Do you Smeeeeeeeellllll....

... what my roomie is cooking? Here's some hints:

• Burnt salty water
• Crisco fumes
• Onion-fueled Burmese Nose Snot
• Carbonized mulched Pig-meat with MoanoSodiumGluetamate and assorted organic Nitrates

If you guessed pseudo-Bolognaise sauce for non-noodled-Spaghetti, you guessed wrong!
Roomie is on the phone (again), telling his Girlfriend Down Under that he's steaming chicken. Wrong!
It's leftover Dinner Splatter, lovingly seared by Heating Coil. Mmmm. So appetizing.

As I desperately static-charge my way to the balcony door and set off a St Elmo's Fire-sized blue ball of kinetic energy on the handle, I remember the fresh smells of:


- moist loam, freshly revealed by snowmelt, and a squirrel's determined rooting. See the little guy near the 'trunk'.

- freshly rain-pelted sludge, lining the driveway. It's lightly garnished with cigarette ash, broken butts, with a light sprinkle of tarred driveway meticulously gouged out by snow ploughs. The upright squirrel in the background (near the tree line) is obviously chittering in appreciation.

- recently used squirrel outhouse (behind and to the right of the leftmost tree). Note the grand entrance to the rustic abode of Mr & Mrs Squirrel.

- pristine ornithoid spoor, joyously revealing to interested amateur anthropologists what geese can forage from soggy ground.

- gently spiralling clumps of snow, born of virgin moisture from the heavens, turned crystalline by temperatures decrescendo poco a poco. Snow and gently rolling fog enveloping Gates Mills in a sleepy embrace, silencing the shriek of technology, wrapping a cocoon of tranquility upon all who can hear.

Scenes from Today

OK, so this was last night. But I'll be having part two tonight! Roasted Beef Rump with red potatoes, red onions and very sweet corn!

The last bit of crinkle-cut clouds before rain and sleet clouds descend upon our soon-to-be-flooded Landerhaven facility.

This isn't a squirrel pic, it's a Squizilla pic.


A preview of conditions tomorrow. I'll keep everyone posted on black ice accidents.

Images for today...

Debris from my roomie's quickie 6 minute bacon, egg and toast breakfast - very noisy, and I don't mean the pseudo-crisp bacon or toast either.


Ice-cream cone newspaper dispenser?

The one patch of open sky this afternoon in between snow flurries. Did you know that an airplane ran out of runway today at Cleveland Hopkins Airport? Yeah, poor thing was going too fast or something, and the suddenly snow-covered runway didn't help none neither. Thankfully, no casualties. Not if you count the two engines..

[Sigh]. I think the local fire station draw lots to see who gets to respond to the false alarms from Gates Mills.

Unwanted detritus

This? Not by a long shot! Had nice change of breakfast this morning, with flapjacks and eggs and sausage patties. Yummers!

No, this here pic is of the discard:

The wonderful tenants in my apartment complex apparently have no regard for corporate property, nor goodwill. I had to pull this cart out of the way - some carbon-based life form with silly putty for brains apparently believes that this is a self-returning cart. They left it there for the helpful snow plough to come by and bury it in snow, thus effectively blocking off the walkway leading from the carpark to the access area to Eastgate shopping mall. Thanks Lazy Person!

Aaaand here are his cousins, Mr Make-shift habitat-for-squirrels:
and Mr I'm-up-to-my-neck-in-work:
More fun stuff. I saw my first bipedal cow yesterday. It was silently mooing at Mall people:I'm sure it had a voice, though. I can only imagine a Keanu Reeves type voice asking "Do you want cream or half-and-half?"

The Ohio Experience

It took us an hour, crawling on all 4 wheels, a grand total of around 2 miles. Pepper and I went on a teambuilding dinner at But guess what? They were closed, due to weather (not enough employees able to get to work). Gee. The manager on duty was nice enough to give us some coupons for our next visit, and recommended alternative (and open) establishments. So we went drove 100 meters over the snow banks in the parking lot to
They got all the re-directs from closed restaurants in the area, apparently. There, I had semi-nice dinner with excellent dinner companions This aren't my companions, but they did keep my strip steak company for a while. It was the first time I had a infra-red seared steak that was raw on the inside, seared on the outside, and cool all the way around. Strange american steaks... :-)

Walking gut-stuffed from the restaurant, we walked sinus-first into my first-ever Ohio Blizzard!
Here's what it looked like:

Oh yeah right. I was too bundled up to take a pic. When:

• snow is blowing parallel to the ground, and snow clumps are flying clumsily into your ear, rattling chillingly around for a minute before finally settling on your eardrum. Ow?!
  
• snowflakes are abraiding your face, driven by 35 mph winds. Not only that, they're also being driven so hard, they're changing directions every few seconds, blowing themselves into your nostrils, around your specs, into your ears and up your pant legs, right up into the sensitive groin area. BBrrrrRR!
  
• wind-blown snowbanks prevent you from driving your car out of the parking space
• driving snow reduces visibility to 50 meters, and covering cars so that they look like large snow banks lying innocently around all over the place. So's you can't tell if you're still in the lot, or already on the freeway...
  

there's no time to take pictures! Thanks to great and safe driving, pepper and I got back safely. Thanks Ralph and Dave!
This is the first time I've seen this much snow blow up into our sheltered lobby entrance:
Waking up this Valentine's day morning, this is what the howling, whistling, window-rattling winds brought me:
Snow on the inside of my window.. (no, it's not white sponge — you're looking at sieved snowflakes)

Sciurus Vulgaris? Ardilla Sciurus Aureogaster? No, It's Sciurus Niger?

Sciurus Ngier, the Eastern Fox Squirrel? Anyway, it's The hunchback of Landerhaven lane! Click the pic to see how large this not-so-little fella is! He was eating so loudly we could hear him cracking nuts (or something) open this morning.
The Squirrel-un-lovers among you will notice that we have much fresh snow on the ground. Yup. This week is SNOW STORM week. Weather 'cast predicts 3.5 feet of snow. Woof!

We had a slight thaw lately, and then a freezing, then snow, so the local fountain now looks like:
Weird ripple thing going on there.

After lunch, Pepper and I decided to go Squirrel Hunting. Here's a pic of Pepper patiently picking her route to the unsuspecting squirrel...Pepper managed some good shots. Go see her blog for pics!

In the meantime, here's some to tide you over:

Zoomed in:
another:
and lastly, what he might look like in the summer (pic apparently by John White):
or maybe it's this guy:
Ours really was this fat... and out-massing some Singaporean cats too!

I promise, no more squirrel pics, unless someone gets molested by one, or if one poops on me.

..... %#@*&$#%@!

5AM Monday Morning!!!!

To partly quote Pepper: "Farging foraging frigging forging rizzer razzer FRAT!"

Fortunately, part of the day was saved when Pepper and I were out on a naturalist safari, within the Great Squirrel resort that is our company premises.

Weather improved a bit (less cold, more snow), so the squirrels (or the squizels, as DemonicPepper calls them) were coming out again, all puffy and nibbling on nuts and cones.

Pinecones lah, not ice-cream cones.

Aaand, to further save my day...

Rump Roast! with roasted red onions and red potatoes, and just for contrast, brussels sprouts.