Jo and I are learning all about television antennae by trial and error. The main thing we learned today is that an antenna on the ground is useless. We got the antenna full assembled and hooked up to the digital converter, but it still could not
pick up a signal. Later, I bypassed the converter and hooked up the antenna directly to the television set. I wanted to see how well it would bring in an analog signal. The answer was: Not well -- certainly no better than the rabbit ears we're now using.TV Antenna: It's hard to believe that much aluminum, fins and tubes cannot pick up a signal, even if it is just sitting on sawhorse, but it won't. The next step is to experiment with moving and reorienting the antenna. If that doesn't help, I reckon it's time to start getting it higher.
Weather Summary: High = 43ºF/6ºC. Low = 18ºF/-7ºC. Cold overnight but warmed during the day, especially after the wind direction switched to the south.
Wednesday, 1/14/09:Since a strong cold front was on the way, I decided it was time to add to my wood supply again. Brought home another small pickup load -- and I didn't trim off any more of Jerry Joe's stumps.
Weather Summary: High = 57ºF/13ºC. Low = 21ºF/-6ºC. South wind building all day until a new cold front arrived late in the afternoon.
Thursday, 1/15/09:
We didn't get much of anything done today -- too cold -- though we did bundle up and take our afternoon walk through the pasture and woods.
Weather Summary: High = 24ºF/-4ºC. Low = 10ºF/-12ºC. A cold, overcast day in the Ozarks. We got a light dusting of snow a little after dawn.
Friday, 1/16/09:
Jo made a trip into town, mainly because her driver's license was up for renewal. The Nissan did not want to crank in the cold. I didn't figure that it would, so I gave it a little boost with the battery charger. It still wouldn't crank, so I charged the battery for a while and then gave it a boost. It started. With the engine warm, Jo had no problems while in town.
Weather Summary: High = 24ºF/-4ºC. Low = 8ºF/-13ºC. Again NOAA predicted we'd have mostly sunny skies, but again overcast prevailed -- at least, until late afternoon.
Saturday, 1/17/09:
We had to let the fire in the wood stove burn down today so I could clean it out. So many ashes had accumulated that you could hardly get any wood into it -- and it wasn't drafting well either. It got kind of chilly in the house for a while there.
We'll be making one less trip up to Columbia, MO, in 2009. The Fall Festival of the Arts that we've done off and on (whenever we could get juried into the show) for a dozen years or so is history. The show was put on by the City of Columbia. A lot of reasons were giving for canceling and there was some truth to most of them, but if you read between the lines, the City need to trim it's budget and an art show was an obvious item to get the ax. The sorry state of our economy strikes again.
Blog post on Nature in the Ozarks: Black-capped Chickadee.
Weather Summary: High = 55ºF/12ºC. Low = 19ºF/-7ºC. Our cold snap is finally broken, though we did have a strong south wind blowing for most of the day that made it feel colder than it actually was. Partly cloudy to mostly sunny skies.
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