Jan 15, 2014 A Venture Down There

The snow ends here.

Dinga playing in the snow.

Monday 1/13.  I wrote letters, ran copies of genealogy charts for Nene and got the mail all ready to send tomorrow.  Also worked some more on the computer with my genealogy files, but my old one is so very slow.  JB is still taking programs off but that is very time consuming.  

I enjoyed Shadow of Night so much that I am now re-reading the book that comes before it, A Discovery of Witches, both by Deborah Harkness.  These are not books that I simply read, but rather immerse myself.

I brought in firewood and we all went for our afternoon walk.  Our high for the day was 38 so I hardly even needed a coat.  I actually took it off towards the end of the walk, even though a breeze rustled through the trees all day.  It will take more than one warm, sunny day to melt all this snow and ice.

I set the alarm when I went to bed.  Something I haven't had to do for more than a month.

Tuesday 1/14.  Some horrible sound intruded into my dreams early this morning and while I was trying to figure out what it was, I heard a disembodied voice say, "Are you going to turn the alarm off?"  The alarm?  Aha!  So it wasn't a cougar screaming outside our window.

Getting up at 7:00 am is not my idea of a good time, but we wanted to leave no later than 9:00 am for Down There.  We actually left a few minutes before and JB drove very slowly.  The ice had started turning soft so our journey was quite safe.  That was only one place where the road was covered in a solid sheet of ice, but it was flat there so no problem.

We accomplished everything we wanted to and my doctor's appointment was a success.  My arm on which she had removed a small skin cancer three months ago was doing just fine, and, as I suspected, I do have a low grade sinus infection for which she gave me a prescription for an antibiotic.  Should be feeling much better pretty soon.

It felt more like Spring Down There.  Their high was 54 which is 20 degrees above average.  Our high was 38.

This is our sixth winter Up Here and the first time we have been able to drive down the road in mid January in the Jeep.  Since we did, I bought more than I normally would have had we taken MAX.  We got all the groceries put away, with JB noting them on our inventory list as I put them in the pantry.  Now there is three weeks of mail to go through.

We received the short wave (CB) radio and JB will get it all hooked up soon.  Our "lightening rod" is well grounded, which is more than I can say for some people I know.

Wednesday 1/15.  It is still 38 outside this morning with mostly cloudy skies.  I had hoped to take the day off, but JB seems to have it all planned out for us: dishes, snake the pipe again, then do a load of wash.  Today I will be under the house - with knee pads on - while JB snakes so I can tell just how far the snake actually gets.  Fine.  In return, I am taking the next two days off.

Thought for the day:  We don't have a trillion-dollar debt because we haven't taxed enough; we have a trillion-dollar debt because we spend to much.  Ronald Reagan