Well, we have had quite the rainfall around here for the last week.
Since I love obscure facts:
Our area received 11 inches of rain in 6 days! That is 1/3 of theYEARLY rainfall in just 6 days.
I also heard that Hurricane Katrina had 12 inches of rain during that catastrophe...considering that is only 1 inch more than we had...I thought that was pretty amazing. (Obviously, that 12 inch total did not include storm surge and disclaimer here that our area was as bad as Katrina..not anywhere near that.)
Our back yard looked like a lake for a while but no water damage, just the afore mentioned tree.
We were actually quite lucky in our area because many in Maryland had to be evacuated due to possible dam break. Some of the federal buildings had to be closed, (National Archives, IRS, Museum of Natural History, and Museum of American History to name a few.)
We did have a small sump pump crisis for a few minutes, but the husband took care of the stuck float and all worked well after that. We were both glad that the sump pump stuck in the ON position and not the OFF!
We have been gradually doing the yard clean up and sweating in this horrible humidity. The weather outlook looks better so that is the good news!
Friday, June 30, 2006
Friday, June 23, 2006
A Tree has Fallen
It blew up a big storm last night and the casualty was:
The good news is that the silver maple didn't land ON the house and really didn't do too much damage...other than to our pocketbook to have it removed!
It was one heck of a storm all over this area and many folks got little to no sleep due to the horrendous thunder and lightening, the hail, and the wind. We surprisingly did not loose our electricity or our direct TV signal ( which is amazing considering that the rain was horizontal!)
The last time I saw a weather map that looked like it did last night, was when we had the tornado in the neighborhood. It is never a good sign to see ALL RED on the weather map.
A lot of folks have been without electricity for almost 18 hours.
Maddy, Tommy's dog was not liking the storm at all and was reportedly shaking like a leaf and hyperventilating. She finally settled down some when Tommy let her crawl into Becky's dark closet and hide. Becky was out of town and was unable to comfort the puppers. They were without electricity for a while last night.
Traffice this morning was horrific due to traffic lights being out. The happy campers of the day were the tree companies that began knocking on doors to drum up business for tree removal.
I had to work but Tom captured the action of the tree removal pretty well...it was pretty amazing how the guy climbed the tree to take it down.
MY BEAUTIFUL REDBUD TREE!
Not only did it take out half of my redbud tree, but the wind also took down my twenty year old, silver maple tree in the front yard. That tree was around 30-35 feet tall and really provided a lot of shade for the house. It is a sad day around here.The good news is that the silver maple didn't land ON the house and really didn't do too much damage...other than to our pocketbook to have it removed!
It was one heck of a storm all over this area and many folks got little to no sleep due to the horrendous thunder and lightening, the hail, and the wind. We surprisingly did not loose our electricity or our direct TV signal ( which is amazing considering that the rain was horizontal!)
The last time I saw a weather map that looked like it did last night, was when we had the tornado in the neighborhood. It is never a good sign to see ALL RED on the weather map.
A lot of folks have been without electricity for almost 18 hours.
Maddy, Tommy's dog was not liking the storm at all and was reportedly shaking like a leaf and hyperventilating. She finally settled down some when Tommy let her crawl into Becky's dark closet and hide. Becky was out of town and was unable to comfort the puppers. They were without electricity for a while last night.
Traffice this morning was horrific due to traffic lights being out. The happy campers of the day were the tree companies that began knocking on doors to drum up business for tree removal.
I had to work but Tom captured the action of the tree removal pretty well...it was pretty amazing how the guy climbed the tree to take it down.
I was not totally bent out of shape about the loss of the silver maple tree...I'm more upset about my redbud tree.
(DUE TO TECHNICAL ERRORS...I lost the rest of this post and there is no way I can begin to remember where this story was going ...sorry if you missed it...it really wasn't that great of a story anyway! Sometimes technology sucks!)
Sunday, June 11, 2006
Spaghetti Dinner
I've written in the past about the difficulty of deciding "what's for dinner" but there is always one meal that is a great favorite at our house.
It tends to be the dinner choice that is suggested first when it comes to a weekend meal when the whole family will be in attendance.
I'm talking about the infamous Spaghetti & meatballs dinner.
My husband was raised on spaghetti and it was almost a tradition to have spaghetti every Sunday when he lived at home. He could eat pasta just about every meal and never gets tired of it, even now.
In fact, his "fall back dinner" is what he lovingly refers to as "red sh** and noodles". This is his slang for Ragu out of a jar (traditional style with meat...not any of those other varieties) .
I like his homemade, special recipe spaghetti and meatballs, but I am not a big fan of the "red sh** and noodles" senario. (I much prefer peanut butter sandwich and chips as my "don't want to fix anything or go out to eat meal".)
He told me not too long ago that he was going to always suggest his "red sh** and noodles " for dinner so it would force me to choose what's for dinner since he knows I won't eat Ragu ( only under duress and extreme laziness.)
He was a little upset not too long ago when there was a study released that had people rate jar spaghetti...I forget what was the winner, but Ragu was at the bottom of the survey.
Today, all the boys (& Becky) came over for dinner and of course the menu was spaghetti. We had a very enlightening discussion about the actual pasta being served. The discussion centered around what kind of pasta was everyone's personal favorite.
The oldest and youngest sons chose: angel hair pasta ( which was served today and had raves from them today!)
Becky prefers: rigatoni or any of the "tube like" pasta's. ( She said she likes a more substantial pasta.)
The husband votes for : linguini
The middle son stated he had no particular favorite...he likes them all.
I hadn't really given it much thought to a favorite but I would have to say I know I don't really like regular spaghetti ( too thick). I guess if I was pressed to choose a favorite it would be capellini.
Anyway, eating spaghetti is a pretty traditional weekend meal for our family.
When the boys all left for college and began doing some cooking, they all made the call to dad to get his recipe for spaghetti. (Much like my sister's and I did when we all called mom at Thanksgiving to see how to cook turkey.)
They all got the proper instructions for his spaghetti sauce and meatballs with visuals included!
Now, all the boys can make Tom's famous spaghetti and meatballs. The only question now usually is whether we should have a meat sauce, or meatballs, or to make lasagne. They all are delicious but the boys usually choose meatballs.
It was a particularly good batch today...maybe because it has been a while since the whole family was here for spaghetti. The husband has not figured out how to make "little batches" of spaghetti, so care packages went home with them all.
Nothing like second day spaghetti...just makes it that much better!
It tends to be the dinner choice that is suggested first when it comes to a weekend meal when the whole family will be in attendance.
I'm talking about the infamous Spaghetti & meatballs dinner.
My husband was raised on spaghetti and it was almost a tradition to have spaghetti every Sunday when he lived at home. He could eat pasta just about every meal and never gets tired of it, even now.
In fact, his "fall back dinner" is what he lovingly refers to as "red sh** and noodles". This is his slang for Ragu out of a jar (traditional style with meat...not any of those other varieties) .
I like his homemade, special recipe spaghetti and meatballs, but I am not a big fan of the "red sh** and noodles" senario. (I much prefer peanut butter sandwich and chips as my "don't want to fix anything or go out to eat meal".)
He told me not too long ago that he was going to always suggest his "red sh** and noodles " for dinner so it would force me to choose what's for dinner since he knows I won't eat Ragu ( only under duress and extreme laziness.)
He was a little upset not too long ago when there was a study released that had people rate jar spaghetti...I forget what was the winner, but Ragu was at the bottom of the survey.
Today, all the boys (& Becky) came over for dinner and of course the menu was spaghetti. We had a very enlightening discussion about the actual pasta being served. The discussion centered around what kind of pasta was everyone's personal favorite.
The oldest and youngest sons chose: angel hair pasta ( which was served today and had raves from them today!)
Becky prefers: rigatoni or any of the "tube like" pasta's. ( She said she likes a more substantial pasta.)
The husband votes for : linguini
The middle son stated he had no particular favorite...he likes them all.
I hadn't really given it much thought to a favorite but I would have to say I know I don't really like regular spaghetti ( too thick). I guess if I was pressed to choose a favorite it would be capellini.
Anyway, eating spaghetti is a pretty traditional weekend meal for our family.
When the boys all left for college and began doing some cooking, they all made the call to dad to get his recipe for spaghetti. (Much like my sister's and I did when we all called mom at Thanksgiving to see how to cook turkey.)
They all got the proper instructions for his spaghetti sauce and meatballs with visuals included!
Now, all the boys can make Tom's famous spaghetti and meatballs. The only question now usually is whether we should have a meat sauce, or meatballs, or to make lasagne. They all are delicious but the boys usually choose meatballs.
It was a particularly good batch today...maybe because it has been a while since the whole family was here for spaghetti. The husband has not figured out how to make "little batches" of spaghetti, so care packages went home with them all.
Nothing like second day spaghetti...just makes it that much better!
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