Rabbit rabbit rabbit

Yesterday was the 1st of March, the day you're supposed to say "rabbit rabbit rabbit" as your first words of the day, for good luck to last you a year (until next March 1st). Those weren't my 1st words (my first words were "Good morning," spoken to the dogs), but I did say RABBITRABBITRABBIT while I was in the shower. Almost counts, but not quite.

Today I'm having an eat everything in sight morning. Devouring anything that I come across. I didn't finish the 2-day old chocolate donut from the staff room, though--it didn't taste good fresh, and now tastes worse stale. I bought chocolate milk when I got my coffee, to have something in my stomach when I took my 600 mg of ibuprofen on the way in. I've switched back to that for my knee--the narcotics didn't seem to help as much as good old Motrin. Nothing really seems to help, but ibuprofen numbs it a little bit. Tomorrow is my MRI. Can't wait to get this resolved. Every time I get firewood I have to climb over the first two rows buried in the snow in front of the currently-being-used rank, and it's very tipsy and my knee is very weak and it hurts. I'm afraid of falling, of having my knee lock, blahblahblah. Anyway, I have to go to RI next weekend for my mother's 80th birthday, then I go to Boston for the Public Library Association conference on the 22nd so I need some sort of resolution fitted into my schedule. Meanwhile I just look as if I'm trying to garner sympathy, limping around and groaning involuntarily.

It's been cold this week, -13 on Monday, -8 on Tuesday, 0 yesterday, but warmer today. I think it's supposed to be 30 today. Makes me realize it hasn't been above freezing in a long, long time. Of course it snowed last week, I had my car washed the day before. It looked so nice and shiny for a whole day. I found out last night that it was NOT my plow man who plowed my driveway on Saturday, but my friend Peter, who did it to surprise me. I have some really nice friends. I have to get some wine and take it to Peter's house this weekend. I met Dennis, who stays in one of the camps at the end of my road from time to time during the winter. He's the caretaker and uses his snowmobile to get to and from the camp, parking near my driveway. I saw him last night (he's a friend of Peter's) and he said "So your driveway is nicely plowed," then told me that Peter had done it while I was at Sunday dinner, knowing I was at Sunday dinner. Dennis also told me that the ice on the lake is really thick, but along the shore it has heaved up and is not so thick: he went through up to his knees last weekend. Guess I won't be going out on the lake this year. The mere thought of going through the ice totally freaks me out.

We've had the most spectacular sunset the last two nights. You know, Red sky at night, logger's delight. Sailer's delight. Farmer's delight. Fill in the blank. Anyway, I've said "WOW!" out loud, alone in my car, both nights as I've driven home, when I've seen the mountains lit up with

Alpenglow (German: Alpenglühen) is an optical phenomenon. When the Sun sets in the west, a horizontal red glowing band can sometimes be observed in the east. In mountainous areas such as the Alps, this can be caused by snow, moisture, and ice on mountain sides which receive the scattered red light from the setting Sun.
In the absence of mountains, the aerosols in the eastern part of the sky themselves can still be illuminated in the same way by the remaining red scattered light straddling the border of the Earth's own shadow (the terminator). This back-scattered light produces a red band above the darkness rising in the east. The difference with gegenschein, which is also found in the east, is that alpenglow is caused inside the Earth's atmosphere.


The mountains are really spectacular when this happens, and we only get to see it a couple of times a year. It's been a while since I've seen it so I was really pleased to come across it unexpectedly the other night. Jamie and I used to see it in Lake Placid on the High Peaks, spread out across the mountains--really stunning there. It was nice to see it on my own mountains, Silver Lake Mountain, Douglas, Catamount.

We're having a group photo taken of the whole staff in front of our new bookmobile this morning. Bob is busy washing the bus so it will have it's best smile on. I'm short so I never really get to stand behind someone in these shots to hid my chubby little body, but sometimes I can manage to tuck myself in somewhere.

Last night I changed the water in the fish tank. It was really dirty and there was brown stuff growing on the sides of the tank. How did the fishes reward me? They died. 4 of them did, so far. Floating belly up this morning. Well, I had to clean the tank. I don't know what was wrong with the water but obviously something was. So now it's back to new danios again, and I'm down one rasbora. The orange platy is hanging on by a slender thread. Don't tell PETA about me, please.