Sending y'all some Arctic air from Birmingham

You're welcome

Damn!  It's COLD up here.  Wind is blowing hard too.

http://www.northescambia.com/2014/11/falling-temps-today-arctic-blast-with-near-record-lows-coming

It could get into the middle teens here tonight.

PLEASE keep the cold air north of Montgomery!!! LOL

...and we're doing it again (Sending cold weather down there.)

It is supposed to go down into the twenties tonight and the teens... maybe single digits... Tuesday night.

I'm going to have to get some more firewood after this cold spell.

-36*F and counting. My brakes didn't want to work this morning and my buddy's electrical system gave him the finger. Vehicles hate the cold. But it makes me glad that I always test my brakes before I start driving when it's cold.

It has been a really warm winter, so I really shouldn't complain about the temperature.

I may want to visit Alaska...Is there a particular week when it's nice ?

TEOTWAWKI wrote:

I may want to visit Alaska...Is there a particular week when it's nice ?

LOL. Yes, we schedule it annually for the 4th week from never.



I've heard Alaskan fables that June, July and August are supposed to be really nice, but aside from the singular day when I was moving and it was 80*F and I thought I was going to die from a heat stroke, it was very cold and wet all three months.

A helpful hint. If you have a pressure washer, freezing them will ruin the pumps. Mine is in the garage up here... and the garage has a space heater in it.

Okay, Ricey.  You win the "Green Weenie" for coldness.  I heard that euphemism one time and thought it was humorous.

Anyway, for us pussies in the lower 48, it is 28 here in Hoover and with a 24 mph North wind, the wind chill feels like it is 11ºF.  The wood stove is singing to me on the 2/3 level of the fan... pumping out glorious HEAT!

I have had occasions when it was cold outside and the wood stove got it so hot, we had to open windows.  If I had only remembered that I had a whole-house attic fan, I could have prevented the overheating we had that night.  It was a belated wedding reception for my youngest son, Nick, and it could have been much cooler, if I had remembered.  What a dummy on my part.

In our first house, we used a small antique, two-plater Birmingham & Banner BS&R Model #18, and it was our central heat system... with no other heater at the house.



We cooked stews and soups on top of that stove, which took only small wood portions.  At night, I would load it up with coal, so it would stay hot all night while we slept.  The stove and half of the stove pipe going to the triple-stack at the ceiling, would glow red hot with that coal in it.  What a stove!

You gotta remember, we were newlyweds and poor.  The 672 sq. ft. house (later enlarged) only cost us $5,000 because we helped tear down houses after hurricane Frederic for scrounged materials, dug footings, framed, trimmed, roofed/shingled, sheetrocked... all but plumbing & electrical... we did the labor.

Anyway, that stove kept us warm in our cozy little first home.

My dad designed that house and made the cabinets for us. It had a kitchen, dinette/open greatroom layout, a bathroom with a skylight, a bedroom and a huge walk-in closet with a Washer, Dryer, and Hot Water Heater, right next to where we hung our clothes. It was uber convenient... we could wash, dry, and hang up our clothes in one room. No toting stuff anywhere.

The greatroom was sufficient for us to be able to host a wedding reception there for dear friends (fellow poor souls), and we had plenty of room. (As I recall, I was one of few that didn't meet Ralph's Buick that night. There were two cases of champagne.) A great time was had by all, for what little they remember.

Great story!

Thanks.  My dad had a great life, flying biplanes off Pensacola Bay in the Mid 30's for the Navy, flying Howard Hughes, looking for Amelia Earhart, inventing the fork-lift high-dry marina (they're all over the world now), and a builder later in life.

He would draw building plans, to scale, and show every stud and header location, not just distances at 1/8" per foot like standard blueprints show.  His drawings were a picture of each wall before they were covered up with siding and sheet-rock.

He was quite a man, and he helped us with our first house and helped us build our fanciest home on Innerarity Island.

What an interesting and amazing life he had!

My grandfather and great grandfather were carpenter's by life skill and trade. Grandfather worked at NAS Pensacola during WWII. I wish I'd known to ask more questions about what he did.

I did carpentry as well.  I was a framer, even ran a framing crew.  I did trim carpentry as well.

We "kicked ass" as a trim crew.  We trimmed out two three-bedroom houses, twenty miles apart in one day with a three-man crew.  That's all the interior doors, closet shelving, base moulding, paneling, crown, ceiling beams, window moulding, sometimes setting appliances, etc.  It took the better part of an hour to set up all the sawhorses, three power saws, compressor and compressor hoses, nail guns, etc., but when we got started, it was poetry in motion.  We didn't need to ask questions and each of us were assigned specific tasks, going about wordlessly.  I specialized in closet shelving and bass moulding, but each of us could do the other's tasks if need be.

28 with 24mi/hr winds is pretty fng cold for most anywhere in the South. And I have gotten spoiled being up here where the wind blows. I was crying like a bitch when I got to work this morning... -34*F and the wind was blowing like a bastard. The cold is no big deal because it's so dry here and the wind does not normally blow. But if there's any moisture in the air or if the wind starts blowing... all bets are off.

So I say you guys win the green weenie for that day with the temp, humidity *and* the wind. Screw that. I'll keep the weather up here.