October 27, 2004

It's white outside here in La Pine.

The last two days, it's been snowing. Yes, that's right - SNOWING. I would have posted a picture, if I wouldn't have dreaded leaving the house so much.

Yesterday, it all melted away again by like 3 in the afternoon, but it was the same crap all over again this morning.

I don't know - the first days of winter always make me feel like dying. I get depressed. I don't have my studs on the car yet, so driving around on the slick roads with the summer tires isn't my idea of fun. So I stay home whenever I can, which of course makes me feel like I'm trapped.

It doesn't help that when it snows real hard, the cold white stuff sticks to my DirecWay dish, in essence cutting off my internet connection. All this has led me to devise a plan to build a small shelter over the dish, so it can be snow-free for the entire winter. I wish however, that someone at DirecWay would have addressed this issue at some point, somewhere ...

All this makes me wish I'd live in Bend. What a difference a few hundred feet in elevation can make. While it snows down there lightly or rains, we here in La Pine get slammed with winter.

On the Bright Side: I just got my annual property tax love letter from the county. They're saying that my property has increased in value almost 15% over the last 2 years. That's nice. However, in reality, the real market value (based on homes that have recently sold in this area) has increased more like 25%. I guess I should be grateful that the county is so ignorant...