Johnson Family

Umbrella Theory

Posted on the March 1st, 2009 under About MJohnson.net, Home by Michael Johnson

If the current forecast is accurate and to be beleived then 24 hours from now I will be shoveling out from 8 to 14 inches of snow that will start falling after midnight tonight. Of course the forecast is wrong. It always is! But preperations have to be made because it could be worse even though statistically, it has a high likelyhood of being less.

So there are a few things we do in my house before any storm that will be of significance. We always have enough food for 4 or 5 days. So that wont appear in this list. But if you happen to be in the habit of being short on food then you should consider having 2 or 3 days of food on hand that you can prepare without electricity. We have a gas stove so we are fine.

So with food off the list, this is what we do:

• 2 – five gallon buckets of water are filled and placed in the bathroom. Used carefully, we can flush the toilet for a couple of days with this.
• 2 – large stock pots are filled with water and placed on the stove top. If the power goes out, we lose the furnace and therefore heat. But with a low heat under these pots I can maintain a comfortable heat in the house. The increase in humidity from the water steaming off actually makes it comfortable at a lower temperature. Water for cooking and cleaning could be pulled from these pots as needed.
• Water pitchers are filled and placed in the fridge. On average this is 3 gallons of drinkable water.
• Flash lights, lanterns, candles and matches are checked and re-located to places that you can stumble to in the dark if necessary.
• The cars are move out of their normal parking locations to a spot that is easier to plow snow past them. The cars are normally up near the house. But this is tough to plow around. So we move them off to the side for easier plowing. Unfortunately, the best spot under some trees. So in the case of storms with high wind, I move them onto the yard and away form the trees to avoid possible falling limb damage.
• Snow shovel, snow shoes, and measuring stick are placed near the door for easy access.

Most of these steps are over-kill and are rarely used or needed. But it’s the idea of the “Umbrella Theory” that states that if you carry an umbrella then it won’t rain.

So we are hunkering down for tonight and tomorrow. Do you take any special steps to prepare for a storm?

Re-birth of a website

Posted on the April 20th, 2008 under About MJohnson.net by admin

This is the re-birth of The Johnson Family website. I got tired of the old site. But I’ve been blogging much more lately and hope to report in here more often as well.

We had a georgeous day yesterday and was able to rake most of the lawn. A couple of patches are still frozen with ice. But now that those areas are uncovered of sand and dirt they should melt soon. Other than along the road and the places where the snowbanks sat, the lawn looks good.

But that will change on Monday. I hope to remove a couple of tree stumps and large rocks. When finished hauling off the ruble and filling in the holes it’s going to look like a war zone I fear. We shall see.