about my Viking kin, aka the Rus, but the Viking Age in totality is just bloody compelling and riveting, for anyone one with even a rudimentary interest in history, enlightenment, and knowledge (which sadly obviously rules out most rightwingers and Trump-ettes)

As explorers and traders, the Vikings played a decisive role in the formation of Latin Christendom, and particularly of Western Europe. In this course, you will study the Vikings not only as warriors, but also in other roles for which they were equally extraordinary: merchants, artists, kings, raiders, seafarers, shipbuilders, and creators of a remarkable literature of myths and sagas.

Professor Kenneth Harl synthesizes insights from an astonishing array of sources: The Russian Primary Chronicle (a Slavic text from medieval Kiev), 13th-century Icelandic poems and sagas, Byzantine accounts, Arab geographies, annals of Irish monks who faced Viking raids, Roman reports, and scores of other firsthand contemporary documents.

Among the topics you will explore in depth are the profound influence of the Norse gods and heroes on Viking culture, and the Vikings' extraordinary accomplishments as explorers and settlers in Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. With the help of archeological findings, you will learn to analyze Viking ship burials, runestones and runic inscriptions, Viking wood carving, jewelry, sculpture, and metalwork.

From 790–1066, virtually invincible Viking fleets fanned out across Europe, raiding, plundering, and overwhelming every army that opposed them.

By 1100, however, the Vikings had disappeared, having willingly shed their identity and dissolved into the mists of myth and legend. How did this happen, and how should we remember this formidable civilization that, for being so formative, proved so transient?

https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/vikings.html

[Jade Dragon]

I just have to share this, because of my love of Japanese things. It's a metal cover version of a Japanese video game song. The lyrics are in English, and the song speaks a lot to me. It fits under so many likes. too bad as usual with youtube videos, it's lost a little sound quality.

[ThatOwlWoman]

I just have to share this, because of my love of Japanese things. It's a metal cover version of a Japanese video game song. The lyrics are in English, and the song speaks a lot to me. It fits under so many likes. too bad as usual with youtube videos, it's lost a little sound quality.

I'll have to share this with my 19-yo g-daughter. She loves anime, as well as Japanese culture and language. She's been teaching herself Japanese, or at least she was.

[Jade Dragon]

Cheat day today, with little donuts.

[Althea]

Cheat day today, with little donuts.

Whoa

[Cypress]

This is a discussion started by a former Amazon poster, but is for all that can behave. If your name is banned it's because you rarely behave. Talk about anything pleasant

Some of my Russian Easter eggs.
While associated with Easter ritual and Christian religious symbolism, I have read that the practice painting eggs with ornate designs purportedly goes back to pre-Christian pagan times in eastern Europe.

[countryboy]

Been working on some mosaics for my wife's shower. These are leaves we scavenged from our own property, and traced onto different colors of porcelain tile. I then cut them out with a wet-saw by whittling away carefully at them. These first few pics are of the rough cut leaves before removing the permanent marker tracings, or smoothing the edges.

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[ThatOwlWoman]

Been working on some mosaics for my wife's shower. These are leaves we scavenged from our own property, and traced onto different colors of porcelain tile. I then cut them out with a wet-saw by whittling away carefully at them. These first few pics are of the rough cut leaves before removing the permanent marker tracings, or smoothing the edges.

How beautiful! That looks very tedious and difficult.

[countryboy]

How beautiful! That looks very tedious and difficult.

Thanks! It's definitely tedious. For me the skill comes naturally, of course I have a lot of practice with tile work since that's what I do for a living. But I rarely get to work on something so detailed, it would cost a fortune. These few leaves represent hours and hours of work. But I enjoy the work.

We were playing around with the layout tonight. We're going to fill in the blank spaces with manufactured flat river stones and pea gravel.

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[ThatOwlWoman]

Thanks! It's definitely tedious. For me the skill comes naturally, of course I have a lot of practice with tile work since that's what I do for a living. But I rarely get to work on something so detailed, it would cost a fortune. These few leaves represent hours and hours of work. But I enjoy the work.

We were playing around with the layout tonight. We're going to fill in the blank spaces with manufactured flat river stones and pea gravel.

Those are works of art... you've brought Nature indoors and made your home part of it. Lucky wife. :~)