Sunday, February 09, 2020

We can call THIS winter

What a snow storm we had on Friday!  It started with ice on Thursday night, turned to a full day of snow on Friday.  We ended up with something between 18 and 24 inches, depending on which method of measuring you used: my plow man said we had 2 feet because his boots are 20 inches tall and the snow was over his boots.  OK, that sounds good.  Others measured the snow as 18-19 inches, which seems more likely to me but who knows.  Either way it was a ton of snow.  No, really.  The ice didn't help, my car was encased in ice under the snow.  Ugh.

Saturday I went to the dump, traveling roads that were slick but not impossible to navigate.  What I mostly did all day was clean my house.  Friends came for dinner (salmon cooked in a clay cooker along with roasted radishes) and we had a really nice time.  It got cold during the afternoon and evening, was down to -5 when they left.

By this morning it was -21--wow that was a surprise to me!   My house was chilly (58) but not miserable and warmed up with the sun.  We had a gorgeous sunny morning and I went to the gym with friends, came back to their house for coffee and a nice visit.

I made cake for book group tonight, a bourbon apple cake.  Whatever possesses me to try these things?   The cake is good but the bourbon flavor is really strong. 

Tonight I'll cook a pork tenderloin with roasted carrots.  It can't really be called a book "group," in the winter it's just a trio.  Meanwhile I need to come up with something for us to read for the next month.  It's not as if I don't have enough books, I just have to pick one.

My mother's friend emptied her wall-sized bookcase and estimated the total number of books at 1500.  Oh dear, this made me wonder just how many books I have--4 bookcases full, so at least a few hundred.  Why, oh why?

Wednesday, February 05, 2020

Beautiful day

It's 21 degrees with bright, warm sunshine--my very favorite kind of winter day.  I wish I were brave enough to go down to the lake alone but the last time I did that I fell through the ice.  Yikes, luckily it was close to shore but it sure was scary.  It cured me of solo trips on the ice, that's for sure.

We've been having a spell of pretty nice weather but haven't seen much of the sun.

I went snowshoeing the other day with friends.  We were going to go to camp and check on the boat house but I knew I wouldn't make it up the hill to come home so I stopped at the gate and came home while they went down to the lake (with Bear).  They said it was beautiful and the ice was fine.

Work is going well.  We're taking a break from scanning to add bibliographic records to the data base, which is what I did for so many decades when I worked.  It's funny to be doing that work again and it's even funnier what comes back to me about manipulating the data.  Am I pleased about this?  Not particularly.

I've been working at the thrift store but today it was pretty slow so I didn't stay long.  Saturday it was really really busy with shoppers but we had enough people working and there wasn't that much in receiving, it moved at a nice pace.

I've been walking the bog some mornings with friends, when we don't walk the bog we go to the gym.  One would hope this would lead to weight loss (not) and improved lung function (not) so it's all sort of discouraging.  I see my doctor later this month and was hoping to proudly announce my weight loss but alas and alack that doesn't not seem to be going to happen.  Oh well.