Erica has been playing with computers and cameras for years. Lately she has been toying with video. Tonight she got serious, in her own way, and recorded herself talking about her pets. With a little help, the above video is the result.

She turns 5 years old in two weeks. Enjoy!

Erica talking about her Pets from Michael Johnson on Vimeo.

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?

We had a snow day. It was only about 5″ of snow. But it was wet and heavy. After plowing and shoveling and delivery Deb to work, she hates driving in lousy weather, Erica and I relaxed for a bit at home. Then we went for a hike in the woods on snow shoes.

She tried trail blazing for a few dozen feet but decided it was much easier to follow me. We measured the snow base and found anywhere from 18″ to 30″ of snow, depending on where the snow had drifted. We went about a quarter-mile when Erica reported she was tired. So I tossed her on my shoulders and carried her home.

Which made me tired! But still, a nice way to end a weekend.

Please note that Deb, Erica and I have decided to drop our home phone service, which is currently through Vonage. We are going to use our mobile phones only. If you don’t have our cellular phone numbers or need some clarification on how best to contact us in certain circumstances then email me and I’d be happy to talk about it.

Thanks!

You can see some other pictures at my Flickr page.

It was a lot of fun and we are already thinking about next year.

Deb was very nervous about travaling alone. But she got through it and hopefully is more conifdent about the trip back. We will be meeting her at the airport late Friday night.

So far Erica seems to be handling things well. This is the first time she has been away from one of us for five days. She’s been on sleepovers with her cousins and was without Deb and I for up to two nights previously. And Deb and I have been apart as much as two nights since the second year we have been together. But not since I went to Texas for a week in 2002 have we been apart for this long.

Maybe it’s not a big deal. But it seems like a long time!

We miss you “mommy”!

I was chastised yesterday for not posting any photos from Christmas. Sadly, we didn’t take many shots at Christmas. The one above was shot a week before. The Johnson Family has been sick for a long time and was particularly not well through the holiday break. Just when one of us is better someone else gets sick. It has not be pleasant.

I think we are all tired of it. Today, I hosed the house down with Lysol. If it wasn’t so cold out then I’d open the windows and air the place out well. But it’s too frigid for that right now.

I’ve posted what pictures I have to my Flickr account. I’ll try to take some more pictures soon.

Erica is ice skating on a small pond at my dad’s house next door. And if the forecast is correct then we will be playing in the snow more soon. So I will endevour to snap some pics of those experiences and post them. Thanks for caring!

I thought that was pretty good and suggested she also add a dress for church and shoes for play in case she gets to go outside.

She headed up to her room and was there for over an hour. Then she came down with a pink backpack on her back reporting that she was all packed.

“Great!”, I said, “Let’s take a look and see what you have.”

The following contents came out of the pack:

• 2 dolls
• 1 tamborine
• 1 set of maracas
• 1 tiara
• 2 necklaces
• 1 dress

No shoes, no PJs, no change of clothes, no underwear, no socks.

“Where are the things we talked about?”, I asked.

“Well, daddy, there wasn’t enough room for everything so…”

We spent a wet and rainy morning on Sunday at the WW&F Railway Museum. Despite the weather, we had a nice time. Erica loves train! We will probably be heading back in a few weeks as the foliage turns some more.

See more photos of our day at Flickr.

Tomorrow will be a quiet day. Garbage to the transfer station and then gymnastics for Erica in the morning. Grocery shopping in the afternoon.

On Sunday we are heading to Alna to spend some time at SeptemberFest. SeptemberFest is taking place at the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington (WW&F) Railway Museum and is hosted by the museum and the The Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association (SVCA). The WW&F is always working hard to extend the track up the old line and has a great collection of narrow-gauge railway stock.

Then Monday we are heading across the state to the last agricultural fair of the year in the state of Maine, the Fryeburg Fair. This is the third year Deb and I have taken time off to go during the week and we are really looking forward to the time off this year. Monday is Woodsmen’s Day, which is always a great treat.

Hopefully tropical storm Kyle doesn’t ruin any of our plans.

Let me know if anyone is going to be at any of these events. I’ll keep an eye out for you.

Today, as I was helping a group with dribbling, a large dump-truck backed up into a parking lot adjoining the field. Most of the little boys lost all interest in the ball as the truck begun spilling it’s load of gravel out the back and onto the ground. Everything came to a stop as the gravel and truck rattled and shook.

“Can we go dig in the dirt now?”

Dirt wins over football for four year olds apprently.

The coach asked, “Who’s here to protect you?”

Another little gymnast piped right up and said, “God!”

The coach, without missing a beat, replied, “Who’s standing beside God?”

The little girl on the bar asked, “You coach?” Everything was fine after that.

Out of the mouth of babes, God bless the children.

July 16, 2008 - I spent the day at the Maine Highland Games at Thomas Point Beach in Brunswick, ME, helping out my friends presenting a timeline of soldiers of Scotland. I portrayed 7th Kings Own Scottish Borderers circa 1944.

Our very busy summer weekends are starting to slow down. Last week I spent a day out with the boys at the Maine Highland Games. This is the second year I turned out with Dave and Frank to help with the Soldiers of Scotland timeline. I had a nice time away from the family.

Deb and Erica were at the birthday party of Erica’s cousins. We all arrived home tired and worn out.

Erica and I have been fighting some sort of cold for weeks. Now we are really sick. Chest cough and sniffles. But we are suffering through.

Even sick we have not slowed down. We went to the Union Fair on Friday night and enjoyed some fair-food and rides. Neither Deb, nor Erica care much about the livestock. So I didn’t get much chance to walk around the barns.

We painted the house yesterday. Deb wanted something lighter than the slate gray it was. Now its a bit too electric blue for me. Turquoise is a good description maybe. Hopefully this morning we can start painting the trim and clean up the mess. Plus I need to mow the lawn.

The Windsor Fair starts today. I think we will head up one night this week.

We have a birthday party to attend next weekend. Then nothing planned until Fryeburg Fair the end of September.

If you visit my Flickr page, you can see some of the pictures and video taken from the week camping and from Gabi’s birthday in Connecticut. I have a few public pictures there. Most are limited to friends and family only. Add me as a contact, I’ll approve you and you can see more pictures if you are interested.

Some of the highlights from our week at Lake Pemaquid Campground were the 61 pounds of lobster we had on Wednesday. The great weather. Karaoke night with Erica and her cousins singing “Best of Both Worlds”.

We then zipped off to Gabi’s birthday party. And we returned to Maine absolutely exhausted. Frankly, I’ve not recovered since.

A week later we spent a lovely day at Pemaquid Lighthouse.

The training-wheels are off Erica’s bicycle and she is doing well with that. I really didn’t expect to have to do that until next summer. But she was popping wheelies in the driveway and that seemed like a sign that we needed to increase the challenge for her.

I’m drowning at work with all that summer in a public schools has to offer. But school will start weather I am ready or not. There is just too much to do and not enough people to do it.

Deb is also feeling the weight of work these dys too. He company is changing the backend software that runs everything and she is intimately involved with that. Looks like long hours are ahead for her.

The upcoming weekend is the only free weekend we have this month. Then you can find me at the Highland Games on Aug. 16 and Deb and Erica are going to a family birthday party wthout me.

This is our third year doing this. Deb’s sister and her family and one of my brothers and his family will all be camping at Lake Pemaquid next week. A total of 13 of us. Plus my sister-in-law’s sister and their familys total 20 or so and are camping as well. With so many cousins it’s a great deal of fun for Erica. For me it’s rarely a vacation of relaxation but is usually enjoyable in any case.

The campground does have wifi. So I’ll check in from time to time.

We start camping on July 12 and then leave to go visit family in Connecticut on the 19th and returning to work on July 21.

So for me there is the Fourth of July, Summer, Foliage Season, Autumn, Winter, Mud Season, Spring and finally Black fly Season. Yes, black fly season is in full swing now. The excessive amount of water that is around and the warm days make for perfect conditions this year. And the massive swarms are demonstrating some amazingly large examples. I could have sworn I saw some the size of a small house fly today.

I stopped for some road construction today and could barely see the flagger due to the cloud of black flies around him. I felt so sorry for him and was glad when I could move on.

So unless we are saved by a couple of days of overnight frost then it looks like this will be a particularly bad black fly season. By the middle of June they will pass and all of the activity and excitement around Independence Day will arrive marking the change of the season.

Oh, and for the record, I still have snow banks in the yard! Reminders of the long winter we had.

Of course, as you can see in the photo, most of the yard is now dirt. We seeded last night and now we pray for grass. Hopefully it’s green by Erica’s birthday in early June.

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.