Our World Has Been Very White

Three days of snow, a lot of snow, made for much inconvenience.  Roads covered, trees and bushes and plants covered, driveways blocked, etc.  And after awhile, it all turned into power outtages everywhere and people scrambling for alternatives.  I didn't leave the house for those three days and didn't have power for two of them, so don't have much first-hand information about how people were coping.

We shifted from electric to propane heat, cooked on the propane cooktop, turned on the oil and propane lamps, and otherwise did without whatever electricity normally provides.  After the first 6 hours, our walk-around telephones (we don't have a land-line in this house, and apparently these phones were able to get a connection to the tiny guest house which does have a land-line) took to working but we didn't discover that for another 8 hours, and our power didn't get turned back on for a good while longer

A 20-foot fir branch fell, with great and scarey noise, onto our roof and thence onto our car, denting the roof (which is metal), and the hood of the car, while pretty much destroying the front windshield.  We send up a cheer for shatter-proof glass.  And we sat about listening to the great snow gatherings in the trees above us eventually drop and explode like bombs heard at some distance.  The cat was not sure that it was at a distance and mostly retreated to the closet and still, 2 days later, has a very worried expression on her face.

This was a big snow storm, although maybe we've had one or two as big over the past 22 years.  But nothing I'd be interested in repeating regularly.

Below, the snow before it began falling from the trees.  Many branches broke from its weight.  Very wet snow.

A Better Version Than Mine

My older daughter, a blog reader from New Mexico, comments that the previous post sounds a lot like 'spam poetry' (an internet art).  And then proceeds eloquently to turn it into spam poetry:

The Parking Lot Has Cracks

Walking disabilities can't see at night
A discussion why you might change
after years of being.

An offer to escort the disabled from their cars to the building
Describe four possibilities, including itself
No decision, there were only two.

Mr. Meursing thinks Mr Wilmot thinks
Something about possible other benefits,
Might not be the one you want.

To ameliorate the problem
3rd meeting in a row
but nothing about more.

Clear how they are planning
The surface black
Soon it will be on video

You can watch it all for yourself
While you decide the insurer
Should be an adequate response.

If It's Wednesday, It's the Fire District

There's a discussion of why you might change insurers after years of being with one insurer.  Clear about how they are planning to look for other insurers (have one insurer describe four possibilities, including itself), but not clear about when/why you decide that the insurer you've had might not be the one you want.  Something about possible other benefits, but nothing about more costs for more benefits.

And some more discussion (3rd meeting in a row, I think) of the fact that the parking lot surface has large cracks that people with walking disabilities can't see at night because the District painted the surface black.  Mr. Wilmot thinks there could be something done to ameliorate the problem; Mr. Meursing thinks an offer to escort the disabled from their cars to the building should be an adequate response to the American with Disabilities Act.  No decision, since there were only the two of them at the meeting.  Perhaps Mr. Riffle had yet a third view.

Soon it will be on video and you can watch it all for yourself.

High Costs and Low Temps

Cold for days and days, it seems.  Not much but cold seems to happen when it is cold.  But this is the second week of the month when meetings are abundant, so one can go to meetings.  Ideally, in warm buildings, but not always the case.

Last night, I went to hear what the Park and Rec Board was doing to repair the Community Center.  Waiting for the seismic engineers' report on the seismic inspection, is mainly what they are doing.  And, as a result of the meeting and an excellent suggestion by Ron Hughes, considering whether it needs to hire a project manager to coordinate the various aspects of the Major Repair Program.  The initial idea was for one of the Commissioners (none of whom it would appear was particularly skilled or had relevant experience in this area) to complete the task for free.  One might think that having appropriately responsible coordination and oversight for a $250,000 project would be essential and that it would necessitate hiring someone to do it.  But not necessarily, apparently.  The Commissioners are thinking about it at this point, anyway, thanks to Mr. Hughes.

Tonight, we could choose between the Propane Meeting and the Community Advisory Committee Meeting.  I chose the former, because I kind of knew that the news at the latter would be minimal.  The propane meeting, by contrast, was a brand new topic and seemed to have considerable possibility for just being interesting.

Until I read about the meeting, I didn't even know there was a problem about propane.  We use it to heat the house and we like it a lot.  I Googled a bit and found that there has been a big surge in propane prices here and there throughout the country, but not everywhere in the country.  Some places it was in the range of $2/gallon, and in others it was $4-$6/gallon.  The midwest and the east coast were especially being hit with sudden spikes in price, but few stories about such spikes on the west coast.

So I went to the meeting with the knowledge that it wasn't just a local problem.  At the meeting, the impulse was largely to treat it as a local problem.  One of the two local suppliers was charging considerably more than the other.  Unfortunately, unless you own your own propane tank, you can't just switch from one supplier to another.  (How people expect market theory to work when there is a captive audience and no information and no effective form of competition is a mystery to me, but doubtless there are market supporters who would say well, we shouldn't have chosen to live in such an awkward location.)

Couple of things by way of information: According to Puget Sound Energy, when propane gets to be over $3/gallon, electricity is cheaper to use as heat.  (Electricity prices are quite stable.)  According to George Iddon, if you have a rented tank, your propane supplier charges an extra 10-20 cents for each gallon of propane you buy.  (Thus, he said, when you ask them what their price is for propane, they need to know first whether you own your own tank.)

Some of the dozen or so folks attending wanted to write a community letter to the more expensive of our propane suppliers to indicate their unhappiness at the pricing policy.  Again, Mr. Iddon reported that he had checked propane prices in Whatcom County, and that prices were generally in line with the cheaper of our two suppliers.

The U.S. Senate is talking about holding hearings on the problem nationwide and urging the FTC to look into the price spikes to determine whether there are market manipulations going on (as with the Enron scandal in electricity pricing some years ago).  So we could be contacting our U.S. Senators, as well.  Or, we could just watch the Olympics, I guess.  Or do some extra exercise to keep warm or, in honor of Jimmy Carter, put on another sweater..

Update: the national average price for propane this week is $3.75/gallon.

See the Video!

The Fire District's video of its last meeting (early January) is now on its website.  You can see it here.  They don't allow you to make comments, though.

This, That

Last week the Fire District Commissioners met with their newly purchased video camera in use.  The camera was purchased so that the public can watch all their meetings without the inconvenience of actually going to the meetings.  It remains to be seen how this will work out because the acoustics in the room are not good and there did not appear to any special microphones other than the built in one, so whether this is going to be an audio and a video experience is not yet clear.

The Chief said the video would be posted within a couple of days from the meeting on the District's website, but we are about a week on and it isn't yet posted nor are the minutes from the meeting  [update: minutes now posted here: ].  The plan was also to have a copy of the tape in the library for folks to watch.  I'm not sure there's a burning need (no pun intended) among the public to watch all this, but Chairman Meursing believes that it will add to transparency.  However, those who are concerned about transparency mostly are of the view that the problem is what happens between the meetings and not at the meetings.

Also dropped in Park and Recreation last night to see what they were up to with their new job of getting the Community Center up to speed.  Apparently, there is soon to be the beginning of assessing what would need to be done to bring the building up to seismic safety levels, assuming there are some official ones.  I take it that there aren't, but i'll check it out this week.  My sense that there isn't much of a safety requirement for old buildings is that the Chairman suggested that if what would be needed cost too much the Commissioners wouldn't be planning to do it.  A seismic assessment, I am told, will involve seeing what's inside the walls.  Given that there's water under the building and water coming through the roof, it seems likely that there's some water in the middle, too.

Otherwise, we are pretty quiet here in Point Roberts.  The International Marketplace is continuing it's "Roundup" campaign to raise money for the new library, but I'm unofficially told it will come to an end soon.  And when it ends, we'll have the final number for 2013 fundraising.  And we'll know how much more we need to raise in order to get the new library actually built.

Today, I planted (surely the last possible moment) a dozen tulip bulbs that I bought last fall.  They've been sitting outside on the porch and had barely started to put up any growth, so I'm hoping they'll make it when we get to April.  But I never got around to planting my garlic (usually in November), and I doubt if spring is good enough for that.  Well, onward we go anyway.

Fire Department Calendar Update

I was talking to Chris Carleton a few days ago (when he came round to ensure that we were following F.D. regs for burning yard debris) and inquired about the success of the Fire Hydrant calendar sale.  He reported that they had sold virtually all of their original order of 200, but that they had ordered 50 more.  So, you can still buy one, but you have to go to the Fire Department building on Benson to do so.  Still $20.00 each.