Still Winter

Posted on by Jordan

It’s amazing how hard this time of year seems to hit… every year. There isn’t much to look forward to in the days after Christmas and winter has only begun to bare its icy fangs.

So, twice in the past seven days we have gotten a flash snow storm bad enough to choke traffic going to work in the morning. Both times I managed to see an accident on my ONE MILE drive to work. Also, it was several degrees below zero on the way to work… again.

Sorry, I don’t mean to complain, I mean everybody knows it’s going to be cold in the winter. and this isn’t the first nasty winter we have seen in Iowa. That being said, it still surprises me how quickly it gets us down.

Driving home today, I did see one approach to dealing with winter:

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Mind you it was a balmy 5 degrees out by this time. I don’t know if this was an attempt to feel warm by dressing for summer or what.

-Jordan

Two Years

Posted on by Jordan

January 24th marked the end of our second year of marriage.

I just dug around the blog, and found that I never actually put up a post detailing the first year’s activities.

So, on year zero (the honeymoon) we were in Colorado skiing.

Year one, we went to a local “paint your own pottery” place. That wasn’t terrible, but the end results of Heather’s work: cute, my work: sad. I guess they will both last forever, and that’s something. The only downside is, someday our children will ask why we have a plate dad made in preschool arts-and-crafts.

Now that your up to speed, this year we did something outdoors again!

Oh wait, another tangent! When we set our wedding date in January, people often said things like “well at least you can go someplace warm on your honeymoon” or “yeah, but you can go on trips to the beach for your anniversary.”  I have to admit that I did little to kill off those ideas, because saying “Bah, you just need a better coat and to move around a little” isn’t really what they wanted to hear.

Right, so back to this year: Heather found out that the local parks department was hosting an outdoor winter activities workshop this past weekend. We thought it would be a fun alternative to dinner and a movie, so we headed up after church.

They had a really neat program going, and plenty of participants! The first station we encountered was snowshoeing, but they had every single pair of shoes already out, so we trudged on down the trail. Up next was ice fishing.

It didn’t take long to determine that ice fishing wasn’t going to be our thing. I should mention, as you can kind of see from the picture, we had a beautiful sunny day. It was still quite cold, but being outside in the sunlight was a wonderfully refreshing change from our normal lifestyle.

After checking our pole back in with the ranger, we headed over to the cross country ski station. As with the snowshoe station, they had every single item already out in the snow. We were able to put our names and shoe sizes on the board for later that day, letting us wander back over to the snow shoe station.

On the way we found the dog sled team, resting after their exhibition.

The snowshoe station had just a few shoes, but a few is enough for the two of us! Granted, the snow wasn’t anywhere deep enough to really need snow shoes, but we still gave them a try. 🙂

After a loop around the meadow behind the lodge, we headed back over to the cross country ski station. Even having our names on the list didn’t mean it was a painless process, but eventually we had two pair of boots, poles, and skis. We headed down the trail, having no idea what we were doing.

I guess we were just naturals though, because we moved on down the trail without much trouble 🙂 I may have fallen a few times, but that is the price you pay for finding out how fast you can go. Heather stayed on her feet the entire time, although I am sure she doesn’t know how fast she can go yet. We learned that the DNR rents out the skis any day they aren’t offering a free workshop like we were participating in, so maybe Heather can figure that out another day. 😉

-Jordan

Winter Camping

Posted on by Jordan

The past weekend saw Heather and I apart for a large amount of the time.

I went camping with the Boy Scouts, and Heather had a movie night with some girls from church.

In the days leading up to the weekend, Heather was making phone calls and sending e-mails to entice people to come over. I meanwhile, was rapidly eating through my Christmas gift money buying cold weather camping gear. The premiere purchase:

A sleeping bag rated down to ZERO degrees! The picture isn’t from the camping trip, but Heather thought she should record my testing the bag for proper fit.

By all accounts, Heather’s movie night went really well… and the camping was kind of cold 🙂

Actually, it wasn’t so bad. We had access to cabins, so weren’t out in the cold the entire time, nor did I really need the ultra cold weather bag when we were sleeping inside. I am prepared now though!

It was my first trip camping with the troop as an adult leader. The trip back in November was a training event and I didn’t camp with the troop.  I had fun, but it was challenging to know exactly how much guidance I should be giving.  Doubly hard when many of my meals were being cooked by 14 year-old boys. In the end though, I think the boys had fun, and hopefully learned a few things.

I had fun, and learned a lot, even if the boys didn’t! I don’t know if I can quantify it as easily as saying “I learned square-lashing” but I am sure I will be better at working with the troop next time we go out.

-Jordan

A Few Numbers

Posted on by Jordan

Today is December 16th. The current outside temperature is 19 degrees F. I say that because we turned our heat on yesterday!

To be fair, we often ran the fireplace for a few more hours while we were hanging out in the living room in the evenings, but still… This little apartment has amazing insulation we have discovered!

The other significant number is kind of sad… but well I will post it anyway. The new expansion to World of Warcraft came out a few weeks ago. It sold 3 million copies on the first day, and has approximately 12 million players worldwide. That isn’t the sad part though, I also bought the game. Not on day one, but I bought it. One of the many features the game provides is a report of how long you have spent playing. Not calendar days your account has been active, but actual time you have been playing. I am just over 100 days played! It’s kind of a horrifying number. I try to justify it with the fact that I basically quit watching TV about 4 years ago. I don’t know if that quite covers it though.

and…. I really thought I had a 3rd item to talk about here, but somehow it has slipped my mind. I guess that will be another post for another time… when it comes to me!

-Jordan

Workout

Posted on by Jordan

Heather and I have started another workout challenge! As some of you may remember, we did one of these back last spring. I can’t remember exactly when we started it, but I know it was really cold then too.

Two days in, and I think that having both of us in the same bed isn’t going to sabotage getting up early. I was afraid that would make it far too easy for us to talk each other out of going to the gym. I suppose I shouldn’t say too much a few weeks of this and we may feel differently 🙂

It is really sad how quickly I seem to lose my edge with weight lifting and cardio workouts. I am basically starting back at zero for endurance and lifting strength. Time will tell how quickly Heather and I can bounce back up to the level we were at when we ended the first challenge.

There are starting pictures, but I can safely say those will not *ever* be featured here… Unless perhaps Heather and I have dramatic results, and even then… don’t hold your breath.

Ignoring the lack of sleep, it has been nice to get out and doing something… I feel like cabin fever is starting to set in. We had a wonderful few days of nice weather, and now its too cold to do anything outside again. I guess “getting out is kind of a misnomer, but going to the gym is at least out of the house.

-Jordan

The Honeymoon Day Two (Counting Backwards)

Posted on by Jordan

The second to last day we were in Colorado, was our most ambitious day. We planned to ski and go on a sleigh ride.

Our gracious hosts at the bed and breakfast had recommended we try a nearby mountain that was considerably smaller than Winter Park. That sounded like excellent advice, given Heather only had one other trip under her belt and I was planning on trying skis instead of a snowboard.

Let me just say that was some great advice! The ski area “Solvista” only had 3 lifts, small to say the least! It was perfect for our needs though. We got equipment and lift tickets, and headed out to conquer the mountain. The thing I hate about skiing, is that one of the hardest elements happens at the start: getting off the lift. I managed to wobble my way away from the dismount point, and Heather almost pulled it off too.

Neither Heather nor I were feeling too confident for the first run down, so we took our time. I was very glad to have taken skis as they are just so much more maneuverable at low speeds. After two trips down the mountain, we were ready for a break, and it was lunch time. I should again mention how awesome the smaller ski area on a week day was. Our car was parked less than 100 feet from the front door of the main lodge.

After lunch we made one more trip down together, stopping to document our “who can look like the biggest dork” contest:

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Heather thought she had a solid lead, but ultimately couldn’t compete with:

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We had a lot of fun skiing together, but by this time Heather was ready to call it a day. I took a few more quick trips down the mountain, just to see how well I could really do on skis. I still prefer a snow-board, but I found I was comfortable on about the same blue runs in skis as I would have been on a board.

We had just enough time to make it back to our cabin, clean up, and head back out to where the sleigh ride started. The sun had just set when we left the cabin, and it was fully dark by the time we made it to the ranch. The temp readout in our car said -6f. Every other night we were in Colorado the temperature was in the high teens when we went out at night. Suffice to say, the hour-long sleigh ride was perhaps the coldest experience of our lives.

It was also amazing! The sleigh was fully loaded with twelve people, everyone wrapped up with lap blankets, and move slowly through the forest near the ranch. The trees had a perfect coating of snow and, the stars and the moon were beautifully clear through the openings in the trees.

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(note the frozen faces in that picture… we were so cold)

After the sleigh ride, there was a dinner in the somewhat rustic mess-hall. It probably would have been really nice, if the temperature were 20 degrees warmer. The room simply did not have sufficient heaters for the cold conditions. Dinner isn’t quite as relaxing when you eat it while wearing your winter coat and hat. It may not have been a romantic candle lit dinner, but I think it may have created more memories for us to look back on later 🙂

-Jordan

Speaking of Winter

Posted on by Jordan

I mentioned the apartment being cold yesterday. It still is by the way, but what I wanted to post on today was the window situation.

back at the end of June, there was a major wind storm that knocked out power for most of Omaha for a few days. Some parts of town were without power for over a week. Lucky for Heather and I, she never lost power, and I only lost power for about a day. Heather’s apartment (now ‘our’) was however rather exposed to the wind. The storm did some impressive things to the building, such as tearing off siding and breaking two windows in the bedroom. They were double pane glass, so nothing to into the apartment, and functionally they were still windows. I took a picture of them the day after the storm:

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(well one of the windows anyway, you get the idea) As you can see from the picture, The window is very visibly broken. So visible we could see the broken window from almost a block away when we went out to look things over the next day after the storm.

Fast forward to November, and I move into the apartment. My first night sleeping there I could here a strange rattling sound coming from the windows. The next morning I peek behind the blinds, and there is still a pile of broken glass where the second pane should be! I have no idea how the repair team missed something so glaringly obvious, but nobody realized there was a broken window or two on the building after 4 months. I talked to the office later that week, and they didn’t doubt for a second how the window had been broken, or that it was broken. It took them over a week to actually get it fixed, but at least its fixed now!

The point of all this is just to say that I am happy the window is fixed now! I don’t know how much insulation value the double pane windows selected by the apartment actually provide, but it has to be better than the pile-o-broken-glass we had before.

-Jordan

YAY For Hats

Posted on by Jordan

Its December and I finally replaced the stocking hat I lost moving over to the new apartment a few days back.

this may sound dumb, but I have been amazed how much warmer I am with it. I think I wore a stocking hat last year when it got cold because it seemed like a good idea, and maybe even because my ears got cold. Those were the reasons I replaced my hat, but I also discovered that the 10 degree days we have been having don’t feel nearly as cold when I am wearing a hat.

your thinking “why is this worth sharing?” and really I have no answer to that. However the cold was killing me, I kept thinking this winter was going to be the end of me. It just felt like I couldn’t hold up to the weather as well as I expected to be able to. I thought maybe loosing 60+ pounds could have been part of it. Somehow being in better shape seemed like with better circulation and whatnot I should hold up better to the cold, even without the extra mass to dampen the cold.

As it turns out, a good hat is all it took. At some point I will break down and wear insulated gloves too, but not until the temperatures is at least single digits… Hopefully I can hold out for the negatives before resorting to that. You have to save some way of counter-escalating things 🙂

-Jordan