Lunch

I like to read a book while I eat lunch.

Here's what lunch looked like today. The veggie burger is still warming in the microwave oven.

Postdiluvian

I snapped this out the window when I was parked right at the waters edge, where the Snoqualmie River had spread out across Tolt River Road as it leads to the bridge over the Snoqualmie.

There was still about 3 feet of water over the road. You can see the high water mark on the leaves of the brambles. I'd estimate it was 3 feet over the road at this point, which means it was about 7 feet deep at the deepest point over the road.

More Flooding

It takes a long time for this much water to drain off.

The farmers apparently moved their livestock onto the flood mounds. I wanted pictures but, of course, if you could get to where the flood mounds were in a car, you would just truck the livestock out to high ground.

I wanted to see someone waterski on the flooded fields. Only later did I realize that waterskiing over submerged barbed wire fences might not be a high safety activity. There was a speedboat following the river, though, probably with a TV crew in it.

Flooding

We've had heavy, heavy rain. The rivers surged, the rivers jumped their banks, and the valley was flooded. Greg had huge problems just driving to school. I went out to scope out the road closures for Greg's drive home from school.

The sign closest to the camera reads "Water over roadway". No kidding. At night, it's surprisingly difficult to see that the road is covered with water. You'd think it would be easy to see the centerline and fog lines disappear, but it's not.

Behind the camera position, there were huge white and orange striped temporary 'Road Closed' barricades.

Payoff

About a year ago, we got hit with a whopper of an ice storm. We live in the middle of the forest, and the loud cracks as the branches were torn off the trees, and the tops ripped out of the trees, and the tree trunks snapping - it sounded like we were in a war zone. We had something like 40 trees fall across our driveway. We spent the entire day just cutting the trees up and clearing the driveway so we could get out into the world beyond. Then I spent more time helping clear the road into town.

Later, I went back and bucked those cut down and cut up trees into reasonable lengths, and Greg and I hauled some of the wood to the woodpile near the house.

Today, I lit a fire in the fireplace, the first one that's used the firewood salvaged from the ice storm damage. After all that work, it was nice to have the cheerful fire.

Slush

It's hard to think of slush as fodder for artistic endeavors, but after the Fedex guy drove through it, it looked pretty to me.

More rain

I was trapped inside by cold rain; nothing to do but clean the workroom. I found a nice spot for the spare ink cartridges.

Winter Decorations

This sort of sums up winter here. We have the little jewel tone snowmen on the window, and outside, it's just raining.

Grouse

Not shown in the picture is the grouse that Kodak was hoping to have either as a new playmate, or maybe as a little snack. I'm not sure which.

Kodak thinks the grouse are great fun. They make a terrific racket when he flushes them out of the undergrowth and they fly off.

Emily goes back

I drove Emily to the airport so she could catch a plane to take her back to school. I took this picture of her right before she entered the security check line. I wanted to take one of her weaving through the zigzag of the queue, but as soon as I turned and started to lift the camera, I could see the security people tense up.

So this is all I've got. It doesn't even come close to the image I wanted, but sometimes you don't get what you want.

Some Snow

This slough is one of the spots I like to go in the Snoqualmie Valley to photograph. I've been amazed by the changes in how it looks in different weather, different light. But I was really stunned by how it looked with snow and ice on the water.

Snow

It snowed this morning, so I unlimbered the tripod and view camera and cruised the valley. It felt good to have the Linhof out.

Reading the Paper

At Starbucks, there was a nice man reading the paper. His puppy was helping. Actually, his puppy was not actively impeding the reading; instead, he had just snuggled down and was snoozing.

It looked like a fine way to read the paper to me.

This Morning

It reads like some sort of horror story.

First, I took it out of the dark, small Group Chamber of Captivity, where it had been held with its fellows since its capture yesterday afternoon.

Then, I slashed it viciously with a razor sharp, saber shaped tool. Without giving it any time to recover, I immediately put it in a small, enclosed space. This space was surrounded by dozens of electrically charged wires, which carried so much current they were incandescent. Immediately, the temperature in the space soared hundreds of degrees, and the skin and exposed innards immediately started to char.

But before it could be reduced to a charred husk, I removed it from the superheated chamber. I smeared it with a yellow, greasy substance.

And then I took this photo, sat down with a cup of tea, and I ate it for breakfast.

And tomorrow, I'll do it again. There are more bagels in the Group Chamber of Captivity, better known as the breadbox. Yes, we really have a breadbox, in which we really keep bread (and bagels). How big is it? Just about the size of a breadbox.

No Icicle Riding

It's been cold lately. When it gets cold, water freezes, which is a surprising event around here.

This sign, on the outside of the grocery store, caught my eye for some reason. The modification just seemed appropriate to the weather.

Icycle riding. I think it like it.

Destiny

The Snoqualmie River runs south to north through the valley, snaking back and forth across the valley floor. Two of the ox bows of the river come right up to the road that runs along the east side of the valley; you could hurl a bottle out of the window of your car and right into the river as you hurtle past.

It's a pretty spot, and the rise of the embankment makes it a great place to make photographs. The added elevation always helps get a bit more shape into the sand bar that forms and re-forms along the river bend with every heavy rain. I used to stop there every little while, just to take a moment to look at the river.

Last August, a mother and her daughter were driving up the road. It was dark, and raining, and the mother was apparently drunk. She ran off the road, off the embankment, and into the river. The car hit the water upside down. The mother was rescued by the folks who live on the other side of the road. It took rescue crews a frantic 80 minutes to locate the car in the river, in the rain, in the dark. The little girl drowned.

It's taken me this long just to consider stopping there. Taking a photograph sometimes helps me figure things out, and I was sort of hoping that I might find a glimmer of understanding if I could just make even one photograph. But I still don't get it.

Not even a little bit.

On the Road, part II

No, not the one with Charles Kuralt, although I really liked that show. If ever there was someone who could pick out jewels where others saw only prosaic dross, he was the guy. I'd like to think he'd approve of Quotidian View.

This is another one from the road into town. This time, it's from the east side of the road. What do you know? The frost on the east side isn't like the frost on the west side. Different sun angles, maybe, or prevailing breeze. If I hadn't stopped to make these photos, I'd never have noticed.