Dusting of Snow

We had a very light dusting of snow last night. It was so light, you could not see it in the grass, only visible on bare ground. It lasted about an hour after the sun came up.

Dam Might Burst

Below is an article from the WBKO-TV web site in Bowling Green...

Dam at Lake Cumberland Leaking ©

The Army Corps of Engineers has discovered a leak beneath Wolf Creek Dam in Russell County. The dam holds up Kentucky's largest lake and could wipe out Burkesville's entire community if it breaks. Engineers say there's only a 15% chance of that happening, but some local residents are taking action to be prepared if it does. "We're in the process of applying for grants for a warning system." Emergency Management teams and fire officials are forming an evacuation and notification plan. They say water would reach the town in three hours, and cover the community in 48 hours. The dam needs work totaling $300 million. Congress will have to approve funding for repairs.
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Below is an excerpt of an article from the Times Journal newspaper in Russell County.

WORST-CASE SCENARIO ©

As part of their preparations for handling any events as the results of the seepage, the COE has been preparing for emergency notification, and what to expect, should a catastrophic failure suddenly happen in the dam.

Zaccola told the gathering that computer simulations were being created to study what the effect would be should the dam suddenly burst. The computer models were run to estimate how long it would take water to rise and how much land it would cover, giving authorities a planning process to prepare emergency notification procedures and where they would need to take place.

The model shown at the meeting was based on the sudden - and almost impossible - failure of a 200-foot wide section of the dam. The model was created with three levels of the lake, which would show the effects if the breech were to occur during an abnormally very high lake level, a mid-level, and a very low lake level as it currently is.

Using the worst-case of a very high lake level, Zaccola described how the water would quickly rise in the river below the dam with a 200-foot-wide breech. The river around Creelsboro, about 8 miles from the dam, would begin to rise about 7 feet per hour, and would be noticeable in the first hour. Within a few hours, it would begin to cover the entire river valley, and would reach its peak in about 29 hours. By then, the depth around Creelsboro would be about half that of the lake itself. It would take about 15 days to recede.

Downstream, the city of Burkesville would begin to see waters rise in 3 hours. The city would be deeply underwater in 12 hours. The peak there would occur about 1.8 days after the breech opened.

Cold Weather Is Here

Sunday there was not much on TV, it was too cold to work on anything outside, so we decided to go to Campbellsville for a shopping trip. We went in the Mustang and ate at Arby's as soon as we got to the town. After that we hit up Big Lots, Peddlers Mall, Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart and a few other shops before we headed on back home.
Linda has worked the first three days of this week at the school, Stacey and I have went to Burkesville and rented DVDs and mailed our Christmas Cards.
We have been keeping a fire burning in the stove and the house has been around 78 degrees until the fire dies out when we go to bed. Then the heat pump kicks on and keeps the house at 74 degrees the rest of the time. I think burning wood will save us money on the electric bill, but most of all, it feels really warm and comfortable. Wood heat feels the best of any heat, IMO. Of course, it is a lot of work, cutting, splitting, and hauling the wood to the back porch, stacking it and then carrying it inside, but I enjoy that work. I have to keep the trees picked up that fall into the fields anyway, so we might as well burn them for heat and get some benefit from the work.
Linda has been busy with Christmas decorations. Once again we have several Christmas Trees and other decorations through out the house. She has used the Mule to transport many boxes from the 'little house' to the garage, where she sorts the items and gets them ready to display.
"It's begining to look a lot like Christmas" around here.

Shopping in Nashville

We had planned to pickup Pauline and Brent and go shopping in Nashville, TN on Thursday. But the weather reports were threatening our area with rain, sleet and snow so we stayed in Burkesville and only went to eat at Pizza Hut. We received some rain and that was it, no sleet, no snow.
Friday was a clear day and about 9:30 Brent contacted us on Skype and they wanted to go, so we took showers, and headed over to their place to pick them up. It was a slower start than I would have liked, but we went anyway. We made it to their place and left for Nashville a little after noon. We went about 5 miles and everyone wanted a sandwich for the ride to Nashville. We picked up some Jr Bacon Cheeseburgers in Smith's Grove and hit I-65 South headed to Tennessee. After about 75 minutes we were in some heavy traffic as 3 Interstate Highways converge in the center of Nashville. We went through town and headed south to Coolsprings. It is a suburb on the south side of Nashville. Coolsprings Galleria is a double decker mall located there with lots of others shopping areas around it too. We made a lap around the lower level, then came up stairs and made a lap around the upper level. By then the sun was almost ready to set and we decided to eat in the food court before driving to 100 Oaks Mall. With several places there to eat, each person was able to choose their own type of food. After eating we loaded into the truck and headed on over to 100 Oaks. I hadn't been in Nashville in 2 or 3 years, so I had forgot the exit number for the mall, it was dark, and I exited one exit too early. I used a side road and we drove about 3 blocks to the mall. The girls went inside a Michael's store, while Brent and I went to CompUSA to look at computer stuff. After we were done there, we headed north to the Rivergate Mall. Once again, I exited too soon and I thought we could just take the side roads and find the mall, but we ended up in a sub-division that was full of dead end roads. Brent was saying there are a lot of city lights over that way, but we couldn't get to them. At one point we pulled up on this cul-de-sac near the top of a hill and could look over about a quarter of a mile and see the mall, but we couldn't get there...arghhhhhhhh! I finally fiqured out an alternate route and we were on our way up a main road to the parking lot. The detour probably took an extra 5 minutes, nothing big, but it was funny and we were all laughing and having fun. We parked and went inside at the food court. We got brownies and cookies for desert and started our lap of the mall. We stopped and dropped and shopped some more. It was a little after 9 PM when we loaded back into the truck for the ride home. We dropped off Pauline and Brent at their house, picked up Missy and rode the parkway home, arriving after midnight.

Another Shopping Trip to Sommerset

Since things are at a standstill outside, we took a trip to Somerset to add to our Christmas bounty. We left home and headed to Burkesville for a gas fill up then east towards Albany on KY 90. We noticed a new developement along the road, which Linda thought was probably the spot for the new YMCA that was proposed last year. We bypassed Monticello and continued towards Somerset. We entered town from the south on US 27 and made our way to the mall. It is a small mall and didn't take us long to circle the entire place. We left there and decided to eat at Bob Evans. The meals were good and when we finished we drove farther north to Goody's, where Linda and Stacey like to buy clothes. I dropped them off in front of Wal-Mart and waited in the truck for them to return some pants and come right back out. That took longer than expected, but when they returned, we went to Jay's place and then to Big Lots. We entered the ramp for the ride towards home about dark and on the way we stopped in Russell Springs for a trip to K-Mart and Kroger. We loaded the groceries into the back of the pickup and then gobbled down some McRib sandwiches before trucking home where we found the ducks waiting at the garage door. We hit the button on the door opener and the ducks rushed into their cage while we unloaded the groceries.

School Work

Cold and rainy weather has kept us inside. Linda received a call from the Assistant Principal at Cumberland County Elementary and she asked us to come to the school and assemble some carts for them. So we went to Subway for lunch and then stopped at the school. Carolynn was in the lunch room and we went there to find out where the carts were and where we should assemble them. She told us and we headed there and started work. There were six carts they wanted put together. I opened the first one and looked at the instructions for a couple of minutes. They were going to be easy, because the only tool needed was a flat blade screwdriver. I shoved the four legs onto the top, turned it upside down and added another shelf, then four more legs and the bottom shelf. I popped in the wheels, and routed the cord for the power strip, screwed the plate on that held the strip and Linda added the warning decal. Stacey was opening the next package as we finished. We worked like that for about an hour, and all six carts were done. Carolynn said we were fast and we could put the projectors on the carts too, if we had time. So we opened the six boxes the projectors were in and plugged the cords into the power strips on the cart, hooked in the monitor cables and laid the carrying pack on the bottom of the carts. We were finished. The school was having a fire drill, so we couldn't leave for a few minutes because the children were outside and we didn't want to drive off with all the kids around. So we decided to try one of the projectors. I hooked it to a PC setting there with the monitor already on. It was just hooking up the monitor cable for the projector and turning it on. The projector displayed the image on the wall that was normally on the monitor. It looked great, and I told Carolynn that she could also use them with VCRs or DVD players to show movies too. After the fire drill was over, we un-hooked the projector and headed on home.

Brent's Swim Coach and Wife Visit the Farm

Brent came over to the farm Friday evening and stayed the weekend. We didn't have much planned for Saturday. We ate lunch at Hamilton's in Burkesville and came home and fed the dogs our leftovers. Then we took them for a walk past the pond and around the hill to the back of the hay shed. We moved a couple of the 4-wheelers and Linda brought the Mule out. We rode it over to the fire pit and Brent started a fire to burn the limbs that had fell. We also cleaned out the cardboard boxes that were in the smokehouse. The fire burnt slow enough that I wasn't worried much, but a few times Brent had to beat out the burning embers floating around the yard. It was still burning at dark when we went into the house.
Sunday morning we walked the dogs around again, and watched the Colt's game on the big screen TV and played a few games of pool while watching. Later, near evening, Brent's college swim coach, Bill Powell and wife, Joey, came over to visit. Bill had coached at WKU when Brent was on the swim team and had gave Brent summer jobs teaching swimming lessons in the off seasons. Coach Powell still uses Brent to score the swim meets on the computer for some of the outside meets or high school events. They have had a good relationship with Brent since he first met them his freshman year. Brent took them for a short tour around the farm and then brought them in for some BBQ sandwiches and pie. After we finished those, we gave them a quick tour of the house and we talked while pictures flashed on the big screen of things around the farm and people that had been here. We could tell they were friends with Brent as they knew a lot of things about him and he knew some of their stories too. It was good to hear Joey and Coach Powell say nice things about Brent and we thanked them for helping Brent out during his college days. They left about 7:30 and followed Brent to the parkway for their trip back to Bowling Green.

Krafty Kritters Homemaker's Club Christmas Party

We had been getting ready for a Krafty Kritters Homemaker's Christmas Party for a couple of weeks. Well, today was the party day, and women started dropping off stuff at 11 AM. Linda was busy all day fixing a ham and several other dishes for the 'pitch in' dinner. Stacey was helping and I joined in to help too. The women started arriving for the party a little after 5 PM and everyone was here before 6 PM. There were two husbands that came along for the dinner, so I didn't feel alone. I took group pictures of the women the first thing, then we started the dinner. The 18 people that attended the party were the most people we ever had eat at our house at one time. They ate and then began passing out their Secret Pal gifts while all the time chatting about who had each others name. There were lots of giggles and smiles while they were opening their gifts and sharing stories about how they had hidden their idenities for the entire year from their Secret Pal. After the gift exchange, everyone moved back to the table and played Bingo for small gifts. The first to Bingo chose a gift from several setting on a counter by the table. The girls were hooting and hollering as their numbers were called. Everyone won a game eventually and as the competition came closer to an end, the winners of multiple games were sharing their winnings with some of the less fortunate players. The Krafty Kritters also donated items for a family near Burkesville that lost their home to a fire. It seemed that all the women had a nice time and as they were leaving there was still a lot of laughing going on. The party was over a little before 10 PM.

Click on the picture to see a larger version. In the front row left to right, Regina Jones, Elaine Brown, Hanna McClain. Standing in the back row, Bonnie Holley, Stephani McClain holding her baby Jackson, Betty McIntyre , Linda Norris, Joan Konsavage. Marita Holley, Dean McCool, Rose Anderson, Eva Young, Edith Lovett, Stacey Norris. Others attending but not pictured were Stan Holley and Vince Konsavage.

Shopping in Bowling Green

We left for Bowling Green to do some last minute shopping for Christmas. Linda had talked to Pauline and we drove past there to drop off Stacey. She was staying all night with Pauline and Brent. We then headed into Bowling Green. Our first stops were at Granny's Attic and the Clothes Lion, then to Big Lots and on to Target and then the mall. After that we made a trip to K-Mart and when we were done there, we stopped to eat at Applebees. We ordered and were setting there talking, when a guy asked us if we were waiting on another couple. I said no, we were alone tonight. He talked for a short time, then Linda and I noticed he was the manager. He stopped back at our table again and we spoke about his son and our daughter. About 10 minutes later, he came to our table and told us we could have free desserts because our meals had taken too long. Hmm, we never complained or anything, so we said thanks. Another 5 minutes and our steak and shrimp dinners were ready. We ended up having a ice cream and brownie dessert to top off the meal. We loaded into the car and headed on home.

Christmas

Pauline and Brent came over Friday evening with their dogs. Brent was ready to start opening gifts as soon as he came it, but we decided to wait until Christmas Eve. Linda had snacks fixed, so we didn't have supper, just ate whatever and watched some TV while talking about Christmas shopping and stuff.
Sunday morning everyone was slow rising and just spent relaxing. A little after 9 we took the dogs on their regular walk around the farm and watched as they ran and played. It was nice outside, over 55 degrees air temperature, so no one was in a hurry to get back inside. Once we went back in, we had ham sandwiches for lunch and then loaded the dogs into the truck along with everyone and took a short ride over to George's Place. Linda and I had heard about it on the radio, and had went there to see what they had to sell. It was an odd ball place, and I wanted Pauline and Brent to see it. Talk about an out of the way place, it is 10 miles from any town, and then about a 1/2 mile off the country road. It is one of those round top buildings, some call a Quonset Hut. As we walked inside, there was stuff piled to the roof everywhere, not one inch of space, and about 100 feet long with an aisle down the middle. Just enough room to walk down the center and smaller aisles going left and right. Thousands of things just stacked eveywhere. We piddled around there for about a half an hour, and then went home. Christmas Eve was long enough to wait to open presents, because P&B were going to see Pauline's parents on Christmas and would be leaving early. Stacey and Brent handed out the gifts and we all began opening our presents. We all seemed to like the presents and after about 50 minutes we were done opening our stuff. We spent the rest of the evening watching movies that Stacey had received for Christmas.
Christmas Day we woke early and helped P&B pack their stuff into the car and gave them hugs and said our good byes before they left for Brownsville.

Merry Christmas to all!

(When I say "Merry Christmas," what I actually mean is: "Have a happy year-end period, regardless of which ancient tradition of marking the winter solstice you have inherited from your ancestral culture, and enjoy your chosen rituals of togetherness and renewal in which our similarities -- not our differences -- are celebrated. I am not assumimg you are a Christian, nor do I hope to convert you to Christianity -- but I still wish you a happy year-end period and confer such blessings upon you as a compassionate heart can offer.")

Manger Figurines as Christmas Gifts

Several days before Christmas we received a box through the mail, with no return address. We opened the box and it was a small manger with no figurines. We wondered what was going on, there was a photocopied page telling of the story of the shelter in Bethlehem. The next day another figurine arrived with another story and they kept arriving each day. During this time Linda had the Krafty Kritters Christmas Party at our house, and she asked if anyone sent those items, and none of the members admitted to sending the manger scene.
On Christmas Eve, the door bell rang, and our neighbors, Vicki and Gary Stommel, were at the front door. We asked them in, and they proceeded to give us the Baby Jesus figurine and explain that it had been them sending the manger scene. We thanked them and told them how confused we were about who would be sending us those. Gary said, he thought we would have figured it out, because he is a minister at a local church. I told them Linda had accused the Homemakers of being the guilty party and how they had acted suspiciously. We discussed their daughter going to college in Texas and her getting to come home for Christmas break, Gary also mentioned to Pauline and Brent that he could 'marry them down by the creek' whenever they were ready. The figurines were a nice gesture and we thanked them again and told them to have a "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year!" as they left.

Earlier tonight, I answered the phone, and it was a couple of my old buddies from IN that I hadn't heard from in a long time. Bruce Corn, aka 'Cob', was on the phone and I talked to him for a few minutes before Chuck Anderson got on the line and started yacking with me. We all had some laughs and filled each other in on what had been going on in our lives.

Cutting Wood

A couple of days ago while Brent and I were riding around the hay fields in the Mule, I spotted a tree that was down. It was on the steep side of the hill but near the bottom of the tree line. I had Linda and Stacey follow me across the creek in the Mule while I was on the tractor. They picked up the chain saw on the way and I went ahead with the tractor and a long chain. I hooked the chain to the bucket of the tractor and wrapped the other end around the tree. I pulled with the tractor and eventually broke the chain. It broke near the end I had hooked to the tractor. Linda came over with the chainsaw, so I took it and started up the side of the hill. It was slow going, as I had to place the saw on the ground and use it to anchor me as I crawled up the hillside. Finally, I made it to the branch of the tree that had wedged against a tree that was still standing. I started the saw and cut the limb off, but the tree would still not move. I used the limb I had cut off to pry against the tree, but no luck. I cut some more off, then crawled back down the hillside. I thought my heart was going to burst after that, but I eventually got my wind back. Then I used the tractor to pull the tree down into the field. This was the largest tree I had ever moved with the tractor, it caused the tractor rear wheels to lift off the ground as I was pulling the tree down the hill side and out in to the hay field. I started the chainsaw again and cut a few pieces of the log and lifted them on to the trailer Linda had brought behind the Mule. The pieces were heavy, as the tree hadn't been down very long, so the wood was still full of moisture. It will take a year to dry out enough to burn good. After filling the trailer with wood, Linda drove back to the hay shed pulling the load of wood while I took the tractor back to the barn. Later I went down and started the log splitter and split the wood into pieces that would fit inside our wood stove. After I finished with the splitter, I went to the house and took a shower. Then I made a fire in the stove and enjoyed a glass of tea. IMO - The warmth from a wood fire just feels better than any other heat.