Sunshine

“Sunshine” is not a new word, just a new experience. Yes, we finally had a long weekend of beautiful sun. Now, our challenge is how much of the eight inch ice base on top of our gutters and the first few rows of shingles can we break through without destroying our roof.

I tapped the gutters with a hammer, and it was like banging on concrete with a rubber mallet. There must be ten pounds of ice per foot on our gutters, to say nothing of the weight of eighteen inches of snow on the roof.

As for the downspouts, they are nothing more than a twenty foot ice column that probably won’t thaw until Easter.

How about water backing up under the flashing into the soffits and draining down the inside of the window sashes? Hopefully the 3/8 inch drain holes that we drilled into the soffits will provide an alternative escape route for the water—outside, not inside! It's like ice fishing upside down as the icey water runs down the drill and my arm as soon as I break through. So far, the makeshift drains are working. I just have to remember to poke through ice in the holes each morning and to fill them in before bee season.

Winter really is a lot of work and requires a few common sense preventative measures to make it through, but the beauty of it far outweighs the consequences, so far anyway. I just hope ingenuity prevails over foolishness as we combat the unusually high volume of ice and snow that we are getting this year.

Warning for moms

What thoughts come to your mind when you see, "Not Picked Up?" It is simple, to the point, and clear yet there is something very provoking about it, especially with the added elements of time and days.

If you are a teenager, think how great it would be to just hang it on your door to let mom know it just isn’t ready for inspection yet. If you are a parent of a teenager, perhaps you should have one outside their bedroom as a subtle reminder.

Maybe you need a smaller version for the coffee table in your living room, or on the kitchen counter, or maybe even mounted on the dishwasher or refrigerator for someone else in the family. Have you thought about one for the office, or perhaps your boss’s office?

How about giving the clock a digitized voice to sound like the Garmin lady that keeps saying "recalculating" every time you want to go your own way and not hers? "It is 6:15 and not picked up."

These little signs could just be the next pet rock. How many would you buy, and where would you use them? Think about it.

Thinking of spring

After tunneling through the curbside snow pile to get to our bright yellow mailbox that the town snowplow so skillfully buried, I found a note from the postal service that we had to maintain a thirty foot approach and exit to and from our mailbox, or not get delivery. I'm not sure why a stubby little fifteen foot mail truck needs sixty feet to deliver the mail, but I dutifully blow away what the plow leaves there each day after it passes. While I love winter, I have to admit that there are times when I long for spring.

But, spring isn't exactly around the corner, another Nor'easter is. So, I thought I would bring a hint of warmth into your life as you throw another log on your fire.

Icicles

I think we have one of the largest single home icicle collections in our part of Connecticut. During the day, icicles look menacing, but in the moonlight they take on a whole new appearance, almost a fairy tale likeness.

There are literally hundreds of pounds of ice hanging onto our gutters for dear life. It is a regular phenomenon that takes place every January as the snow begins to melt from the rooftops but has no place to go, so it just hangs out. They are all different shapes, sizes, densities and yes, weight. It's the only collection of anything that I destroy each day hoping to never see it again. But then magically, overnight, they reappear one drop at a time.

Snow decked

We bought an outdoor fireplace for our deck at a tag sale this past summer thinking it would be nice to sit outside on a cool winter evening and make smores. The wood is ready, we have graham crackers and marshmallows, but the Hershey bars are gone. We couldn’t wait any longer.

Snow days

As everyone trooped out to their local supermarket on Tuesday, the day before our big nor'easter snow storm, they all seemed to focus on bread, milk and eggs. No one seems to know why, but those are the shelves that clear out first. Someone mentioned french toast on Facebook this year and I was off like a shot to get my bread, milk, and eggs. Normally, I don't follow the crowd, especially to the supermarket the day before a big storm, but I remembered we have a bottle of New Hampshire maple syrup that Lois's cousin made last year. We call it "Liquid Gold."

Cousin Bob has been boiling sugar in New Hampshire ever since his wife got her C.P.A. and began putting in sixteen hour days during that January-April 15 tax rush. Bob, never one to sit idle, started tapping trees to collect sap and boiling it in a home made, wood fired boiler. All we have to do is save a few Snapple bottles during the year for him to fill with syrup in the spring.

His operation has improved somewhat over the years, but there is no way to rush the flow of sap or speed up the process. During the cold months of winter, people in New Hampshire huddle around their wood stoves and social activities come to a standstill. Once the temperature goes above freezing, sugaring season begins.

The trees are tapped, sap is gathered each morning, and by evening, it's in the boiler beginning the slow process of becoming maple syrup. It's also an opportunity to end that long winter cabin fever and put up a "Boilin' come on in" sign in the snow pile at the end of the driveway. It's the only indication of life in many rural areas, and if you're like Bob, you need someone to talk to just to maintain your sanity.

Now that Bob's wife, Dale, no longer works in tax accounting, we hope that he is still susceptible to cabin fever, even though she is home every evening. Maybe she'll take up reading or knitting during sugaring. I mean, how would we ever get through heavy snow days without Cousin Bob's "Liquid Gold" to pull us through.

This is insane!

I understand a lot of people like to fish, but frankly, dropping a string in the water hoping a finned underwater creature actually attaches itself to the hook only to be hauled up into an environment that causes a slow agonizing death just doesn’t attract me. In fact, I don’t even eat fish.

Here’s something I don’t understand, ice fishing, especially when there is no lifeguard around to pull you out. It’s one thing to relax on a pier, in a boat or beside a lake or stream, but sit on the ice in the middle of a lake in subfreezing temperatures and dangle a string through a hole, hoping to catch a fish? That’s insane!

But that’s just my opinion. What’s yours?

Which way is . . . wait a minute, where do I go?

One of the advantages for universal symbols in signage is to help us understand where to go, regardless of where we are. I realize it’s based on the concept of “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but are there really enough words to explain this one. I mean, which way do I go, and what’s going to be there when I arrive?

Does the wheel chair ramp go to up to the exit, through the sign and out, or do I go down the ramp backwards to arrive at whatever the sign above it symbolizes? It could be anything from an airport bar to a DMV vision test. It could even be someone getting a dog license at city hall.

I’m beginning to think that the pictures could represent almost anything in a thousand word vocabulary, but the easiest symbol to read is “EXIT.” Perhaps that’s the most universal sign of all, and it’s the only one that is spelled out.

How do you read this sign, and where will you be when you get there?

Winter hats, form or function

Did your mother ever nag you incessantly through fall and into winter to wear your hat every time the temperature went below fifty? It was always one of those ugly, practical, high function, warm hats, too. Yikes, how well I remember those days when function trumped form. I always managed to get out of the house with a squashable hat because it just wasn't "cool" to wear a hat around the other kids.

For me “form” was more important than function. Only weird, uncool kids wore hats. As soon as I got a few houses away from home, I would take the hat off, squash it as much as possible and jam it deep into my pocket. It seems the colder it got, the more defiant I became until by January, my hat barely made it outside before I squashed it into my pocket. By February, it never left my bedroom. After all, I was twelve, and I knew I could take it.

Now, it's cool to wear hats. We wear them in the summer as well as winter. For many, form still trumps function. For me, I go for function, especially when it gets brutally cold, but before I would wear one of these Manhattan street vendor’s hats, I think I would just stay inside.

Slow service

Restaurant service is always a hot topic, whether the food is hot, or not. But one thing is sure, if you want to speed things up, carry a camera, not a cell phone camera, but a real standalone camera.

We were at a very odd pizza restaurant just outside Litchfield, Connecticut. It was out of character for us, but not out of bounds.

We picked a booth, the waitress brought our beverages and took our order. Then we waited, and we waited, and waited some more. I'm sure it has never happened to you, but yes, I had my camera with us, and yes, we started using it. The only things on the table were a pair of salt and pepper shakers and one hot pepper shaker. When combined with the warm sunlight, we had all we needed, and before we knew it, our lunch was ready.

Always carry a camera!

It's a new year. Have you thrown out the trash from last year?

It's a new year and time to clean out the trash that bogged us down in 2010. I'm not saying trash everything from last year, unless of course it was a real bad year for you, just get rid of the stuff that will drag you down in 2011. I don't mean just coffee cups, water bottles, and Coke cans; I mean anything that will detract you from making your goals in 2011.

When we surround ourselves with stuff, we tend to fall back on old habits while everyone around us moves ahead embracing new technologies and new ways of thinking. Remember the eight track players, and five inch floppy discs? Remember LP records, Polaroid cameras and the Instamatic camera? They were great new ideas, products, and trends of the past that have since become no-bid stuff on e-bay (many are sitting on a shelf in my prop room). They have been replaced by technologies virtually unknown at the beginning of this century. If the memories were great, put it on a shelf, but don't hang onto it because you are waiting for the Smithsonian to make you an offer. If it's that good, they probably already have it.

As you move ahead in 2011, keep your eyes and your minds open. New markets, new ideas, new products, new trends, and new ways of communicating will unfold more rapidly than ever. The old stuff that you have been hanging onto, simply won't work, but before you trash it, send me an email as I might want to add it to my prop room. If I don't, it really is trash.