December 18, 2023 (Monday)
On this day, it was wet and windy. However the full fury of the storm was unleashed on the coastline. The rain stopped briefly around noon and I was able to take a walk with Carl Toko. We checked on the water level at the Smithville Reservoir, but it was still below flood stage. The Smithville Reservoir is part of the flood control system of he Souhegan River. It was designed to mitigate downstream flooding. Over the years I’ve seen it performing that function. The featured photo for this post was taken at the Smithville Reservoir (Damsite 35) in May 2006 during one of those flooding events. I’m not sure if the latest storm will match that level.
The headwaters of the Souhegan River are located in New Ipswich. It will take a day or two to see how much water flows into the Reservoir. I’ll check daily.
April 2007 Flooding
April 18, 2007 demonstrated how the flood control dams work. They are earthen dams with a spill way. They fill up and release the water at a slower controlled rate. It only takes a few days for the water to recede. I have photos.
17 Years of Blogging
When I turned 60 my friend John Weber suggested that I should start writing a blog. I already had some experience posting birthday photos on a discussion forum for the family. I also made the mistake of posting political opinions alongside the birthday greetings. During the BUSH / GORE campaign the discussion got so heated that one family member wrote “Who are you people?” and left the group. You will note that for the most part I avoid political discussions in my postings. There are other venues that are lot more suitable than this.
In December of 2006 I started a blog on the Blogger platform, a free publishing platform from Google. I’ve never been comfortable with the term “Blogging” which stands for web logging. I’d rather refer to what I do as journaling. There were several platforms available to publish the writing and I chose BLOGGER because it was free. I also did some work on the free version of WordPress. Those published posts are still floating around in cyberspace and occasionally I’ll get a comment about something I wrote a decade ago. I made the mistake of creating multiple blogs under different name. It became chaotic. I needed to consolidate my efforts.
Self Hosting – My Strange Life
In 2018 I decided to self-host my WordPress Journal. I was serious enough about this enterprise that I was willing to pay for hosting fees and other publishing expenses. I though I could cover my expenses with advertising, donations and affiliate partnerships I was being naive. This is a labor of love and my own money. My regular readers may have noticed that I’m making an effort to post on a daily basis. Since I’m paying for the hosting I might well use the tools.
BREAKING NEWS!
I didn’t think I had much to write about today. I mentioned the weather and my journaling. I was going to conclude with a daily picture theme. It was an uneventful evening. Still some rain, not windy. At 19:00 I heard a tremendous crash and felt the house shake. When I went to the garage and opened the rear door I saw that a large pine tree had fallen and dented the rear door. I can’t see the full extent of the damage because it took out the rear light fixture. If the tree had been 10 feet taller it would have taken out the rear of the garage. Still a bit jumpy about this. Expect some photos tomorrow. I used the chain saw to cut the offending branches learning against the door. If the tree had fallen slightly to the south it would have come into this room and you wouldn’t be reading this sentence. Time to wrap this up with a daily picture theme.
Daily Picture Theme – #Wait
Waiting for the toilet, waiting to be let back into the house, waiting to get into EXPO 70 in Japan
