Still moving toward spring but slowing down

We're stuck in this weather pattern where it's in 30's during the day but down to 11 or 12 at night.  Although we do like to firm up the mud, this is doing little to bring spring.  I recklessly turned off the heat in my cellar hole and bingo! my pump froze this morning.  No harm done and it thawed while I was running errands in town so all was well.  But really???  Is that necessary?

Life goes on in Hawkeye.  Huge wind storm last week caused power outage that lasted almost 2 days while temps were in the teens.  That was nasty.  House was 47 when I got up Thursday morning.  I went to work, convinced as I always am that the power would be back on ANY MINUTE.  Only it wasn't and the house did not warm up during the day.  I lit a fire and got it up to 57 before going to bed on the couch by the wood stove.  What a drag.  Power came back on of course and all was fine.  Just a reminder of how dependent on running water and television I am in my daily life.

My new couch was delivered on Friday after my friend Lin spent hours cleaning my bedroom as a favor so my new mattress would have a good home.  Except there was a problem with the ordering of the mattress, of course so it won't come until this week.  Not to worry, the bedroom is still clean and the couch arrived without incident.  The dogs think it's not as nice as the old couch (yes, I know what they think) because it's higher, cleaner, you don't sink to the floor when you sit on it and it doesn't smell bad.  Aw, too bad. Wait until they find out we're getting a new mattress.  Yikes.

I'm still getting to the gym most mornings, the thrift store on Weds. and Sat. and the Archives on Tuesday and Thursday.  A busy time but not too much.  I've been promoted at the thrift store and am learning to accept the responsibility of receiving and pricing donations.  Yes, there's a philosophy and a method to the madness.  Somewhere between "one less thing to the landfill" and "this could be valuable."  Always "one person's trash..."  Yes, we get a lot of trash, most of which is no ones treasures.

Tomorrow I'm going to Canton to a workshop on metadata for my work in the Archives.  It's about 1 1/2 hours away and the training is 3 hours long.  I have always maintained that meetings or training sessions should last at least as long as it takes to get to them so this session is very satisfying.

Later this week I go to Potsdam to a retirement party for a network director friend.  How do I feel about retirement parties?