This past year had been a hell of a ride for me. In fact I can honestly say it’s been the worse year of my life. But there have been some good things amongst the bad. One of the best things in my life this past year has been all of you guys. Your love, support and understanding have meant the world to me. You guys have helped me through the tough times and have encouraged me to continue on and keep moving forward. In the process I feel that we’ve all become close and dear friends. I know I’ve thanked you a hundred times, but here’s one more for the road.

Thank you all for everything you’ve given me this last year.

To all of you I give this New Years wish;
May your 2008 be filled with happiness, contentment, joy, and peace.
May your lives be filled with love and caring.
May you all find strength and  support when you need it.
And may your lives be filled with all of the gifts our world has to offer.

Happy New Year to the whole SierraVisions Community!!
Steven

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As promised, here is a picture of my new home. This is from the backyard and is looking at the back of the house. It’s a large brick building with two apartments, one on the lower floor and one on the upper floor, but as you can see it looks like a house. I think at one time it might have been.

The door and window on the second floor is to one of my bedrooms. It’s the one that I’m typing this in. You can kind of make out my little balcony. The other bedroom window is behind the pine tree. The lower windows are my downstairs neighbors. The lower door is to the basement. My entrance is on the right side of the building. I have a private stairway that climbs to my place.

Leslie commented on the first post that it looked so country. That’s one of the things I love about living in Monona. Even though we are in the city, it feels like a small town. My neighborhood is awesome. Lots of big lots, large backyards, parks, and the coolest little mid-western houses. I’d love to own one of the homes on my street some day. Also Monona is know as an American Tree City. There are lots of trees here. The city limits of Madison are just right down the street from me and I can be at the mall in 10 minutes, but this neighborhood totally has a small town atmosphere.

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Here is a picture of my backyard from my balcony.
Wouldn’t that be a great web cam? I’ll have to think about that.
The yard goes all the way to the house in the background. The street is on the other side of the trees on the left and there is more yard behind the pine tree on the right. There are three other large pines back there too. Scout loves it!! I wish it was fenced. But I think this summer I should be able to string up a line between trees and let Scout spend time out there.

I shot this just 10 min. ago and yep, it’s snowing again. We are expecting from 3-6 inches of snow today.
I’ll get a shot of the house for you when it stops snowing.

Check this out, the record snowfall for Dec. in Madison is 35 inches. That was set in 2000. We are currently at 30 inches for this month. The average snowfall in Dec. is 12.5 inches. Last year they only had 7 inches in Dec. I guess I brought some Sierra snow totals with me.

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The US Postal Service has released previews of it’s new stamps for 2008. One of the new stamps is a painting of Yosemite Valley by Albert Bierstadt. Here is the stamp and the caption from the USPS site. You can click on the image for the larger version.

Add the beauty of Yosemite to your mail with the eighth issuance in the American Treasures series next August. Art director Derry Noyes of Washington, DC, chose “Valley of the Yosemite,”an 1864 oil-on-paperboard painting by Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902). It belongs to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. “Valley of the Yosemite” shares the freshness and immediacy of the plein air field sketches Bierstadt used in composing a much larger painting titled “Looking Down Yosemite Valley.”

You can view all of the new stamps at this link: New Stamps for 2008

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Here is a really cool article from the NY Times about ice skating the lakes of the Sierra back country. It’s centered in Mammoth and talks about how short the season is, (as soon as the snow flies it’s over) and some of the dangers of skating on back country lakes.

In High Country California, Seeking Ice Instead of Snow

Have any of you guys done this? If so tell us about.

I’ve walked across Horton Lake during an extreme drought year.  It was early Feb. and a buddy and I hiked up to Horton Lake. We saw that the lake was frozen over pretty good and got up the nerve to walk across. I’ll tell you what, I don’t think I’ll even do that again. It was pretty scary. As you look down at the ice you see cracks going through it and the ice moans and groans and lets out a nice loud pop every now and then. When we were in the middle of the lake I started thinking about how alone we were up there. I remember thinking at one point that if we fell through at least we’d drown in a beautiful lake.

Of course now that I live in Wisconsin I’m kind of looking forward to my first ice fishing trip. But that won’t be in the middle of the Eastern Sierra far away from everybody.

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