Today, while on FB, I noticed a picture attached to a newspaper article link and I immediately recognized the photo and I just had to laugh.
Andy Blume wrote an awful blog post about me last year. People commenting on his blog weren’t much nicer. I followed Andy on twitter and we bantered back and forth. He actually warned me before he wrote his second blog post.
I often wondered if Andy was really a tram driver. I wondered how someone could tweet while driving and get away with it. I guess this week he took a pic of someone who really didn’t like it. Or he crashed into them.
The Herald Sun wrote a story on Andy and reported his blog and twitter account to Yarra Trams. There’s even a second opinion piece…
Oh Andy, I guess now you’ll know what it’s like to be on the Internet and have people judging you.
On an ABC special episode on Underage and Famous this week, Corey Feldman shocked a lot of viewers by coming out and saying the biggest problem for kids in Hollywood is always will be Pedophiles.
Sounds familiar doesn’t it?
The reaction is also similar. People have come out on blogs calling Corey a has been seeking another minute of fame. They’re saying he must be trying to get another production greenlit. They say he should name names or STFU.
Are these the same 5 jaded people with nothing better to do?
I hope he doesn’t name anyone. For one thing, there’s more than one crooked person in the industry. If he names one, all focus turns to that person. People get complacent and forget about all the other perps. We need to come together and stand as one and fight the industry as a whole. Focusing on one story doesn’t help anyone. People should applaud Corey for coming forward and shedding light on the industry, not shun him and assume he’s got an alterior motive.
I stand with Corey. I support him and believe him. I hope more actors will stop thinking about maintaining the status quo and start speaking up for what’s right. The protection of the future generation is more important than an acting job
Elissa Doherty from The Herald Sun had asked my thoughts on the new Kid Pageants coming to Australia. She was asking my opinion since the new company is based in my home of Texas, and as someone who grew up on TV and is now an Ambassador for Bravehearts. Here’s my thoughts on it. Be sure you check our her articles on the matter too.
When I was a kid back in Australia, and I was doing modeling, Mum had friends that had their kids in pageants.
Back then, pageants weren’t just about glitz and glamour. The pageants were a way for kids to learn grace and poise, like taking a deportment class. They were also about raising money for charities and teaching kids about philanthropy and giving back to their community. Beauty pageants were about being beautiful on the inside as well as the outside. Back then, it wasn’t always the prettiest kid who won. It was usually the one who had raised the most money for charity. Sure, this may have pissed of the parent who thought their kid should have won because she was the prettiest, but it was about the whole package.
As I got older, I forget about pageants. I see Queens and Princess all the time over here. San Antonio has a huge Fiesta celebration every year. It’s when all the rich people in town have a big party, someone get’s crowned King Antonio and there’s also a King Antonio. One year, one of the my friends who was the official photographer for the King asked me to be his second camera. I spent all week in this ridiculous cavalcade. Everyone was dressed up, and we had a police escort everywhere we went. We went to one party and function after the other, where money was presented to different charities. They said it costs about $1 million dollars to be king for the year. You also have to be a member of the Cavaliers, which is a club here in San Antonio. Rey Feo is pretty much the same deal. Last year, our next door neighbour had their daughter come home from Cornell so she could be a Princess for Fiesta. That honor cost them almost $100k in dresses and events. But, she did get to spend a week hobnobbing with all the right people…. To those outside the “inner circle” it’s just a big party, like Carnival or Mardi Gras.
Apart from Fiesta, each little town around here has a Queen and Princess. In Stockdale, where we have our ranch, we get to see the Royal court when we go to the rodeo. They aren’t wearing flash dresses, they’re normally in wranglers and cowboy boots.I’m not sure on their process to get there, but being the local Queen means you can then compete in each bigger competition, until you become Miss Texas and then Miss USA. Of course, there’s so many different competitions these days, I can’t keep up. There’s Miss Texas, Miss Texas International (WTF?) Miss Rodeo Texas, Rodeo Queen and about a dozen others.
Somewhere along the way, people worked out there was big money in pageants. Especially now that you’ve got things like Toddlers and Tiaras making a show about it.
The people behind the Toddlers and Tiaras pageant have gone a different route. They don’t raise money for charity. They don’t pick one winner who takes all. Instead, they pander to parents who think their kid should never understand losing. Every kid gets a prize. I know that seems like a nice thing, but honestly, what are you teaching your kid? That as long as you turn up, that’s enough. You’ll get a prize anyway…
Tiny girls in bikinis. So not appropriate!
Kids no longer wear a party dress. They have these ridiculously elaborate gowns that costs thousands of dollars. They wear a tonne of make-up. They are even wearing false teeth and fake tans. Essentially, they have gotten rid of everything that had to do with kids pageants, and turned it into an adult pageants for toddlers.
I’m sure that the TV show Toddlers and Tiaras has filmed and edited it to make it as dramatic as possible. They show the most outlandish parents and the biggest tantrums. They show all that is wrong with pageants, because controversy creates ratings.
However, when you take away all that’s good about pageants, like teaching kids confidence, public speaking, grooming, philanthropy and most importantly, inner beauty and replace that with creepy looking kids who are being over-sexualized and taught to win at any cost, it just becomes sad.
I know kids are pushed into many things they don’t like to do. I had friends as kids who were ball room dancers and figure skaters. Both had to practice long hard hours and wore skimpy outfits when they competed. They didn’t always want to be there. If they’d had a reality show following them around, I’m sure they couldn’t caught parents having a fit and kids throwing a tantrum too. Shit, if we’d had cameras following me around as a kid, I’m sure they would have seen me have plenty of tantrums.
I’m not defending the pageants. I don’t like where they’ve gone. I don’t like the idea of small kids thinking that the only thing that
matters in life is being fake beautiful. I say fake, because everything about them is fake. Teeth, nails, hair, tan and even personalities. Then, even after all that primping, they’re airbrushing the photos. Seriously, does a 3 year old need to be airbrushed? A kid should look like a kid, not some doll or mini adult.
They’re not competing for a good cause. It’s just for the company to raise money for itself. What is that teaching kids? Pay $300 and we’ll give you a trophy telling you your pretty? How about we just tell kids they’re beautiful. I wish I had been told I was beautiful when I was a kid.
Is she 4 or 24?
Kids should be allowed to be kids. They should be allowed to feel beautiful as they are. They’ve got their whole life to grow up
and wear make-up. Childhood is sacred. Lets celebrate our kids, but as kids. Childhood goes by so fast, and you can never get it back again. Lets not force our kids to grow up before they’re ready.
As someone who has been working since the age of 3, as someone who was forced to grow up before my friends, and as someone who ended up as a Bravehearts Ambassador, I ask parents to really think before they put their kids into a pageant.
Ask your kids if it’s what they want to do. It has to be what they want. Just because you think they’re pretty, or because you want
to live vicariously through them, is NOT a reason to put them in a pageant. Ask them why they want to be in a pageant. If they have dreams of one day being Miss Australia, fine. If they tell you it’s because they want to feel pretty, then you need to tell them they are pretty.You need to make sure your kids know you love them and think they’re beautiful. You also need to tell them beauty is on the inside. It’s not just make-up and clothes.
Also, find a pageant that’s doing more than just making money for themselves. Do it to raise money for charity. Teach your kids there’s nothing more beautiful than helping others.
Pageant or Playboy?
Do not enter your kids into a pageant that makes them look like mini Playboy Bunnies. It’s just creepy looking at little girls with big blonde hair, fake teeth and posing like they’re in a centerfold. It’s just glorified kiddie-porn. Don’t do that to your kids. We don’t need to sexualize our kids. We don’t need to desensitize society to that either. We don’t need to tempt pedophiles by offering them little girls dressed up as big girls.
Whether you decide if pageants are right for you and your kids or not, make sure you know your kids are beautiful.What you tell them as children will stay with them forever, or at least take a lot of counseling to get over.
Back in the Hey Dad days, I asked my Mum once if I was beautiful. I needed her to tell me I was. She told me no. She said I was pretty, but only grown ups could be beautiful. As those of us who are grown up know, we never feel like we’ve become an adult, so I never felt like I grew into being beautiful. No matter if anyone else told me I was beautiful, I never believed them because the most important person, my mother, told me I wasn’t.
Your kids don’t need a pageant, they just need you to tell them they’re beautiful.
I just wanted to share with y’all the email I got yesterday from Protect.org
Alicia Kozakiewicz in Austin at the launch of Alicia's Law, with Ed Smart of the Surviving Parents Coaltion and her mother, Mary.
Victory in Texas!
They said it couldn’t be done—not in Texas, not this year—but we did it!
In the middle of one of the worst budget crises in the U.S., PROTECT has secured passage of Alicia’s Law, a major expansion of funding for the men and women struggling to rescue Texas children from sexual exploitation and abuse.
What the Law Does
In Dallas, Houston and Austin, three law enforcement task forces (covering the entire state) will get $3 million in state funding over the next two years. Alicia’s Law also makes Texas the first state in the nation to give its Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) officers special subpoena power to get suspect information from ISP’s fast.
What it Means to Children
Survivors of child sexual abuse know that if they were being abused today chances are their tormentor would have child abuse images on his computer. Hundreds of thousands of these “child pornography collectors” have been located by authorities in the U.S., but they remain at large due to lack of resources to go get them. Alicia’s Law funds will enable investigators to follow that trail of child pornography traffic “back through the Internet,” right to the door of children in need of protection, often in their own homes. That makes the $3 million in Alicia’s Law funding the most effective money Texas ever spent to prevent child sexual abuse.
Who Made it Happen
Alicia’s Law was sponsored by Sen. John Carona (R-Dallas), Rep. John Frullo(R-Lubbock)and Rep. Pete Gallego (D-Alpine). Behind the scenes at every stage was Texas’ powerful Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who made it clear that funding Alicia’s Law when popular programs were being slashed was his personal priority.
Thanks also to our partners: the Surviving Parents Coalition, National Sheriff’s Association, the Fraternal Order of Police and Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT). And we’re proud of our PROTECT warriors on the ground, David Keith and Camille Cooper.
Credit goes first and foremost to our members and supporters. Behind the scenes this time, you were joined by a very generous and powerful group of Dallas women and men. Their quiet phone calls and emails to Austin made all the difference.
It’s great that places in America are trying so hard to protect their children from predators. States like California and Nevada have a ONE strike and you’re out policy, Texans are trying their best to protect kids here, as well as stop child sex trafficking from across the border. I’ll have to take a photo of some of the billboards up around town about that.
My best friend just moved and we went over to her place for dinner the other night, and it was nice being able to pull out my phone and do a neighbourhood check to make sure there were no registered sex offenders close by. She felt better knowing there was none on her block.
Alicia’s Law shows that if enough concerned citizens stand up and say what they think, that laws can be changed. We can help to protect our kids.
Do you ever see an article in the paper and just feel absolutely no sympathy at all? Maybe I just woke up grumpy, or maybe it’s because my new comat boots have arrived and Matt laughed at me for walking around the house in them and nothing else, but when I read the story on the poor sex lives on West Australia’s miners, I just thought, Wow, Suck it up. Are these people serious?
Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand what it’s like to be in a long distance relationship. My first husband, (yes, I was married before) was in the US Air Force. He was in a unit that was always deployed. BEFORE the war. I spent most of my time in Australia, and flew back and forth to visit him. We had been friends since we were teenagers, so we decided to go back to being friends. We both met our new partners while we were still married, and when he comes to San Antonio for training, we all go out for a beer together.
Matt was on the road for the first 8 years we were together. We met because he was working in Brisbane. He has also worked in China, Canada and in almost every state in the US. Back during the tech boom, he used to fly up to Canada and back every week. Eventually, he asked his boss to just let me come up there and overlook the extra expenses instead of flying him home every week. It worked out cheaper for them, so they did. Then, Matt took a different contract. He was all over the place, most places for one or two weeks at a time. Eventually, we bought a motorhome and could travel together. We didn’t like being apart and we missed each other. Of course, me traveling with him meant that I couldn’t really work. We never knew how long we were going to be in each place. Finally, while were were up in Iowa, where I actually did get a part time job teaching acting, Matt got a full time permanent stay at home daytime job back in San Antonio.
The thing about San Antonio, it’s a military town. It has 3 major bases. Lackland AFB, where they train every new airman in the USAF. Randolph AFB trains some very advanced pilots. Fort Sam Houston in a HUGE Army facility, BAMC is attached, which is Brooke Army Medical Center and is one of the leading trauma and burns hospitals in the US. There’s also Brooks AFB, Camp Stanley and Camp Bullis. You’ve also got a bunch of smaller national guard armories. Basically, you can’t get from point A to point B in this city without seeing someone wearing a uniform or displaying Purple Heart or Disabled Vet license plates.
Sure, all of the people in the military today have chosen to be in the military. We no longer have a draft. However, many people join for the benefits. The military has great health care, housing and they’ll pay for your college. Of course, there’s also long deployments and the chance you’ll be killed in a desert in the Middle East somewhere. Or any of the other 100+ countries the US currently has troops stationed in. At some point in your military career, you’re supposed to do a long deployment. Lots of Airmen end up on a year tour in Korea or Japan. If you elect to take your family, you have to do 2 years. If however your spouse or kids are attached to their home, you get to go alone. You don’t get to fly home every 2 weeks to see them. They don’t get to come see you. If you’re getting shipped off to Iraq or Afghanistan, you might be gone 6 months without a trip home. If you make it home. Some people have already made 3 or 4 tours of the ME.
While the military folks do get good benefits, it’s not the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year miners are making. Miners aren’t getting shot at, don’t have to go for weeks without a shower while down range, don’t have to worry about ending up on a video on CNN with a gun to their head. Sure, there’s mining accidents, but that’s a risk of the job too.
Every job has it’s good points and bad points. Everyone has to make sacrifices. Life is not always rosy.
But surely, while we’ve still got boots on the ground and have good men and women coming home in body bags, do we have to see money spent on a study of miners making sure they’re getting laid?
Those of you that know me or follow me on twitter know that I’m a pretty handy type of person. I like to get my hands dirty. I’m also pretty granola and like to be earth friendly.
While we live in the city in San Antonio, Matt and I love to get away to our ranch, which is about 40 mins outside SA in a place called Stockdale. It’s got red dirt, lots of acacias and it looks like it could be the Australian outback or somewhere in Africa. It’s beautiful.
Right now, we have a trailer out there. We had sold our motorhome last year, but we had a 24ft car hauler that we’ve put up shelving and a toilet, as well as a futon bunk bed. We recently had electricity hooked up and there’s also a well on the ranch. We fill up a mobile water trailer and hook that up to the trailer and have an outdoor shower and kitchen sink as well.
We both love it down there so much, we’ve been thinking of something more permanent. Matt started looking into nicer RV’s. We even looked at a couple of FEMA trailers. (ugh)
Eco-Dome
I however, would much prefer something that creates less impact and is much more permanent. That’s when I started looking into sustainable housing. So far, my two favourite types of home are the Eco-Domes designed by Nader Khalili and Earthships designed by Michael Reynolds.
Earthship
I have also been researching other sites, some with great info like EarthBag Building.
I much prefer the earthbags over the tire pounding, and an earthship could be built using sandbags or used fruit bags or burlap. I like the roundness of the dome, and now I’m just wondering how to take certain aspects of the earthip, like the water harvesting and reclycling and incorporate it into the eco-dome. For a weekender, we probably don’t want growbeds like the earthship. They wouldn’t get enough water, but I’m thinking if I start out with an eco-dome with water catchment that then uses the grey water for outdoor gardens, that’ll make a good place till we decide if we ever want to move to the ranch full time. At that point, the dome would become a guest house and we’d build a full on earthship. I like the idea of being completely off the grid and self-sufficient.
Everyone says it’s important to practice on smaller projects first, so I have just ordered 1000 sandbags. My first project is going to be an outdoor kitchen next to our trailer. We already have a metal cover down there that Matt’s parents pulled down from the old camp site. So this week we’ll go down there and set that up. Then, I’ll use the empty sandbags and the local earth to build 2 walls, facing north and west. I’m going to try to incorporate some of the beauty of the earthships by using old bottles for windows and decoration. Last week we went to the Habitat for Humanity store by our house. I picked up 2 great looking bars. One for the ranch, one for the house. Turns out they’re from movie sets from a local telenovela they filmed here. I got the counters for $149 each! So add in $250 for sandbags, and since we already have the roof, all I need now is a sink, a 50 gallon drum and some guttering for rainwater harvesting and I’ve got an outdoor kitchen for less than $500.
Meanwhile, as I write this, the guy just turned up to give me a quote for new insulation in the attic in our house. The old insulation, which we found out after after the lightning and subsequent fire, was highly flammable stuff which was also really gross and disgusting after 15 years of animals living in it. (There was squirrel poop and hummingbird eggs!) I have since removed 90% of it, and we are getting new green stuff up there. He’s measuring now and is going to give us prices for recylced cellulose as well as Bio-Foam, a soy based spray in expanding foam insulation.
I’m super excited about building the outdoor kitchen at the ranch. I’ll take lots of pictures and put them up here. If that goes well, I’m then going to make a dome shaped bathroom. Then we’ll have a nice dunny and shower while we’re out there. If we ever build an earthship, the dome bathroom will be nice for visitors who come out camping.
Yesterday I finished putting up the texture on the upstairs wall at our house that we lost after the fire. We had been looking at the studs and new insulation for a year! Tomorrow I’ll paint it, then I’m going to make a nice trim with decorative tile. It’s so nice to have a week off work and get some real stuff done!
Since San Antonio is 16rs behind Sydney, I get a really long birthday! It started with a text from my brother on Monday afternoon. I was pretty excited he remembered, and even better, he said my beautiful nephew sent me kisses! I started gets tweets and FB messages from all my friends in Oz.
Tuesday I woke up and Matt had to go to work. I got to spend the day just relaxing. I pottered around, watered the garden, pulled some weeds, did some laundry. Matt came home for lunch and headed back to work. When he got home again, he told me I looked hot from working, and I should go take a shower and just relax. He said he thinks his Mom was going to come over and surprise me… I hit the MIL jackpot with Matt’s mom. She’s the nicest lady ever. She loves me like I’m her own.
Then I get a text from one of my best friends Vicki who’s another Aussie expat who had since moved from San Antonio to the coast. She was in town, and wanted to know if she could pop over to say hi.
Matt’s Mom shows up, and then our best friend Will came over. Will was my first friend in America. We actually chose where we live so we could be close to him. He was the only invited guest at our wedding, where he shared duties of best man and maid of honor. He even went dress shopping with me!
So now I’m thinking we’re going to dinner with them. Then Vicki shows up. Then, my BFF Cassandra turns up. I love Cassandra. When everything was going down last year, she was the one who held my hand through the whole thing. When Matt had to go to San Diego, he sent me to stay with her, knowing she would take care of me. I got her a job at my work, but they’ve never put us on a shift together. Probably smart…
Then, I hear my chihuahua bark, and Lindsay and Stacey are here! Lindsay’s another Aussie, and his wife Stacey is the sweetest thing on earth. I was there when their boy Casey was born and they mean the world to me. Casey is actually the only kid that Matt likes. Then, another bark, and Eric and Melissa are walking in the door. Eric is a huge giant redhead and Melissa is this beautiful petite woman. Eric and I did Boy Scouts together and we traveled all over the US and even went on a trip to Mexico together. Eric also works at Immigration and he’s been with me through my entire immigration journey. Now, we’re all going to be in the same military unit together.
So, we’re sitting around drinking Bundy Rum, having a great time, when Matt says, “Lets Go”. I’m like, what do you mean? I’m not dressed pretty, my eye was all swollen up from allergies and I had no make-up on. But I was so happy to be surrounded by my favourite people, I walked out the door.
Then I saw it. Matt had rented a big white stretched limo. It’s Fiesta in San Antonio, which is a huge week long party. So instead of trying to find parking downtown, Matt just got the limo. Then we could all drink, ride in style and not worry about parking. We all laughed when we noticed the footprint on one of the windows…
So we rolled downtown, and Cassandra had picked this really nice Italian restaurant. We got there, and they thought our reservation was for the 13th… No worries, they got a room sorted and we were all seated.
We got a bunch of wine, ate great food and I looked around the table and thought about how lucky I was to have such great friends in my life. Then, my phone rang, and it was Ray, one of my bestest friends in Australia. My night was made.
I am so lucky to have such great people in my life. This last year has been tough, but it also taught me a lot about who my real friends are.
I know many Australians hate the fact that I’ve become “Americanized” and now have a mixed accent. But there are times when I really do think that the US has got something smarter going on than Australia.
Like today, I’m glad I live in the US.
I am so saddened to hear that they have decided to find Derryn Hinch, a man who has spent so many years defending small children, who has put his freedom on the line to name and shame pedophiles is now going to face jail time again, especially when he’s already fighting for his own life.
What a joke. How many times have we heard judges say we should show mercy to pedophiles who are on their death bed, or who are just simply old. Yet here, a man who is fighting to let the truth out, trying to protect more children from being abused is going to die in jail. Still, he keeps his sense of humour, by stating that they won’t get five years out of him.
Meanwhile, in the US, anybody who is charged with an offence against a child goes onto a sex offender register. This is a publicly available list. There’s even an iPhone app that I have on my phone that will pinpoint my location, and tell me if there are registered sex offenders close by. When an offender moves into a neighbourhood, and it has to be a certain distance from school, churches, etc they then have to go around and let the neighbours that they are a registered sex offender. At work, we received a letter informing us that a sex offender had moved in nearby. It was mandated by law. People don’t conduct a witch hunt. They are simply informed, so that they know not to let their kids play with the offender.
The identities of the victims are protected. On the registrer, it has a photo of the offender, as well as what type of offense they were charged with. When we had our exchange student, we noticed there was an offender listed as living on the way she walked to school. We informed her, so she could stay clear of him and his house. No big dramas. Just a heads up.
In Australia, we protect pedophiles. We allow them to continue molesting more children. We don’t empower parents to protect their kids. We don’t give them the simplest thing to save their kids from years of pain; information.
Derryn, I applaud all you have done over the years to help kids. You are an incredibly brave man. I wish I had come to you back when we both worked at Channel 7. You would have done something about it.
Stay strong Derryn. Fight till the end. I’ll be fighting alongside you.
I woke up to my tweetdeck showing a whole bunch of tweets in Portuguese with my name in the middle of it. Apparently BBC news in Brazil picked up the story. Checked out my website, and there’s a bunch of little Brazilian flags showing my hits from down there.
So I just wanted to say Olá to everyone in Brazil and I hope you’re having a great time at Carnival. I hope to make it down your way one day.
So while Australia is cleaning up after Category 5 Cyclone Yasi and volcano’s are erupting in Asia, the US is in the middle of “Arctic Blast 2011”. The local news people are loving it!
We’ve had snow is San Antonio about 4 times in the last 16 years. The last great snow was the year we had gone back to Australia for Xmas. The year on the Boxing Day Tsunami. Seems like all the big things happen the same years…
The local weather people had been predicting the possibility of snow for almost a week. Most locals were skeptical. Usually, if they say snow, we might get lucky to have a real light flurry that lasts less than 5 minutes and doesn’t stick. I was at work on the other side of town. We close at 9pm and then clean up and get out about 10pm. We were watching the weather. Originally they had said snow starting at 11pm, but then an update said 10pm. So we hauled ass and started packing up. We were out to our cars at 9:30pm. It had started to sleet. The cars were getting an ice coating. Thankfully, Michelle and I both had our ice scrapers. We both laughed cause for weeks we’d had people ask us why we sold ice scrapers at work. People kept saying, we don’t get snow in San Antonio. We’d have to bite our tongue to keep from saying, “good thing they’re not snow scrapers then…” So, we did our cars, then helped scrape windshields from the girls leaving next door. I hit the road, driving as carefully as I could. The roads were icing over. Thankfully, we had spent a winter in Iowa, and I knew to just take my time, leave plenty of space, don’t slam brakes, etc. Closer I got to the house, the more people I saw sliding. Made it home safe, but I could hear sirens as I walked inside.
Matt was watching the news. I made it home with about 10 minutes to spare. They were shutting down all the highways. The city isn’t prepared for freak events like this. There was over 200 accidents in the first hour! There had been a 9 car pileup right behind me. (No, I didn’t cause it!)
They local news people stayed on TV all night, keeping the city updated. Matt tried to stay up to see the actual snow falling, but he ended up going to bed. About 1pm, it started to really fall. I ran outside to take pictures for Matt, in case it melted by the time he got up. It sounded really cool. It was soft snowflakes yet. It was freezing rain to start with. Tiny pellets of ice, so as it hit the ground and the house, there was a constant chink chink sound.
Thankfully since it had been freezing the last few nights, all the plants and pool filters were covered. The backyard and side yard were quickly covered in white. I watched the neighbours roof slowly turn white. Our gutters were filled with snow. I let the dog out to go potty. It seemed like she remembered the cold white stuff from Iowa. She ran around in it a little bit, just like a small kid would.
The whole street out the front was turning white. It was so quiet outside. No noise of cars since everything was shut down. Just the click click of ice falling. I was pretty impressed by the local news people who were up all night, following the snow. They made me laugh when they said that one reporter “Had drwn the short straw” and was stuck on remote locations. The same people were still on air 12 hours later….
About 11am, the snow was finally starting to melt. The highways were still shut down. There ws still ice on the roads, but it was slowly melting. The sun was doing a good job, but anywhere there was shade, it was still icy. The roads finally opened up again at Noon. Of course, it was like morning peak hour traffic. Thankfully, my work had already cancelled me for the day, so I didn’t have to go driving in it. Matt finally headed in to work about 12:30.
It seems funny that such a little bit of ice is such a big deal. We had snow everyday in Iowa for 5 months. Sometimes a couple feet at a time. Here, we had some freezing rain and a light dust of snow, and the whole city just shut down! But, up north, they are set up to deal with it. Here, there’s no ice scrapers, no snow ploughs. No trucks to lay down salt. Well, I take that back. Apparently, there was city trucks, but the TXDot people were waiting for it to get above freezing before they went out to try to de-ice the roads… It seems that the people in were terrified of the ice and were scared to go out in it. The TXDot spokeswoman said they weren’t prepared for ice, which made Matt laugh and yell at the TV. We don’t get snow here often, but we do get ice a fair bit in winter. Just not usually that much.
So now the sun had come out and it’s a beautiful day here. Everyone who got the day off is probably pretty happy. It’s supposed to get way down below freezing again tonight, but no precipitation is expected.
Hope everyone in Australia is doing ok. Between Sydney getting record heat and North Queensland getting all those storms and bushfires in other parts of Oz, it makes my little snow storm story seem pretty insignificant…
Andy Blume wrote an awful blog post about me last year. People commenting on his blog weren’t much nicer. I followed Andy on twitter and we bantered back and forth. He actually warned me before he wrote his second blog post.
