Last Tuesday morning at a quarter after ten,
the temperature was 39°, on the way up to 56°, bright and sunny, and the front
yard was full of robins. I relayed this
to a cousin who is in a nursing home, and she said, “I don’t see many robins;
mostly black birds.”
Nursing homes should put up more bird
feeders! There were feeders at Prairie
Meadows, where my brother Loren was, and also at Brookestone, where my sister
Lura Kay was. Most people enjoy watching
the birds; and if squirrels come along, all the better! 😅
We have three kinds of black birds out
here in the country: Common grackles
(above), European starlings, and Red-winged blackbirds. In town, they have Brewer’s blackbirds, and
sometimes crows.
I did a bit of housecleaning, refilled the
bird feeders, paid the bills, and then headed upstairs to my quilting
studio.
Someone I know likes to chat with AI
‘characters’. I asked her, “What happens if
you tell it to do things it cannot do? ‘Bring the car around, please.’
Or argue with it? You know, such as informing it that it’s wrong about
most anything it happens to say.”
I’ve done that with Windows Copilot
and its forerunner, Cortana. Copilot just quietly subsides. No fun
at all. Cortana used to say a variety of cheeky things. “I’ll get
right on that, and then I may or may not let you know what I find.” To my
car request, Cortana responded, “I’ll push it off the three-story car garage
straight away.”
I suppose unhumorous consumers
protested, and caused the programmers of Copilot to make it bland and
boring, though it does have a lot more info at its figmental
fingertips.
That day started a week of extreme
weather across the United States. At
4:30 p.m., I saw that one to two feet of snow was expected in the Cascades. Tornado watches were issued for a good part
of Illinois. 1.5” hail was expected in
Abilene.
Fifteen minutes later, the storms in Illinois
were towering at 50,000 feet tall! Though this did not bode well, and I
don’t want to see people hurt or their property ruined, I nevertheless like
watching and listening to the weather. It reminds me of standing in the
open garage door under the front eave of our house with my father, holding his
hand, watching big storm clouds rolling in.
I pulled up a live stream of Ryan Hall, Y’all on YouTube, and got on
with the listening and watching.
Here’s a big, ugly, menacing, rotating cloud,
directly in front of some storm chasers near Pontiac, Illinois. Several of them were chasing the same
storm – in fact, there were more than a hundred storm chasers on it, sometimes
creating dangerous bottlenecks for each other.
That funnel cloud turned into a bad tornado
that devastated Kankakee, Illinois.
Someone posted a picture of one of many
destructive, spiky 5” hailstones that broke all previous records – and then
that record was promptly shattered when someone found one that was even
bigger: A massive 6.14-inch-diameter hailstone was recovered in
Kankakee, Illinois, on March 10, 2026, and is the new state record. Found by the Denault family and verified by
researchers from Northern Illinois University, it breaks the previous 4.75-inch
record from 2015. Unofficial reports
suggested even larger stones, with some estimated at up to 8 inches in
diameter. At least two of the storm chasers had their
windshields destroyed.
Around 7:10 p.m., a wedge tornado went
through Kankakee, south of Chicago. There were tornadoes all over the
place, stretching all the way from Indiana clear down into Texas on the Mexico
border.
While all this was happening, I went on
sewing. At 9:15 p.m., I trotted
downstairs and got myself a cup of blueberry tea. Back upstairs, I sipped tea, sewed, sipped
tea, sewed... When the tea was gone, I
shut everything down and quit for the night.
Wednesday morning a little after nine, I walked into my
laundry room, where the patio door leads onto the back deck, preparing to
rehang the bird feeders – and discovered a couple of inches of snow out there. It was 33°, heading up to 47°. The sun was shining, and snow was melting off
the roof; so I was dodging between drips as I went in and out the door.
Soon I was heading for my sewing room
to see how much I could get done before our evening church service that night.
That
afternoon, Victoria sent an ultrasound picture of Baby #5. It’s amazing how detailed ultrasounds are
these days, even when an unborn baby is only about 1 ½ pounds.
“Awww...”
I wrote back, “a pretty little mouth shaped like Carolyn’s.”
“Yes!”
exclaimed Victoria, “I thought so, too!”
I looked
at that dear little face that we hope to greet in a few months, and thought how
very horrible it is that so many people think nothing of murdering unborn
babies. Horrible, horrible! What a way to bring down the wrath of
God! There’s not a soul alive who
doesn’t know that’s absolutely wrong.
Anyone who says otherwise is just plain dishonest.
After church that evening, we picked up sandwiches
from Subway. Yummy! It’s been quite a while since we had Subway
sandwiches.
Thursday
at midmorning, it was 40°, on the way up to 67° – and we were issued a
high-wind warning that would take effect at 7:00 p.m. and last until 3:00 a.m.
Friday, with winds up to 60 mph expected. From noon ’til 9:00 p.m., there was a red-flag
warning for fire danger.
After he
got out of school, Hannah brought Levi to put a new bass string in my
piano. Unfortunately, the string he
ordered was the wrong size; he’ll have to try again.
Did you know that a standard modern
piano has 88 keys (52 white and 36 black) – but Bösendorfer grand
pianos have 97 or even 108 keys?
Despite the wrong string size, Hannah
and I had a nice visit, complete with tea (Bentley’s blueberry for Hannah;
Thompson’s black for me); while Levi had blueberry lemonade Celsius.
That evening, Hannah sent pictures from my
niece Christine’s property, where she often goes with her dogs to take walks. “There is a beaver in the lake, and a heron
in the sky,” she wrote.
The structure on the right is the shelter
where we have our Fourth-of-July picnics.
It was chilly Friday morning when I went out
to rehang the bird feeders – just 36°.
Lately, the grackles and the red-winged blackbirds have been hitting the
feeders in droves, going through black-oil sunflower seeds like it’s hot soup.
I ate breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and headed
back upstairs to my quilting studio.
That
afternoon, a lady on Facebook told about seeing so many bluebirds in a fruit
tree, the tree looked blue.
We saw a
bush like that once when I was about 13, traveling with my parents in Florida. The bush seemed to be covered with blue
blossoms, and they were all swaying in the wind – except there was no wind. We stepped closer, the better to look at those
flowers – and they all flew away, in a cloud of blue with a slight flash of
purple! That bush had been covered with
Great purple hairstreak butterflies. We had
never seen them before.
That afternoon, I began hearing about wildfires
in Nebraska. The largest ones are to our
west, while some smaller ones are to the north.
The governor declared an emergency and mobilized the National Guard.
For supper that evening, we had a chef salad,
with eggs and chopped pork pieces and crackers, along with yogurt and
cran-cherry juice.
At 7:30 p.m., a helicopter went over quite low,
which is unusual here. It had barely
crossed over the house before I smelled the jet fuel. Ugh, my whole quilting studio reeked with the
odor!
The helicopter was probably checking on the
prairie fires.
I finished the ninth Star Crossed block and
got the tenth partly done before quitting for the night.
I sat down in my recliner, looked at the news – and saw that one of the prairie fires had crossed the canal near Gothenburg. In the video, you can see a pivot putting water on a field, hopefully protecting it from the fire.
I posted this photo of American
goldfinches on one of the nyjer seed feeders.
A lady asked, “American? How do you know?”
“They showed me their
passports,” I answered.
I intended to post a
picture of a European goldfinch (below) to show her the difference, but I got
distracted and forgot. Fortunately, I
have helpful friends who posted links to pages with various types of
finches. We have 17 different finches,
here in North America.
Here’s a note someone
posted on a YouTube weather channel: “Ugh! After 22
hours my electricity just came back on because of wind!”
How ’bout that. The wind caused the electricity to come back
on!
Grammar, she is a
dyin’ ember.
Or maybe I’m judging
her wrongly, and her electricity is generated by a wind turbine that idled down
to a standstill on account of 22 hours of windlessness, and then finally got
enough wind to take off again. 😏
Nawww, she meant the
wind took out electricity for 22 hours, and it is finally back on.
A friend told of
seeing a nice-looking upright piano in a thrift store, and wondered if she should’ve
bought it. The next time she saw it,
there was a ‘Sold’ sign on it.
My opinion: Always assume Laurel and Hardy brought any
used piano to a thrift shop, or that they were the direct cause of it actually being there. For reference, see The
Music Box.
Some rain and snow was expected in some of
the areas where there are fires; but the trouble was, so were high winds up to
70 mph. Winds downing power lines sparked the largest of the fires.
Another was from embers from a prescribed burn. Foolish, to have a
prescribed burn in bone-dry areas where the winds were expected to pick up like
they did. Some said the wind was ‘unexpected’, but that’s not true. It was forecast in various weather apps and
on the radio.
That evening, it was reported that someone in
the little town of Arthur had been killed trying to flee the Morrill Fire. Today, they released her identity: Rose Mary White, age 86. She was a mother of four, a grandmother of
six, and a great-grandmother of 12. Such
sad news.
When I stopped sewing
that evening, I had 11 blocks done.
Five more to go, and then I’ll begin the sashing.
Sunday morning as I
blow-dried and curled my hair, getting ready for church, I sipped
Gingerbread/Vanilla/Red Velvet cold-brew coffee and listened to the wind
howling. It was 29° at 7:00 a.m., with a
windchill of -6°. It would continue to
get colder until Monday morning. The
wind was blowing at 42 mph, and would get up to 60 mph in the afternoon. We got a bit of ice and snow, too. There were snow squall warnings here and
there.
What would my nicely coiffed hair look
like by the time I got to church?!
More hairspray, please.
A friend was trying to transfer
her phone number and data to her new Galaxy Z Fold7 and have it added to her
son’s account. The staff at the phone company
didn’t seem to know how to do it. The
son eventually explained the process, and the task was accomplished
successfully.
The story brought back memories of
when I couldn’t get Loren’s phone lines set up properly for him, first
because he was not an ‘authorized user’ (and they wouldn’t
tell me who the authorized user was, and neither Norma’s nor Janice’s
credentials worked, and emailing them both women’s death certificates, as
requested, had no effect whatsoever); and second, because I was not an ‘authorized
user’. Then they couldn’t get it through their thick heads that I, as his
Power of Attorney, had the authority to close his Verizon account, in order to
add his phone to our plan, seemingly the only workable option. They
demanded that we bring him in and have him sign the papers. They were not
amused when I asked if they ran into troubles when they had to exhume people in
order to close accounts.
After speaking with a variety of ‘upper
management’ who refused to be helpful, Larry took Loren in and had him sign the
papers.
I told one of the managers I talked to
on the phone, “You could get in quite a lot of trouble, forcing a person with
known dementia to sign papers. Verizon employees need to take some
informative classes to learn what ‘Power of Attorney’ means.”
What I said was so... mild, in
comparison to how I felt. I wanted to tie his ears behind his head. In a Constrictor Knot.
I should’ve created a Big Stink about
it, in order to help all those who come after and run into the same brick
wall. But I had too much to do, and was soooo sick and tired of their
baloney.
Once upon a time when I was wee
little, my father came home from somewhere or other, announcing that he had ‘run
into a brick wall’. I’ll bet my eyes were as big as saucers. I
thought Daddy was a good driver! When I thought nobody
was looking [though I don’t imagine my mother missed a cue], I sneaked over to
the garage door, opened it quietly, and peered out at our nice car.
??? It didn’t look like it had been run into a brick
wall! ???
When the snow stopped yesterday evening,
I suppose we had about a quarter to half an inch of snow on top of a dab of
ice. Hard to tell, with a 60-mph wind blowing it all into Texas.
As we headed to our evening church
service at 6:15 p.m. last night, it was 22° and felt like -14°. After the service, we picked up
groceries from Walmart. By then it was 15°,
and still very windy. I felt like a
drunken sailor, trying to carry groceries in from the Mercedes.
At 10:30 p.m., it was 11° and felt like
-32°, what with the wind blowing at 44 mph.
Weather.com said the wind was Force: 6 – a ‘Strong Breeze’.
A couple of weeks ago, Caleb and Maria’s
Great Pyrenees, Marley, somehow found his way out the front door of the garage,
avoiding the underground perimeter that works with his collar. He made his way a couple of blocks to the
west – and got hit and killed on the road.
Eva, who hardly ever cries, cried. Caleb decided they’d better get those little
girls of his a puppy – so they got an Anatolian shepherd puppy from Teddy and
Amy.
I looked at the weather at a quarter ’til
eleven this morning – and saw that there hadn’t been a letup of bad
weather. There were tornadoes in
Maryland and Vermont right that minute.
The fires continue in Nebraska despite the snow, which was too scant, with
the winds making them all the worse.
The temperature had made it up to 14° from a
low of 7°. The windchill was ‘only’ 2°
below 0, since the wind had ‘calmed down’ to 28 mph. That’s Force: 5 (Fresh Breeze). 🙄
My friend who got the new Fold7 smartphone
sent me a text:
“I’m typing from my new smarter-than-me
phone with every available ‘correction’ option turned on. I may have to turn some off. I apparently can’t string three words together
in a manner that satisfies Mr. Fold. It
took me 27 minutes to type this message, including the time I spent debating
with the phone just how I would say what I wished to say. I won; but the phone’s not happy.”
It’s 10:45 p.m. now, and I just checked on
the Nebraska fires at the Western Fire Chiefs Association live webpage. {These numbers have not been updated since
afternoon, so they are low, as the fires have grown since then.} The size of the Morrill Fire northwest of Lake
McConaughy (‘Big Mac’) is 572,084 acres, and it’s 18% contained. The size of the Cottonwood Fire between North
Platte and Lexington is 131,259 acres, and it’s 40% contained. The size of the Road 203 Fire near Halsey
(Nebraska National Forest) is 35,386 acres, and it’s 36% contained. The size of the Anderson Bridge Fire west of
Valentine is 17,400 acres, and it’s 60% contained. That makes a total of 756,129 acres that have
burned.
The majority of fire personnel in rural
Nebraska are volunteer. Crews have come from Colorado, South Dakota, Utah,
and Wyoming to help. The Utah crews were
stymied for hours on account of blizzard conditions shutting down the roads in Wyoming.
Here’s a video of an airplane helping fight
the fires.
The photo below was taken one mile
south of the Ponderosa Wildlife Management Area near Crawford. The fire
crossed the road like it wasn’t even there.
I was so engrossed in weather and fire, it
was 4:30 p.m. before I finally remembered to start a load of clothes.
Oh, and earthquakes! There was another earthquake to our south. This one was smaller than the one a couple of
weeks earlier. The U.S. Geological
Survey reported a 2.5 magnitude earthquake at 7:15 a.m. on Thursday, March 12,
located about three miles east-southeast of Cowles in Webster County.
This makes the fourth earthquake to
strike the area in the last month. The
largest was an M4.1 quake that hit on March 1 at 12:59 p.m. A notable M2.6
aftershock followed around 2:30 p.m., with a third M2.6 tremor around 8:45 p.m.
that evening.
Residents near the quake reported the
shaking was noticeable, though damage was minor, with nothing more serious than
pictures being knocked off the wall.
When I walked into the laundry room, I
saw over
a dozen male red-winged blackbirds at the feeders on the deck.
All the clothes are done now, folded and put
away. Time for bed!
P.S.:
One more thing: The Upper
Peninsula of Michigan got nearly three feet of snow.
,,,>^..^<,,, Sarah Lynn ,,,>^..^<,,,
