Am I referring to it being day 17 of this ridiculous cold? Or the 24 hours we spent thinking the geomagnetic storm cut us off from the rest of the planet?
Both?
First, this stupid cold. I haven’t had a cold in… years? Even Covid I’ve nicely not been affected by. I think I probably had it 3 times, but each time it was less than a day of super mild symptoms and then I’d get tinnitus for a couple of weeks. But this one, sheesh! I think my green and yellow chest goo is finally subsiding. I even missed two days of work in the midst of it when I was coughing so much I was sleeping (sorta sleeping) upright in my recliner chair. Now Jeff’s caught it too, but he’s getting over it faster.
On Friday night, it was opening night at Diamond Tooth Gertie’s. They’ve got a new Gertie this year and all new dancers. Thinking it was going to be packed, as there is a conference with 150 attendees in town too, we went 30 minutes before the door opened at 7pm and stood in line. We were #2 & 3 in the line! We’re silly! But at least we got a good table in the middle of the main floor.
The first show was at 8:30pm, so we had dinner while we waited. The Grumpy Schnitzel is running the kitchen inside Gertie’s this summer. Delicious! Chris makes a Big Mac replica that Jeff loves and I sunk my teeth into a delicious chicken finger burger.
By 8pm, we noticed our cell signal was gone. It came back for a bit and then cut off for good. It was just after we were seeing everyone’s amazing northern lights photos being posted online. It was pretty cool seeing people’s emotions seeing them for their first time. We don’t get darkness anymore so we didn’t see them.
After the show, we headed home and we had no home internet access either. And still nothing in the morning. Suspecting this was probably not just from the geomagnetic storm, we dug out a radio and tuned into the CBC radio station we can get on the AM dial. Over the next few hours we pieced together the story that the forest fire near Fort Nelson, British Columbia flared up on Friday evening and burnt through the fibre optic cable. Fort Nelson itself was evacuated, and the Alaska Highway was closed. Turns out another fire flared up and burned Northwestel’s east/west run they use for redundancy too, leaving most of Canada’s north offline. No cell phone, no data, no internet, no phone calls, no 911 service. Some landlines worked to make local calls, but who has one of those anymore. Even the Yukon amateur radio operators club had trouble communicating because the geomagnetic storm was causing some problems with their shortwave and radio waves.
In Whitehorse, they had ambulances and emergency responders parked around the city, should anyone need assistance. Here in Dawson, things were pretty low key. Our main grocery store has Starlink, so they were able to continue regular business, accepting cards as payment. Most of the rest of northern Canada was cash only!
When you start thinking about having no way to call for help, you start thinking what could possibly go wrong. I was doing laundry. What if we had a dryer fire!? How would we call for help if we couldn’t call!?!
So we cleaned out the dryer vent. HA! I’ve never cleaned a dryer vent. But I think we probably should have been!?!?! I had ordered a kit from Amazon a few weeks back. What fortunate timing!
Jeff worked in the garage for hours, fiddling with getting his boat ready for the season, and installing a rail on the garage ceiling for an electric hoist I bought him for his birthday. It’ll be much nicer (and hopefully safer) to move the boat motor around!
I cleaned the house, and then I read a whole book! Fortunately I had a few Amazon Prime free books to read on my Kindle so I dove into one and read it all! Remember when Saturdays were like this before the internet, where you cleaned house, got some groceries, and then read a book? You don’t? That’s cute, you youngster!
Last evening we suddenly got a swarm of notifications on our phones. We are back online!
I’m missing a big adventure, right now as I type this. We were invited out with our friends for a day of ATV’ing. But it’s cold and wet out. The forecast calls for a high of 8°C today with lots of rain and possible thunderstorms. I just didn’t think it was wise to take this cold out for a wet afternoon of riding, especially when I’m flying out tomorrow for a couple of weeks. I’m heading to Ontario for some family time and for Grandma’s funeral/celebration of life. It feels strange to not “Seize the Day!” but I’d really like to have this cold in my past. I know, it doesn’t feel like me!
What else has been going on….? Oh the crocuses came! I don’t have any stunning photos this year. This one is a bit early when they were just emerging, but every other time I’ve been up on the dome to see them, it is windy enough it feels like it is going to flip your car! Our weather just hasn’t been that nice this May so far. I haven’t even sat on the porch yet!
Our river breakup was pretty casual this year. No flooding, no danger.
Here’s a couple geese watching the river thaw one morning:
I missed 3 morning walks and 4 workouts due to this cold, but I resumed last week and my walking pace has picked up nicely, finally back to last fall’s pace.
I missed my Uncle Paul’s annual daffodil party last weekend, but my youngest niece and nephew checked out the flowers for me!
Around our neighourhood, some people are mourning the loss of some neighbourhood trees by our power utility, who is upgrading our grid for better service:
I like trees as much as the next guy, but our town is surrounded by forests, and I really like having a reliable electricity service. Or maybe it is because I once was a powerline labourer for a summer, cutting down the trees under the service wires, and I can empathize with the work. 🤷♀️ I thought it made for a cute picture though!
Well I’m off. I’ll have plenty of adventures coming up in the next couple of weeks to share with you. And if you’re family, I look forward to seeing you in Dublin so we can send Grandma off together.
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>I’ve never cleaned a dryer vent.
Lisa!! This is the number one cause of house fires! Dryer vents should be cleaned annually! So glad that yours is now clean.
We saw a glimmering of the Northern Lights here in Asheville. It wasn’t the spectacular dancing across the sky, but more of a light pink haziness. Pretty, and I still want to come up north!
Ha! I know, we should have done it by now! I always clean the outdoor vent, but not the pipe thingy, and it had too much build-up! Husky hair does not help!
I was thinking of you during that geomagnetic storm and I was hoping you’d see a bit of the northern lights!! Happy to hear you got a bit of it anyway!