Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for January 19, 2011

Cue in the music: Tiny Bubbles

Don Ho

LOL- the bubble will still land in the neighbors yard!

Oh, oh, I want one of those! Not only would it make clearing away the snow easier, but I could entertain my kids at the same time. Most children do tend to love bubbles.

Snow bubbles?

Now if you could only add some colors.

Don who?

You can snowblow one way “with the wind” but if you don’t back up and go the same direction each time half of the time the snow will blow back in your face some. With over 600 feet of drive we do not go only the one direction! It takes long enough as it is! End of the drive can prove interesting, with all the plows drop there the piles can get not only too high to blow up to, but worst too high to see out of. Shoveled them down many a time. One year we all had little flags on our antennae so others could see us. Doesn’t work as well with the built in antennae!

@sayhowURfeeling - That goes the same for shoveling. BTW, in any area, the wind is usually in the same direction for the first day or so after a snowstorm passes. For instance, where I live it is always from the north and west. I have learned how to configure the cars so I always have a southeast line to throw the snow.

C K: Theory, That word has too many ways to get around: small and capital ‘ell’ small and capital ‘eye’ and the number ‘one’ plus heill. and others anyway, why bleep it at all when you can hear it ten times, in church, every Sunday and Wednesday.

Can any of you snow lovers tell me what’s the minimum grade for sledding? Here in the Old Dominion we barely got snow and the one day I went out with my kid, I ended up as a sled puller all morning.

Capital idea! an air powered snow blower to blow bubbles, no waiting for Summer fun woo whooo!

Potrzebie, instead of concerning yourself with inclines, I suggest you read Calvin and Hobbes. Hose the area down with water and let it ice up. Minimum grading would be irrelevant when it’s slippery. Of course, one must use caution re: cross traffic, pedestrians, etc.

If you are voluntarily residing in a place that has this problem, would you please explain why? I spent 4 years in Wyoming and 4 years in Germany, and if I never see another snowflake, it will be too soon.

You gonna patent that Wiley?

A real Welk-end warrior.

From the instruction Sheet :

Ah Onea: turn the key.

Ah Twoa: push the choke to fulla.

Ah Threea: Prime de engine.

Ah Foura: Leta Bobby and Sissy pulla your starter cord to the magical number.

Don’t buy a snow machine, surely “global warming” will soon make it obsolete - oops I forgot, it is “Anthropomorphic Climate Change” and it means that warming begets colder winters as well as warmer. I’m so confused!

Wonder if any two snow bubbles are the same?

SeS1066 Very simplified, Our great huge oceans control the weather. A change overall of less than half a degree, plus or minus, and the currents are changing, too, is enough to throw the weather patterns of the world all higgledy piggledy and God bugger us all. That’s “BILLIONS AND BILLIONS AND BILLIONS” of gallons of water vapor, alone. I truely hope I helped.

In my experience with blowing snow, it seems that whatever direction you are blowing the snow in, is the direction the wind is blowing from.

For those of you who live where it gets down to 20 below Fahrenheit try this in that deadly cold. Blow soap bubbles outside and watch them turn into crinkly saran wrap like clusters.

Helium snowballs?

I love winter – and when I was blowing my driveway last night, I came to realize that on the next round, I’ll have to angle the chute up higher next time. Hella high snow this year – but not a record here. Heh. Lived through those winters, too.

When I saw this, I started to try to figure out HOW you could get bubbles out of a snow blower - So, start with the auger end of the snow blower, add a Hotsy pressure washer, with soap dispenser. Add a lawn tractor with a leaf blower / vacuum, and you have it.

Damnnn I need a patent lawer now.

pop pop fizz fizz….

Thanks for the relief from all the pseudo-science, treered.

Potrzebie, If you are in the Old Dom, you must be in the tidewater section. (east of the fall line on the major rivers) Here in the piedmont, you can’t go very far at all without finding a sled worthy hill.

junco49, oh, I’ll have to try that, but not, I hope, until next winter. One cold snap per winter is all that’s allowed, right?

We had snow, followed by warm weather and rain. Driveway’s a skating rink. I’m putting on the shoe grips to make it the twenty feet from the door to the dogs’ pen without slip-sliding away.

Even the dogs, with their built-in crampons, are going down.

junco, I too blow bubbles outside in the winter. Sometimes they freeze full size, sometimes they pop. Don’t think I’ve ever seen them crinkle. Maybe I haven’t done it in cold enough weather. We are going to get some pretty cold temps here this week, even by my standards. (I’m hard to impress when it comes to cold temps. I’ve been in -30 degree weather. There is so little moisture in the air that it really isn’t that bad. Except for the metal seat in the out house!) Time to go to the store to get some bubble stuff for some more experimentation….I’ll keep you posted….

There are two kinds of people in the world. The ones who like pretty bubbles and balloons floating in the air and the ones who like to pop them. I hate the poppers…

I thought the best snowblower is one you don’t have to use…

^ Or the one someone else is using to clear your driveway!

I hate winter, and have often wished my ancestors had settled somewhere warmer than Ontario when they first came over from the Olde Country! As it is, my Canadian citizenship limits my choices in moving to a tropical climate.

plus4: what makes global warming a “political” issue? Political issues are about opinions and beliefs. That the oceans have gotten warmer, the climate is becoming more extreme, the warming is the result of higher atmospheric CO2 and the increase in CO2 is pretty much exactly what you’d expect given the amount of fossil fuels we’ve burned up… these things aren’t opinions or beliefs; they’re measured facts. We can argue about what we should do in response; that would be politics. But as for the phenomenon itself, that’s just a fact. And all the political argument in the world won’t change that, for Mother Nature doesn’t pay much attention to politicians.

Lawrence Welk’s last words: “someone turn off the bubble machine!”

@ Varnes,

No there are only 10 types of people in the world those who understand binary and those who dont.

(if you are the 2nd type “10” translated from binary is 2)

The time machines can be tricky to find though. The Chameleon Circuits make them look like ordinary home improvement items.