Moving along

Wonderful Weather (2/17/2021):

By Tuesday (2/16/2021) morning we had accumulated about five inches of snow since Friday. During the previous night, our outside air temperature (OAT) equaled the -17F OAT that I recall having experienced in Kansas in about 1960. The Current Results: Weather and Science Facts website tells me that, as recently as February 10, 2011, we reached -17F, again. How soon I forgot. The website tells me,

"These records were observed at Eisenhower National Airport and go back to 1954. The lowest temperature measured during that time was -21 degrees Fahrenheit (-29 Celsius) on February 6, 1982."

Lowest Wichita temperatures in recent years

Min °F	Date	Min °C
2	March 05, 2019	-17
-2	January 01, 2018	-19
4	December 31, 2017 +	-16
-10	December 18, 2016	-23
0	January 07, 2015	-18
-5	January 06, 2014	-21
3	February 23, 2013	-16
7	December 29, 2012	-14
-17	February 10, 2011	-27
0	January 09, 2010	-18

Not living in this area during 1981-1989, I missed out on the -21F  OAT in 1982. I was living on the Gulf Coast of Florida's panhandle at that time.

Finally this afternoon, I got around to tackling the snow on our driveway. I do, after all, need to drive to the grocery store tomorrow. (Kudos to WalMart for automatically having rescheduled my pickup from Tuesday to Thursday when their online scheduling system was overwhelmed such that we customers could not reschedule for ourselves. One assumes that everyone with a scheduled Tuesday pickup was pushed back to days expected to be exhibiting better weather/street conditions.)

I never spent more than 11 minutes at a time and only went out thrice. My muscles are not accustomed to that sort of exercise, now, and I hate it when I cripple myself because I'm too stupid to pace myself. I'll do even more shoveling tomorrow morning - after it warms up a bit, but before my appointment at WalMart's little store.

The first photo (below) shows the results of my first two ventures out. That bare concrete is where my car will be required to back and turn to the street (to the right).

Next, I cleared some of the concrete in front of the garage doors that hide Hunky Husband's and my cars.

Emergency Supplies (2/17/2021):

Yesterday afternoon, a tiny package was delivered by FEDEX; but, today, FEDEX brought me a really important, heavy box: 14 pounds of safflower seed and 10 pounds of shelled peanuts for our birds. Yay!

Old Photographs (2/18/2021):

One of the photos that I scanned, today, was of my mother's basketball team. She attended country schools during her grades 1 through 10, then had to transfer to a larger school in a town down the road a piece. Whether she also played basketball in 11th or 12th grade, I'm not sure; but, I also scanned photos of the elder of Mom's two younger sisters with her basketball team from the larger school.

In the photo, below, my mother is holding the ball because they lined up by height and she was the shortest. I remember a few of these players, and the coach, from years later when I lived in that area. In fact, my first year or two were spent in a house whose yard abutted the schoolyard. I suspect that the "uniform" bottoms were bloomers - with elastic at the leg opening which is pushed up on the thigh. At least, our gym uniforms in the 1950s had elasticized legs that pushed up - a bit shorter than the ones shown.

ADDITION of 2/24/2021:

Joared gave me a thought. In seeking a photo that showed the gym clothes that my own generation of girls wore in high school, I had searched my yearbooks from 1954 and 1955. Aha! I have a yearbook from 1956 (with which class I should have been graduated had I not skipped 11th grade). The following image is a scan of a page from the 1956 yearbook which illustrates, nicely, the outfits that we wore in the mid 1950s. Since I attended school with these girls for several years, I know knew nearly all of the girls in the two photos. The girls who were seniors when the photos were taken, and who have survived, will be celebrating their 65th year reunion, this year.

Turkeys Making Tracks (2/19/2021):

Each day, early of a morning, our neighborhood's turkey flock left more tracks through the snow. We could follow the flock's movements after-the-fact, up and down and across our street; but, the most interesting patterns were left in our back yard.

Finally, a "clear" sidewalk (2/19/2021):

Now that we've finally reached an OAT that is above freezing, I deigned to clear the snow from our front walk. A man walking down the street to retrieve his mail from the mailbox cluster asked, "Would you like for me to do that for you?" I thanked him and explained that it was good exercise for me. Really, it's more fun than work since I limit what I do at one time - this stint's being limited to 14 minutes. (Working my way up.)

It is a waste of time to clear the sidewalk: no one uses it. I can't blame them. It is so much shorter to cut across the yard from the street to the front steps.

Comments

[bogie]

Pacing yourself is important when you are not used to the workload - good job!

Your backyard is a super highway for the feathered walkers :) My backyard is criss-crosssed with squirrel tracks except right next to the feeder, which has junco and tracks.

Taking a look at those shoes they wore to play basketball - even those were pointy (like dress shoes). I can't imagine trying to wear those for athletics - not that I ever wear pointy shoes for anything.

[Cop Car]

Yes, pacing is important, and it means that the snow will be gone from melting/sublimation before I get it all shoveled. ; ) BTW: I would encourage others to go see your light snow results.

What was the omitted source of tracks in your yard?

We didn't see squirrels during the 12 days that we never got up to freezing (32F). I started seeing them, again, on the day we hit 32F. Yesterday, we hit 43F, and are to be at 60F, tomorrow. It is supposed to be at 60F, again, Tuesday when I have an appointment for my annual physical. Unfortunately, we will be at 49F when we go get our 2nd COVID vaccination shots on Wednesday. We'll have nearby parking, though. Shots will be given at the old downtown Wichita library and parking will be in the Century II parking lot across the street from it. They aren't even making us put quarters into the parking meters!

You should have seen my mother's shoes WIWAK: platforms...always platforms (but blunt toes). Since Dad was at least a foot taller than was she, she liked to have that extra inch of height. She was always the shortest adult (at 5' 2") in our family just as, now, I am the shortest adult (at 5' 5") in our surviving family. Of course, I towered over your dad's mother (5' 0" ?) and sisters (4' 10" ? and 5' 2.5").

[Joared]

Lots of "traffic" in your pristine snow. Got your exercise in with snow shoveling but good you paced yourself.

Lucky you to have had two piece basketball outfits. Our required gym clothes were a one piece shorts outfit I hated since you had to strip to go to the toilet. I really enjoyed sports what little I got to engage in them. I wasn't able to play on the basketball team for several reasons. I never had an opportunity to develop the skills 'cause during the season our P.E. class turned out to be practice time for the team, so the rest of us got little experience. They also practiced during the lunch hour if the boys weren't on the court, but I worked in the lunch room so it didn't matter anyway. As I recall they had special basketball game rules for girls then. We couldn't run up and down the court. I think it was something like one bounce, taking a step then you had to pass the ball off to someone else. -- something like that, I don't remember exactly now. It was ridiculous! I was a pretty good hard fast softball pitcher but pretty limited in opportunity to play there, too.

[Cop Car]

Joared--I failed to be clear that our gym clothes were also one piece. The only gym we had was 1/2-sized (although, the year after I was graduated a new wing was added that housed a pool and a full-sized gym) of which use we had to alternate with the boys. (We had "health" class during class time excluded from the gym.)

Yes, in your & my day, we played a 6-girl team with 3 girls playing on either half of the court. I don't recall the rules otherwise and never played basketball outside of gym class. My gym class team did well because the other 2 girls who played on "my" half of the court were twins who communicated via ESP - lol. Not one of us was a great player (or tall), but we were a great team. One needs to recall that, in the case of my mother and her sister, their basketball teams probably comprised the majority of the girls in their respective classes. I believe that there were 30 people in Mom's Class of '33.

[Liz Hinds]

Gosh, you did work hard to clear that path.

Our gym uniform was navy knickers and a t-shirt. And we played hockey on a public playing field on the top of a windy hill.

[Cop Car]

Liz--I hope you were better at field hockey than was I. I remember Dr Perkins (a tiny woman, the only PhD on staff) yelling at me, "Run, [Car], run!" We did have playing room, outside, in clement weather.

[bogie]

Our squirrels don't care about temps, they may stay away if the wind chill reaches very low temps. But it is rare for them not to visit the feeder.

I am unsure what I was going to type, maybe "other bird".

[Joared]

I was envious, cause photo looked like you had two piece gym outfits. Oh, well!

[Cop Car]

Joared--The photo that I posted is of my mother's team. I couldn't find any photos of my own gym outfit that would show up; but, I'll give it a go, using photos of gym classes. (See addition to posting, please.)

[Joared]

I’d forgotten — I was on the volleyball team but i think basketball was the only girls sport that got to play teams from other schools.

[Cop Car]

Woo-hoo, a jock in our midst. We may have had girls compete with those from other schools; but, being a geek, I would not have known about it. It was only in looking back through our yearbooks that I learned we had a (male) golf team. Bogie & Dudette played basketball and volleyball. If I recall correctly, Bogie was offered a volleyball scholarship at a local college. I always enjoyed watching our daughters play.

[bogie]

You are correct, I was offered a volleyball scholarship to a very small college (and it was a very small offer at about $200 if I remember correctly).

I played basketball, volleyball and ran track (long jump, shot putt and 1/2 mile) plus did summer track. I don't remember Dudette being in sports for school teams (she was certainly on teams outside of school). I do remember that a coach wanted her to try out because of her height - but I don't remember if she did or not. Maybe she did before band took over her interests.

[Cop Car]

Bogie--Thanks for the additional info and corrections. Perhaps I was thinking of when our family played volleyball at the Cessna Activity Center. That was so-o-o long ago. It's impossible to think that I've been out of high school for 66 years, let alone that our daughters have been out of high school for a bit over 40 years. The next thing we know, Next Gen 1 and Next Gen 2 will be out of high school. : |

$200 (nearly $700 in today's dollars) beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. As I recall, your dad and I didn't "let" you and Dudette apply for scholarships on ethical grounds. We felt that scholarships should be left for those who could not, otherwise, afford to attend college.

I, OTOH, couldn't get a good scholarship because I was going to engineering school that offered no scholarships to women. As it was, I accepted a small scholarship ($100 for my freshman year, as I recall - worth nearly $700 in today's dollars) that was good at any state school in Missouri. Because elder brother had received a good scholarship for his first two years and because he dropped out of school to get married, my mother's paycheck went to my first 2.5 years of college. She continued to support me after your dad and I married (as your other grandparents continued to support your dad); but, I paid that back to her and dad, with interest, a few years later. In later years, whenever Mom protested over something that I did for her, I explained that it was return on the investment that she had made in me all those years ago.

[bogie]

I never applied to any colleges until I was 34, so have no idea about how you viewed scholarships. Heck, I never took SAT or PSAT and I don't think any colleges would have let me apply without those.

When I did decide to go to college, work assisted with probably 2/5 of my classes and I paid for the rest (no loans - payed as I went). They would only pay for 1 class per semester AND only up to $1,200/per year (which, with books, came out to almost 3 non-computer related classes per year); grade dependent of course. At the time I was taking night classes that were 8 weeks per semester (6 semesters a year).

There was at least 1 year that work didn't offer tuition assistance because they were struggling financially. And of course my last 3 courses were taken while I was laid off after they let 40% of their workforce go. By that time though, their dollar limit was paying less than 2 classes per year.

There was a good reason it took me 7 years to get a 4 year degree :)

[Cop Car]

Interesting chronology on your college work and paying for it, Bogie. Thank you. I was always impressed that you were willing to go to such lengths to get your degree - and that you did so well, academically. Well done! (Super well done!)

BTW: You may recall (the late) Dwight Tullis - my first supervisor at Cessna. He had worked at Cessna and raised a family while completing his BS at WU. It took him 14 years. You were like a jackrabbit, comparatively.