Winter sky

Fun at Ikea

Over the winter break, I had the chance to go down to Dallas to catch two small art exhibits: Chihuly and Rex Ray. Both were amazing. I even got to explore a fabulous high-end modern furniture store that had a few more of Rex Ray's collages on display. Then we went to Ikea.

All that and what do I have pictures of? Fun stuffed animals at Ikea!!!

Virga

It's time for some more cheerful images. Here are some virga clouds--lovely snow that nobody has to shovel!

Oh, how I love electricity!

The power finally came back on this morning, just 12 hours shy of a whole week without electricity. I can go a whole week without tv just fine, but candlelight isn't quite enough light for reading, or for sewing, or any other creative work I like to do. It's maddening! You can play dominoes, but not cards, not really. So I'm ecstatic to finally have POWER again! Not to mention that we were frickin' freezing.

Another view of the sad sycamore, taken from the front yard.

A side view of the sad sycamore. This shot really shows all of the broken branches--pretty much all of the large branches not curving upward are broken, including that big one halfway up on the right side. :-(

A cold kitty discovers the joys of an old-fashioned hot-water bottle.

How to survive a week without power: flashlights, bottled water, sheets tacked over the windows and doors, every blanket in the house piled on the couch for sleeping, and every candle in the house clustered in front of a mirror for light.

And finally, we get sunshine too. A morning of blessings!

Broken

This is the damage to my sycamore tree from the ice storm that hit Oklahoma on December 8-9. My power went out around 11 pm on December 9, and it's still out. The ice on the trees was pretty until the limbs starting breaking. I haven't been able to bring myself to take pictures for fun because I love trees and it's just so depressing to see almost every single tree in town nearly destroyed. There are a lot of trees in Norman--or were. We'll see how many survive.

These pictures were taken at about 8 a.m. on December 13 just as the morning fog began to thicken, which explains the bad lighting.

"Leaving on a Jet Plane . . ."

Sunset with contrails

Interesting shadows on the pedestrian bridge