“Brrr – really this time!”
When I left you last week we were talking about Saint Valentine’s day and how cold it was. We had no idea how cold it could really get. I didn’t want to share this video last week as I hadn’t shared it with Diana yet. Here’s Marc Cohn who wrote and recorded our wedding song, “True Companion”, with a personal message for Diana:
I sang and played all 3 verses for Diana prior to the video. Made it through until the middle of the 3rd verse before getting too emotional. That’s the verse that Marc plays on the video.
Well, the weather talk certainly intensified this week. The -4 degrees Fahrenheit temperature on Monday morning, combined with ice and snow, brought the Texas power grid to its knees. Many generating stations were frozen up and the demand was very high, resulting in rolling blackouts across the state. We spent most of Monday with power on for 30 minutes and then off for 45 minutes – we got pretty good at predicting the pattern. At some point in the afternoon the folks in charge of executing the rolling outages lost control and weren’t able to execute that plan anymore. We were among the lucky few who had full power from that point forward.
Most of my folks in Austin were without power until Friday. And then the water issues started – many were without water for several days. You know it’s bad when you get a text saying “my last toilet just froze over.” It really was a survival situation for many. We organized folks with Jeeps to go and collect others, but every time we had a plan to take them somewhere, that place lost power and water. So frustrating picturing my friends freezing and nothing to do to help. Nothing worse than that helpless feeling.
Everyone survived and by Saturday had mostly thawed out. Some are still waiting for water. Hard to believe that during the week that the Mars rover sent back colour pictures of the Red Planet, we still have 14 million Texans without water as of this posting. That’s almost half the population operating on the bottom level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs pyramid – shelter and survival.
Bitter cold and no heat mean almost everybody has a burst pipe story. We were again very fortunate. I was watching TV on Thursday and wondered what all the static noise from the speakers was. I turned off the amp and TV and it persisted. Following the noise took me to a small river flowing out of an electric socket that is through the wall from our hose tap. Ugh! Rapid response required before the hardwood floors are ruined. Diana sprinted out front and began trying to find the water main under the snow. She found it quickly but we couldn’t get the frozen cap off. I got sufficiently mad at it and it popped off.
Water off and we now had a big flood to clean up. Fortunately our neighbor Daniel has a deluxe shop-vac that made quick work of the clean up. Daniel also helped us repair the burst so that we could turn the water on again. A trip to Home Depot – not a ton of fun with the road conditions – to pick up a pipe cutter and my new best friend – a Shark Bite pipe cap – and we were all set to execute our emergency repair. With phone communication in place I ventured back out front and slowly turned the water back on – all good. Crisis averted.
The icicles on the back patio got pretty long – the one on the right was about 5 feet.
It reached 54 degrees on Saturday and we were able to get out and replenish supplies. Penelope’s all wheel drive worked like a champ on the slightly snowy neighborhood streets. 0 to 60 in a couple of days – crazy Texas weather.
A high of 72 degrees on Sunday was hard to believe – like a nice Scottish summer day.
The Sunday crossword made me laugh on two accounts. The Singin’ in the Rain reminded me of the trip with Mum and Dad to Rothesay where they were entertaining themselves by singing the song and dancing in the rain – much to the embarrassment of a much younger me.
And then with “Pour Some Sugar” – Anne’s chosen wedding dance when she and Denny couldn’t remember theirs:
This time last year I was in a totally different climate – enjoying a refreshing drink on a rooftop in Antigua, Guatemala. So much has changed in the year in between.
Will and Christine picked up their new baby in Las Vegas on Saturday – a labradoodle that’s 75% poodle. They chose green boy over blue boy – blue boy was the naughty alpha male and green boy more timid and cuddly. They seem like excited parents based on these pictures. Green boy is now named Ollie.
He was all tuckered out today from all the travel excitement:
I finished reading “Hard to Handle.” A very enjoyable read and so disappointing to read story after story of how egomaniacal, uncaring, and intolerable both Chris and Rich Robinson really were throughout the life of the band.
I did enjoy the stories about playing with Jimmy Page and of the ways he tried his best to help the band. Highly recommended if you’re a fan of the music of this band. Thanks again Kara.
I’ve just started “The Moth and the Mountain” by Ed Caesar. It’s a story about Maurice Wilson, a World War I veteran in the 1930s who concocts a plan to climb Everest against the British government’s specific instructions. He has to hike over 100 miles from Darjeeling before he even begins his ascent. And that’s after he flew is Sopwith Camel from Britain to India. He disguises himself as a Tibetan priest from Darjeeling until close to Everest. I’m looking forward to the adventures ahead.
I took on a project on Sunday morning that I soon regretted – alphabetizing all my albums – much easier to do if you have flip bins like those in the store above. I quickly lost steam and thank goodness McD pitched in to help get through the task. Sorry I had a minor fit when you wanted to file Steely Dan under D. I can quickly find what I’m looking for now which hasn’t been the case for many years. The searching does result in some surprise discoveries in my collection that I’ve forgotten about, but it will be nice to go directly to what I’m thinking of playing.
This cover of the Bee Gees by Foo Fighters made me smile. That’s really Dave Grohl doing the falsetto vocals.
The legendary jazz-fusion pianist Chick Corea passed away last week at the age of 79. It would take a whole separate posting to cover all of his contributions to jazz. I feel very fortunate to have seen him perform at the Blue Note in NY a few years ago – such a treat. Here’s a link to my posting about that show. I had forgotten it was a Miles Davis tribute show with such a one of a kind all star band – and it was almost 5 years ago – feels like 3 tops.
https://www.keithjrobertson.com/?p=510
The new Foo Fighters album has a totally different feel – more funky with hints of Abba. I like the title track:
And here’s an old classic that I heard this week. Is there a better rock vocalist than Steve Marriot and teamed up with Peter Frampton – Humble Pie were excellent.
Stay safe, calm and kind to everyone – it’s been a harsh week for sure.