![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Home again, home again, jiggity-jig!
Mar. 15th, 2019 01:54 pmSorry for the slow update, we didn't get to bed until 5am this morning.
Thursday afternoon I did laundry at the observatory, I'd brought a hamper of dirty clothes that I had planned on doing at home on Wednesday but obviously couldn't do. Rather than Russet giving the dogs a run at the observatory, we decided to go to the house and check things out, then down to Alamo for dinner, and give the dogs a run at the movie theater.
Then something happened... [CUE DRAMATIC CHORD]
I checked the weather app that I use, Waetherbug, and it showed the Cloudcroft school weather station as reporting - they had power back! And they're about 500 yards from our house!
So we go home and it's approaching sunset. There's LOTS of downed trees, but NOT on our house. The house two away from ours - not so lucky. I don't think it was damaged badly, and it's been unoccupied for years, so it was lucky. More on that, and photos, later. We talk to our neighbors, who also have no damage, and they say some power people were around and said we may have power in an hour or so.
In our house, we feed the dogs, let them romp around outside, then head down to Alamo. Do dinner, a little shopping, do the bike ride, come home. AND WE HAVE POWAH!
Lights are on, the heaters kicked in and the temperature had risen from 40 to 45. Turned up all the heaters to max and turned on the oven to warm the house further. The dogs are absolutely ecstatic, Rupert especially: his favorite spot is in front of this flat rectangular space heater that's in front of the TV and it's been running for an hour or so, so he's happy.
But now we have to go back to the observatory! We've got to clean out our room which includes our meds, and retrieve what little food we'd brought and my car. The observatory was shut down as it was still running on the generator and the generator was a good 30+ years old and was a little twitchy, so all the telescopes were parked and everything was in low-power mode, there were only two telescope operators: one was playing video games on the giant TV normally used to monitor weather, the other was surfing the web. That would have been it except for one other Cloudcroft weather refugee family, hopefully they can go home today.
Surprisingly, the dogs had no problem heading back to the observatory. It was instant "YAY! A car trip!" I will never understand dogs. Returning home, though, that was a different story.
Dante ran away.
Russet thought she'd closed the door securely behind her, perhaps the wind blocked it, doesn't matter.
We're very careful trying to not let the dogs run wild around the neighborhood because odds are they will (a) get skunked and/or (b) eat shit, but it happens. I wasn't too concerned about them getting skunked, because with it being about 22 degrees out and with the storm that had come through, I figured skunks were well in hiding. But we have lots of deer and elk wandering about, pooping where ere they please, and more recently wild horses wandering around. I don't know what the fascination is for dogs eating excrement, but they do, and that's all there is to it.
We tried all the standard lures to get him in, all to no avail. The most recent effective lure is for Russet to get on her bike and ride up and down the street we're on, but it was 1am and bloody cold. And the road was icy/slushy. Not gonna happen. We walked around a bit, calling out to him - not too loudly as we didn't want to wake neighbors. Couldn't hear him running about, gave up and went inside to watch some second and third season Pie In The Sky. Excellent BBC detective show starring Peter Griffiths, best known as Harry Potter's foster father. And no murders! We call it Murder He Baked.
We were checking the front door to see if he'd come back and was sitting there, waiting for us to let him in, also to no avail. Or Noah Vale. Finally Russet decided to do some serious tromping about and find the little twerp. And Charlie was eager to accompany, so she hooked him up to a leash, and within 5 minutes Charlie is saying 'There's something interesting over there!'
He found Dante, chased him back to our porch, and scolded him!
Maybe we'll have to use Charlie more in the future if Dante escapes again!
Anyway, with having to unpack some things from suitcases, etc., didn't get to sleep until about 5am. The clothes dryer at the observatory didn't do a very good job, so had to re-run them through our dryer while we were watching TV. The house was up to the high 50s when we went to bed, and we have an electric mattress pad in addition to decent quilts, so the bed was warm enough. Rupert was wrapped up in a blanket, as was Dante, and Charlie joined us on the bed, so we were all fairly warm last night. Today the temperature is a little above freezing, though it's overcast and there's a decent chance of snow Saturday and Monday, though that bomb cyclone is far away and there's no wind alerts.
Thursday afternoon I did laundry at the observatory, I'd brought a hamper of dirty clothes that I had planned on doing at home on Wednesday but obviously couldn't do. Rather than Russet giving the dogs a run at the observatory, we decided to go to the house and check things out, then down to Alamo for dinner, and give the dogs a run at the movie theater.
Then something happened... [CUE DRAMATIC CHORD]
I checked the weather app that I use, Waetherbug, and it showed the Cloudcroft school weather station as reporting - they had power back! And they're about 500 yards from our house!
So we go home and it's approaching sunset. There's LOTS of downed trees, but NOT on our house. The house two away from ours - not so lucky. I don't think it was damaged badly, and it's been unoccupied for years, so it was lucky. More on that, and photos, later. We talk to our neighbors, who also have no damage, and they say some power people were around and said we may have power in an hour or so.
In our house, we feed the dogs, let them romp around outside, then head down to Alamo. Do dinner, a little shopping, do the bike ride, come home. AND WE HAVE POWAH!
Lights are on, the heaters kicked in and the temperature had risen from 40 to 45. Turned up all the heaters to max and turned on the oven to warm the house further. The dogs are absolutely ecstatic, Rupert especially: his favorite spot is in front of this flat rectangular space heater that's in front of the TV and it's been running for an hour or so, so he's happy.
But now we have to go back to the observatory! We've got to clean out our room which includes our meds, and retrieve what little food we'd brought and my car. The observatory was shut down as it was still running on the generator and the generator was a good 30+ years old and was a little twitchy, so all the telescopes were parked and everything was in low-power mode, there were only two telescope operators: one was playing video games on the giant TV normally used to monitor weather, the other was surfing the web. That would have been it except for one other Cloudcroft weather refugee family, hopefully they can go home today.
Surprisingly, the dogs had no problem heading back to the observatory. It was instant "YAY! A car trip!" I will never understand dogs. Returning home, though, that was a different story.
Dante ran away.
Russet thought she'd closed the door securely behind her, perhaps the wind blocked it, doesn't matter.
We're very careful trying to not let the dogs run wild around the neighborhood because odds are they will (a) get skunked and/or (b) eat shit, but it happens. I wasn't too concerned about them getting skunked, because with it being about 22 degrees out and with the storm that had come through, I figured skunks were well in hiding. But we have lots of deer and elk wandering about, pooping where ere they please, and more recently wild horses wandering around. I don't know what the fascination is for dogs eating excrement, but they do, and that's all there is to it.
We tried all the standard lures to get him in, all to no avail. The most recent effective lure is for Russet to get on her bike and ride up and down the street we're on, but it was 1am and bloody cold. And the road was icy/slushy. Not gonna happen. We walked around a bit, calling out to him - not too loudly as we didn't want to wake neighbors. Couldn't hear him running about, gave up and went inside to watch some second and third season Pie In The Sky. Excellent BBC detective show starring Peter Griffiths, best known as Harry Potter's foster father. And no murders! We call it Murder He Baked.
We were checking the front door to see if he'd come back and was sitting there, waiting for us to let him in, also to no avail. Or Noah Vale. Finally Russet decided to do some serious tromping about and find the little twerp. And Charlie was eager to accompany, so she hooked him up to a leash, and within 5 minutes Charlie is saying 'There's something interesting over there!'
He found Dante, chased him back to our porch, and scolded him!
Maybe we'll have to use Charlie more in the future if Dante escapes again!
Anyway, with having to unpack some things from suitcases, etc., didn't get to sleep until about 5am. The clothes dryer at the observatory didn't do a very good job, so had to re-run them through our dryer while we were watching TV. The house was up to the high 50s when we went to bed, and we have an electric mattress pad in addition to decent quilts, so the bed was warm enough. Rupert was wrapped up in a blanket, as was Dante, and Charlie joined us on the bed, so we were all fairly warm last night. Today the temperature is a little above freezing, though it's overcast and there's a decent chance of snow Saturday and Monday, though that bomb cyclone is far away and there's no wind alerts.
