Kurashiki, 2005
My thoughts with Japan today.
Winter is being such a bitch this year, particularly on my roof. Granted there are many people in the neighbourhood who have it worse: it seems on every street there are houses missing so much of their eavestroughs that I can see their rafters from the street. And trust me, no one wants their rafters showing.
In an effort to not be one of them, I’ve tried a couple of different methods to relieve my roof of the eight inches of ice that is threatening to pull down what’s left of my eavestroughs. Chipping at it didn’t work – it’s far too solid. So I figured, why not throw some salt up there? As soon as we have a nice day, maybe it’ll melt from the top rather than the bottom as it has done for the past couple of weeks, causing the residual water to come in around my window frames – inside the house.
The salt, however, seems to be rather picky when it comes to the roof. It melts the ice just fine on the sidewalk.
After putting almost a full ten pounds of salt on my roof, what do I have?
This, first of all:
:
\
It would seem the salt has created some interesting formations out of my icicles.
What else?
Everything dripping off my roof is crystalised. I have white splattered all over my exterior walls, I have white steps at the front of my house, and best of all, I have a saltwater cascade dripping down my windows and onto my hardwood floors. And still, I have eight inches of ice on my roof.
The good news? The mold that I’m positive is growing on the other side of my drywall will be well preserved.
“Do you have change for a twenty?”
That’s how it started – with those words.
“I think so,” I replied, juggling gloves and newspapers to dig into my pocket. I pulled out a couple of receipts and a five dollar bill and then went into the other pocket. Just as I was about to give up, I found a ten.
“Yes!” I exclaimed.
All right, maybe I wasn’t quite that excited. I was just collecting for my paper route after all.
It was while I was walking back down my customer’s driveway, my gloves still tucked under my arm, that I saw the writing on the $20 bill.
“Yes!” I exclaimed, for real this time. “It’s a blog post!”
This is what I saw.
I couldn’t wait to get home to check it out.
When I googled whereswilly, I saw a Wikipedia entry for it, so I decided to go there first — in case it was some kind of hacking thing. It turns out it wasn’t.
According to Wiki, the “Willy” refers to Sir Wilfred Laurier, past Prime Minister of Canada. There are apparently close to 4,000,000 bills in circulation with this message, and you can, in fact, register on the website to see where the bill has been AND be emailed to find out where it goes. It’s based on a “Where’s George” site in the U.S., to track currency there, and has been used by researchers to track the movement of pandemics, such as SARS.
Isn’t that interesting?
I’m only the second person who has tracked this particular $20, but I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. According to the website, I can do this with any bill, any time.
You can check out the Wiki page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Where%27s_Willy%3F
Have you heard of this before? Have you ever come across a bill with a website written on it? Do you want to start one? It’s so cool!
First it was the ice storm. Remember that? Back in December, just before Christmas I slipped on the ice and hit my head on a concrete step. Result: concussion. Thank goodness I had the lovely villainous Navigator1965 to cover for me.
Then there were the frost quakes. They were fun.
And let’s not forget the icicles, that led to the destruction of my eavestroughs.
And now? To add insult to injury, the ice is laughing at me:
Can you see the big grin? Just in case, I drew eyebrows, eyes, a mustache and a goatee on him:
Have I mentioned lately that I’m sick of winter?
I live in a town where dog poop is front page news. It was thrown over a fence. In tiny baggies, no less.
I shit you not.
In other news, I’m still working on the article which will reveal the person behind “Boy Series…” I want it to be perfect. In fact I don’t think I’ve worked on any short piece of work this hard, ever. I hope someone actually reads it. 😛
It’s still as cold as a polar bear’s poo … thrown over a fence … Never mind.
My mind is too muddled by all the things going on in real life.
What random thing happened in your life today?
For all you parents out there who think their young kids take advantage, consider this:
A Deaf child who doesn’t want to go to bed, really can act like he’s not listening if he refuses to look at you…
Remember the pretty icicles?
Look! No more icicles!
And no more eavestroughs too!
*grumblegrumblegrumble*
Brave, hardy birds, cardinals are. Today was cold and crisp – a pleasant 9 degrees C, (16 degrees F). I heard him singing first – they have a very distinctive song.
But the thing which has puzzled me for the past few weeks is this odd way the icicles have been forming… or leaning after they’ve formed. It seems they only do this if they begin above a window, so the only reason I can fathom is it has something to do with the heat from inside.
The first is an east-facing wall, and the second is a north-facing wall, so the sun has nothing to do with it.
Any ideas?
Three different shots of the icicles outside my bathroom window:
The first is fixed a little – in actuality I could see the icicles sparkling through the blinds, but they didn’t turn out well, even with some editing.
The second looked like something I might see on the morning after the night before:
And the third is like a bad nightmare gone worse:
Which one do you like best?
One thing I can say for Canada is it never gets boring.
This picture was taken May 28th, 2013:
and this one, of the exact same spot was taken this morning February 6th, 2014:
If you look closely, you’ll see the railings on my next door neighbour’s front steps, on the left of both pictures.
I can’t stress enough how much I’m looking forward to May.
lindaghill.com 