Monthly Archives: December 2012

Sun 16 Dec 12

Parko ate sixteen hot dog buns today in about a fifteen minute period. Eight when I left him alone in the car with a bag of groceries and eight more when I left the replacement hot dog buns unsupervised on the kitchen counter for thirty seconds. Impressive devastation. Fool me twice.

A little more snow early today. I took the dogs out for runs at Cottonwood and Cowiche Canyon.

And then lots of wet snow here tonight (6″ maybe as of right now) with a big system moving through the Pacific northwest. I usually love the snow when it comes here, but this time it means that Mary’s probably stranded in Twin Falls, ID for a day until the weather moves through. Trapped behind one pass in Oregon. So close.

Fri 14 Dec 12

First snow of the year this morning. Woke up to a quarter inch on the ground. It mostly melted in the yard throughout the day, but when I took the dogs out for a run at Cowiche Canyon this afternoon all the sagebrush and cheat grass was still lightly dusted. It threw off my perception to see all the greens and browns masked, like some sort of landscape-wide Photoshop filter.

Mary and Nora are on their way west, stopped in Lincoln, NE at a Comfort Suites at the moment. The early travel weather forecast is nice in the Midwest, but a little snow seems to be cropping up now in the western mountains. Wyoming, always Wyoming. I’m trying to play virtual road condition navigator with all the DOT websites, so hopefully they can dodge anything too dicey. Looking probably like a four-day trip though, sticking to daylight.

Sun 2 Dec 12

Well, that’s more like it. In the 50s and sunny most of the weekend. November was miserable. Really miserable. Just seemed to be cloudy, cold, and rainy every day. I don’t remember a run of weather like that here ever. Bring on December! All that rain has definitely re-greened things up around here though. Here are a couple green pictures from the backyard.

Went rock climbing at The Cave yesterday afternoon. Blue skies, nice temps (air and rock). Some lingering slippery spots in the shade or near any vegetation. Climbed Age of Consent (5.8), then rapped off of Childhood Injury (5.10B) with the intent to top rope it, but bailed due to water runoff on the rock about half way up. Also pulling quite a bit of rope drag seemingly off the sloping rock just below the anchor. So we scooted to the west and in the dwindling daylight climbed Children of a Lesser Chaos (5.8) and Flake Crack (5.7). Nothing too tough, just happy to be outside in shorts and a t-shirt in December.

The Cave, Mark's Wall Age of Consent
Age of Consent Childhood Injury