Spring at Last?

Three weeks with no post to the blog. Tsk, tsk. By way of excuse I have been busy though. I've been remodeling, tearing out walls, building new ones and wiring. Wiring is tedious work, figuring out what outlets/switches/etc. you want where and the path the wire needs to take in order to do it.

Friday I was hanging sheetrock. Why do they call it "hanging" sheetrock? It doesn't hang. It's nailed in place. Clothes hang on a line, pictures hang on a wall, both can move. Wallboard can't go anywhere. It is part of the wall. Anyway, I came to an inside corner that needed only 9" to complete that wall and I thought to myself 'If I measure very carefully, I wonder if I could score the sheet from the backside fold it forward and just have it go around the corner with the front paper still in place so I wouldn't have to tape the corner?' I allowed for the thickness of the wallboard plus a 16th of an inch for safety and voila', it worked! I have a perfect corner without taping. Too bad I can't do that with all the corners.

The weather is finally showing signs of breaking here. We had 2 days in the mid-40s this week and there are more coming up next week. The sap is running and the maple syrup producers are all boiling away. I thought this evening that I would see how much snow we had left and I took my aluminum yardstick out to check an average spot in the yard. Unfortunately the snow is like rock (temperatures in the 20s today). It not only holds me up anywhere I walk, the aluminum stick couldn't break through it. I bent it trying. After checking along where I had shoveled I'm guessing about a foot is left. I had thought it was less but now I think a foot is probably about right. There is a pile across the road where it was plowed up from in front of the church that is still about 8' tall.

Is Jack Frost's Wife a Fat Lady?

If so she hasn't sung yet and winter isn't over here. After a relatively mild day yesterday (45ºF) we got 3 or more inches of wet heavy snow last night which I spent about 90 minutes snowblowing/shoveling this morning. It has continued to snow off and on today. It is snowing again as I type and the forecast for tonight is more snow than we got last night. It is projected to end tomorrow morning but snow is forecast for Tuesday & Wednesday of next week as well as Friday & Saturday.

Last night's snow stuck to the trees so that was a good opportunity for snow photos and I took a drive this morning after cleaning up the driveway and walk. The photo at the right is the best of this morning's shoot. I have modified it in Photoshop using various filters.

Addendum at 6:30PM.
We are now having thunder and lightning with our snow and sleet. March is such a lovely month.

Catching Up...

It has been a whole month since I last posted. I've been tearing out the walls of the middle bedroom and am now in the construction phase of turning that floor space into 2 walk-in closets and more floor space for the remaining bedrooms. The 3 bedroom arrangement I had built 30 years ago was functional for us at the time but we'd like to sell the place in the next few years and it was a little too funky for the average home buyer. This change will fit our current needs better and be more sale able down the road.

I began a new blog dedicated to photography where I will post photo tips, reviews of software/books and the like. I'll still post photos with reports of my wanderings here. The other site is more an instructional site for those interested in learning new photography skills.

March 3rd edit: I forgot to give the URL for the new blog. It is http://jimbullardsphotoblog.blogspot.com/