Update - March 2009

Well, I'm certainly not a good blogger. I think about posting but don't actually get around to it. Here are some random pictures in Calcium.

Here's a picture of the construction to the education/fellowship are of the church when we first arrived in Calcium in October 2007. You can just barely see on the left side of the picture, the edge of the sanctuary part of the building.




Here it is finished (on the outside). This picture was taken in March 2008. This inside was finished a month later.











This is our Mark and me in our garden last summer (August 3). We had radishes, pumpkins, zucchini, and yellow squash.








This is our first snow of the year - October 28th!!! We had a FOOT of snow. My birthday is the 30th and I've never seen snow on my birthday. Everyone in the area said it's very unusual. In 2007, our first snow was not until late November.

Low Rhymes with Cow??

In yesterday's installment we hung clothes in the semi-enclosed porch (the walls are lattice). The jeans have been hanging on lines since yesterday and are still damp/wet. That could be because the high today was 39 degrees and it rained last night! This morning one pair of jeans was a little crunchy at the bottom of the leg from freezing. It didn't get cold enough to freeze them stiff as a board so I'm kind of disappointed with that. Oh, well.

It's only going to be in the upper 30s or lower 40s the rest of the week. The lows at night will be in the mid 20s. Brrrrr!!!! Some areas had snow yesterday. We only had some sleet but not very much. The Buffalo area (about 3 hours away to the south and west) got a couple of inches yesterday and to our south east about 25 or 30 miles they got a little snow last night and probably more today. They are at a slightly higher elevation and apparently get more snow then we do. I guess I'm glad I'm in Calcium and not in Lowville. The "Low" rhymes with "cow". They pronounce things funny around here. But, then, after hearing us speak we are sometimes asked - "You're not from around here are you?" Go figure. I have an accent? I can't hear it. :)

Did you know that Taiwan does not observe daylight savings time? I just figured it out. I have time clocks for Taiwan, Kansas, New York and Kazakhstan on my Google page and Taiwan was 13 hours ahead of NY instead of 12 like it was a couple of weeks ago. I checked on the internet and they don't observe DST. Click here to read about it. That is why you see the Taiwanese clock on my blog. I also thought the temperature in Calcium would be good, too, so you can see how cold I am this winter. And feel sorry for us. :) If you click on the clock or on the temperature you will go to their websites where you can find the html code for your blog or website. Cool, huh? Ahhh, technology.

Have a great day, whether it's today or tomorrow in your part of the world.

In Which Clothes Freeze

Last week for Halloween we had lots of trick or treaters - about 40 I believe. All polite kids and everyone of them had an adult with them - even the 13 and 14 year olds. I was pretty amazed at that. We don't have sidewalks in this neighborhood so that might explain the adults even with older kids.

I'm still looking for a job, but not real hard. I probably should get more in gear, but there's been lots to do even without a job.

We finally got a washer today. Yayyy! No dryer yet but Mark put up a clothes line on an semi-enclosed porch. I think the clothes we hung up late this afternoon will freeze dry! It's supposed to be around freezing tonight and snow is in the forecast. We did have rain off and on today and at one point a bit of sleet. The lady at the post office called it hail and said a woman originally from Kansas who had been in the office earlier in the day told her it was sleet not hail. Mark assured her that is correct and confirmed that hail is BIG and can indeed be the size of golf balls and larger and yes, it is recommended that you park you car inside if it is going to hail! I guess it must not hail around here much. Just lots of snow. I heard someone on the radio say yesterday that it averages 140 inches per year. Sure hope it's a light year. Needless to say with that much snow in an average year I'm looking for jobs in about a 10 mile radius of the house.

Well, that's all the news that is news. Uhh, that's all I can think of right now. Actually there is one more thing -- it's a long story I won't go into right now but there's no gas to the church, so no heat in the building except space heaters. It's anybody's guess as to when it will be restored so we could use some prayers concerning that issue since it's cold here now (low 40s) and we have lots of older people in our congregation. It did warm up to 60 in the building by the time church started but that's not really very warm!