Oh no not again

It's -8 right now and due to be -200 or so by morning.  Well, it IS winter in Hawkeye, isn't it?

I've been fairly busy recently.  Last week I volunteered at the Clinton Co. Historical Assoc., just for 2 hours on Weds.  The project I'm working on is scanning old photographs and writing descriptions of them in a spreadsheet.  It was more complicated than I'd hoped (I think what I really wanted to volunteer doing was stuffing envelopes, or something mindless like that) but I got into it, of course, and enjoyed myself.  I'm going back this Weds.

After being at the Hist. Assoc. I was to meet my friend for lunch at the Thai restaurant.  So there I went and sat and waited and waited.  She, it turned out had gone to the Thai restaurant that's UPTOWN, while I of course was at the one DOWNTOWN.  She waited, I waited, she worried, I worried, then all was well.  We're having lunch again this Weds. TOGETHER.

Friday I had lunch with Barb, which was really nice.  I like hearing about her family, especially since I knew her before her son was born, and his girlfriend is now pregnant.  WHAT????  My little Andrew, going to be a father?  Oh my.

On Saturday we had the Big  Burn of this year's brush pile behind Ken's house.  Everyone takes their brush, branches, etc. to the pile all summer, and in Feb. Joe comes from Georgia and the pile is lit.  It took a while to get it really going but once it started, it was as impressive as always.  A smaller pile this year than some years, but a nice day and good company.  I went with the Holts but we didn't stay until the bitter end, we left before the hot dogs were cooked.  The snow is deep but it's still powdery so at least I could walk up the hill to the fire.  I had my doubts...

Saturday night I had dinner with the Holts, always a treat.  Rush has started his new job in DC and they're working on the logistics of that.  Right now Annie is still in NJ but she'll be in DC with Rush soon.  It will be great having them there to visit, but it puts them farther away from Hawkeye.

My frozen pipes were finally fixed on Thursday.  The pipe behind the washing machine split on Sunday/Monday and I finally got someone to fix it for me on Thursday.  I had the Holts' house for water and shower and wash so it wasn't as disastrous as it might have been.  I got good advice on how to keep it from happening again, so now I have the doors of the bathroom vanity open and the heat on in the bathroom.  I'll check on it before going to bed, and if I wake during the night I'll make sure it's OK.  Whew!

Joe measured the thickness of the ice while he was here, and this year it's 28" thick.  A perfectly respectable number!  We have had consistent subzero temps so it's not surprising that the ice would be a bit thicker than some years.  It's hard to comprehend what it will take to melt all that ice.  I haven't been out on the lake yet--my unsuccessful trip 2 years ago has made me a bit nervous.  I did go out on it last year and managed not to fall through.

The dogs are doing well in this weather.  They don't mind going out until it gets to -20 or so, then they have trouble keeping all 4 feet on the ground at once.  Sometimes Tess stands in the driveway and barks at me, but I just tell her to hustle on inside.  I'm not totally tired of the weather yet, probably because I'm home every day to keep the house warm.  It was so awful when I was working and came home to a cold house, leaving a cold house in the morning to go to work.  Now I keep a good fire going all day and it's lovely.

I'm not as productive as I hope to be but I think I'm just getting used to this new life.  I do some cleaning, I cook a bit, I read, I watch too much TV and I get to be with my dogs.  It's all grand, just grand.