Traipsing Through a Winter Wonderland

Well, it will definitely be a white Christmas here in Minot, and you know what? It’s not the Bi(n)g deal it’s cracked up to be. Has something with the forecast high being minus 5.

I have heard of minus 5, but have never experienced it firsthand. Honestly, I’d be OK if I never did, but thanks to the Mayans being horribly wrong, that appears to be unavoidable now.

Fortunately, I have a giant pumpkin suit on loan that has helped me fight the cold.

This thing is warm. It’s a RefrigWear and is highway safety orange, complete with reflective stripes. I mean, there is NO missing me in this. (Though I do blend, because we have several of these at work and these days, we’re all wearing them.)

I think it’s rated to something like 55 below zero, but I’m OK with not testing that theory. However, it’s really so warm I’ve been looking for excuses to pull it on and then go traipsing down the street. I even shoveled something like a quarter inch of now just to test them again.

The outfit is in two parts, but so far I’ve just been wearing the pants. They look like firemen pants; they have a high bib and little overall-like things. (I’m sure there’s a word for these, but I’ve no clue.) It zips and buttons up the front. The pants also unbutton/zip to the knees, too, so you can wear cool LL Bean boots with them. (I shudder to think of how much I’ve ordered from LL Bean since I’ve been here. This includes today’s order, which I hope to be my last.)

The thing is bulky as hell, but it’s warm so who cares. I love the thing. So far, though, the pants have been enough; I wear them and then my LL Bean coat (in addition to the boots – either pair), which has a hat.

We at Hope Village got a donation from an oil company, Baker Hughes, for these things for volunteers to wear while they’re working outside and fixing houses. Since at the moment, we don’t really have any volunteers in, we’ve put them to use otherwise.

The little tag bills itself as “Visibility Safety Warmth” and there is no doubt why “visibility” is listed first. Stand next to a fresh snowdrift and the thing throws off an orange glow.

I’ve been walking to work, and since it turned bitterly cold (this is the Weather Channel’s description) this week, I pulled on those suckers – no easy feat – and hiked.

It’s fabulous. If anything, I’m sweating by the time I get there. I’m not sure I’ll feel the same once the wind gets here, but for now I am greatly amusing myself (as well as others, let’s be honest) by wearing the things.

The only thing I haven’t figured out yet is the same issue I had in Detroit. I can’t cover my nose with a goiter or scarf without fogging up my glasses. That’s a problem. But for now, the cold just isn’t a huge one right now.

I made it to the winter solstice, so even though I recognize it’s going to get horribly bitter, the days are at least getting longer. However, I am going to be wearing that pumpkin suit as long as I can.

Thinking Out Loud

It’s maybe 18 degrees outside with lots of snow on the ground. Someone told me this is as bad as it gets and although I don’t believe them, it’d be fantastic if it were true.

I’m still expecting horrible wind, but so far it’s been manageable. Actually, I find it really amusing because all these North Dakotans keep telling me I’ll never make it, but they’re the ones running the car for eight hours a day to keep it warm while they’re at work. I’m still walking to work. It’s as unheard of here as it is in Indonesia.

But I’m sure it will get worse, no matter what I was told today. While researching weather averages in North Dakota, I found that January 9 is traditionally the coldest day of the year.

So, Dec. 21 is the next calendar milestone I am aiming for and that’s coming up quick. After that, there’s Christmas, so next I’m aiming to get through Jan. 9. Hopefully, it will be downhill from then on out.

This week was my six-month mark, too. So technically, I’m halfway done. BUT … there’s a new plan. It might not happen, but I’ve requested to extend for four months.

That would put me here until Oct. 15, 2013. Our big building season would end at the end of September and two more weeks would, first of all, round it off to four months, but second, allow me to wind this thing down.

Realistically, we could finish our rebuild project next year, so it might enable me to really ride out the whole thing.

The reason I’m considering this is because I have re-qualified to take the foreign service oral assessment again. I’m hoping to take it in May (I think you have to wait a year between takes). Before last week, I thought if you took it again and got a higher score, it replaced your old score but you didn’t gain any time on the register. But I learned that it’s a whole new candidacy.

If I passed, I would get 18 more months to get offered this job, which would mean I’d have no problem finishing out here.

If I didn’t pass, well, I still wouldn’t get an offer until July or September anyway (I’m still on the register with my low score.)

So there are a lot of things to consider. Nothing is definite, but I did officially request an extension and asked my supervisor to do the same thing. I figure it’ll be stronger if it comes independently from both of us.

My supervisor wants me to stay on anyway. It would just be more convenient if we could just continue on the same path. And honestly, it seems like a decent compromise because we were supposed to get two volunteers and wound up with just one. I’m not sure that AC will see it that way, though.

This weekend has been a little more exciting than last, just in that I went to a Christmas party. Nothing huge, just a little get-together with the same old people. I have a small but special social circle. And they’re good cooks.

Food … For the last two weeks, I’ve been eating salmon left from HostFest. I finally finished that and am now starting on leftover Salisbury steaks. Quite honestly, it might be February before I need to buy meat. I’d love to make some chicken soup, but I just have too many meatballs, S steaks and ribs to even consider buying new stuff. And that doesn’t even count the fish sticks – I forgot I had those.

Really, I have barely bought much food. Milk, yes, but real food – no. I even have donated tea. Someone brought a ton of tea bags that make a gallon at once. It’s a ton.

I am on the Key lime pies, though. The Marie Callendar ones are fabulous, but Edwards are pretty good too. Nothing’s the total real stuff, but it’s darn good.

I’m trying to avoid retail outlets before Christmas but I did walk over to Walmart this afternoon. All I did was drop off a bag of bags for recycling, but I dropped them off at one entrance, walked through the store and walked out the entrance closer to my house.

Holy cow. People are nuts. The 20-items-or-less [sic] line was stretched to the pharmacy.

I want to stay so very far away. However, it’s tempting to not get caught up in it. I haven’t been in the country for what, four of the last five Christmases? So this is kind of cool.

And then yesterday, I got a free-and-clear $10 gift card from Eddie Bauer. I don’t need anything, really, but I could use some socks. The gift card expires the 20^th, so it would require me to go to a mall before Christmas. I’m just not sure I am capable of doing that.

Happy to Be Home

Ah, my first post-fund-raiser weekend and I pretty much had the house to myself.

No big plans, but I did intend to get up and go to a Christmas party. However, it snowed Friday night – I really need to pay more attention to the weather reports – and the roads were slick on Saturday.

Now, I lived in Detroit for 11 years. I do know how to drive in the snow, but then, I had a 4x4 truck and now, not so much. My little front-wheel drive Corolla has already skidded twice and it just freaks me out  a little bit.

I did intend to head out there, but the place was about as far as it could be from where I live. I left and stopped off at Walmart on the way for a few groceries and skidded on the way out, so that was all she wrote. I drove back home and just holed up. I had a Mad Men disk so I watched that and then some serious Monk-a-thon took place.

 

And I’m pretty glad it turned out that way, because I found out later that someone caromed into a house in my trailerhood.

This little neighborhood, which really does have some nice trailers, runs along a main road. It doesn’t back up to it; there is a big field there that has wheat in the summer. And the roads inside are pretty curvy but very neighborly.

Well, apparently on Saturday, a truck – not a semi or anything, just a regular work truck – somehow lost control on that main big road, took out a streetlight, headed straight over the plowed-under wheat field and into a house.

Here are the photos from the daily:

http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/571481/Pickup-truck-smashes-into-residence.html
 
http://www.minotdailynews.com/page/content.detail/id/571482/Pickup-truck-smashes-into-residence.html

Sorry I missed that. I guess the fire fighters came out, but I certainly heard none of it. And I am really, really glad I was not on the roads.

I really didn't do much over the weekend except take another FEMA class online and then write a news release, in which I am attempting to somehow parlay my fund-raiser into a little more.

Not that I'm unhappy with it -- it's surpassed my wildest dreams. I just came out of such odd circumstances I'd like to pitch the story elsewhere and see if I can get some more media attention on disaster recovery here.

So we'll see what this week brings, momentum-wise. I had the TV station here for one photo opp earlier and I've still got more on those burners.

Since it's so freaking dark out so early, I'm trying to knock off earlier (by that I mean about 5:30 p.m. or so). I am still trying to walk to work when I can, but it's now cold, dark and icy and that's just not a hat trick I want to deal with.

But it's much nicer to be "home" than it has been in awhile.

My little home really is a trailer, but it’s about a triple-wide and is nice. The bedroom, honestly, is about twice the size of the RV.

And I've splurged on Netflix for the six months I'm in the little house.

I don’t miss the RV.

Hard to believe, isn't it?

Thump, thump, thump

That’s the sound of me patting myself on the back

It doesn’t happen often (as in, never before), but my fund-raiser is essentially over and I’ve pretty much surpassed anything I could have imagined.

Considering we had about a 30-day span (I’m still taking money if it is clearly earmarked toward the campaign, but the deadline was Nov. 30.) and we decided to do a mailing campaign at the 11^th hour (stuck in the mail on Nov. 19), it went very well.

Plus, my automatic match came through, so that immediately put us at the minimum we’d hoped to raise, which was $100k.

Essentially, my Zac Brown Band auction winner ponied up a total of $75k, and the Minot Area Community Foundation kicked in $50k.

But the rest of it – the part where I did all this work to raise money – netted $40,000. Well, $40,028. I’m thrilled.

So now I have to figure out whether or not to have another news conference to present the checks to the other entities (we were splitting it 45-45-10, with us getting 10).

And I have to pump out a lot more copy regarding it still and I am way behind on the newsletter.

Essentially, this thing has sucked away my November and it’s still going. Which is OK, because it’s cold outside and I need something to distract me from the weather.

I'm just really glad it's almost over and been an amazing success. It's a lot of money toward flood recovery, which is awesome.

At some point, maybe I'll get back to normal, but I'm really not sure what that is.

This week has been cool because my roommate is gone and I have the house to myself. Not that I'm throwing parties or anything, but it's just been a good week to decompress after the whole frantic pace of November.