Deep Thoughts… Or Something

Posted on by Jordan

Over the weekend, Heather and I drove out to western Nebraska for a wedding.

But before that, let me setup my frame of mind…

First I saw this video:

And then, the Internet being what it is, the remix video:

So, back to my drive out west. The song was kind of stuck in my head, and at the same time I was driving into an awe inspiring lightning show. I mean a really incredible storm! Clearly I all to easily forget how intense a storm can be.  I was really enjoying the lightning show, and started thinking about the guy in the video.

Now, I am afraid he may have been under the effects of some mind-altering chemicals at the time of that filming, but I don’t think that means he was wrong really. Rainbows, storms, all the other things you see outside… they are so amazing and I kind of take them for granted too often.

I actually have started investigating some ways to force myself to get outside, and outside of city limits, but I won’t post any details until I actually get something going. For now lets just leave it at enjoying the amazing show weather patterns in the Midwest can produce, and in awe of the splendor God has built around us.

-Jordan

Merry Christmas!

Posted on by Jordan

HerbieTree

Heather and I have a (short) tradition of getting a new ornament every year. Herbie got the honors this year… Heather sometimes talks like I am the only one who feels weird about being in Iowa, but I think we both have strong allegiances there. We have the same little tree from last year, it works really well in our space-limited apartment. We still don’t have many Christmas decorations, but the tree does a lot to make the apartment feel the holiday spirit.

Speaking of the holiday spirit, Heather and I have discovered that we listened to different Christmas music while doing traditional things like decorating the tree…. and I find that I don’t feel as into it without that. Heather’s tradition is to watch “White Christmas” during/after the tree decorating. I know my family always listened to the same albums of Christmas music… I just don’t know what those albums were called. Heather has actually accused me of being “a scrooge” but I just don’t care for some of the more…. artistic interpretations of traditional Christmas songs.

Along with tree decorating, Heather spearheaded baking some Christmas treats. More than spearheaded, I didn’t even help. Not to say I wasn’t willing, but we have found that only one person should work in our galley kitchen at a time. It only takes a few times bumping into the other person when you are trying to quick get something done to think it isn’t fun anymore. After making some amazing cookies, Heather broke them up into a bunch of gift plates:

HeatherCookies

We then worked our way around the building giving them away to any of our neighbors who happened to be home. It was a fun thing to do, and I am really glad she took the initiative to do it. I think about half our neighbors weren’t sure what to think, but it’s hard to complain about a plate of cookies!

I know this is a few days early, but we are looking to slip out of Des Moines before another wave of ice and snow shuts the city down, so I probably won’t get the chance to post closer to the actual day…. Merry Christmas!!!

-Jordan

p.s. I don’t think I ever mentioned before, the ornament from last year was a sand timer… we only had a month until the wedding at Christmas 🙂

Didn’t Make It to Oz Last Night

Posted on by Jordan

The weather forecast was pretty dire yesterday afternoon. As the evening progressed, the sky to the west started to look rather dire too. Heather and I were setting on our bed, looking out the window while keeping one eye on the weather maps via. the laptop. We have a rather good view looking west, there is basically nothing blocking our line of sight for miles.

At some point during the more exciting part of the storm, I started pondering the fact that our apartment was rather exposed. The complex is named “Whispering Hills” I started thinking of new, more accurate names:

  • Wind-Raked Hills
  • Wind Buffeted Hills
  • Roaring Hills

I am sure there are more, but I can’t seem to think of them right now. In the end, the storm didn’t amount to much more than some wind and rain. I was thinking the entire time that I should take pictures, but the lighting wouldn’t have been great, and wind is remarkably hard to photograph. It would have been ideal to have some sort of web-cam rig doing a picture every five seconds, then I could have stitched together a video showing how quickly it got dark, then light again once things blew over.

-Jordan

Ice Storm!

Posted on by Jordan

Omaha, got hit with an ice storm that slowly turned to snow last night.

By the time I got home from work, everything had a thin layer of ice on it, and the storm wasn’t showing any signs of letting up. It was really the kind of weather you stay at home and drink hot chocolate in. I didn’t have any hot chocolate though, so I went to the gym. Heather apparently also lacked hot beverages, and went to the gym in Blair. Getting home from the gym was a little exciting, but the advantage to driving when you shouldn’t is that there aren’t too many other cars on the road.

This morning, it only took roughly 25 minutes  to get enough ice off my Escape to consider it drivable. I think it would have been a lot longer, but when the engine runs that long it gets warm and makes a big difference in how hard it is to get the ice chipped off the windshield. I don’t know how my car was in the perfect place to get this effect, but the caked icy snow stuff was over two inches thick over my windshield and hood. I have never seen anything like it. Luckily it was really brittle, so it broke up fairly quickly, but I was still left with a conventional layer of ice covering the entire vehicle after that.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch… or I mean… In Blair, Heather was discovering her car wouldn’t traverse the farm roads at all. Local family members helped get her to work, but not until much later in the morning.

Hopefully we are getting all the nasty travel ending weather out of the way now… you only get one bad ice storm per winter right!? I can’t imagine another one come January, especially late January. 🙂

-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:

img_0142

(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

Snow!

Posted on by Jordan

(If you really wanted to nit pic we had some dustings before, but they don’t count)

Today was the first snow of the year! I can’t say that I am really that excited about it, but its still kind of fun to see. It made the drive to work rather long and slow, but my fellow drivers were being cautious, and I won’t complain about that. It’s much preferable to the other alternative.

Also, it is still brutally cold, not quite the -4 we had yesterday, but today still saw negative temperatures. The thermostat in the apartment still says the temp is the same, but it feels colder. I think maybe there is just a bubble of warm air around the thermostat. On a recent trip to Blair I helped Heather figure out how to hook up the electric blanket her bed was equipped with. Right now I have to say I am somewhat jealous of her blanket, although I would settle for Heather staying with me in Omaha.

I guess it is kind of nice to have Heather in Blair on days like today, when driving conditions are questionable. She only has a few miles to get to work instead of 30ish. Sadly I can’t really think of anything else good about having her MILES away, but maybe the cold is inhibiting my creativity.

-Jordan

And It Just Gets Worse

Posted on by Jordan

I suppose I should take the hint and stop complaining about weather on the blog. I said it was cold yesterday, and now today is not only colder, but driving to work required scraping my windows!

Scraping ice isn’t a chore I really mind that much, but doing it today was depressing. Its not even November yet, I didn’t want to start doing this every day quite yet. Then again, Saturday was nice enough I didn’t even need a coat, so I shouldn’t act like its going to be bitterly cold until March. The weather will swing the other way a few times I am sure.

I might have my projector sold, but it will be a few days until I know for sure. Selling off a few things I own, and cutting ourselves down to just one round of rent and utilities for the remaining time until the wedding is going to do wonders for our goal of paying off all our debt ASAP. Dave Ramsey would be proud I am sure 🙂

Only three more days until I move, and I am maybe 15% packed… you would think I could have used some of that time last week when Heather was gone to get that take care of, but I really didn’t accomplish much on that front. Moving is more fun if you wait till the last minute anyway, right?

-Jordan

(Doing these rambling multi-topic posts is messing up my nice clean plan for categories and tags, you would think the editor would crack down on that)

Fog!

Posted on by Jordan

Maybe this seems mundane, but personally I have found it to be really really cool this morning.

The fog was unbelievably thick on the way to the gym around 5:30 today ( we started a little later because our schedule was a little more flexible today). Easily the thickest fog I have ever driven in, I honestly thought the streetlights were out on the next block almost the entire way there. Visibility was maybe 40-50 feet and then just black.

I probably wouldn’t have posted anything about that here, but the fog was just as thick almost 3 hours later when I was driving to work! Sometimes visibility dropped down below 50 feet, it was honestly a little scary considering how heavy traffic was… you really couldn’t see much.

-Jordan