surprisingly cold

[solarbird]

It barely got above freezing today; it peaked up to 0.2C and then decided not to bother for anything higher, so there's still hard frost on the yard from yesterday. The feeder has been a sparrowsphere (or other type of birdieball) most of the afternoon, as everything with wings gorges itself on sweet, sweet, suet. It's almost down to last night's low here already, so who knows how cold it'll get overnight. The steps are quite slick just from the frost, so if we get a warm spot, I'll want to have that sanded-paint on standby!

We've had a bunch of the "icicle" segments on our icicle lights fail already - and the glowy-ball strands have had another failure, this time the better-behaved strand on the front deck failing on the right half. These lights are so not worth the trouble sometimes. I think, though, I've got a plan: replace all the bulbs (on the sphere set) just right out of the gate every year. There are only 19 of them (originally 20 - vandals at the old one took out one beyond repair), so that's feasible. With the icicle strands, tho', I dunno - maybe just buy new ones every third year? That would certainly be easier, but I just hate the waste involved in that. (And replacing all 150 bulbs every year is out of the question. To get that many bulbs semi-affordably, I'd have to buy a new strand already pre-loaded, and, well, there you are!)

Wednesday's miles: 1.1
Today's token: 0.1
Miles out of Hobbiton: 540.1
Miles out of Rivendell: 80.3
Miles to Lothlórien: 386.1

And today's leaf picture:


Explorer Moth

I also got a bit of a moon photo out of Paul's camera; that's not easy, since it's not really meant for this kind of photography at all. It isn't as neat as it was in real life, but it's kind of interesting in its own right:


Moon in the Clouds

Comments

Holiday lighting solution

[amethyst-dancer.livejournal.com]

I have a bunch of Stay-Lit (http://www.inliten.com/staylit.html) light strings, although haven't found time to put them up yet. But I have tested -- you can actually remove a bulb and the rest of the string stays on! I've bought them in previous years at Target and K-Mart, so they're not hard to find. They come in icicle type, too, although I haven't tried those. Another interesting side effect of the technology is that you can have individual bulbs blinking separately, as many or few as you want.

They're not as cheap as cheap light strings. I think I paid close to $10 for each of the 100-light strings I have. But the cheap ones are hardly worth replacing bulbs on, because it's so much trouble to figure out which ones need replacing! They're basically disposable because of that, and Stay-Lit isn't. I think it's worth it.