1lb chicken, skin, bone, and fat removed
1 1/2 c sliced carrots (or more)
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 1/2 c rice wine
3 c water (or vegetable broth)
21-spice top secret seasoning mix (Trader Joe's 21 seasoning salute)
1/4 c Yoshida's gourmet sauce (or just soy sauce and 1 tsp sugar)
1/8 c sesame oil

Combine all ingredients in deep pan and cook on high heat until all liquid has evaporated and chicken is cooked and golden brown. Stir almost continuously. Serve with rice. Chicken frozen? no problem... just add another cup of water.

NOTE: Kids WILL eat this! (at least my picky 5-year-old will...)

I am vista.
Watch me die.
In shades of blue and white,
what you were doing -
is no more.

BLARGH.

It is currently snowing, has been since 6PM. We have exactly one inch accumulation, which means that all Seattle-area drivers will be totally paralyzed and abandon their cars in the middle of the road (again). It's likely we'll get a bit more accumulation here since it's still coming down...

be sure to check out the real-time weather here at Weather.Boal.Net to see the latest charts for temperature, precipitation, and statistical data for year-to-date.

We did see a small doe black-tail dear in the back yard earlier today as well (note the lack of white stuff covering everything). She just went about her business munching on the plants and then walked off into the forest. Such is the life of a dear apparently.

2009 is off to a bang-up start.
Cheers!

After almost 10 days of snow (ending on the day after Christmas), the snow is mostly melted off now. There's still a couple inches on the back deck (down from 12" accumulation). In all I think the total snowfall was around 18" at my place - not much considering some of the surrounding areas got three times what we did. So I'm not complaining... Michele only got her car stuck twice on our own driveway... For next winter I think I am gonna have to check into a snow plow that attaches to my lawn tractor I think, if only just to clear my loooooong driveway.

Finally today I was able to get the BMW out of the garage and on the road again. I cleared enough of the snow and ice off the driveway and the rest has pretty much melted off. There is still some snow around on the ground and on the road up my hill but it's not a problem any more. Feels nice to drive my car for once rather than the big giant truck... However, the truck did very well in the snow for me for the last couple weeks. There were only a couple days I think that it couldn't have coped with the snowfall, but I had tendonitis in my foot and couldn't hardly walk anyway those days. It's been nice to have the snow but after a couple weeks the charm wears off. So many of the stores' shelves are bare around town because people stocked up and new deliveries are backed up or can't get over the pass it seems.

It's been above freezing since before Christmas eve, but not too far. So, the snow is slowly melting - which is good since we don't want to get flooded again like '96 when we had two feet of snow and then a warm heavy rain... Now the winds are supposed to be back. Today the winds were whipping quite a lot, so am not looking forward to the predicted storms for the 30th and the first of the year. Having the power out for a couple hours on Christmas day was kind of a drag. But now I guess if I have to fire up the generator again at least I won't have to trudge through a foot of snow just to get to it. And it could probably use new fuel with Stabil and a tune-up anyway also. Fortunately the power was only out a couple of hours and I didn't have to drag the second gen out to the well house through the snow to power the water pump. We'll see what happens with the weather this week...

The snow finally arrived this morning. We got about 3 1/2 inches from about 4AM to 7AM, then another inch and a half (and still falling) for the rest of the day. It was just a few degrees below freezing, so just perfect for playing in the snow...

and of course Santa had to check the treehouse to make sure there was snow up there too...


(note the snow-covered ladder line to the HF antenna in the foreground...)

All in all, it was a very snowy day...

With the relentless motivation of my father-in-law and his help (well, I helped him actually) the tree house is now actually a box in a tree. We used a pulley and a large truck to hoist each wall up to the platform

and then set it in place and bolted it down and bolted it to the other walls.







(helping with the final wall)

It took us most of the weekend, but it all came off well with no injuries and successful completion.

(Inspector indicates approval)

Now the ball is back in my court to find a way to get some kind of a roof on the thing before it all gets wetted repeatedly this winter. Here are some photos for those of you who can't see it locally. It's 10 feet up a 140 foot Douglas Fir, and YES it does move a bit when the wind blows. The tree is 19" in diameter (bark included) at the 10' level where the floor platform was constructed.

Today we rode the ferry to Bainbridge, for turkey and all the trimmings. Caught a nice glimpse of the cranes on the waterfront docks backlight with the clouds and sun behind them.

nice ride, now we just need to eat some turkey...

Happy Thanksgiving! (gobble gobble)